The House of Sacrifice

by Anna Smith Spark

  Darath said, shocked, “What? What?”

  “We are his allies,” said Cauvanh.

  Quiet, embarrassed pause.

  Cauvanh said, “Lord Vorley, Lord Emmereth. You have failed to kill the demon Marith Altrersyr, despite paying one of his most trusted lieutenants a quite astonishing amount of money to ensure his death. You have conspired to overthrow the Immish rule here in the Sekemleth Empire, when the Immish Great Council would have given your city to Marith Altrersyr the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane the man you just failed to kill as a loving gift.”

  Quiet, embarrassed pause.

  Cauvanh said, “If we in Immish once harboured any other ideas about our alliance with him… I’m not sure what else you think I should do now, if you were in my place?”

  “He’ll come for you too,” Darath cried out. Orhan thought: oh Darath, I love you for your innocence just as much as I love you for being the most jaded old roué in Sorlost. “Chathe was his ally. He’ll wallow in our blood up to his eyeballs and then he’ll come for you. Of course he will. You heard what they say Marith Altrersyr did to Elarne. He’ll do that to us. He’ll do that to you. He was defeated in the mountains, he must be weakened, everyone thought he was dead for Great Tanis’s sake!” Pleading. Almost running around the room. Trying to get out. “If we stand against him now, while he’s still recovering, if you help us now, we can raise an army together, fight him in the desert, his army can’t be used to the desert as we are, they’ll run out of water, they’ll struggle in the heat, if you help us, if we—”

  Orhan put his hand on his lover’s arm. “Darath.”

  You sound like my father when he was dying, Darath, Orhan thought. I can’t die I can’t die I can’t die not me not me do something do something there must be something all this power this money there must be something I can’t die not me not me.

  “Chathe was the demon’s ally,” said Cauvanh. “Yes. Chathe’s King Rothlen went to Ethalden in state, brought tribute of gold and jewels. Knelt at Marith Altrersyr’s feet and kissed the soles of his boots. He went so hastily that the walls of Ethalden were still being raised when he arrived. Before even the Immish Great Council reached Ethalden, which says something indeed. The blood of the people of Illyr was still wet on the demon’s hands. Rothlen kissed it off. Swore fealty, offered troops, grain, tribute. All he asked in exchange was that the demon leave Chathe in peace. Which the demon agreed.

  “Rothlen died soon after arriving home. As soon as he was crowned in his father’s place, King Heldan also set out to offer homage. Knelt at Marith Altrersyr’s feet and kissed the soles of his boots. The blood of the people of Cen Elora was still wet on the demon’s hands. Heldan kissed it off. Swore fealty, offered troops, grain, tribute. Sent Ryn Mathen the king’s cousin to serve under him, at the head of five thousand Chathean troops.

  “We Immish at least only offered fealty once. And we have never fought for him.”

  Cauvanh placed a letter on the table. “This is from my agent in Elarne. She was there to see it, is now a part of his army, indeed. Marith Altrersyr came out of the mountains at the head of his Chathean troops. Ryn Mathen rode beside him, his eyes shining with love. He turned the Chathean troops on their own people. Burned the land, destroyed whole villages, killed every person who would not join him. King Heldan sent an army to hold him a little while, buy the people of Elarne time to run. They must have known that it was hopeless. Dead men knowing they went to die to buy their children an hour or two more of life.

  “A sensible decision. Who wouldn’t die, to buy their children an hour or two more of life?”

  “Nor did the men of Elarne. They fled at his advance. The demon sent his shadowbeasts after them. Turned the Chathean troops with him on their own city. Elarne is razed to ashes. King Heldan and every man and woman and child in Elarne is dead.”

  He put the letter down on the table. Carefully folded it up.

  “Chathe is a plague-ridden wasteland. She writes that the Army of Amrath is already eager to march on. They are full of new-found energy, she writes. Like children. They are shouting for glory and plunder and revenge on the world that briefly dared to thwart them. She writes that they are now preparing to march on Sorlost.”

  Darath said, “So help us. You have twenty thousand men under arms. Strike now, while he’s still weak. Where will he go, after he has destroyed the Empire? He will destroy Immish, he will kill you. You fools.”

