They could have opened the gates, he thought. To stop it.
It got to noon. The sun overhead, blazing. Not a cloud in the blue-gold sky. The walls shimmered in the heat, seemed to sweat like flesh. The army stood and stank of sweat, tramping their feet, their knees and their shoulders aching, the long ash-wood shafts of their sarriss trembling from holding them so long, sweat coursing down inside their helmets blinding them. The horses were lathered and gasping, eyes wide and white, foam at their mouths and even blood.
The walls seemed to ripple in the heat. They looked like a great curtain of fire surrounding the city, an encircling ring of flame.
“Marith—” Kiana began, wiping sweat from her face. A jangle of horses’ hooves: Thalia rode up beside him. White horse white gown white flowers, her face bronze dark her hair wild midnight black. Soothing. Her arms were bare, showing her scars. In her left hand she carried a knife.
“Marith,” Thalia said. She looked like a may tree in first blossom. Her eyes went huge and blue, looking down at the city before her. “Marith. I… We… We could…” She took his hand, clutched it tightly. “We don’t have to… We could… I could…” She closed her eyes. “Do it, then,” she said. “Destroy it.”
Closed his own eyes. Opened them. Rode his horse forward down towards the great bronze walls of the city of Sorlost. No man knew who had built them. Perhaps, indeed, they had not been built at all. He stopped near to the Gate of the Evening, sealed and blank. Behind it, people must be waiting, soldiers of the Empire, guards in gold armour like the ones he had killed over and over, guards in black armour with blue flame racing down their sword blades. They must be afraid. They must be laughing at him, also, he thought. Ten thousand men in his mighty army! And here he sat, one man alone, at a gate raised by the gods before the world was born.
“Hekykamena,” he said quietly to the vast bronze walls before him. Break. And then he said, “Tiamrekt.”
Burn.
Did they not look like a ring of flame?
Like bronze in a crucible. Goldwork held in the jeweller’s forge. And once, long ago, he had seen a master glassblower who had come to the court at Malth Elelane to show his wonders, glass cups, glass bangles, a glass figurine in the shape of a swan. He had blown a great bubble of glass for show, in the feasting hall, red glass, as delicate as a soap bubble, as wide as a man’s arms could reach, the glass had been so hot, the craftsman’s face had run with sweat. The man had played a game, a trick to amuse them, it had been summer and he had conjured up a cloud of yellow butterflies that had come dancing around the shining glass bubble, thinking it a flower, been burned to nothing; not even the ash was left, when they alighted on its beautiful lustrous surface.
Like breathing on a mirror. Breathe out and there’s steam on the mirror. Your own face obscured. Funny thing for a little boy to do.
Liquid bronze. Flowing.
Even the men of his own army began to scream.
Chapter Forty-Five
Orhan Emmereth, adviser to the Emperor’s Nithque, who once believed himself to be a man of wisdom
Sorlost
“He’s melting the fucking walls! He’s melting them! He’s melting them! Melting them!” Until Orhan slapped Gallus’s face, to make him shut up. The way he sometimes dreamed of slapping Dion.
“Great Tanis. Great Tanis. Great Tanis. Great Tanis.” Aris Ventuel the Lord of Empty Mirrors. His voice going on and on. “What is he? What is he? Great Tanis. Mercy.”
“Do it. Give them everything. One in two of the people of the city. My wife’s head on a plate. Do it. Do it. Anything. Everyone in Sorlost. Make him stop.” Selim Lochaiel. Whispering screaming whispering screaming rocking banging his head.
Orhan thought: he won’t stop now. We all know that.
Everywhere, people were running. At the Maskers’ Gate and the Gate of Laughing, people were trying to tear the gates open with their bare hands. Kill those around you, pile up their bodies before the walls, trample over them to escape. The frenzy devouring them. Remember people eager to kill their own children, when the plague came. Here are people casting all they love aside, trampling down husbands, wives, children, parents, in their desperation to escape. The claustrophobia of dying. There is no way out. There is no way out. People fucking in the streets, uncaring, brother and sister, old lovers both long married, a man raping his young son. We do not care now for anything. Some small acts of kindness, a woman striking the man over and over, her companion dragging away the child, and a voice shouts to them, “Why? Why? What difference will it make?” A girl carries her brother back away home, while their parents fight to die crushed in the mob against the sealed gate. A wine shop pours out bread and meat and wine for the beggars, so that they might die having had something good to eat. Two men meet and embrace and forgive some great terrible unforgivable deed each once did.
