The Tower of Living and Dying

Marith looked away at the walls. Shadows. Hate. Pain. Leave me alone, he thought. Just leave me alone.

Selerie said, ‘Don’t fret, dear Nephew. War’s a difficult game at which you’ve had very little practice. I’m sure even Amrath himself made mistakes occasionally. You’ll learn.’

‘I’m sure I will.’ His cup was empty again. Held it out to the girl for more. Her eyes flicked to Selerie. Selerie’s eyes flicked back. She stepped backwards away from them, leaving Marith’s cup hanging.

‘It’s a very fine rug you’re sitting on,’ Selerie said kindly. ‘I wouldn’t want it spoilt by you vomiting on it.’

Felt like being back being raged at by his father for turning up falling-down-dead drunk at some important event. Felt like being laughed at by Skie for killing a dragon and it somehow being embarrassing that he had. ‘I’m the king, Uncle. Not Ti. A greater king than you are, indeed. King of the White Isles and Illyr and Immier and the Wastes and the Bitter Sea. Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. You’re only king at all because my ancestor spared yours. I should make you kneel at my feet.’

Selerie said nothing. Looked around him with his bulbous mad eyes. The gilded leather. The fine furnishings. The furs and the wine and the jewels and the girl. Marith twirled the empty cup in his fingers. Gold. Don’t pretend you didn’t want this, Uncle. You sit in your tower drinking quicksilver and seeing the same things I do. Days, it takes, to get from Ith to the White Isles, even with magic in your sails: you sailed well before my failure at Malth Elelane, to join me, secure me as king. You must have been readying your troops since first you heard I was still alive. Look at this tent, these fittings, the men with bright bronze spears outside the door. Why else did you come, if not for this?

Selerie looked away at the walls, seeing something there in the leather in the corner where the light from the brazier hardly reached. ‘And what would you do, King Marith of the White Isles and Illyr and Immier and the Wastes and the Bitter Sea, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane, parricide and dragonlord and dragon killer and despoiler of the holiest woman in Irlast, if I knelt at your feet?’

Tell you my father was right to kill my mother. Tell you it’s lucky indeed neither of them are alive to see what I’ve become. Tell you to kill me and bury me beside Carin in one grave. You might even do it, I think, perhaps, Uncle, you who once gave me an old sword with a ruby in its hilt like a clot of blood.

Marith said, ‘You know what I’d do.’

Selerie gestured to the girl to refill Marith’s cup. ‘Do I? Do you?’

‘I’d ask you to give me your ships, and your men, and your allegiance.’

‘And why would you do that, then, Nephew?’

Marith looked at him. ‘You know why.’

Selerie smiled back. ‘I remember you when you were a child, Nephew. You seemed so very bright. Full of laughter. Yet one might have guessed, even then, that this would be where you’d come to in the end. King Ruin, I hear they have named you. King of Death. Very well then. I’ll give you my ships. And my men. And my allegiance.’ Sipped his wine. ‘But I do not think that you will thank me for doing so.’

Marith thought: no. I do not think perhaps that I will. I told you, I was perfectly happy sitting in my tent.

Selerie rose to his feet, placed his cup back on the tray the woman held. ‘I have another ten ships riding at anchor around the next cape. Twenty ships in all. Two thousand men. We’ll meet again this evening, then, to discuss. You’ll bring your woman to dinner afterwards, perhaps? I would be most interested to meet her, this holy and incomparable creature who gave up god and empire for you. For this.’

Hateful old man. Selerie’s eyes like his father’s eyes again. Yes, I failed. Yes. I know. But next time … Marith tried to think of other things. Thalia. Dinner. Plans. There’d be better fare for her here than whatever his soldiers had managed to hunt up in the marsh and the village huts. A few hours’ warmth in a dry tent. A pretty dress and some jewels and a chance for her to be treated as she deserved. Oh, she’d looked so perfect, seated beside him in the high seats of honour at Malth Calien, radiant by firelight with the men all eying her with jealous desire in their hearts.

Selerie said, ‘I have a man with me whom you may I think be interested to meet, given your current circumstances.’

‘A hatha merchant, is he?’

Selerie’s face went dark with anger. ‘A weather hand.’

‘A weather hand?’ Marith started. Never met one. Half convinced they didn’t exist. Just lucky men. And not loved, on the Whites. Storm-bringers, death-dealers, things you scared fisher children with. But he’d seen the ships last night, sails swelling against the wind. ‘Really? That might be … handy.’

