The House of Sacrifice

In the ruins of Ethalden, as the great battle for the ruins of Amrath’s city had still raged, Landra had uncovered the bones of the first Amrath, used a power they held clenched within them to try to destroy Marith. Failed. In the new city rising on the rubble of the battlefield she had seen Marith crowned in his new palace he had built himself on the site of her failure. Her brother would have wept for him, she had thought. She had tried herself to weep for him.

Don’t go looking for vengeance: but, oh, it is too late for that. No other arguments left. Anything else is weak. She thought now: I did not want to come back here. I do not want to do this. But I must. I must. It hurt to her soul, guilt and anger mixed together. Shame, dry and crouched, flaked with dried blood. And the joy, on top of it. Perfume to her soul. Landra Relast, who had nothing left. Do it! Do it! You must! She had crossed half the world, to return here, to do this. She was not certain whom she thought of, when she thought of vengeance. Against Marith, or against herself. When she had found him he was dead, nothing, forgotten, a sellsword in a rough company of failed killers. He was content enough with his life, he had claimed. All he had ever wanted: to be nothing. She had brought him back to his kingdom to punish him. Ah, gods, Amrath and Eltheia, she had punished him. The great tragedy of all our lives, she thought: that I walked the wrong way down a street in a distant city, and thought I saw his face, and followed him. If I had been looking the other way, when he passed me … If I had walked left rather than right out of a shop … Through such absurdities the world is brought to this.

A soldier spares a child in the sack of a city: the child grows up to be a man who beats his wife. A cruel master dies, his heir frees his servants: they starve and freeze on the road, homeless, lost. A woman chooses one dress over another: a dressmaker’s child eats or does not eat that night. Deep inside her, a voice laughed and stirred. Rustle of green leaves. Giggle of running water. Scream of grief. It is not vengeance, she thought. It is just and good. He is Ruin. The world will be a better place without him.

What would I have done, Lan thought, if he had asked me to forgive what he did to me?

She spat in the dust, mounted up on her horse, rode slowly down the hill towards the city that shone before her.

Reached the city’s gates in the late afternoon. All of white marble, and the city walls themselves were solid gold. As though he had thought of the bronze walls of Sorlost and promised himself that he would outdo them. Measuring himself by this. And the green and gold walls of Malth Salene, she thought. Somewhere here was a boy clasping Carin’s hand with a smile.

Guards at the gate in bronze armour and red badges, the Altrersyr colour, red banners above the gates snapping in the cold wind. Bored-looking, guarding a city at the end of the world: they must dream of being in his wars. She could feel the spear points whispering to them. A wagon came out through the gates with its cargo safely muffled against the weather. It was so cold that the oxen drawing it steamed out breath like dragons; Landra could smell the sweet hay scent of them, a good smell.

‘What is your business?’ the guard on the gate asked her, when it was her turn to enter.

‘I am seeking work,’ she lied in a flat voice. He looked at her, and she saw what he must see, her head swathed in cloth covering what should be her hair, her scars, the dry cold of her eyes, the stiffness in her body of knotted wounds. Still a young woman, somewhere beneath it all, but her face was the face of a thing carved from rock. ‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ she used to hope for Tobias to tell her, when he caught her looking at her reflection, ‘people always look worse to themselves, yeah?’ It can’t be as bad as you think.

The guard shrugged. ‘Come in, then. Ethalden the City of the King welcomes you.’ A rich man with a guard around him rode in after her and was not questioned. She still noticed that she noticed that. She found an inn, argued with the innkeep over the cost of stabling, argued with the innkeep again until he moved her to a room with a door she could lock. The whole inn smelled of sawdust. Joists still creaking and settling, plaster in places still damp. The stairs to her room were badly made, the steps uneven; the bedroom door struck in the frame. But she had never been in a place so new and clean. They could only have finished building it in the last week.

She ached. Her whole body, aching. Deep pain, down to the bones, in her back, her stomach, in her chest when she drew a breath. In her hands, up her arms, pulling and twisting up her right arm, the fingers on her right hand puffed up red and numb. She spat on her fingers, rubbed the spit into them, took a water bottle from her belt and poured water over them to try to ease the pain.

