The House of Sacrifice

by Anna Smith Spark

  I open my eyes wide and I think I see it, I claim to be King of Death, knowing it all, understanding it, death is truth, all else beyond death is a lie. But it’s impossible that people die.

  Thalia stood and looked at them and shivered. Her silk dress was like the film over their wounds, like the cauls of her dead babies, like the fat that stretches over their innards as they spill out fragrant with their rot. Her dress is like the mould blooming on their bodies her jewels are like their crusted matted stinking pus. She writhes in ecstasy like the maggots that consume them still living. The tendrils of her hair are like gangrene. He loves her and adores her so much.

  “Death to those who need to die,” Thalia whispered.

  Her light rose around her. The sickhouse was filled with her light. Marith’s eyes were dazzled and blind. Her light as black darkness, her body a pillar of radiant bronze. Her light alone killed them, scouring the sickhouse clean. The light faded and king and queen stood together in an empty place filled with bleached corpses, dried out, made clean.

  “That was a good thing,” Thalia said. “A reason to have come back.”

  They could not look at each other, afterwards, until they were back in the Temple, drank wine together, lay silent fingers entwined listening for each to speak. Trying to fall asleep in the High Priestess’s bed.

  “Why did you come back, Thalia?”

  She murmured half-asleep: “I am their queen.” A pause. She said half-asleep, “And of course I wanted to see you again, Marith.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Another month passed. Marith drew up his war plans: ride hard at the Immish, kill them. There was definitely an outbreak of deeping fever in southern Chathe, there was definitely a rebellion in Immier, a tax collector on the White Isles had also run off with six months’ worth of tax. Alleen Durith had occupied the city of Gaeth, set himself up as king there; the people of Gaeth had thrown him out again. Work on the temple on the site of the Summer Palace was running three times over budget already. The word “pethel,” as in “pethe bird,” Chief Secretary Gallus turned out to know somehow, was probably Aeish in origin, meant “brown bird.” Marith hated his new cloak. On the third day of the month called in Literan Janusthest, the month of remembering, in Pernish Ammak, the month of the earth, the Army of Amrath gathered in Sorlost to march out.

  The advance columns had left stores of grain and water, to help the main body of troops in the desert. They would be well on their way now. Must have realized by now where they were marching to. Even the most unobservant and ignorant. Marith thought: I swore I’d raze Reneneth to the ground. That gives me some faint sense of purpose to this. They saw me hungover and self-pitying, the shameless bastards. Deserve everything they get.

  The columns lined up in the Grey Square—still not rebuilt in red porphyry—all the fierce old hands from before Turain; the new ones from Chathe and the desert villages who knew now the pleasures and rewards of their work; a new muster from Illyr and the White Isles, mere eager children; one in two of every surviving inhabitant of Sorlost. The people of Sorlost had seen butchery and murder, lost everything. Thus a great wisdom had come upon them. Marith and Thalia stood on the steps of the Temple to receive them, watch them file out past.

  It would very soon be Sun’s Height and the Feast of Amrath’s Birth Day. Celebrate in the ruins of Reneneth, treat any survivors to another glimpse of Marith Altrersyr with a hangover, roast their flesh and drink their blood and grind their bones for bread. “And we will be King and Queen of Immish by Sunreturn,” Marith said to Thalia. “I think you’ll like Alborn. It’s not as grand as Sorlost, of course, but very fine in its own way, I’m told. We can celebrate Sunreturn in the tower where the Great Council meets.”

  “Year’s Heart, it’s called,” Thalia said. Then she said, “I will look forward to seeing it, yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “All cities look the same,” said Thalia, “after we have sacked them.” A troop of sarriss men marched into the square, the great spears as tall as pine trees perfectly aligned. Acclaimed their king. Marched out towards the Maskers’ Gate. A troop of Sorlostian swordsmen followed, a rabble after the old guard, but eager. Marith took a sip of iced wine. They had to have chosen the hottest day yet, to march out. The swordsmen acclaimed their king. Marched out towards the Maskers’ Gate. The White Isles horsemen a little while later were at least just about worth watching. If so shockingly frighteningly young. More horsemen, more sarriss men, more swordsmen; an eternity of bronze helmets, bronze armour, every face turned to him parading past him with the same words written in their eyes. On and on and on. Red banners, curled leather crisped with gold, standards topped with human heads. Some of them wore armour of human skin now, tanned peaty-brown, soft, they said, beneath the bronze plates. If he had died in Turain, they would now be marching past another king, with the same hunger in every face.