Selerie snorted. ‘So I thought when I found him. Handy. Though lacking his right hand.’

Marith got to his feet. ‘At sunset, then. Osen had better come as well; a couple of the other lords. There’s a fishmonger somewhere here who lent me his house and everything in it after I tore apart his liege lord’s fortress. I said I’d give him some high post somewhere.’

Selerie said nothing. Looked away at the gold and the furs and the girl.

Hateful old man.

He stopped outside his uncle’s tent watching the Ithish soldiers raise the last section of a scrubby palisade. All neat and efficient. One thousand Ithish men here. Another thousand coming in. And then they were ready. Done and sealed and too late. I wish Carin was here, he thought suddenly. He hadn’t thought about Carin so much recently. Getting weaker in his mind. Harder to remember his face, the exact colour of his hair and eyes. Carin would have stopped all this. Dragged him off for a drink so he forgot all about it. King Marith the Unmemorable, who did absolutely nothing at all. King Marith the Incapable, too stupefied to pick up a sword. Hard to think really properly seriously about killing people when you’re slumped in the gutter covered in puke and piss and drool.

Gods, you were good to me, Carin, he thought.

But this time I won’t fail.

The man with the weather hand was called Ranene. A middle-aged man with a wart on his nose, who could call the wind and make the sea change and bring a ship safe to harbour in any storm. Black skin and hair, the accent of Allene. He spoke in a hoarse whisper like a rustling of dead leaves, where his throat had once been cut. Wore a collar hung with seed pearls to hide the scar. He had brought ships to safety and ships to drowning for hire, trading a ship’s fate to the highest bidder, before Selerie found him and made him his man. Safer that way, at Selerie’s court guiding the king’s ships. Sailors feared and hated a weather hand, knowing what they could bring a ship if their mood turned. Marith found him rather agreeable. He grinned cheerfully back at Marith when Selerie introduced them.

‘I’ll bring you across the sea as my king, My Lord,’ he said in his quiet scratched voice. ‘What comes when you come to shore … I don’t even have a hand.’ He paused: Marith had to strain to hear him. ‘But if your brother comes out to meet you with his ships … High winds and high waves might be handy. Does your brother have a weather hand, My Lord?’

‘No.’ King Illyn had never had one. Rare. Almost a myth. Hated. Feared. ‘No.’ Marith shut his eyes at the thought of the sea in storm. The greatest storm he had seen as a child, he had been ten years old, watching from his window awed as the waves shattered the rocks of Morr Head and the roofs of Morr Town. Ships smashed on the headland, bodies washed up far inland as the water rose over the streets of the town, trees and walls ripped away. Like the fire at Malth Salene, scouring the coastline clear. The air had stunk of seaweed and dead bodies, pallid puffy fish things dragged up from the depths, the broken stones of old cities far out beneath the sea. Sand and salt had been blown even onto the high balconies of Malth Elelane.

A ship out in that. A ship out in that …

‘You could do it?’

‘I could.’

‘How?’

Ranene said, ‘I feel the waves. I feel the water. I feel the sky.’ Pause. ‘I have no idea how I do it, My Lord. Especially as I was born a month’s walk from the sea.’

Well, that was disappointing. But then he’d asked Thalia how she made the light and she could only say ‘I do’. ‘Magic’s a subtle thing’. ‘Magic’s a complex thing’. ‘Buggered if I know’ had at least the virtue of honesty.

‘Do it, then.’ Destroy them. Shatter them to pieces, smash them, break them. They had refused him. They should have opened the city to him. Welcomed him in. His brother! His mother! His home!

Destroy them. Break them. Drown them. Curse them.

Ranene bowed his head. ‘As My Lord commands.’ Looked happy as anything. Couldn’t imagine a weather hand got the chance that often to really let himself go.

‘The whore’s son’s ships will be broken, then,’ said Selerie. ‘Well and good. You will have command of the sea. But you will need to take Malth Elelane. Morr Town.’ He looked pointedly at Marith. ‘Ideally without either of them being entirely reduced to smoking ashes. Unless you think otherwise, Nephew, of course?’

‘We bring the ships in at night down the coast,’ said Lord Bemann. ‘March on Malth Elelane with the dawn. Order them to open the gates.’

