There are so many things, Marith thought, that I should like to see again.
Thalia took his maimed left hand in her scarred left hand. “In the Mountains of Pain, Marith—by the shore of the Sea of the Tears—I thought—After us there is nothing. But we—we can walk away, Marith. All we have to do is to walk away. We have food and water in the saddlebags. And gold. There are streams in the desert, going south. We have crossed it before. We can cross it again. And when we get to the coast, we can find a ship.”
She looked around her at the blazing sunshine yellow desert. Laughed. “Seserenthelae aus perhalish. Night comes, we survive.” The hope in her face. She said, “We can learn other things, Marith. We can be other things. We can live in peace. We dreamed of living alone together in peace, once.”
Her eyes were blue as summer. Wide and huge as the sky and the sea. Beautiful. She’s so beautiful, he thought. “I should have done it when I first came back to you,” she said. “I would have done it. I wanted to. But I wanted to see us made glorious again.”
She said, her voice very low, “I wanted to see the Temple fall. I wanted to return to being a queen. I am glad that I saw the Temple falling. I wanted…” She shook her head. “It is more difficult than it would seem, to wash all of these things away from me, I think.” And she laughed at a joke that he did not understand. “Or perhaps they deserved it. Perhaps it was a good thing to destroy the Temple. Perhaps Sorlost was dying anyway, and we merely hastened it. Who can tell?” She said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s done. But we can leave it all behind, Marith.”
His heart leapt. Ah, gods. I knew it. From the first moment she came back to me. From the first moment I first saw her, he thought, in Sorlost, her light, the hope in her, I knew then what she would one day do. She is so strong, he thought. She can do this. She left her god behind her, her Temple, her glory as a priestess, she can bring this too to an end. But look at all of this around us. Everything that we have, we are, everything we’ve made together. Crowns of silver, thrones of gold, the world kneeling subject before us.
“Don’t,” he cried out. “Don’t do this, Thalia.” His voice cracked, saying it. The army, the massed ranks of his soldiers, the grain wagons, the weaponsmiths, the cities, the slaves, the servants, the lords and ladies of his court…“Thalia! Don’t do this.”
“I should have done it a long time ago.” He heard in her voice: I should have killed you long ago, Marith. I am better than you are. I know you, and I should have killed you. She said, angry with him, “Come with me, Marith. It’s so easy. Just walk away.”
“My army—” He stretched out his arms towards them. “Our army, Thalia.”
Her face shone, radiant, brilliant. The scent of flowers. The scent of desert rain. The scent of snow. The two of them, together, not wanting, not needing. Riding through green summer woodland. Reading by the fireside. Sitting beneath an apple tree.
“I can’t. Don’t do this. Please. I am a king, Thalia. A king.”
“You can leave it behind,” Thalia said. In her eyes his face was reflected, the shadows writhed in his eyes, ate at him. The scars opening up in him. Kill and kill and kill, don’t stop, don’t let it end.
“I am a king,” he said. The shadows screamed. Wept and raged for him. Her face shone. She should have done it before, when she first came back to him, yes. Left him the last things of his dreams.
“Athela,” Thalia called to the yellow dust of the desert.
Come.
It came down over them, blotted out the light. Beat of its wings.
The red dragon of the Empty Peaks had told him that he had driven it mad, when he had spoken to it. “You killed my son,” it had said to him. “Do you think I care about your son?” he had said back to it.
Its body was a deep grey in which all the colours of the world flickered. Its wings were the red of old wounds. Its eyes were the green of trees and leaves. It circled over the desert hills, over the dark valley, over the Army of Amrath so low they could almost reach up and touch it.
A dragon. Of course a dragon. There are dragons in the desert, said the old maps of old empire; this is an age of wonders, over and over, summon them and they will come to you. He had tamed this dragon, bent it to his will, broken it. It circled over and over his army, staring, it did not speak because it could not speak, it could not think. And he was Marith Altrersyr, dragonlord, dragon kin. Marith reached up his hands towards it. “Lanla,” Marith whispered to it. Heal. Be made well.
It ignored him, circling, its heat raising the smell of singed hair and warm bronze. It felt like standing at rest in a warm breeze. It screamed out the one word “Ynkykgen.” Repeated it out again and again. “Ynkykgen. Ynkykgen. Ynkykgen.” The only word he had left it able to think or to say or to be.
I will kill.
Its fire took his army. He watched the flames wash them away. They were just waking, stumbling out of their tents, rekindling the cookfires for their breakfast and morning tea. A blacksmith was reshoeing an officer’s horse before the day’s marching. Children awake since before dawn in the excitement of everything played together in the dust. Kiana would be massaging her injured legs, soothing them with oils. Ryn would be fucking his acrobat. They were drowned in fire, sinking in fire, wallowed in the fire of their death. They stretched and reached for it, enjoying it, luxuriating in the wonder of the end. “He was killed fighting a dragon. A dragon killed him.” It is like to becoming a god. All men dream of wonders. All men dream of death.
They had brought him to this. They must have known, all of them, that it would end in their deaths.