  “Of course he will,” said Cauvanh. “The White City of Alborn is filled with treasure and beauty and wine and women, his troops will I am sure greatly enjoy themselves there. Immish has deep clear rivers that he can poison, wheat fields longing for him to burn them, sweet green woods crying out to be uprooted. Towns and towns of people, thousands and thousands of people to kill.”

  “But the men of the Immish Great Council will be sailing across the Bitter Sea by then, a hundred miles out to sea, our ships laden down with gold. Heading for Ae-Beyond-the-Waters. If it even exists as a real place. Or perhaps we will all be drowned.”

  Cauvanh stood and bowed to Darath and Orhan. “Thank you for everything you have done for me, Lord Emmereth, Lord Vorley. Thank you. And… I am sorry. Truly. A part of me… a part of me thinks that we should stand with you and fight.”

  Cauvanh walked out.

  The city was filled with screaming. It can’t… It can’t… Do something… Do something… People fighting to get into the Great Temple to make offerings. People fighting to kneel in prayer beneath the statue of the demon in the Court of the Broken Knife. The godstones, the heathen shrines and holy places were soaked in blood and milk and wine poured in offering. One man had crawled into the city crying and the whole city was pissing itself. Oh Sorlost. Oh my city. Beauty and wonder and old sorrows, the dream memory of golden childhood, the desire for a lost beloved never truly known. To see the end come like this. Bil went to the Temple, used all the wealth in their house to push her way through the crowds, throw herself weeping before the low altar where she had once made offerings in thanks for Dion’s life. Celyse came and sat with Dion, sat and stared at him. She was back at her own house, reunited with her own son and with her husband at the Nithque’s written order. But she sat and stared at Dion, her hands clasped.

  It is impossible to imagine. Conquering the world. Conquering a city… that is hardly a notion we are unfamiliar with. But the question comes suddenly to a thousand lips, that had not occurred before when it was a far-off unreal thing. Why? Why does he do this? Why do they do it? An army marched from Illyr in the north a thousand thousand miles, suffered injury and sickness and weariness and defeat, each man in that army risked death a thousand times, saw friends and comrades wounded, dying, screaming, went on themselves wounded, hurting, so that they could… do that.

  “Why?” Bil whispered, dry-lipped, when she returned, her eyes filled with the stories. “Why did they come all this way, to do this?”

  “They are poor,” said Orhan. “They are angry…”

  Darath could only shrug and say, “Because, Bilale. I am going out to buy a new toy for Dion.”

  Just before dusk the gates of the Summer Palace opened, and the last of the Immish soldiers marched out, Lord Cauvanh at their head. They looked as shocked as the people of the city did. They must know, also, what had happened. Perhaps some of them felt guilt. Orhan watched from a high window of the palace. Cauvanh raised his head, looked back, raised his arm in a wave. He can’t see me, Orhan thought, he might guess I’m watching but he can’t see me, obviously he can’t.

  Voices drifted up on the wind:

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  A crowd had gathered—people knew, how did they always know? The street whores, the sweetmeat sellers, the beggar children with their hatha sores, they knew what was happening, what it meant. People gathered at the palace, in the streets, at the Maskers’ Gate. Odd silence. Then moans, wails, a woman’s sobs. Then a rush, a howl like a dog, people rus
hing forward, wrestling with the Immish soldiers, begging them to stay, begging to go with them.

  The Immish soldiers pushing their way forward. Cauvanh at their head, trying to keep looking ahead of him, like this was all perfectly normal. Like he wasn’t a man to feel shame and grief.

  Some soldiers. Taking a walk.

  “No. No. No. No. No.”

  Behold. We are liberated!

  The crush was growing. A woman screamed. The Immish soldiers pushed forward, people pushed against them, not quite a riot, almost a wrestling match between the Immish and the city people, a flow of water grinding against a wall until the wall breaks. This must be what a battle looks like, thought Orhan. A real battle. Absurdly, he thought of Bil in childbirth, Janush shouting, “Push, push, Bilale, push,” Bil’s body straining almost tearing itself apart. A woman went down under the soldiers’ feet. A soldier shouted something in Immish, tried to grab at her, someone mistook his action, a punch was thrown, a sword blade flashed.