‘No.’ Lord Stansel. A poor man, who held a poor island with few men to fight. A cripple, bound to his wheeled chair. But a clever man, with a reputation for good sense. ‘If we were taking a foreign city, even any other town on the Whites … But Malth Elelane … We are not coming as invaders. We are coming to bring our rightful king to his throne. We are coming to bury the last king in the tomb of his ancestors, where Altrersys himself lies. We do not sneak in the darkness like outlaws. We do not threaten. We do not cajole. Tiothlyn’s ships need to be destroyed. Yes. We send storms in the night to shatter the ships, frighten the people. We come into harbour with the dawn, beneath the banners of Amrath and King Marith His heir. Where Tiothlyn the Usurper has brought the sea’s anger, Marith the true king will bring strength and a favourable wind. The town and Malth Elelane will yield graciously to us as is our right.’

‘And if Morr Town doesn’t yield graciously to us? If Morr Town starts chucking banefire at us again? If Master Handy here somehow can’t whistle up a storm?’

Somewhere in the barrel of honey the dead king stirred, moving. Shadows beating on the walls of the tent. Selerie looked about, almost seeing them. Fear in his eyes for what he’d begun. Marith took a breath. Say it. Say what must be done. ‘Lord Stansel is right. We sail straight into Morr Town harbour. And this time they will welcome me as they ought. Malth Elelane will yield. It was built for the kings of the line of Amrath. It is mine. Thus it will yield to me. Morr Town will yield or it will resist. If it resists, it will be destroyed. Morr Town is nothing. It can be rebuilt. Or I will build a new city elsewhere, leave the ruins as a warning.’ He looked at his uncle. ‘Morr Town has banefire. Very well then. It is only a liquid that burns. Morr Town has defenders. Very well then. They are only men with swords. We have an army. If half of that army falls, they also are only men. Men die. We need only enough left alive that the gates of the city are opened and my brother’s body hung above them in chains.’

The men shifted. The lords of the White Isles. The king’s captains, the chosen companions of the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. Thugs and chancers, men with younger brothers themselves, men who hungered for chaos and bloodshed, men who clung blindly to the right of the eldest born son as heir. Faces smiling. Rictus grins of terror. What did you think, Marith thought, what did you think it was we were to do? Osen shivered, looking from Marith to Selerie to Ranene. Fear in all their eyes. Seemed also to realize, suddenly, at last, what it was they were about.

‘Master Handy here can certainly whistle up a storm,’ said Ranene. His voice piped like a hollow reed blown between a boy’s hands. Profoundly irritating. But you could hear something in it. This one has power, Marith thought, looking at the man’s lumpy, warty nose. ‘The greatest storm you island men have ever seen. My Lord Selerie has seen some small amount of my powers. But for the king here, this king who is lord of death and shadows and ruined things … For him, I will raise such a storm as will never be forgotten. I will raise a storm that will shake the island of Seneth to its roots. The men of Morr Town will open their gates to him with joy and rejoicing. Those few that are not drowned.’

Eyes watched him weak with horror. The shadows blinked and laughed in the corners of the tent.

‘A storm, then,’ said Selerie lightly. ‘Then I think we are dismissed for the night. Dinner is I think prepared and waiting. My Lords of the White Isles. Master Weather Hand. Till tomorrow.’ Selerie got to his feet. ‘A drink, Nephew, while we await your lady?’

Selerie had somehow brought white bread and sweetmeats and cured venison over with him on campaign as well as wine and gilt chairs and a girl.

‘Amrath campaigned rough with his men,’ Marith said defensively when Thalia raised her eyebrows at it all. ‘You can’t move fast, with all this lot to lug around. We keep the proper ways of war here on the Whites.’ He thought of Skie’s bare tent, where the fact that it didn’t stink of mildew had been sign enough of power. A bedroll. A cloak. A change of shirt. A day’s ration of bread. Nothing else had seemed necessary. Nothing else had been necessary. ‘Yes, well, yes, I could, possibly, have put some more thought into the logistics.’ First course was apples baked in honey. The smell of the honey was making him nauseous. The spoon dug into the fruit and he couldn’t not think of his father’s head. Folds and folds of skin, the soft brown dapples like winking eyes; his father floating like an unborn baby, all soft and unformed … ‘Any thought into the logistics. But Osen didn’t think about it either. And he was almost sober some nights.’

