The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

  So bitter. So bitter his voice. But what do I know, she thought, of family? I who was given up at birth to the God. And yet … the petty rivalries of the Temple, the little slights over nothing that grew and festered over the years into mortal wounds. Yes, she thought, perhaps I do know of these things.

  She said after a while, “And if they do not kneel?”

  He laughed bitterly. “What do you think? But they will.” His eyes rolled in his head, he looked mad as he said it. She shivered. So vile. So much hate in him. Kill him, she thought then. You are wrong to feel for him anything but disgust. But he woke that night sweating, whispering his father’s name. Thalia gave him water, stroked his face. His eyes burned like fever. “But I had to do it. I did. I did. He would have killed me. Killed you.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  He had been drinking heavily at dinner, as he did every night, laughing and shouting with his lords in Malth Calien’s great hall, rough and violent, a thing she hated and thought from everything he had said to her that he would hate, but he seemed so caught up with them, a man among men, a king in his court, a warrior boasting of his deeds. He sucked up their adoration, the envious among them raised endless toasts to Marith the War Leader, Marith the Conqueror, Marith who would outshine even Amrath; he laughed about it to Thalia, mocking them, but it pleased him, his pale flushed face shone; the next morning he would smile and tell her they were empty craven fools and then in the evening he would drink it up again with his wine and come stumbling to bed filled with their praises, laughing with pride.

  “He hated me.”

  “Yes.” She thought: he did not hate you. I saw that, I who have never known a father. He did not hate you, any more than you hated him. But there is nothing else that can be said. If we repeat the lie, it is true, is it not? Without that lie … without that lie, we are nothing.

  I could have stayed in my Temple, when the men came to kill me. Woken the other priestesses. Called the guards. I did not call for help. I ran. Two slaves died. I ran.

  “I’ll bury him with all honours.” Marith rubbed painfully at his eyes.

  He is almost pitiful, Thalia thought. And I … I do pity him. So indeed we shall be happy. If pity and lust together can make love and happiness.

  “All honours.” He was drifting back towards sleep. “He would have killed you … He told everyone I was dead … King Illyn …” he muttered again, rubbing at his face, “King Illyn Altrersyr …” The walls of the Great Temple rose up in Thalia’s mind, high and huge, the faint glimpse of golden domes and silver towers, the sound of voices talking about things she had never seen. High great walls, shutting out the world.

  The weather changed, becoming bitter cold, hard frosts, one morning a faint dusting of snow. The marshes froze over, a thin skin of ice that cracked beneath the weight of a man’s foot. The reeds stood out bare and black. The birds fled with the ice, the last flocks of them gathering on the roofs of Malth Calien and flying into the west like long plumes of smoke. Lone deer picked their way through the frozen landscape. The trees bent furred under the frost. The last few lords of the furthest islands came, of those who would come, and the news ran down from Seneth that Tiothlyn was crowned king at Malth Elelane and was raising his own troops.

  “Why does he hate him?” Thalia asked Matrina Fiolt, Osen’s wife. At first Thalia had not liked her at first, golden haired with deep, heavy breasts and round cheeks, making eyes at Marith, smiling with him as a woman who had known him for longer, who knew how to say things that Thalia did not understand but that made him laugh. “My Lady,” she called Thalia, but with something in her voice that Thalia recognized from her Temple, meekness cutting like knives. But it was so dull, sitting in this cold place looking out at the marshes with nothing to think of but what was to come.

  “Who? Hate who?”

  “Marith. Why does he hate his brother? And the queen?”

  Matrina put down her embroidery, a long fine girdle patterned with flowers. Frowned. “I … Most brothers hate each other, a little bit, I think … And Marith and Ti … I don’t know, I’ve never met Tiothlyn. But it must have been hard, I suppose, the two of them, with so much before them … Being Marith’s brother … Did you not have brothers or sisters you were jealous of? Saw yourself less than or better than or different to, and thought your parents loved the more?”

  No. Nothing. Only the God, Great Lord Tanis Who Rules All Things, whose power reached to a small dark room and a knife. Thalia thought: life and death I know. Light and dark. Killing. Nothing in between. Nothing that means anything in the living of a human life.