  He took Thalia’s hand. “I’m glad you came back to me. Thank you, for coming back to me.” She stiffened, and relaxed, and smiled at him.

  Another troop of sarriss men filed past them. A troop of swordsmen from Immish, poor bastards, a few of them also must guess. It might be best to dispose of them quietly, out in the desert, there were a lot of them. His luck wouldn’t hold forever: there must come a time when a troop of soldiers would refuse an order to kill their own kin. One might hope. Ryn Mathen came out of the Temple behind them, to tell them that everything was ready, it was time they themselves rode out. The beautiful horse Ryn had given him; and a matched one had been found for Thalia now, a gelding to his stallion but so similar it was almost comic, the great war horse and the smaller one beside it, pure white with red ribbons in their manes, gold and silver trappings, the cheekpieces, the nodding headdresses, the black-red saddle clothes, the high arched gilded hooves. Marith helped Thalia up, though she barely needed it. She made her horse rear, as he liked to do, laughed with him. At the Gate of Dust Celyse Amdelle went down on her face before them, so close Marith could have trampled her beneath his horse’s hooves simply by nudging his horse forward a pace.

  “Glory to you, My Lord King,” Lady Amdelle said when she was up on her knees again. Then all the honorifics. The woman must have been practising, to get them all in the right order without stumbling. There were so many of them now a man might fall asleep before he reached the end. Can you down a drink for every one of your titles, Marith? Honestly, no, even I couldn’t do that. “Conquer, be victorious, bring all the world of men beneath your rule,” Lady Amdelle finished, making a gesture of encompassing with her hands, her fingers curling smooth as polished wood.

  Marith said, “To you, Lady Amdelle, I entrust the city of Sorlost, the jewel of my empire. The lives of all who live here I entrust to you.” The first of all of the nobles of the Sekemleth Empire to do him homage as king, so eager to do it, so bright-faced to kneel and praise him. She’d do it well. She went down on her face again, murmuring further pleasantries. A great shimmer of gold and jewels, as all the other nobles of Sorlost prostrated themselves behind her to see him off. Oh, they would be rejoicing in the city streets tonight. He glimpsed Lord Emmereth at the back of the crowd beside Lord Vorley, when they came up out of their protestations the man was dazed with wonder that the demon was leaving them and Lord Vorley was still alive in his arms. Lord Emmereth was whispering something to Lord Vorley, thinking the king couldn’t see. Let us pretend I can lip read, that Lord Emmereth’s telling Lord Vorley he loves him. Two men, so close in age, so devoted to each other: gods, Marith thought, please let it work for them, let them be happy together. But Thalia had seen him watching them, and he needed to get on.

  In the dead place beyond the circuit of the walls he made the horse sacrifice, stood sticky with blood as they raised the corpse up. Beneath his feet the ground crunched with melted bronze. His skull towers stretched away to the horizon, squatting over the ancient burial grounds of the people of Sorlost. A great patch of newly disturbed earth where his own dead were tumbled; th
e beasts of the desert came at night, clawed down to get at the soft meat. There, too, he had sacrificed a horse. They had not stripped some of the bodies: he thought of men in future years coming to dig there as the beasts did, mining the bronze and the iron, the jewellery of silver and gold.

  He gazed over at the city he had conquered. Ragged people cheered from the windows of every house. Kiana Sabryya shouted an order, a trumpet sounded, the men began to march.

  To the endless ringing of silver trumpets and the slow steady beat of war drums, beneath their banners of human skin and human bones and human grief, the Army of Amrath marched out into the desert, towards Immish, taking the path that Marith had once taken with Tobias, when he had been a man like any other, before it had all been done and too late. Horses in the desert, grey and blind, their hooves beating, the sand made the sky darken, blocked out the light of the sun.

  “Do you regret any of it?” Thalia said that evening in their tent. Even more splendid than the last one, so glorious its fittings they needed their own wagon train to transport them. The exterior walls were dusted with crushed rubies. The sleeping chamber was lined with the skin of goats cut from the womb three days off birthing. The bed was whale bone and gold.