‘I have something for you,’ Selerie said to Thalia. ‘Here.’ He gestured; the girl stepped forward, held out a little wooden box. Cedar wood, carved with a delicate pattern of flowers, a few last fragments of gold leaf. The more beautiful, for being old and use-worn, the wood smoothed and darkened by careful, loving hands. Thalia opened it slowly. In her perfect fingers a short chain of silver, set with sapphires almost the same colour as her eyes.

‘Oh!’ She held it to the candle flame to make it glitter. Blue stars. Blue fire. Blue lights shining in the sea.

‘I am the nearest kin my nephew has,’ Selerie said. ‘It seemed apt therefore to welcome you as such.’

Thalia smiled at Selerie kindly. The girl disappeared with the empty box. Servants brought cold cured meat and hot bread. Spiced greens. Cimma cakes. Hippocras. Even keleth seeds in a silver bowl. It was a pleasant enough evening. They wandered back afterwards in the light of a torch flickering on Tal’s armour. Stopped a little while to look at the sea. Again before their tent to look at the stars. Clear and cold, their breath puffing out white. A hard frost.

Till tomorrow, then.

A child, a youth of thirteen, when he sailed to Ith, to visit his uncle. A child, strong and happy, climbing trees in the orchard, scrumping sour apples, running and running through the wild country of his kingdom, running into the sun with the wind in his hair. Even then, he knew, the shadows followed him. Felt them. Knew them. Shadow eyes that watched him. Longed for him. A child, a youth of thirteen. Dreaming such dreams. His brother was less than two years younger; he loved him so dearly, looked after him, his best friend, ‘when I am king’, he would say, ‘and you are my closest adviser, my second in command, the captain of my armies – you and I, we’ll conqueror the world, won’t we? I’ll win you a kingdom too, Ti. A really big one. Rich and grand. We’ll share out the world.’

He went to visit Ith.

Selerie told him things.

He came home.

His brother was waiting there for him.

Chapter Fourteen

On the sand of the beach His wonder worker raises his arm. Speaks words that mean nothing. Empty sounds. His face is calm, still like the smooth water. His eyes are closed. Sweat trickles slowly down the line of his jaw. The wonder worker, the weather hand, the vessel of His hopes. The weather hand grasps at the sky before him. Lowers his arms. Speaks meaningless words.

He opens his eyes. Looks at the calm clear water, the calm clear sky, the pale liquid light. Birds dance on the horizon. The marsh reeds whisper behind him in a soft breeze. His weather hand speaks. Shouts.

The air shimmers. The storm comes. Vast black clouds pile on the horizon, rushing in on a warm, strange, savage wind. He watches the rain coming, a wall of black water, the sea churned and shattered with the weight of it, so heavy it rips the canvas of His army’s tents, breaks down branches, bruises the skin. The ships dragged up on the beaches tremble in it. Like iron falling from the sky. Like the stars are falling. Like there are no stars left in the dark.

Hours. Days.

Waves batter the rocks high as buildings. Their crests are furious white with foam. Sea bulls, His men call them. As the storm goes on He begins to see things floating on them. Tree limbs. Bits of boats. Bits of houses. Dead things. In a lull in the storm some of His men find the bloated carcass of a horse, its hooves painted in gold. They eat it raw, the wind being too strong to kindle fires. Two men die of it. Should not take that which belongs to the old gods. Sea and sky and earth and stone. And it’s bad meat, being drowned.

He sends men over the cliffs of the headland, to spy out the land nearer to the storm’s heart. For they are only on the edge of it. Shielded. The men go on hands and knees in the darkness, heads wrapped in leather against the rain and the earth blown by the wind. He has promised them their own bodyweight in gemstones if they bring back news of His enemies. They cannot get far, in the storm, the first stream they come to is a raging torrent, the path up the high steep cliff is a knife blade, three of the ten slip and fall. The sea at the cliff’s foot boils like a cauldron. They are hurled around in the water and the rocks show briefly red. Three go back, shaking. Four go onwards, reach the top of the climb where the land sweeps down to a wide golden valley and a river mouth. A long view across the lowlands, before the sea-girt hills and then the forests that rise slowly to the north. They cannot see beyond the length of a spear thrust, in the wind and the rain and the whipped-up spray. The waves are tall as battlements, their white caps huge as drifts of snow. When they break on the fields they shatter rocks and tear the earth. Lightning rolls and roars and hangs as cracks in the world through which another light burns. Stormspirits shrieking, dancing with long teeth and long nails. His troops cower in their shelters. He stands on the shore with His face in the rain.