“Thalia!” Marith cried out clutching her. In Illyr you banished the demon. In Sorlost you turned your eyes on me and gave me hope. Make it go away. Take it away. Thalia! The men of his army were streaming out across the desert, black things small as toys running. His great new red war tent began to burn, all that wealth and splendour, he could have told them not to bother with it. That, more than the soldiers dying, made him understand what she had done. The soldiers were fleeing scattered. I wonder if Kiana is still alive, Marith thought, or Ryn? And Alleen, crowning himself King of Ith. But I want to be king, he thought, I want to be king, I thought you wanted to be queen, Thalia, stop this, what have you done? She, too, she was frightened now, she was filled with fear, she knew that she had been wrong. Marith drew his sword Joy, ran down the slope of the hill towards his distant camp crying out to his men to rally, to the dragon to stop. “Denakt,” he screamed at the dragon. “Denakt, Tiameneket. Ansikanderakesis teime temet ansikysaram.” Leave, dragon. Your king commands you. “Thalia, what have you done?”
It was mad and wild, and it would not obey him. In the fury of its killing, it had no understanding left. It ran free of all things. They are like me, Marith thought, the dragons. Death things.
It saw him. Its head came around, it wheeled in the air as the birds had. It was grey as iron. Its wings were the same red-black as his hair. Amrath died fighting a dragon. Amrath is a story, a tale told by firelight when the wine had gone around. Do you think you are greater than Amrath, little Altrersyr boy?
Thalia screamed in grief or in horror. The dragon’s fire washed over him, took him. He was swimming in flame. His blade was hacking at it, cutting through the fire, shaping it, parting it. Once, in Sorlost, when he was still a man, he had watched a mage shape fire with a twist of a hand. Black fire, burning. Blue fire washing over a woman’s face as she wept. His own statue, heaving to the sky its pointless burden, running with flame. The dragon fire flowed away from him, parted, as a child parts a trickle of rainwater with a blade of grass. You see? I am still a king, I will not give this up, wondrous the power that I have. I can destroy a dragon. I have conquered the world. I can save my army, kill the dragon, how great shall be my glory, how measureless my renown. I’ll make you a cloak of dragon skin, Thalia my love, seat you on a throne of dragon bones. I’ll build my monument in the Mountains of the Heart, my palace on the southern shore of the Sea of
Tears. I’ll slaughter every living thing in Irlast, I’ll cross the Bitter Sea and put every man, woman and child in Ae-Beyond-the-Waters to the sword. I can do it all.
The sword Joy bit deep into the dragon’s jaws. Blood spurted out burning the ground. The dragon’s tail lashed the earth making it tremble, making Marith sway on his feet. Its claws bit into the sand. A worm, he thought. A stupid dumb beast. Any last fear he might have had of it fled away. His sword came up again to meet it. Rainbows brilliant on the blade, dancing on the ground around him. Rainbows dancing on its scales. It breathed its fire and the flames were soft and warm on his face, soothing like the warmth of Thalia’s hands on him. The fire ebbed away. Faded like mist. He drove his sword in. The scales and the flesh of the neck. His sword was so small, compared to it. Swaying on his feet, this huge thing coming at him, facing down so close to him. And him killing it, like a man with a knife cutting open a great bull. And he was so small, and it was so huge, and in a few strokes of his blade it would be gone and dead. Its blood ran down the slope of the hillside, onto the bodies of his men, the blood smoked on the blade of his sword. Oh my army, you who fought and died and lived for me, you who would follow me forever, my companions, oh you who trusted me, who loved me and placed your lives in my hands… you see? You see? Didn’t I promise you death? Death and ruin and killing without end? You want it! All of you! Rotting flesh, my army, men marching who are a long time dead. Purged in fire now, we can still go on. On and on, never ending. On and on and on. You see, Thalia, you see? There is nothing else. All that I can do is kill. It drew back up into the blue sky, vomiting fire over his army, it was dying, it was afraid. The Army of Amrath staggered together, he could hear their cries, the wails of the dying, the weeping and mourning of those that survived. But you wanted this. Death and death and death! On and on! In Sorlost his statue stood in the Court of the Broken Knife, had stood since the world began, waiting for him, raising aloft in useless triumph his glory and his guilt and his shame.
The dragon came back down towards him. Wounded jaws open, dripping blood and flame. He was running in fire. It was nothing real, it was all he could see. Its claws reached into him, opening him, breaking him, opening up bones and meat. My heart, is it? His heart his entrails the depths of his body opened. Teeth long as sword blades burrowing into his stinking flesh. His sword in turn digging into it. Pounding and tearing at it. Obscene. Comic. His body falling away in fragments. Its body falling away shredded. Its fire and its poison, its body arched over him. Stabbed up at it, his sword blade caught it, the sword Joy hissing. It screamed so loud he could see its screaming. The fire and the blood searing his eyes and he was blind.
Thalia. Thalia. Help me. He could not speak. His mouth like his eyes was eaten away. The ruby in his sword Joy’s hilt was melted. The runes on its blade were melted away. His bloody cloak was burned to nothing. The brooch that Thalia had given him was smashed and gone.
There is nothing outside of himself. He thought: I don’t want to die. I’m so afraid, Thalia.