  “I quarrelled with my brother all the time when I was a child,” Matrina went on, “we fought like cats and dogs over everything. I love him, of course. But I was glad to leave and come here. And they are so close in age, and so similar, and Marith—and the king’s birth mother—”

  “She is dead,” Thalia said. “His father killed her.”

  Matrina coloured a little, then laughed. “Look at me!” She shook her head. “There’s no reason not to talk about it, any more. She died when Marith was still only a baby, and the king, the old king, I mean, King Illyn married Queen Elayne so soon after that. These old things, they get forgotten. What does it matter? Twenty years, she’d been dead. But then Marith started talking about it, stood up before his father and accused him of having his mother killed. My father and brother were there, they saw. And Tiothlyn was so angry back. And the king too, of course. Marith had to apologize, say it was lies. Who knows? But young men quarrel with their fathers, and their brothers, and take against their stepmothers. My father and my brother quarrel. My father wasn’t even sure he meant it.”

  On and on. So far back, the shadows that ate at him … Thalia shuddered. Saw it all before her, and the old king again, eyes and mouth jutting open, golden with honey. Killers and murderers, all of them. Death and hate. On and on and on.

  A clatter from the courtyard, a harsh voice shouting, “Faster! Again! That slow and you’ll be dead, the lot of you! Again!” A flurry of fine powdery snow blew in at the window. Sand and dust had blown in occasionally, long ago in the Temple when all things were different.

  “Seneth is a beautiful island,” Matrina said. “Perhaps Osen will take me to live there, if the king keeps him close to him.” She frowned again, took up her embroidery and set back to her work. “I wish my father would come. It’s so awkward like this.” Marith had explained it to Thalia: Matrina’s father Lord Dair sat in his hall on Belen Island, torn between astonishment at his daughter’s husband’s good fortune and his own loyalty to the Murades and the queen. The complexities of it all made Thalia’s head ache. Always, it came back to killing their own kin.

  “This is war,” Marith said wearily later when she asked him. They stood together on the outer wall, watching a column of men march in under the gate. “That is what war is.” His face was pale, following the soldiers’ progress with hungry eyes. Scarlet armour and dark spears, white pennants fluttering with the great blaze of an orange sun, come up from ships beached on the mud flats, black timber and white sails and red painted eyes on the prow. Almost the last, he thought, Stansel of Belen with three hundred men and five ships. Not a huge host gathered, though enough to fill the halls of Malth Calien twice over, camped in the orchard and the horse yard, eating the castle and its villages out of everything in their stores, hunting and fishing the marshes bare. It would be a hard winter, for those left behind. The earth around the castle was fouled with sewage that would spread disease.

  They must leave soon. Marith must know it. The men cooped up in the fortress grew restless, eager for war. Ghost lights flickered out on the marshes. Shadows circled the towers of Malth Calien. Bright dead screams in the evening. Kill and kill and kill and kill. Death! Death! Death! It would be better for him when they were moving, Thalia thought. Away into clean air. Away into doing. He sat in the hall at night and let them praise him and call him king and conqueror, and most times he laughed w
ith them and believed it, but sometimes now he would mock them and curse them to their faces, and once he had broken down and wept. Get him away from these things. If they could be alone, themselves … He and she stood together alone on the walls and he smiled his sad smile and looked more what he had been, beautiful and desolate as the frost on the marsh. They would leave for Malth Elelane. They would bury his father, kill his brother and his stepmother. They would marry and he would crown her as his queen. And then perhaps he would have some kind of peace.

  He turned with his beautiful dead eyes and his smile as the last men came under the gateway, a voice calling out the order to bar again the gates. “That is the last of them. Soon. Very soon.”

  Men’s voices shouted from the courtyard, commands, greetings, cheers. They came down from the walls into the midst of it, men and horses and servants, Matrina Fiolt with an anxious face trying to order her household in the face of something almost like a siege.