The sky is boiling. The sea is boiling. There is no sky. No sea. No earth. All that exists howls in the wind.

Days. Nights. No sun. No dawn. No dusk. Men drown standing on the cliff top, from breathing in the rain. The waves are huge as towers. Sea dragons. Harder than stone. The air is screaming. A man’s mouth opens, pleading, and he cannot hear his own voice. The rain is rock and metal, crushing, shattering down the world. There is nothing left.

And then calm.

The storm fades to stillness. Slow, heavy beat of the wind. A heart slowing. The rain stops and the air is fresh and sweet. Cold. Pure. Washed clean. The land is transformed by wind and water, raw holes in the land, broken stone where the earth is ripped open like a miscarried womb. Piled mounds of muck and filth. Scar tissue across the landscape. Pus. Timber and flesh litter the beaches, stranded by the outrunning tide. The sky and the earth are silver, shining water that laughs musically as it runs back down into the sea.

The shattered remains of ships begin to float in at the mouths of the marsh channels. Black wood. Red painted eyes. Dead men in armour, heads and limbs. Ripped metal, its surface pitted by the rain. Dead women. Dead babies. Broken walls.

He walks the tideline, wondering. Bids His men ready their own ships for sailing. Today He will come into His own.

The sea is choked with rubble. Dead people. Dead animals. Broken trees. Broken houses. Broken ships. They sail slowly, prows brushing through the bobbing ruins of lives. The wind is against them, but the sails fill and they sail.

They come again around the headland. A flash of white on the high cliff. The smooth waters of the bay open before Him. Winter sunlight. The sea welcoming Him home. His fortress rises before Him. The harbour is broken, its wall shattered into pebbles, not a single ship remaining whole. The war engines are missing. The houses and taverns of the lower town have been swept away like sand.

On the broken stones of the harbour His people are waiting. They cheer Him, receive Him kneeling, throw open every door and window of their town as a sign. He walks up the high road to His fortress, the whalebone gates that were raised for Him a thousand years before He was born. The grey towers of Joy. The golden tower of Despair. His fortress. The stones bid Him welcome. His fortress, built for Him and Him alone. His servants kneel before Him in a blare of silver trumpets, holding bloody offerings in outstretched hands. They spread the victory feast before Him. Wine and honey and plates of gold. His soldiers raise the paean, shout His name. Victory! Victory and triumph! Rejoice! Rejoice! And then His bedchamber, with the crimson hangings and the windows open to the sea, and the woman with her eyes wide.

And He is home.

PART TWO

Chapter Fifteen

A wedding party in Sorlost.

It was painfully hot. Yellow dust piled in the streets, thick with dead insects, dead leaves. The skin felt grimy, gritted by the heat, eyes stinging, bodies sticky and overripe; people clung to the shadows, poured lemon scented water on the parched flagstones, drank tea under wilting trees. Birds hung in cages from heat cracked branches, singing out notes to cool the ear. The street sellers sat by the fountains, kohl stained faces rank as peaches; at dusk the knife-fighters grappled, sodden with each other’s sweat, warm metal slipping over warm bone. In the corners bodies mounted: firewine drunks and hatha eaters and beggar children, mummified and wet lipped. The air moved sluggishly. Dust in the shafts of light. Curse this city in her burning. Her body and her soul are silver mirrors, heated with solipsistic lust. Like a dog she pants and scratches, the sweat of her lovers coalescing on her azure tiles. In her dust is her voice harsh as trumpets. Her dust chokes me as it fondles my mouth. 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. Her rough stones enfold me, the arid depths of her passion, her kisses an abrasion dry as desert sand. Oh city of shit and sunlight! Oh city of dawn and the setting sun! In your embrace I dream of water. In your embrace I am withered to broken straw. Curse you, and yet I will lie forever in your burning, my body wracked with the heat of your love.

Serenet Vikale, The Book of Sand. New and popular, much quoted, certainly caught the sensation of the current heat. But, if one were feeling uncharitable, one might be inclined to ask questions about the state of the man’s private life.

Anyway. A wedding party in Sorlost. The meeting of two great families, a symbol of peace and stability in an uncertain time. That the two great families concerned were the cause of that instability is to be ignored. Get some money moving around the city, largesse distributed, gifts and jewels and silks bought. Demonstrate to the masses that all is secure and perfect. There is no reason to be concerned. Why should anyone in Sorlost be concerned?