The House of Sacrifice

‘So why? Why?’

The prisoner stared at him in silence. Shit pooling on the marble. Phlegm dripping down the gold-painted steps. Stared. Lowered his eyes, stared at the floor.

Spat again.

‘Filth. Pestilence. Rot.’

Osen rolled his eyes at Marith. Mouthed something that might have been ‘hurry up’.

Always the same. Every few months, somewhere in his empire. Someone standing up, sword in hand, promising they could overthrow the tyrant, save the world from something it was never quite clear what. Being ruled by one man rather than another, perhaps. Overthrow the rule of evil! Freedom beckons! Kill the tyrant, throw off our chains, make me king! And all the young men and women jumping up shouting agreement, muttering prophecies, singing uplifting bloodthirsty war songs. And he’d have to break off whatever he was doing, march over with an army, deal with them. And they were all freed from the tyrant indeed, and never again had to suffer beneath his yoke.

The smell and the sight of the filth dripping on the dais was making him feel nauseous. Really seriously worried he was about to be sick again in front of them all. Curse Alleen Durith and his choice of drinks.

Hang on, hang on, it suddenly occurred to him. I’d already drawn up my battle plan giving Osen command of the assault on the Salen Gateway. There’s no way I would have changed it if they’d asked me to. They tossed for it? What?

‘Shall I kill him?’ said Osen. Osen’s hand was hovering on the hilt of his sword.

Marith nodded wearily. The prisoner’s shoulders sagged. Osen drew the sword.

The prisoner raised his head, shouted out: ‘You think yourself so powerful! But one of your own generals plots to betray you! Conspires against you! Thinks you nothing but filth and death! Think on that, King Ruin! Even those who serve you wish you dead! Betray you! I know!’

The prisoner’s face leering at him.

The hate in those eyes. Why? Marith thought again. Why? I left your city untouched. I. Left. Your. City. Un. Touched.

‘I won’t tell,’ the prisoner whispered. Smiled at Marith through bloody lips. ‘I won’t tell you. Even those closest to you loathe you. Plot to destroy you. See you for what you are. Encouraged me. Gave me money. Betrayed you. I know. But I won’t tell. I won’t tell you the name.’

‘You’re lying!’ Hot desperate flush in Marith’s face. ‘I left Arunmen untouched!’

‘Filth. Rot. Corruption. They all loathe you, King Ruin. Want to see you dead.’

‘Marith—’ Alleen Durith gestured to the guards. ‘Take him away. Get him out of here. Now.’

‘Betraying you!’

‘Get him out of here now!’

Osen ripped down with his sword. The Calien Mal. The Eagle Blade. Sword that had killed mages and lords and kings.

No sound. The prisoner dead on the floor.

Alleen rubbed his eyes. ‘Marith …’

‘He was lying,’ said Marith.

Alleen said, ‘Gods, Osen, we needed to question him.’

‘He was lying. There was nothing to find out.’

Alis Nymen made a croaking sound. Dansa Arual was staring at Osen with her mouth open.

‘He was lying, he was a traitor,’ said Osen. ‘Who wanted to listen to any more of that poison?’ He shrugged at Marith. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’

Four glorious years. Half the world broken at his feet. Broken towers, burned fields, silver crowns, gold crowns, thrones of gold, thrones of iron, thrones of wood, thrones of stone. We march on and on to the horizon, places I barely knew existed places that I cannot imagine. Impossible to think, really, that these places drawn in ink on a map are real places where real people live. Look to the far south, stare at the clouds where the land and the sky meet – there are people living there, houses, tilled fields, people dying and being born, people thinking feeling dreaming as I dream. Children, he thought, live there. And it is absurd that they are real and exist there. I cannot imagine these places these people. I march my army on. We kill them. All across Irlast my dead lie scattered, mounds of them, my soldiers, dead! Their bones lie on the dark earth for the crows and the dogs, all out of love for me. They march beneath my banners to die for me in places they do not believe are real places, killed by men they cannot imagine are real and live. Ask them why and they will give a thousand excuses. And yet they are ordinary men.

‘I need to earn coin, I need to feed my family, my children will starve unless I earn a wage somehow.’

‘I’ve got responsibilities to the rest of them in the squad. We’re a team. I can’t let them down.’

‘I swore an oath to fight for my king. I am a man of honour. I cannot break my oath.’