The Maskers’ Gate cannot be opened. It is smeared with blood from trying. Fingers raw to the bone. Do not the people of Ae-Beyond-the-Waters have a story, somewhere, about a ship of death that will come sailing out of the north all made out of dead men’s fingernails? Crowds begin to run screaming to where a single man sits on a white horse outside the walls and the walls are melting, flowing, mad with fear they hurl themselves into the flames.
“Open the gates,” Darath was screaming to Orhan. To someone. “Let them out.”
Give the order. Orhan’s mouth opening. But he cannot speak. It’s all too late. In the Court of the Broken Knife they are raising up their godstones, laying out offerings, cutting each other’s throats. Drinking themselves into a stupor. Roaring up the paean song to their god. In the Great Temple they are kneeling, praying, the Hymn to the Rising Sun stutters from dry throats. But had I agreed to his terms, Orhan thought, it would have been the same.
Orhan said, “Get our soldiers drawn up. The palace guard. Anyone who can fight. Darath, are you coming?”
Gallus said, “This is madness. You can’t fight this.” All the wisdom of his profession as a bureaucrat.
“I’ll come,” said Darath. Aris Ventuel. The gangly youth Mannath Caltren the Lord of Weeping.
Gallus the Chief Secretary and Selim Lochaiel did not come. “My duty is here, with the Emperor,” Gallus said. “Someone must be here, to die with him. How will they know how to find him again, Orhan? All the record of the time of his death will be lost. When he is reborn, how will they know who he is?”
He will die over and over, Orhan thought, in the next few days, if he truly is reborn. There will not be a baby or a pregnant woman left alive in Sorlost soon. The High Priestess will die, the Temple will be broken, there will be no one left to recognize Him. He will be reborn as a goatherder’s child in the desert, grow up and live and die and be reborn in obscurity in the desert. He will be born a slave in the King of Death’s kitchens, a captive toiling for the lowest of the Army of Amrath’s infantrymen. Live and die in servitude again and again. I’ve done it, Orhan thought then. I’ve brought down the throne. I’ve ended a reign that has lasted a thousand years. What I hired the demon to do.
They had to fight their way through to the House of the East. Crowds around the palace, weeping, “Go back to your homes,” Orhan shouted at them, “shelter there. Please.” Bil was at the door, white and bloodless, her scars standing out from her drawn face. She looked old and dead, her face was an old woman’s face with sunken lips and eyes, her teeth bared. Dion clutched at her skirts. Her arms clutched around him, the stumps of her hands digging into his chest. Janush was lurking in the shadows by the stairs, cramming the sleeve of his coat into his mouth to stop himself from breaking down in front of the boy.
“Orhan? Darath?” She said faintly, “What is happening? No one will tell us.”
“The sky’s full of fire,” Dion whispered. “What’s happening?”
“We must get armed,” Orhan said.
“I’ll come,” Dion said. “I’ll help.”
“I can’t do this,” said Darath.
&nb
sp; “Yes you can.”
“God’s knives, Orhan.”
The whole city smelled of hot metal now. Over the Gate of the West the sky was red and black.
“Look,” said Dion, pointing.
“I see it,” Orhan said. Not looking. I will be in it, soon, I don’t want to see. I will walk into a furnace. You will look up thinking it is a fearful beautiful thing in the sky. I will die fighting a demon, Orhan thought, the King of Death who they say cannot die. It is . . . wondrous to me.
“No. Uncle Darath, look.”
Over the great central dome of the palace, shadows were gathering. Storm clouds over the sun. No—Orhan thought of washing his hands after killing a man, the blood spooling out into the water.
“What is it?” Dion asked.
Horror. That’s what it is. “I don’t know,” said Orhan.