Chilblains, she told people. Winter is a cruel goddess, gnawing at the flesh. The skin looked heavy, mottled like old meat. She had seen people wince, rub their own hands, when they saw it. She opened and closed her fingers. Shook her hand out. The pain faded a little. It would not heal while Marith lived.

She went over to the window, which faced north over the city out towards the Bitter Sea. The end of everything. An hour’s walk, and then sheer cliffs, and then the sea going on into eternity. No ship would sail on those waters. Wave upon wave upon wave of dark water, on until the world’s end. It was pleasant looking out in that direction, thinking of the sea beyond the walls. Far beyond human hopes or cares. Ignorant of all human things. No hope no pain. Calming. The desire to be herself beyond human things.

The wind was getting up, shaking the branches of a tree opposite the window A birch tree, its bark white as bone. Its branches rattled like bone. ‘His city is built on bones and blood and tears, His city is built on the flesh of living men,’ the songs of praise to King Marith said. ‘Is it true?’ one of soldiers had once asked her, a new recruit, young and ardent and eager, all his love for Marith glittering out of him, ‘is it true, that he ordered his fortress to be built on living bodies, that he mixed the mortar with human blood?’ The Army of Amrath had just taken Raen, had built their towers of skulls where the walls had stood. And the soldier’s eyes had gleamed, looking past the skulls, seeing greater, more terrible things. ‘Is it true? Really? They say you were there, Lan, they say you’ve been with the army since Illyr. Tell me it’s true, won’t you?’

She had tried to speak, but no words had come from her mouth.

‘It is,’ Tobias had said. ‘I saw it. I saw.’ And then he’d rolled his eyes. ‘And other places aren’t, of course. Alborn, Morr Town, Sorlost the Golden, Malth Salene … no one suffered and strained and got hurt building them. Light as air, the stones that built Malth Salene, and the labourers were paid in gold.’

‘That’s not the same, Tobias,’ Lan had said.

‘No. It’s not. Obviously it’s not. But …’ Tobias had shaken his head. ‘Never mind, then. I’m being cruel.’

Raen had been chaos, the usual maelstrom after a sack. Landra had taken her knife in her injured right hand, buried the blade up to the hilt in the soldier’s heart.

Filth. Her heart had sung out for joy. One less of them. A tiny bright difference: somewhere in the heart of a loving world a joyous song is rising. Her shame had been a void beneath her feet.

‘You know what I mean,’ Tobias had said. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Better get your knife clean, Lady Landra,’ Tobias had said. ‘And get away from that corpse.’

She had left Tobias the next morning, fled away north towards the cities of Ander and Balkash. Warn them. Beg them. I can no longer bear it, she had told herself, I must act, make it stop. Something can be done and must be done. She had once loosed a gabeleth, a vengeance-demon; she had once fought beside a gestmet, a god of life. Thus she could do things. A bright light in the world, was Lady Landra Relast. A joyous song, a good sweet song to make the world a better place. Thus every night she cursed him. I will not rest, she swore to herself, until he is defeated and all who follow him are dead.

Knife in her heart. Shame and pity. Her hands ached sore heavy wound red. The wind blew in the branches of the tree opposite, and the branches scratched together like bones, and the bark was white like bones in the fading light.