‘I didn’t want to do it. But I was ordered to. If we all stopped doing anything we didn’t completely agree with …’

None of us know, in our hearts, why we do these things. Because we can. Because we do. They really think I don’t know they’re all waiting to betray me?

Two more days of victory feasting. Outside in the city, the Army of Amrath swarmed over the ruins, killing everything they found. Marith took Osen and Alleen Durith with him to visit the temple of the god spirit of Arunmen. See the house of the enemy that had defied him. He had visited the temple after he had been crowned here, and the presence of the god spirit had been welcoming to him as a king and an equal. So now he must come again as victor and conqueror. Killer of the god. Have a smug but entirely justified gloat. Twice, you beat me off, but in the end I was the stronger. You promised to defend your city, and you failed, like all the weak things of life. The black stone that was the god’s physical form had shattered, they said, at the moment his blow had struck.

Also, the temple was the architectural highlight of the city, and thus of all Calchas. A very beautiful building. Huge and elegant. Loaded with beauty in gold and gemstones. Famed for its treasurers in jewels and silk. As one might expect. He was looking forward to seeing it again.

Soldiers were pouring over snow-covered rubble. Digging up lumps of melted smoke-blackened gold. A group of them were having a fight.

‘What … what happened?’

Alleen said, ‘The dragons …’

‘… sat on it?’

‘They took against it, certainly.’

Osen said, ‘I think we might have managed to get some of the best things out of the remains. I can have the rest tracked down, if you like. The temple vessels and things.’

‘No. It’s fine. The soldiers can keep it. But the paintings on the walls … it’s a shame, I liked them.’ There had been a picture of a woman done in jewels above the west window, her face was quite wrong but her golden hair, the way she held her arms – reminded him—

‘The dragons destroyed it. Good.’

Osen scuffed at the snow. A lump of plaster. A suggestion of yellow paint. Not his mother. She hadn’t been his mother. The woman who killed his mother. She did. Remember. She did. Killed his mother and replaced his mother as queen and tried to put her own son in his place as king. And so he’d killed her and hung her body from the walls of Malth Elelane. Her and her son beside her.

‘Please, Marith,’ she’d begged him.

He went next to the place where they kept the wounded. Osen and Alleen did not come. A long walk. As was only correct and proper by every rule of warfare, the wounded were housed far off from anything, in tents far from the army’s camp. A presence to it that Marith could feel pressing down on him. When he reached the place he was clammy with cold sweat.

Not so many wounded. Two days after the battle, most of them lay sleeping in the black earth with the dust between their teeth. They had marched through the Wastes and the Empty Peaks, crossed the Sea of Grief, tramped up and down Irlast from shore to shore. Desperate to share in his glory, reaching out for a tiny crust of what the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane had to offer. Four long years they had marched with him, they were the Army of Amrath and they would march and follow and pace out their lives following him. I don’t even know where I’m going. I could close my eyes, stab my knife at random into the map. And they would follow. And they lie in the black earth dead and forgotten. And they lie here in the sickhouse, rotting.

Wounds like eyes. Wounds like open mouths. He could not look and he could not look.

The flesh grew over them, wounds healing puckered and distorted. Excrescences of blood and skin. Black traces embroidering their bodies. Arms and legs pus-swollen.Their mouths moved with scabs growing over them. Mould covering their faces, in their bones, their teeth, they spat and choked and swallowed it. Mould, eating them. Hard cold as marble. Soft and damp as leaves. Rippling dry as driftwood. He heard them breathing. Saw them breathing. No face, no hands, no eyes, no mouth, no ears. See hear feel taste touch red. Where they moved, they left black trails of their flesh behind them. Shapes and words. Their living bodies seeping away into liquid. They moved and jerked, some of them. Spoke. Knew. Wounds that had once been human faces turned groping towards him. Bodies swollen up vast with fluids, bodies shrivelled down, lumps of flesh men without arms or legs. Burned men. And at those he almost could not look. Yearning reaching towards him.

The worst, he thought afterwards, were those who did not seem so badly wounded. Like fruit rotted inside with maggots. They looked even strong, some of them.

‘The king, the king,’ the wounded whispered. Their voices thick and dry with pain. An old woman with no teeth in her mouth limped between them, giving them water, pressing a wet cloth to their cold, sweating faces, smoothing her fingers through their matted hair, running her hands over the pus of their wounds.