“It’s a trick of the light, Dion,” said Darath. “That’s all.” The child did not believe him, not being stupid. But he had learnt things, being the heir to the House of the East, for he said nothing more about it, tried to help Orhan finish putting on his breastplate. Orhan lifted him and kissed him, and Darath kissed him too. Bil kissed them both at the doorway. She was trying not to weep, for Dion.
“Take care of her,” Orhan said to Janush the bondsman. “When it comes. When it comes… kill Dion cleanly, Janush, don’t let them… don’t let them—” He could not speak what they were not to do. To say it would be to be struck dumb. One could not conceive of such things, once.
Once? Four years ago.
He thought: no, Orhan. People have always done these things. But you have not needed to know.
“Lady Emmereth and I have already agreed it,” Janush said. “Dion, before her. Her, before me. But… not too soon. Let the boy play in the gardens a while.” He looked at the red and black sky, and said nothing more. Almost the last words Orhan would hear him speak. Good words, perhaps.
There were a few of them already assembled in the square facing onto the Gate of the Evening. The heat of the molten bronze was murderous. The air shimmered, one could see the heat eddies, drifts of heat as the walls fell away. One is used to heat, in the desert, the desert dwellers know the patterns in the way the heat moves and rises, can read the changes in the air as a map. Hot dry air of the furnace, drawing out all of my waters, salt fingers sucking me dry. In her desiccation her stones drip perfume. In her desiccation I am entombed in ecstasies of rain. Curse you, and yet I will lie forever in your burning, my body wracked with the heat of your love. The Book of Sand. The very image of the city in its death-throes. When one of the High Lords betrays the city, he and all his house down to the lowest slave are burned alive.
The bronze wall before them rippled. Moving. Flowing. It reminded Orhan of something he had once seen, he could not remember where, coloured silks moving in heat-breeze. It will be terrible beyond imagining, and it will be the wonder of my life. Ecstasy, to die consumed in such fire. I am the Lord of the Rising Sun, the Warden of the Eastern Marches, thought Orhan. I will die with honour at the last bathed in heat more terrible even than the desert sun. His hand linked into Darath’s. Together, in fire.
The walls were falling. The air was filled with hot mist. It comes. It comes. The walls shimmered and they were a veil of golden silk, and they were not metal but fire, and through the fire the demon the King of Death came upon them. And he was as beautiful as the sun.
Chapter Forty-Six
Tobias, junior squad commander in the absurdly named “Winged Blades” in the infantrymen under Lady Sabryya the Senior General of the Army of Amrath
Besieging Sorlost
You can’t not look. You try to turn away before your eyes are burned from their sockets. No one is being harmed. But it’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen. The soldiers around are screaming. Gods know why they’re screaming. He is Marith Altrersyr Ansikanderakesis Amrakane, we should be… kind of used to it, by now, and yes you say that and laugh and bloody laugh because those words don’t have any meaning strung together like that, he is Marith Altrersyr Ansikanderakesis Amrakane destroying a lump of metal, that’s all, no one’s even dead yet. But you’re screaming and everyone around you is screaming because it’s a fucking huge thing that’s been there since the world began. Some things are fixed, yeah? As long ago as tomorrow, beneath the brazen walls of Sorlost. They’re solid fucking bronze. And he is a man, still, somehow, you tell yourself, a boy, and he is bringing them down burning fucking through them. They’re just… gone. I mean… You know people are going to die here. But he’s changing the fucking world here, right in front of you. So you scream and scream.
And then, when he’s finished, when the walls that were raised by gods before the world was made have been evaporated into bronze steam blowing on the bloody wind, and then you’re going in after him.
The walls fall away. Liquid bronze lapping in a pool on the yellow sand. In the void he has made in the walls, the boy sits his horse still, looking. His blood-clot cloak blows in the wind. His horse is crusted with drops of bronze, its body is jewelled with bronze. The air is filled with droplets of bronze, it’s like a fog, it catches in your lungs, makes you gag and cough. The air is so hot you can feel your hair shrivelling. Chars your nostril hair off when you breathe in. The boy draws his sword and screams, roars a word you don’t know but you recognize in the depths of your heart. He launches his horse forward through the breach. The thunder of its hooves makes the ground shake. You almost fall, because the ground shakes. You hurt from the heat. Your eyes are blinded, without the fire in the bronze walls the world is dark as night.