  Marith said, “Let’s go and look at the forge.” He liked to watch it, the ringing of the great hammer, the shattering showers of sparks, the white metal hissing and writhing and turning black as it cooled, the cauldron where the light of the sun blazed, pouring liquid fire more brilliant than the light itself. Almost something sacred, the way his eyes danced with the sparks, the noise of it so loud it blotted out thinking. They kept the old ways, the men of the Islands, brought gifts of ale and honeycomb and green willow leaves for the men of the forges, bowed their heads to them in reverence at their power of making and burning and raising up death things from the gleaming light. Half gods with their blackened hands pricked with scar tissue, glittering scales of metal embedded in their skin. Magicians. Death summoners. Dragon men.

  “They’ve almost done,” Marith said happily as they came to the low doorway of the smithy. “The sword.” The hammer started up with a stink of metal and his voice was lost. They stood and watched in silence as the master ironsmith beat out a long sword.

  Drew the sword from the anvil, plunged it into a bucket of water with a great hiss of steam. Turned it in his hands, tossing it to feel the weight. Held it out to Marith. “It still needs much work. But if My Lord King would like to try …?”

  Marith took it carefully, looked it over, turned and moved it as the smith had. Brought it up and struck down at the hard stone of the floor. Ringing song of metal. Sparks. Dirty and unfinished. It gleamed in his hand.

  “A good sword, I think. The weight seems good.” He passed it back to the smith. “How long, do you think?”

  The smith considered, shifting the sword again from hand to hand. “A few days, perhaps … Three? Four? It must be retempered and beaten and retempered again. The final cooling in horses’ blood. Sharpened, the jewels set, the runes made … Five days.” His face was anxious. “Does that satisfy My Lord King?”

  “There’s not much I could do if it didn’t, is there? I expect we can wait that long. Five more days in a soft bed, at least. Five more days Tiothlyn can pretend to be king.”

  Five days. Two days and two nights of wild feasting, the men drinking themselves to dropping in the hall, fights breaking out over a woman or a slurred word or nothing at all, three men dead and one injured near enough to dying, the hall running with chaos and filth. Singing the paeans and the war ballads, wilder and angrier and with such perfect eager joy. A day and a night of calm, Malth Calien grey and silent, sleeping, servants creeping through the hallways scrubbing it clean. The snow came, white to cover the ruins, as it had snowed over Malth Salene to cover the dead.

  Then a sudden great rush of activity, the place churning like a rats’ nest, rushing, shouting, everywhere carts and armour and swords. Out of the chaos an army forming, eight thousand men armed and ready, horses, ships, supplies. Tearing its way to life like a child birthing. Coalescing like bronze in the forge. A night’s rest, Marith restless, muttering in his sleep, finally in the dark before dawn settling a little, his face buried in Thalia’s hair. The dawn of the fifth day, and servants come to wake them and dress them and bring them down to the Amrath chapel, to make the prayers asking blessing on their war.

  The lords of Marith’s army stood assembled in full armour. Outside in the courtyards the soldiers lined up in long rows. Still, strained silence. Marith alone beside the statue of Amrath, the stone face looking out beside him so like his own.

  Osen came forward, knelt at Marith’s feet holding up the sheathed sword. A scabbard of dark red leather, worked all over in silver lacework, dragons writhing to swallow their own tails. A hilt of dark silver, plain unworked metal with a single great ruby at the pommel. Marith drew it. The blade hissed in the air.

  “I am Marith Altrersyr, Lord of the White Isles and of Illyr and of Immier and of the Wastes and of the Bitter Sea. The heir to Amrath and Serelethe. The Dragon Kin. The Demon Born.” He lowered the sword slowly, turned to face the statue. “Amrath! I go now to reclaim my throne, that was Your son’s before me, to restore the true line of Your children, to take my rightful place as Your heir, as lord and king. Where the people of the White Isles once welcomed Eltheia Your consort, I will stand and be welcomed as king. I will be king.”