The dragon’s body lay crushing him. Its wings moved, very weakly. It made a gasping noise deep inside itself. Marith drove the hilt of the sword Joy deeper into its belly. It drove its talons deeper into his flesh. Bodies running together.
It, too, was afraid of death.
All the cities broken, all the lives thrown down into dust. All the sacrifices the world had made for him. He thought: I’m so afraid. I’m so afraid. I thought I couldn’t die. I thought—I thought—she’ll come back to me, save me. Someone will come. My mother, my father, Carin, someone. They’ll come.
It wasn’t my fault. My men, my soldiers—I tried—I wanted it to end—I wanted the world to be a wondrous place.
There’s a blaze of light, and his body screams. There’s no peace in dying, he thinks. None. I wanted—I thought—Ti—Carin—Thalia—
Please—
Chapter Sixty-Five
Landra Relast, the murderer
The White Isles
Morr Town was almost rebuilt. Like the fire had never happened. The dead had been buried. The injured had died, or had been tended back to something like health. Some would be scarred for life, burned, bereaved, left destitute. Such things happened. The townspeople looked at the fire’s victims with pity, and then went on. They celebrated Sun’s Height and the feast of Amrath’s birthday; their thoughts turned towards the coming harvest; the days stretched long and sweet.
No one concerned themselves with the woman Lan, lodged in an inn by the harbour. She did not much concern herself with the town. She had been there ten days when the innkeep had shown her his great story: a silver brooch in the shape of a bird, fine work in the Ithish style with garnets for eyes, that the then Prince Marith had traded for a cup of drink one night. “He didn’t have a penny to his name,” the innkeep said, “the king his father had taken it all from him. He was near crying. I took pity on him.” Landra had settled into the inn by then, got used to the feel of it. She had thought about leaving and finding somewhere else.
She had developed a kind of routine: walk down to the harbour to watch the ships coming in; walk up to the market square to listen for traders’ gossip; walk up to the gates of Malth Elelane to watch the soldiers there; walk back to her inn to sit listening to the drinkers in the common room. She would learn nothing of interest. She watched white-haired Ithish merchants unload copper ore for smelting into bronze swords; watched boatloads of soldiers sail off south to a chorus of cheers and sobbing. She had thought to wish the bronze to shatter, flawed; the ships to sink in a storm with all hands; those that cheered and waved off the soldiers to fall sick. Her heart leapt at it, the last cruel killing strength within her. But she had not in the end wished for these things.
Landra Relast, who had nothing. She was consumed and empty, and there was nothing. Not even hatred. Not even grief. The gestmet and the gabeleth were spent and gone; a dog howling over a grave until its throat is dried, no sound is left it, the dust chokes it. All the strength of her hate she had poured out to break dead bones into dust. She thought of drowning herself. Went so far as to walk out of the town to the rocks of Morren Head, her pockets filled with grey stones. The waves had broken on the cliff with a hiss like voices calling that were the dead of Morr Town and the dead of Ethalden, a drowned sailor with a black beard, a woman who had died when she could have made a choice to die or to live as a slave. Landra had walked back, sat in the inn’s common room as the evening fell, eaten bread and hot stew; there was a singer in the common room that night, a tall young man with a weak voice but a beautiful face.
“Going to be a fine morning,” the innkeep said to her as she came down the stairs from her bedchamber the next morning.
“Yes.” He tried to be friendly with her, she had been here for weeks now. And yes, sunlight came in through the windows, fell in bright bars through the cracks in the door, she had watched the water sparkle from her bedchamber window.
“You’ll be staying a while longer?” He was fishing for more money from her, paid in advance.
“I think so.” If I had drowned myself, she thought, he would be delighted to claim all of my things. The gold ring, her father’s ring, he would have snatched up joyfully, sold it with a song in him.
Today she went to the market place first. For a change in her routine, that was the reason, she told herself, the only reason she went up the streets with her back to the shining sea.
Every day the walk up from the harbour seemed harder, her legs seemed to get heavier, her body heavy as stone. Her legs were getting swollen like her hands. But her hair was growing back, she had noticed that morning. Thick yellow curls tight on her head. When she had put out her hand to feel them, astonished, they had felt fur soft. I am turning into a beast creature, she thought. Truly a gestmet, as Raeta had been. Unless that old healer woman’s magic has finally worked. In the bottom of her pack she still had the stick that Ali the Healer had given her, with the charm in it.
More prosaica
lly, she thought: I will need to buy a comb and oil to wash my hair with, I suppose. Hence the market first.
“It suits you,” she imagined Tobias saying.
Slaves and silks and gold and silver in the market place, but she had to search for a hair comb. Unless she wanted one made of gold with hair still caught in the teeth. The people shopping had the pinched look she saw everywhere on the White Isles, drifting abstractedly between the traders’ stalls. If she no longer wished death on them, they were already weary of death.
“Silk cloth from Cen Andae!”
“White jade from Balkash! Amber from Arunmen! Amber such as was worn by the old Queens of Tarboran!”
At the edge of the market, she found a stall selling what she wanted. “How much is this?” A cheap-looking thing. The stallholder had a collection of objects spread on a tattered cloth on the ground.
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