There are things crawling over the city, you see in the new cold dark. Then you’re blind again, because fire from heaven itself has come down upon the city, burning it.
The order is given. And you’re going in. The tramp of feet, you and your men, so very few of you. Through the breach in the wall where the King of Death is.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Orhan Emmereth
Sorlost
Flames.
Flames.
Flames.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Tobias, junior squad commander in the “Winged Blades”
Besieging Sorlost
“Go. Go.”
His sword felt heavy as the whole world. They were jogging down the dead zone outside the walls. The ground beneath their feet was hot. Do you remember the beach, on the shore of the Sea of Tears, where you sat with Thalia, watched as she bathed her dainty feet? And the sand was warm, lovely to sit on, almost too hot underfoot? Gods and demons. Fuck and hells. The drums were beating. The trumpets rang. Silver fucking trumpets. Men on horses charging, some of the horses had silver bells on their harness, tinkling like little girls. The shadowbeasts were over them. They choked on liquid bronze and smoke. The horses were shrieking. They went down beneath the shadows with the horses gnashing their teeth.
“Go, lads,” Tobias said. “Come on.” Feels like a pain in your heart, saying that. This is where you belong, yeah. Doing this. Don’t give a flying fuck why or for what. “Go. Now. Clews, you lazy fucker. Go.”
It’s there. Gap in the bronze wall, the sides molten, running down like wax. Dripping on people going in through the breach, we’re fucking wading through hot metal here, burning up as we go, blood cooling the ground.
“Go. Go.”
There’s the breach. And there’s no going back. Fire washes over the city burning their soldiers and the enemy soldiers; the boy’s voice screams that word out, we all know what it means, deep in our hearts. The gap in the walls so narrow. You know what it looks like? It looks like the entrance to a slaughterhouse. Where they send the beasts in.
The cavalry in front of them went in. Their horses were already bleeding.
The infantrymen in front of them went in. Some of them were on fire. But they went in and went in.
This is fucking dream a fucking dream a fucking dream it’s all Marith slumped in the wagon trave
lling across the desert, hatha dreams revenge fantasies.
There’s a black shadow there. Once you go in, it’s the end.
“Go. Clews, you lazy arse. Go.”
Through it like under a sword blade.
Flames.
Everything here is already dead. Mummified city everything dead.
Holds his sword loose in his hand doesn’t need to aim it wield it. Not under Marith’s spell, this isn’t some blindness delusion like it was before. Honest. Not under Thalia’s either, before you start on it, do many things just because for her but not this. She asked and he answered, but that’s not to say it was out of anything as dumb as lust. But because, in the end, this is all any of it is. They go through the breach in the wall into a world of shadows and fire they’re outnumbered a thousand to godsdamned one. His sword in his hand doesn’t need him to think.
The boy screams and screams. There’s shadow on the city’s towers, spreading like wound-rot. They are very few people here facing them to fight. This is a death place. The killing ground after the battle has been fought, the morass of butchered flesh. This is not a battle. Everything here everything is long dead.
He swings his sword and someone is dead there. They are moving through the city and everything is waiting for them and everything is dead.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Orhan Emmereth, de facto commander of the defence of the city of Sorlost
Sorlost
Standing in the fire. He cannot turn away from it. He knows how to fight, just about. If he’s dying, he can probably fight. They came pouring through the breach, above them shadows eating up the city, the sun is gone and the sky has gone out. A man died under his sword. A man was coming up at him, Orhan cried out because the man was bleeding from his eyes and his mouth, his body gleamed bronze. Covered and coated in bronze. The man’s flesh was red raw. His fat melting running off him. He came at Orhan with a sword clasped in metal-coated hands, a roar came out of him breathing out blood. Orhan swung back, hands trembling. I cannot see this. Their swords clattered against each other, they were almost wounding each other, Orhan’s feet were slipping in the man’s blood.
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