  Orhan screamed uselessly over the turmoil, “Cauvanh! Get them out! Get them out!”

  The gates would be shutting soon. If the Immish soldiers were shut in overnight, they and many others would be dead before morning.

  The soldier’s blade was red. More people were screaming. Cauvanh was looking around him, had stopped moving his men forward. Great Tanis, his face. He was enjoying this. There was a look of something like hunger on him. He had had the same look pouring over his maps after killing Lord Mylt, planning where to march his men off to next. “Cen Elora… Cen Andae… Immier… Chathe, even, if we can raise the men . . .” He does not crave power, thought Orhan. All of this, he did it all only because he craves chaos and blood. Enjoys playing these games. We are well rid of him.

  No, we aren’t. Don’t be an idiot, Orhan.

  “Gallus.” The Chief Secretary was watching Orhan, trying to pretend he wasn’t. “Gallus. The palace guard—get them out. Get them to clear the square, clear the Immish route out. Now.” Should have thought of it before, Orhan thought. Gallus hesitated. Already blood on the street, a riot starting. “Get anyone you can find, out there between the Immish soldiers and the crowd,” Orhan shouted.

  Thus we come to it again already, the soldiers of the Sekemleth Empire killing their own people to save them from themselves. The people are righteously angry, are suffering; they are stupid children and the wise must use force to control them. Kill a few of them for their own greater good.

  One day, Orhan thought. One day of power, without this. Was that too much to ask? Must everything be born and made in blood? The Empire’s soldiers marched into the square, cutting their way through to the Immish. Orhan watched from his high window, tiny figures shifting, the crowd moving like cloud shadows, from here it looked like a dance, like Dion’s toys, like watching ants around a spilled drink. Could not see or hear anything. The Immish soldiers marched on through the violence to the Maskers’ Gate.

  More riots when the gates closed behind the Immish soldiers at sunset. In total perhaps a hundred dead. The bodies were piled up by the gate waiting to be buried, under guard. Three bodies and three of the wounded turned up in the Court of the Broken Knife, piled beneath the statue’s feet in offering. Fires were lit there, people danced around them singing, dropped flowers and coins into the flames. Soldiers were sent to retrieve the bodies. They stopped at the edge of the square. Refused to go further. “The knife,” one of them said when questioned, “the knife had a blade to it, if I had gone into the square to take His tribute, He would have struck me down with His knife.” Orhan thought of going to the Court of the Broken Knife to make an offering himself. “I saw your face, I looked into your eyes, once. Why do you do this?” He and Darath trying to settle who should tell the child Emperor he was going to die again shortly. “You’ve died so many times, you must be used to it. Does that console you? It can’t be worse than when you died of plague.” He’s five years old.

  This city is unconquerable, and will be till the end of the world. Bronze walls encircle us, five times the height of a man, they have no seams or joins, a perfect ribbon of metal twisting around the city, punctuated only by the five great gates. They have never been breached: even Amrath himself dashed his armies to pieces against them to no avail and gave up in despair.

  (Also, we paid him his army’s weight in gold to go away, we have no idea how things would have gone if he’d been bothered to exert himself, he’d have broken through our walls in a week, I suspect, but let’s not talk about that, let’s not think about that.)

  It’s like a challenge. Like a street whore touting himself to a client. Even if we hadn’t done the things Cauvanh listed to me.

  “We could negotiate,” said Selim Lochaiel. “Surrender. Beg him to spare us.”

  “I suppose we could. It might briefly amuse him.”

  “Pay him. Beg him. Open the gates, welcome him.”

  Darath said, “Give him our wives and daughters to play with, offer to massacre every tenth person in the city in front of him, send him my head and your head and Orhan’s head on gold plates?”

  Orhan thought: my life for a hundred lives. For twenty. For ten. For one. But it’s pointless. Isn’t it?

  Isn’t it?

  Hang on to that. Go home and kiss my son, and say it wouldn’t make any difference if I offered to die for him.