But in the dawn, ah, Ethalden was beautiful. Grey mist around the towers, fading, they were unreal, they were not buildings but statues, stone dancers, robed in clouds, they were giants dancing, they wore the dawn as jewels on their skin. Landra slept well and peacefully. Her ancestor Amrath’s city: so perhaps He blessed her, eased her pain, let her sleep. Perhaps her hair and her skin were healed a little. Her wounds less harsh. There were a thousand birds in the city of Ethalden, and every one of them seemed to gather beneath her window that morning to sing. She rested her hands on the windowsill and gazed out at the city, over towards the gold walls and away into the horizon where the sea would be. Peace. Peace. The streets already busy with people, animals, voices chattering, the sound of building work. Women in fine dresses, workmen already covered with stone dust clinging damp to their clothes, slave labourers from half the world chained in filth. Trades being made, goods bought and sold, gold and treasure and living men. The patterns and circles of every city: those who dance begin to dance, and those who weep begin. Beggars, naturally, as in every city – but fewer than in other cities, she thought, where the wealth of the world did not now come. Even as she watched, a woman gave a beggar a coin, smiled at him. Children playing – she watched a pair of them, a boy and a girl, from their matching curls they must be brother and sister. The girl ran and the boy chased her, the boy caught her and pulled at the girl’s dress; they began to quarrel, the girl pulling her brother’s hair; a woman ran up to scold them, kiss the boy’s curls, take their hands firmly and walk on. Pilgrims were making for the tomb of Amrath. Strong young men and women were looking to join the Army of Amrath. Some kind of absurdity here that she, Landra, was a descendant of Amrath.

‘Your great-great-great etc grandma got knocked up by your great-great-great etc grandpa. Get you! Astonishing achievement, having ancestors, isn’t it? Very rare thing.’

‘That’s not fair, Tobias.’

‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, his great-great-great-grandpa having knocked up his great-great-great-grandma certainly means he’s entitled to all this.’ That had been on the day of Marith’s coronation. Tobias had spread his arms wide, taken in all the towers of the fortress, the cheering crowds, the banners and petals and jewels, taken all of it into his outstretched embrace. ‘His birthright. His destiny. For being able to reel off a list of his ancestors’ names.’ As Tobias said it, the sun had put out golden beams that had struck Marith’s face perfectly, lit up his face and his eyes and his crown, made him shine.

‘Honey cakes! Saffron! Curd cakes! Dried plums!’ Landra shook her head. A foodseller positioned himself opposite her window with a tray of cakes, his own face thin and hungry. The children came running back with their mother to buy some. Workers were swarming up a great tower of ivory beside the north gates shouting to each other in a babble of languages, up ropes and ladders, calling, whistling.

‘Get on! Get on! Get it built!’

A great spike of carved sweetwood was rising there: Landra watched the workers struggle with it, drag it awkwardly up the building. Ropes flailing. Many curses. It almost slipped, three men almost fell. It was carved to look like a garland of flowers, gilded in silver leaf, skeletal faces staring empty-eyed between the blooms. They got it upright, finally, struggled and fought with it. Almost done it … then a scream, as a man did fall. His arms flailing as he came down. Horrified cries from his fellows. Landra could not see him hit the earth but turned her face away anyway. Such a long sickened pause. All the men looking downwards, each must be thanking all gods and demons that it had not been him. The foreman shouted at them to get back to it. The carved wood shuddered; they got it steady again, slotted it finally into place. The thud of a mallet on wood. Landra breathed a great sigh of relief. The tower looked beautiful, with the wooden spike at its height. The morning light caught the gilding; from her window, Landra could see the flowers and the faces clearly, like one of Marith’s skull towers, blossom growing up over dead faces all those dead eyes. At the base of the spire, workers scrambled with blocks of marble to build a parapet. I wonder whose palace that will be? she thought. And if they will live to see it? Osen Fiolt? Valim Erith? Alis Nymen, who had once sold fish to the kitchens of Malth Salene? The new lords, his new friends, from all over Irlast. He betrayed Carin’s memory, surely, by making these fine new friends from every corner of Irlast.

A block of stone was being hauled up now, carved with a pattern of hunting beasts. There seemed to be an argument going on over it, the foreman waved his arms, seemed angry, the workers lifting it shrugged and gestured back. The block was lowered down again. The foreman climbed down a ladder, began to argue with someone else, pointed at the block. The two of them disappeared from Landra’s sight, still arguing. The thin-faced cake seller, she noticed, was now eating one of his own cakes. He looked delighted by it. Two men came hurrying up with a bier, to cart off the remains of the workman.

Anyway. Things to be done. She adjusted the headscarf covering her burns. Went down out into the city.