  The crowds in the chapel went down onto their knees in a clatter of armour and a sigh of heavy silk. A deep indrawn breath, held for a moment with the tension of breaking rain. And then a great roar: “All hail Marith Altrersyr, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith!” White fire leaping and running the length of the blade, rushing like water, surging over Marith’s hands, gilding him, covering him, tracing the lines of his bones and his hair, his fingers clenched on the hilt of the sword, white fire pouring down his skin, alight and liquid, brilliant as the dawn sun. He stood looking at them, his people, still as the statue beside him that did not burn but sat dark and silent with its face so like his own. Thalia wondered, even, if he knew he burned.

  He sheathed the sword. The fire faded. Smiled across at Thalia. Joy in his eyes. Look! Look! Look what I am! Look what I’ve done!

  The court rose to their feet, hailing him again as king. “All hail Marith Altrersyr, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith!” Out of the chapel in procession, down to the shore where the ships bobbed at anchor or were drawn up on the mud. Marith held Thalia’s arm, his eyes raised, not seeing. Somewhere far away, in the fire and the light. His hand was cold as cold metal. Behind them came the lords and ladies, breathless, still cheering his name. The soldiers followed, the servants, Malth Calien emptying of people, rushing out onto the mud flats where the ships waited, craning their necks to see the king. “All hail Marith Altrersyr, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith!”

  A bonfire burned on the shoreline. Men had sat all night watching, guarding the fleet from the powers of sky and sea. Now in the glitter of morning Thalia saw long shadows curl around the masts. Ghost lights flickered out on the marshes, visible even in the light of day.

  Marith stopped on the sand near the bonfire, the furthest running of the waves touching at his boots. Again, he drew the sword.

  A horse was led up, richly harnessed with ornaments of gold. It stepped high and proudly, the smooth movements of its flanks like water curving over stones. At the last, as it came up to Marith, it realized. Its nostrils flared, snorting, rolling its eyes. Marith reached out his hand for it and it stilled again, sank down on its haunches before him, head bowed. The cut was gentle. Blood pumping out onto the sand, running into the sea. Silence. Then from a thousand throats a great wordless shout of triumph, swords clashing against shields.

  When the horse was dead it was raised up on wooden spikes set in the water, the men cheering as they worked. “Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr! Victory to the king!” Gulls and crows came immediately, shrieking. Death drawn. Death things, like the swords. The hot stink of the blood made Thalia tremble. Memory. Grief. Pride. So many had she killed, in her Temple, to bring death to the dying, life to those who needed to live. She could feel blood on her skin. The horse flopped on its spi
ke, bleeding into the water, black against the silver-black sea. The tendrils of blood in the water were like the curls of Marith’s hair.

  Trumpets sounded. The slow beat of drums. The men moved together, a churning mass on the shoreline, coloured tunics, coloured armour, the colours of their pennants. Iridescent beetles. Flowers blooming. Women dancing in swirls of cloth and gems. Trudging out to the ships, swords and shields and helmets, waiting faces, coming on in neat long lines beside the dead body of the luck horse, splashing out into the water boarding the black ships with their red gazing eyes and the water flowing with the tendrils of the horse’s blood, mud and silt rising with the smell of salt and salt-rot, the bright fresh light on the waves.

  Servants helped Thalia up onto the ship. Her feet slipping on the wet planks. Wet heavy skirts pulling around her legs. Cold and vile, like clinging dead skin. On another ship they were loading horses, kicking out and neighing, making their grooms curse. Her own fear like the horses’ fear, even as Marith took her arm, smiled, called her queen. Blood on his hands that the seawater had not quite washed away. She could smell the fresh blood on him, over the scab filth of his cloak. Osen handed him a gold cup, he raised it, threw it out into the waves. It flashed in the sunlight, wine spilling out into the water with the blood.

  “May the sea not spite us! May the sky not spite us! Victory!”

  The wordless cheer back at him. The clash of swords on shields.

  We may be going to war, Thalia thought. Such an absurdity. To war! She had told him that she was going, she would not stay here in the marshes sitting and waiting for him. She had ridden away from the battle at Malth Salene, and men had died in pain for her. She had been the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying, the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire. She would go now as the army of Amrath’s queen.

  “Do you think,” she had asked him, “do you think that I am afraid?”