‘Hush now, deary, my boy, my boy, hush, hush, you sleep, you rest, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, deary, my boy.’

‘Water … water …’ A man clutched at Marith’s arm, not knowing him. ‘Water …’ His stomach was a mass of bandages, fat with bandages, spreading blood like cracks on ice. A deep wound to the gut will kill you, sooner or later, no matter what you do. Every soldier knows that. Yes. ‘Water … Mother! Mother!’ Verdigrised hand digging into him.

‘Hush, hush, deary, my boy.’ The nurse limped over wetted its black lips, pressed her wet cloth onto its white face. ‘Hush, deary, it’s well, you’ll soon be well.’

At the far end of the tent the dead were piled. They should be taken away for burial each day. They had not been taken away. Some of the bodies must have been there since the first day of the siege. Beetles had got in there, and flies. A seething column of ants ripped the dead wounds open. Mould grew over black meat.

‘Be well,’ Marith whispered to his men. ‘Be well. You who died for me.’ He should know their names. He used to know all his soldiers’ names. After his victory over King Selerie he had visited all the wounded, thanked each of them by name.

He thought: but I had a smaller army then. That’s unfair.

He thought: half of them died within hours. Whether I knew their names or not. I stopped bothering.

Thalia arrived the next evening. Sieges bored her now; she had decided to stay in Tereen in comfort until it was done. Her party swept into the palace courtyard, red banners crusted with snow. She rode a white horse, saddled and plumed in scarlet; she was wrapped in thick white furs showing only her eyes and her gloved hands. She slid down from the saddle into Marith’s arms.

‘Thalia!’

There were snowflakes caught in her eyelashes. Marith kissed them away. Her eyes shone. The torchlight showed his reflection in her eyes smiling back at him. Dancing in the flickering light. She pushed back her hood, and the snow began to gather on her hair.

‘Thalia! I didn’t think you’d make it today, through the snow.’ He frowned. ‘It was foolish, to come in the snow.’

‘I made them press on.’ She took his hand. ‘I was worried about you.’

‘Worried? Why should you worry?’

Off behind her he noticed Osen and Alleen again exchanging glances. Well, yes, okay, so he’d only managed to get out of bed and stop throwing up about two hours ago, there’d been a nasty while when it looked like Osen might have to receive her in the king’s place. But it had been a hard few days. Tiring. And it was Osen’s fault, really, he’d chosen the drinks last night.

Thalia bent her head closer. ‘And I … I have news.’

‘News?’ Oh? Oh! A hope ran through him. And a shudder. Tried to brush it away. The things he had seen in her face, shining there, when he first saw her, and knew, and was so very afraid of her. Why have you come to me? But she had only smiled, and looked puzzled, and shaken her head. He took her hands protectively now. ‘You shouldn’t have risked it, in the snow. You’re getting snow all over you. Let’s get inside out of the cold. I’ve had men out scouring all the jewellers’ for you. Such beautiful things!’

There was a stirring on the other side of courtyard, people moving forward around another horse, helping Kiana Sabryya down. The joy faded. Watched a servant thrust walking sticks into Kiana’s hands, take her weight, help her steady herself on her feet. Kiana saw Marith watching and her eyes flashed in irritation. Osen hurried up to greet her. Marith heard her sigh.

‘Marith …’ Thalia squeezed his hand. ‘Leave her.’

Osen and Kiana seemed to be arguing about whether Kiana needed Osen’s arm to lean on. Marith turned away.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Thalia said gently.

War kills people. War hurts people. That’s not exactly a big surprise, hey? She fought a demon, it injured her. What did she think it would do?

He shook himself. ‘Obviously it wasn’t my fault.’

They went slowly into the throne room. Servants, lords of empire, all falling to their knees as they passed. Thalia’s wet furs were swept away: beneath, she wore a dress of pale grey velvet the colour of the winter sky, embroidered with a thousand tiny diamonds. She was blazing fire. Too brilliant to look at. Light rippled off her perfect face. Marith escorted her up the dais, seated her on the throne.

‘The Queen of All Irlast!’

She laughed sadly. Bored laugh. I was already the Queen of All Irlast, Marith, her face said. ‘The Queen of All Irlast.’

Everyone present prostrated themselves on the floor.