  “Do I regret any of what?”

  She sipped her wine. “Never mind. Nothing.”

  “I…” He thought, closed his eyes, said slowly, “I regret… some things. Yes.”

  They were silent a little, listening to each other’s breathing. “I should like to see the sea again,” said Thalia. “The winter trees against the sky. I am glad I got to see Sorlost again.”

  “I should like to see the White Isles again,” said Marith. “The hills all dark with cloud shadow, the rivers running down, the silver water, the green grass. Smell the first autumn frost. And the smell the air has, the change in the light, the first morning suddenly when you know spring is coming.” The desert is so bleakly changeless, he thought.

  They rolled into Reneneth grim and determined, the first charge against the town walls coinciding with the first rays of the morning sun. The sky flamed pink, the dawn was in the men’s eyes, blinding, a great bank of clouds massed in the west behind them so that as the defenders of Reneneth looked out at him it must seem still to be black night over his camp. The advanced guard had got the whole thing set and ready, burned out every surrounding farm and field; the people of Reneneth were hungry, frightened, wretched—and had been years before a single soldier from the Army of Amrath appeared in view. The rotting buildings, houses sinking into the dry earth, brickwork crumbling. Thin cattle, thin-faced children. The fires they burned to bake their bread in Reneneth were made of cattle shit. The water in the wells was greenish, stinking, gave his men the gripe. Grey worn-out eyes stared over the walls at Marith. They can’t remember me, they can’t, he thought, they couldn’t have known who I was. A sick man stumbling in bonds behind a horse, muttering curses. He was dressed now in silk and velvet, crowned in silver, his new cloak shimmering spun bronze. I swore that Reneneth would burn, that I would kill every person that lived there, that I would kill the beasts in the fields, the rats in the walls. The pleasure of it. Killing. The most beautiful thing in the world. Go through it hacking them down, taking them to pieces, rending their lives down to fat and broken bone. Trample them. Piss and puke and dance and sing. The ram began to pound against the gates of Reneneth with the breaking morning, heaving itself thrusting in out in out, gleaming red with flayed skins. On the walls the defenders cried out in terror. Tried to let off arrows while their hands shook. Scaling ladders up against the walls, his men swarming up them. They looked like beetles climbing up in their armour. Helmets making their heads like insects. Like a dog running with fleas. Ryn Mathen, dear eager man, first up the first ladder, a knife clenched in his teeth.

  The ram broke through the gates with the wood splintering. Rotten. It bulged and gave and ripped. Marith tasted meat-rot, smelled pus. The way it gave, creaking, rotten… Reminded him . . . His men roared with delight, pushing forward, too many almost to get through the break in the gates. Marith spurred his horse, rode in through the current of his army. The gilded hooves trampled his men’s blood and the enemy’s blood. On the walls above Ryn waved, cheering, a sword in each hand dripping. A man in silk robes went down on his knees in the filth before Marith, babbling: “The town surrenders, My Lord King, the town surrenders unconditionally, if we had known, if we had known you were coming, My Lord King, My Lord King—” Marith killed him with one stroke of his sword. Rode on in. So here we go again, we must start getting bored with this soon, you’d have thought, it’s getting kind of hard sometimes to know where we go from here really, don’t you think? Endless repetition. Kill kill kill tediously unvaryingly unendlingly kill kill kill kill kill. There’s a girl of five screaming: kill her. There’s a big chap with a thing he must use for breaking up rocks, there’s a boy with a meat cleaver, there’s a woman with a hammer, there’s a woman with a baby clutched to her breast: kill them. There’s a pregnant woman, one up even from the woman with the baby, there’s an old old man who’s obviously blind, there’s a starving curly-haired beggar child with a withered leg: kill them. Wait, look, how about a pregnant woman with a child and a crippled old grandfather trying to protect her, and his troops will torture them slowly slice them up despoil them dismember them? That too much? Oh, and there’s a strong tough man dripping in the Army of Amrath’s blood, laying around him with a sword, rippling muscles bulging biceps, standing wide to show his muscular firm strong thighs and arse: spare him, let him live, enlist him. He’ll be grateful for it when he finds someone else’s rosy-cheeked children to chop up into little bits. Thus one more town falls the same way as all the others, people die and suffer the same way they do every moment of every day everywhere we’re not looking, and we go on. I hear there’s a village two days’ march onwards, we can gut that, then there’s another town, then a village, then another village, then another town. Death and joy! Gods, it’s boring by now, yes it is.