She went first to the tomb of Amrath. Already crowds were gathered there to leave offerings. Just to see it. Amrath’s bones. The tarnished shards of Amrath’s sword and helmet and armour, twisted and boiled with dragon fire, eaten into lace by dragon blood. Marith had killed his brother Tiothlyn; the first Amrath had killed His brother that was a dragon, been killed by it as He died. Ever were the Altrersyr fratricides and parricides and cursed men.

The bones of an arm. The bones of a hand. A shattered ribcage. A shattered skull case. Blind eye holes, a hole where the nose had been, white pearly teeth but missing its lower jaw. Yellow old dry bare cold bone. A man who died and lay dead and unburied. A man who had no one left at the end to mourn for him. Marith had gathered up the bones in his own arms, laid them with reverence on a bier of white samite in a coffin of cedar wood in a coffin of iron in a coffin of gold. Over them a temple of black onyx had been raised, sat glaring in the shadow of Marith’s fortress. The doorway was high and narrow, like the doorway of the Great Temple in Sorlost. The whole tomb building, Landra thought with pity, was modelled on the Great Temple in Sorlost. Inside, the floor was black iron, the walls smooth stone. The gold coffin stood on a plinth of white marble. It was huge, to look as though the bones inside it had been huge as a giant. Braziers burned all around it, sending out smoke that was rancid with incense. The smoke made the air dry.

A woman leaned forward to kiss the coffin. A man placed a knife in offering at the base of the plinth. ‘Amrath,’ voices murmured. ‘Amrath. Amrath.’

Landra’s hands itched. The skin red and dry, her fingers puffed up, swollen, the skin cracked. She followed the woman worshipper, reached out and placed her hands on the gold. They ached. The metal felt very cold. She could feel herself shaking. Hear her fast shallow breath.

What do I expect to happen? she thought.

The air in the room whispered. Something will happen. Waiting. Her face reflected in the gold. Wait a little longer, and you’ll see, something will come, the face there will change, the dead will rise. Stare and her reflection is changing, no longer can she recognize that face.

Pity. My ancestor, Amrath, cruel hateful man of anger: unmourned, unburied, raw bones. You, also, would not have chosen this. Did not want this. The face there, so close, thinking it, feeling it: you trampled the world beneath you, who would ever wish this for their life? Everyone in the world, and no one. Amrath, my ancestor, you had what all hearts desire, all it ever can be is grief. To be touched by the gods is cruelty and suffering. To be as a god is to be nothing but death.

My ancestor, Amrath, help me. Grant me strength.

The face in the gold, a different face not her face. Eyes open, mouth open wide, it will speak, it will speak, tell me, help me … Pressed her hands onto the gold. Closer. Closer. Amrath, my ancestor, Your bones lie here, show me what to do, help me. A ringing in her body, a pulse there tolling. The heaviness of it. Trying to reach the surface, swimming, and the surface of the water hanging out of reach. The cool of swimming with open eyes, seeing another world.

There, a face, a mouth opening in the gold, sinking up through the gold towards her. Help me.

A man beside her jostled her, bending awkwardly forward to press his own forehead to the coffin.

Broken. Landra backed away. Dead old bones.

The man who had jostled her was garlanded in flowers, he took them off and threw them in offering. ‘A son, Amrath, World Conqueror, Lord of Irlast, grant me a son.’ His voice was sad and cracked.

Voices, echoing around the black walls, babbling.

‘My wife is sick,’ another man said, ‘let her be healed.’

‘Let him marry me. Let him love me again.’

‘Heal the pain in my leg, the wound there, Amrath, World Conqueror, I was wounded fighting for our king, heal me.’ Smell of flesh rotting. Swirl of incense smoke.

A woman stood silent, staring at the coffin, her face rigid. A man beside her stared not at the coffin but at the people praying there. A man beside him wept.

Mourning?

Rejoicing?

The woman cut off a lock of her hair, laid it before the tomb. ‘Amrath, Amrath, World Conqueror, keep the king safe. That is all I pray. All that any of us pray.’

A note of sorrow then, Landra thought, in the air, in the gold of the tomb.