Marith gestured to Alleen. Servants hurried in carrying boxes. Poured out a river of gemstones at Thalia’s feet. Her smile was sadder even than her laugh.

She is carrying my child. My child! It will all be better now, he thought. There was a memory, he was sure of it, his mother holding Ti in her arms, newborn, wrapped in white lace. ‘Come here, Marith, look, you have a little brother, thank the gods, Marith, thank Amrath and Eltheia, you have a brother.’ A tiny pink fist waved at him, and he had bent, kissed his brother’s pink face. Such love … Such a precious little thing. They were so close in age, he was a baby himself when Ti was born, a false memory, his nurse had said, he was too young to remember, and besides an Altrersyr prince would have been wrapped in red silk, of course, not white lace. But he remembered it. A child! Oh, please. This time, please.

He reached down, picked up a necklace of rubies from the glittering pile at Thalia’s feet. Held it up and placed it around her neck. His hands shook so badly he couldn’t fasten it. It fell limply on the dais. In the light from her face the rubies winked up at him like scabs.

Chapter Five

The next morning they went out riding.

‘Are you sure it’s wise?’ Marith asked Thalia.

‘I rode here, didn’t I? I …’ She frowned. ‘I don’t want – I mean – it seems better, this time – but it could still – like before – and I – I don’t want …’

‘No. Yes. Of course.’ Had absolutely no idea what she was trying to say to him. Except that it hurt her. Saying it.

She had lost three pregnancies. Miscarried three times in the first few months. She was four months gone this time already, she said, you could see the swell of her belly through her dress if you knew to look. Waited to tell him, this time. Spare him false hope and grief. After three months, four months, the pregnancy becomes more certain, the wise women and the doctors all agreed on it.

‘The doctors say that I should keep myself strong.’ Her hand moving to her stomach, up to her throat, to the knife scars on her arm. ‘Last time, I … I didn’t go out at all. Didn’t ride. Barely walked, even. Rested in bed. You know. And—’

He grasped her hands. Kissed them. Deep luminous bronze skin. His own skin white as moonlight. Our children must have your skin, he had told her once, and your eyes, and my hair. ‘I know you did,’ he said. Don’t say it. This time it will be good and well, it will, it will, it must be. I am a king. A god. A peasant in a hovel can father a living child, if my father could father living children … I raise my sword and a thousand men lie dying. I close my eyes and stab my knife into a map and an army marches and a city falls. I can father a living child, if I can do that.

Tiny pink flailing fists … Such love.

He said, ‘Well … Come on, then. If you’re sure.’

But the riding was good, for both of them. The snow cold washing them both clean. Forget. They avoided the city, skirting out to the east towards the Ane Headland. The wind was blowing against them. Blowing the smell of smoke away. The ground rose smooth and open; thick grassland, good horse country. Thalia spurred her horse to a gallop. The wind blew back her hood, her hair whipping up. Like black bare branches. Like birds’ wings. The snow flew out from under the horse’s hooves; the sunlight caught it, made it sparkle, it looked like the waves of a churning sunlit sea. Marith raced his horse to catch her, shouting ‘Ha! Ha!’ as he went. His breath puffed out like a dragon. ‘Ha! Ha!’

Thalia pulled her horse to a standstill at the top of a high ridgeway. Marith stopped further down the slope, looking up at her outlined against the sky. The light was changing, clouds gathering, the light becoming flat and white and heavy, waiting for the snow. He trotted up to join her, looked down in delight at the plain spreading out before them like looking down into a pool. Thick with snow, untouched. And there, on the horizon, the dark line of the Sea of Tears, and what he could pretend in the blur of far distance were the fire mountains of Tarboran beyond. A farmstead with a copse of firs behind it, hawthorn hedgerows flushed red. Tiny black shapes that must be cattle. A beech tree in brilliant copper leaves. Thalia pointed and he saw a hawk holding absolutely still in the white air. The hawk dived. Fast as thinking. A dog barked somewhere below them, loud, another barked in reply. The cattle moved in their field. He thought he could see the hawk flying up again. Perhaps it will all be well, he thought. Different, this time, or the next time. Look at it there! A beautiful world. Waiting for me.

Thalia slid down from her horse.

Threw a snowball at him.