  The whole city, he thought. The whole damned city, the whole world, I’d sacrifice, for Darath and Dion. My life for Dion’s life, if my dying in agony bought him another few moments. But it won’t. So I won’t consider it, and I won’t feel guilt for not considering it.

  “Darath’s right. We lock the gates, arm everyone who can hold a weapon, stockpile food, wait,” said Orhan. “Like everyone else has done. Hope. Pray.”

  “Things might go differently for us than for everyone else,” said Darath. “You never know. He might take one look at our walls and give up. I mean… he won’t. But he might. Let’s just try to hold on to that, shall we? You never know until it happens. And then if you’re lucky you die before you really have to get your head around it.” He wept and he wept.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Marith Altrersyr who may or may not still be the Lord of the World the King of All Irlast

  The desert west somewhere of Sorlost

  The bag containing Osen Fiolt’s head banged against the saddle. Ryn Mathen, riding next to him, was humming. The Army of Amrath sang as they marched. The desert sand was almost pleasant after the hard mountain stones; they had a fine train of provisions, ate bread and meat and drank wine every night. The wind blew from the east, dry and dusty, but bringing with it the distant scent of the Sekemleth Empire, spices and incense and gold gold gold gold gold and revenge. Marith chewed a handful of keleth seeds, wiped sweat from his forehead. Turned to Ryn.

  “Want a race?”

  Ryn grinned back at him. “Yes.”

  They kicked their horses, galloped out across the sand. Soldiers having to leap out of the way. Yells and cheers. Marith caught a man shouting, “Five in gold on the king.”

  The new horse was a marvel. Beautiful, naturally: pure white; clever limpid blue eyes; a perfect arch to its neck; it had been brought to him decked out in red and silver, red plumes, red saddle, silver cheek pieces studied with rubies, silver-gilded hooves, it quite obviously enjoyed its finery, knew how splendid it was, pranced for him to display itself. Strong. Clever—it had been trained for war, it had carried him and understood him. And so gloriously absurdly breathtakingly fast. Shouldn’t be riding it outside of the fighting, should be resting it. But it was so fast and it loved to march and show itself off as the king’s horse and it loved to play and race.

  He kicked his heels in again and it was almost flying. The glorious sound of its hooves pounding into the sand, his breath and its breath, the men cheered their heads off behind them. Gods only knew where they were racing to, until the horses gave out under them or beyond that. Marith pulled around to the right, Osen’s he
ad banging against the saddle, rushing past the ranks of the army as they marched. Ryn followed him, whooping; the men cheered and cheered. Marith pulled the horse up, sweating and blowing, stroked its neck. “Good horse.” Ryn pulled up next to him, gasping like the horses. “One day, Marith, one day I’ll beat you.”

  “You should have kept the horse yourself,” Marith said, “you’ll never outrace him.”

  “Oh no. He was born and bred only for a king.” The horse snorted. Ryn said, “And he knows it. He was bred for you.”

  Gods knew if he was a king still. The men around him called him “My Lord King,” knelt to him, Ryn and Kiana Sabryya did him deference, Alis Nymen arranged the cook woman and the woman with the baby as his household servants, and beyond that, only the gods knew. He wore his crown. His army had destroyed a city. He had sat on the throne of Chathe, apparently, and Ryn had held up King Heldan’s severed head to him and acclaimed him king. And I thought it would be a good thing, Marith thought, if my army was destroyed. That it could be ended.

  The nights out in the mountains, free, the darkness pressed on him, soft and heavy, it was all the same whether he looked out into the dark of the world or in into the dark of his own mind. All that he was running wild in his thoughts, crushing him; his mind crawled, like there were things crawling inside his skull eating at him. His body shaking, things pulling at his body, inside him. No peace. Never any peace. Filth tearing up inside, making him shake and weep. The desert, here, now, yellow dust, yellow sky, yellow light. I failed: I am a king still. Thank the gods.

  There were other things, once, he thought then. I remember… I used… I… Other things. But I can’t remember… I thought, if the army was destroyed, if everything stopped, if there was an ending, I hoped, I thought…

  I was wrong.

  He made the horse rear up with a shout. A king’s horse. Drew his sword and saw the light flash on it. The army cheered.