The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

“He calls their names sometimes, in his sleep. Tiothlyn’s. Illyn’s. Your brother’s.” A pause, Lan went to speak, then Thalia sighed and said, “He did get drunk and cry about it.” She seemed almost to laugh.

  “And Queen Elayne?”

  “She … He calls her name also. ‘Mother,’ he calls her. Then he tries to correct himself. But she … she was dying anyway. She tried to kill herself when she knew it was lost.”

  A pause. Thalia said in the voice of the priestess of the death god of Sorlost, “She killed his real mother.”

  Ah, gods. Not that. Lan said hotly, “No, she didn’t.”

  The blue eyes flickered again. “She made his father do it, then.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Everyone knows it.”

  “Everyone knows it’s not true!” The old rumour, that had so quickly soured King Illyn’s marriage to Queen Elayne. Flickered up, was silenced, flickered up again. Then Marith had stood up and screamed it at his father’s face. Drunk out of his mind, Carin had said afterwards he’d been taking hatha for three days beforehand, crawling in and out of consciousness, weeping, swaying on his feet, spitting out the words. The king his father had struck him. Would have killed him, Carin had said, had Queen Elayne not grabbed hold of the drawn sword with her bare hand.

  Landra had watched the penance King Illyn had ordered the next morning, Marith white and shaking, swearing he had no memory of what he’d said, knew it to be lies. So it had been settled again. Silenced. They all knew it was lies. They all knew Marith was mad. A friend of Ti’s had set up a game shortly after, betting on how long before he either died or completely lost his mind. His white shaking hands and his red-ringed empty eyes.

  “He told me himself. And Selerie. That was why they did it. For vengeance. Elayne killed his mother so that she could be queen in her stead.”

  “His mother died of a baby gone wrong inside her. Of course people talked of poison. They always do, when a king or queen dies. But she died of a baby. As Altrersyr women often do.”

  Thalia stood silent. They built this place for her, Lan thought. For him and her to be king and queen in the snow. He loves the snow.

  “My father was at court when it happened. She bled. Died. The king brought every healer on Seneth to try to help her. Old selkie wise women, a mage, village witches with god charms who’d saved peasant girls from dying the same way. But she died. Too soon after her first child, they said, her body was too weak. The king was close to my father then. He would have known, he said, if anything had been wrong. It is common. Queen Elayne almost died, birthing Ti. King Illyn’s own mother died.”

  No answer. Thalia’s hands danced birds’ wings, folding over her stomach as if she was clutching a stab wound, the long fingers weaving into the fur.

  “My father told me all this. The Relasts and the Murades, the queen’s family, we are old enemies: my father had no reason to love Queen Elayne.”

  “I—” The radiance in Thalia’s face seemed lessened. Looked around the bower, her hands still folded over her stomach kneading the fur. “It does not matter. It is over now. He is king and I am queen and his father and mother and all are dead and gone.”

  “He killed them,” Lan said.

  Thalia said, “He did.”

  “Come away,” Lan said. Found herself saying. “Come away now with me. We can get away, there are people who can help us, we can go to Immish, to Alborn, or take you back to Sorlost. You can leave him.” She thought: you are more alone even than I am, Queen Thalia of the White Isles, is that why you cling to him? You know nothing and are nothing, without him. But I can help you. She thought, madly, bitterly, of taking Thalia to Ru’s cottage, the two women weaving stinking gold cloth together the long dull skein of their lives. “I can help you,” Lan said.

  Cold sad fear. Grief. A faint, ghost smell of blood. The snow outside came more heavily. Thalia shivered and pulled at her cloak.

  “Is that what you think? That I want to be free of him?”

  How can you not want it? Lan thought. Look at you! Look at him!

  “Free of him!” Blue eyes huge as worlds. Lan felt her body shake. So much light in the bower, rainbows thrown in Lan’s vision, bronze leaves and white snow too vivid, the white trees beyond lit like mage glass, dry as bone. Thalia standing in her furs, remorseless, endless grief leeching out from her, beautiful as a beating heart. “I would have wished it to be different. But it is too late.” The blue eyes closed a moment. A swirl of snow. White fire danced on the bronze beech leaves, white as the bark of the white trees.

  Nothing, Landra had thought this woman. A whore or a hatha eater Marith had picked up somewhere. Then, learning what she was, she had seemed pitiful. Marith’s victim, trapped beneath some yoke. Haltered. Hobbled. Maimed.

  White light flickered on the dried leaves and the bare branches. Poured like water from the beautiful face.

  This woman was not pitiful.