Marith laughed, threw one back, missed. Thalia retrieved it, threw it, it smacked into his shoulder and the snow stuck to his cloak. He gathered a handful of snow, tossed it up into the sky, aiming over the edge of the ridge into the world spread beneath. Tossed another handful over Thalia, showering down around her as he had showered her with gems the previous night. Snow on her face. She wrinkled her snow-covered nose. Pushed him over in the snow. Dropped snow right on his head.

‘Stop! Argh!’

‘Stop?’

‘Stop, oh my queen!’

She pulled him to his feet again. Furry with snow: he felt like a furry white bear.

‘I am absolutely bloody freezing now.’ So Thalia wrapped her arms around him. Her skin was warm as the summer sun. They looked together at the view before them, the white frozen world waiting. Our world, he thought. Beautiful for us together. And there is hope, still.

Marith said, ‘Don’t for gods’ sake tell anyone, but I much prefer it out here to Illyr. You can see why Amrath started out to conquer the world, when you look at Illyr.’

‘Oh, but Illyr’s beautiful. Everywhere in the world is beautiful.’ Strained voice. Joyful voice. Her nose wrinkled: ‘Apart from the Wastes.’

The sun broke through a gap in the clouds, a crack of light in the sky too bright to look at, so bright it was almost black. Like the cloud was the edge of the world, the light beyond a void pouring some other life in. She pointed. ‘Look! There’s the hawk again.’

Black against the white. Closer, now: they could see the frantic beating of its wings. On the top of the ridgeway they were almost at its eye level. Marith thought: I wonder if it can see us watching it? Could I call it to me, like I can call a dragon?

The hawk dived. He couldn’t see it land.

Thalia said, ‘Do you remember the hawk in the desert? I’d never seen a hawk before. And the eagles, dancing around the peak of Calen Mon. I’d never seen an eagle before, either. Or a mountain. Or the snow.’ She smiled. Kissed him. Wrapped herself around him. Warm as the summer sun. ‘All those things, we have.’

‘All the world,’ Marith said. ‘All the world, I promised I’d show you. All the wonders. And our children. The world will be for them. Heaped up for them.’

On and on. Over and over. Pressing forwards to the end.

‘We will announce soon that you are pregnant.’ He was King of All Irlast. Of course he could father a child that would live.

Thalia laughed. ‘I should think everyone in our army knows already. I see the faces of my servant women every time they come to change my sheets. The way they stare at my stomach when I dress. It’s the only thing that seems to interest them.’

Had to think about this. ‘Yes … Well … Anyway … But … Yes. Yes. We’ll announce it soon. The army: gods, they’ll rejoice! And when it’s born! It’s lucky for a baby to be born at Sunreturn. Well-omened.’

‘Is it?’ She said, ‘The doctors said after Sunreturn, Marith.’

‘Oh. Yes. Well … Yanis Stansel’s youngest son was born at Sunreturn, always complained everyone forgot his birthday. I’m sure it’s just as lucky for a baby to be born in the spring.’

She said, ‘We’re marching south, Marith. By the time the baby is born we’ll be in the south. Where there won’t be a winter or a spring.’

‘So … maybe we’ll march north again.’ It should be born in Ethalden, perhaps, he thought. Or Malth Elelane. A king’s palace for a king’s heir. It would be nice, he thought, to go home for a while. Show his child the places of his own childhood. Sit in the hall of his ancestors, watching his children play on the floor with the dogs in the warmth of the hearthfire.

I will take her back to Malth Elelane, he thought. Go home. One day. I didn’t want to go back home at all once and now here I am, king. It cannot be so very hard to go back there now. All I need to do is give an order to march north. All I need to do, he thought, is turn my horse now to ride north. Come with me now, Thalia. We’ll ride away home to live in peace. You want that, too, I think. Do you? Raise our child in peace.

It was beginning to snow again. He began to worry suddenly that the cold … She has lost three pregnancies already. His mother had died in childbed. Take care of her and the child.

‘She must not die!’ he had screamed to the doctors, the first time she miscarried. ‘If she dies, I will kill you.’

‘It is not uncommon, My Lord King, for a woman to miscarry in the first few months. There is little danger to the mother, this early. A tragedy, but not a dangerous thing, in these early months.’ Just a lump of blood. Like a woman stabbed with a sword thrust. So three times now he had wept tears of relief. But it was snowing, and she must be looked after, though she was smiling with pleasure at the snow. Put her head back, stuck out her tongue to catch the snowflakes.

‘We should go back, Thalia.’