  That night Marith lay with Thalia in their red tent. So great were the flames from Reneneth that the night was red, her skin was bathed red. Sweat ran down her body, outside in the dark the screams of women rang. What else can I do? Nothing. Do I regret any of it? No. Of course not. Shouts and song and bright laughter. His men were dizzy with happiness. Thalia’s eyes were cold, she was stiff beneath him. She turned her face away from him, and then she clutched at him. She shut her eyes tightly as she fucked him.

  “I swore I’d sack it,” he said. “Remember?”

  She said after a long time, “Yes.” Her body smelled like miscarrying. The red light made her look like raw chopped meat. Through the leather that dripped their sweat like wounds he could just make out the words of a filthy song about him.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The village two days’ march away.

  The town beyond that.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The desert made a last stand north of Reneneth, reared up dry and barren before finally giving way to the Immish plain, rolling green that would be soft beneath the horses’ feet. The advance guard had reached the Immish Forest, burned it. The Immish army was reported to be forming up in Alborn, marching south to engage them. A single letter was sent from the Immish Great Council: We are ready for you, betrayer. Do not think that we are not. Piss on them.

  “Come riding with me tomorrow morning, Marith,” Thalia said that evening. There was something in her eyes. “We’ll be in the grasslands soon. It will be too late.”

  Too late? “I’m sure we’ll come back to the desert once we’ve conquered Immish.” Round and round and round Irlast, killing.

  She frowned at him. “Please?”

  “Oh, all right. If you really want.”

  They gave orders to be woken before dawn. Rode out south to watch the sun come up. Kicked their horses and went fast, the horses matched neck and neck. Fast so that neither of them could think. Up over the brow of a yellow
and dun hill, away from the camp where the air was clear, the ground here was stony, the stones rang and shifted under the sound of the horses’ hooves as they ran. Birds had followed the army out into the desert, they watched them wheel in the sky black lace fragments, listened to them sing. “Pethe birds,” said Marith. “‘Brown bird’ birds. Gorging themselves on the flies that follow the men.”

  Thalia said, “The army’s filth will be fertilizing the desert.”

  “Really? I suppose it will.” All that pink delft grass. Meadows of it. People will come here, till the soil, grow wheat. New villages, towns, cities. In five years’ time or in ten or in twenty the Army of Amrath will come back here, burn the fields burn the houses kill them. The desert sand will be black with ash. The army’s filth will fertilize it.

  The sun’s rays caught the slope of a hill off to the south before them, lit it up golden. Heavy metallic light. The valley below it was deep shadow. The shadows there seemed to move. Feel them. Hear them. Call them.

  Thalia said, “Marith.”

  They looked at the desert stretching away before them. Dismounted, turned back to look north over towards the army camp. Their tent glowed in the very centre of it. All very small and neat, like his toy soldiers and toy fortresses. Campfires burning. Tiny little flashes that might be armour. Twinkling. The Fire Star was still shining in the west. The King’s Star. The great green slope of a hillside, the stone outcrops jutting up through it, clawing their way out to the light, the rain has come down making them shine like mage glass. So steep we have to go up it crawling, digging our fingers into sweet soft earth, staining our hands fresh green. She’s beside me. Or Carin’s beside me. Or Tiothlyn. Just the two of us, we’ll scramble to the top, stand in the damp air, the world will spread itself before us, the high hills running on and on to the sea, the valleys rich in cattle and wheat. A shaft of sunlight will break through the grey sky, fall over a village in the green distance, light up the roofs of the houses where the people live in peace. Cloud shadows will run over the fields. The clouds will come down, cut off the world, we’ll be alone there in the cloud mist. We’ll clasp hands, swear our loyalty until death. “Just you. Only you. That is enough.” But in my heart I want the clouds to lift so that I can see it all, the world spread out before me, staring away to the world’s end.