The red pain in her hand felt no different, if she had hoped that coming here would help it. Touching the bones had caused it, could not now cure it. Dead old yellow bones without power for anything. ‘Tear it down,’ she whispered. And a pain stirring inside her. Itching like lice across her heart. Grief. Pain. Rage. Hope.

Such ordinary things, they wanted, these people, that they must be punished for.

Outside the tomb the city was churning with people. Thalia’s temple was empty, almost ignored; the doorway of Marith’s temple was crowded with soldiers making dedications and prayers.

‘A strong right arm, my Lord Marith Ansikanderakesis Amrakane.’

‘A strong right arm and my sword coated in blood.’

In the temple forecourt, a horse’s head had been raised up on a pole of bleached white wood. It grinned through skeletal jaws. Sinews drying curling back its lips. Its eyes were almost still alive. Its mane moved in the wind. Landra found herself staring at this, also. Disgusting thing. A sacrifice. To Amrath. To Marith. Imagine it, making a sacrifice to yourself.

‘The luck horse,’ a woman said, seeing her staring.

Landra nodded. ‘Yes. I know.’

‘The king killed it,’ the woman said, ‘on the day he rode out to rebuild Amrath’s empire. Jet black, it was, with a blaze of white on its forehead like a star. The most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen.’

The woman was dressed in tatters, her hair matted and filthy. She had a strip of rotting horsehide wrapped around her right arm. A bone that might have been a part of a horse’s backbone hanging on a chain around her neck.

‘You saw it?’ Landra asked her.

‘I held the horse’s bridle,’ the woman said, ‘while he killed it.’

Landra thought: she’s mad.

‘It was a wild horse,’ the woman said. ‘Running loose on the shore out to the north, where the land is dead. Left over from the army that fought him here, the traitors, the blind ones who did not follow him. His enemy’s horse, that fled when the battle was lost, its rider dead. On the day the army was to march my husband found it, out on the shore there where the traitors’ bones lie. He brought it to the king and the king sacrificed it for luck. To bless his army as they marched. Four years ago. Now I sit here beside his temple. To guard it.’

A horror of something gripped Landra. She said, ‘And your husband?’ But before she had finished speaking, she guessed.

‘The horse killed him,’ the woman said. ‘When the king drew his sword it reared up, its hooves shattered my husband’s skull. He lay there dying while the sacrifice was made: his blood and his life, as well as the horse’s, they marched through, to bless the army and the king. Now I sit here. Guarding it.’ She looked at Landra keenly. ‘They say that if you give me a coin, any prayer you made in the king’s temple will be more likely to come true.’

‘I haven’t been into the king’s temple,’ Landra said. She reached into her pocket to hand over a coin. The horse woman raised her hand to thank her. Stepped back. Grimy eyes blinked at Landra.

‘Any prayer,’ the horse woman said. ‘Any prayer, and it will be granted. Think on that.’

‘What happened to the horse’s body?’ Landra asked. Why she asked that she had no idea.

‘They sold it for meat,’ the horse woman said.

Landra went back to the inn, ate a meal, paid the innkeep’s boy a handful of copper to saddle her horse. Rode out of the north gate of the city, along the banks of the Haliakmon river, towards the shore of the Bitter Sea. Silt-blackened water, rushing down fast from the hills, singing as it ran. Fields on the riverbanks, stubbled with winter wheat. Apple trees, plum trees, ghost leaves and ghost fruit still clinging to their branches. Yellow broom flowers, wild clematis down like wool in the hedges. Beside the river the land became marshy, irises on the riverbanks, bulrushes, willows, alder, the banks of the river smelled of rotting leaves and of mint. Water fowl in great numbers. Herons, still and grey as godstones, long long legs, their wings raised over their heads. Kingfishers, perfect blue. An arrow flight of white geese. Red cattle in the meadows, shaggy and long-horned, raising their heads from the grass watching with dark liquid eyes; sheep on the hills beyond with thick wool for war cloaks. A herd of deer come down to a sheltered pool in the marsh to drink.

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