  “I hold his life in my keeping. His life or his death. He lives because I chose it. Better perhaps to ask him if he wishes to be free of me.” The terrible voice softened. “For fifteen years, I killed men and women and children for the sake of a city I barely saw. A prisoner in a bronze cage. My only purpose to kill, so that others might live. Life for the living, death for the dead. A holy calling. Needful. Necessary. I do not regret. But … Out in the city, the city I shed blood for, there was nothing. Cruelty. Pain. Men who wanted to harm me. And you. And Tobias. Rate. Your father. All of you, you were cruel. You wanted things from us. Used us. Bought and sold us. Marith, alone, of all the people I have ever met in the world, Marith alone has been kind to me, for no reason, except that he cares for me.

  “So yes, I choose to spare him. Despite knowing what he is. He will do terrible things,” said Thalia, “I know that. It would perhaps have been better if I were to choose to let him die. But I do not. And that is his grief, and mine. It is nothing to you.”

  Gods. Gods. Eltheia, fairest one, keep safe.

  “Leave us in peace,” said Thalia. “Leave me in peace. You and your family have done enough to him. To me.” She reached out, talking Lan’s hands, helping her up. “You are cold. Hungry.” A sudden thought seemed to strike her. “Where have you been living? You have no home. You must have come such a long way, did you walk all this way? You must be worn out. And here we are standing in the cold …”

  Thalia called her guards back. The man who had given Lan his cloak looked blue-lipped and wretched. Lan mounted up with Brychan again; Thalia rode the honey-coloured horse Lan recognized now from Malth Elelane. She had, Lan saw, become a fair enough horsewoman in the few short months since she had screamed with fear on Jaerl’s horse. They rode back towards the town, stopped just beyond sight of the gates. Lan saw clearly that Brychan and the other two men looked unhappy at all that had occurred.

  “I cannot take you into the town with me,” Thalia said. “I cannot give you any money, either: I went for a pleasure ride, the men have no coin with them.” Her face furrowed. “Wait …” She drew off her riding gloves, unfastened the necklace she wore. Gold floss-work, lace fine, set with amber. “Will this be enough? I do not … I do not know these things. The cost of things. But Garet will need his cloak back.”

  “Won’t he … the king, won’t he see you’ve lost it?” Thalia had said she would not tell, but she would, she might, the guards would tell, Marith would come with vengeance, hang them both from Malth Elelane’s walls …

  “He has given me more jewels than I could wear in a thousand years of living.” A sad inward smile, remembering something. “All the gold in his kingdom, he has laid at my feet. No one will miss this small thing.”

  “And your guards—”

  “They will not tell.” That Lan doubted, thinking of her father’s men. But Thalia seemed so very certain.

  The horses started.

  She was gone.

  Back here again, Lan thought. What did she want with me? Why didn’t she kill me? What did she mea
n by any of this? She looked at the necklace in her hand. Warm metal, the amber warm rich deep orange, flower blossoms encased in its depths. She thinks I can go into the market and trade the queen’s jewels for a better cloak? Then Lan remembered giving the fisherman Ben her gold bracelet to buy bread.

  Well, then. She steadied herself. This time she must go through the gates. She braced herself, walked around the bend in the road, there they were. Open. The guards stamping bored in the snow, a procession of sheep being herded through, a man on horseback waiting behind them. She took a deep breath, like a swimmer, followed the horseman in. Her steps through the gateway were heavy, as though she walked through thick mud or the beating snow-filled wind. A physical thing, a pressing on her, her body shaking.

  Unchanging. Unchanged.

  Sorrow and joy.

  And then she was through, into the gatehouse square, surrounded by milling sheep.

  It felt very strange walking there, knowing herself unknown. She went through the town up to the gates of Malth Elelane, to see what Marith and she herself had done. It was very silent, the banners and ribbons of Sunreturn were gone packed away in waxed cloth for another year, the snow had mounted up on the roofs. The narrow windows were almost all dark. Grey and cold, the stone of its walls, towers like bare trees, at its heart the golden tower of Eltheia rising, its jewel hidden in clouds. A thin, still beam of light reflected on the sea beyond.

  A woman’s voice said, “Stop looking at them.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He killed his brother and his mother. Marith. My husband. He killed them.

  He blames his uncle Selerie. Says Selerie did it. Perhaps Selerie encouraged him. But he killed them. His brother. His mother.

  And then I married him.

  The storm calmed and we sailed. We entered Morr Town harbour to a thousand voices raised in joy. The town was ruined. Storm-soaked. We rode through the town. “My home,” Marith kept whispering. “My home.” He looked ahead of him, so eager, he had to keep himself from urging his horse into a run. We came into the fortress of Malth Elelane. The storm had blown all the banners of the towers down, washed the gold from the roof of the Tower of Despair. The diamond set at the top of the tower flashed for us, shone like a star, shone with every colour like a rainbow. “Eltheia’s diamond,” Marith said when he saw me looking. “And you, now, come here as the new Eltheia.”

  Ah, yes.

  The doors were thrown open for us, lords and servants kneeling; half the soldiers there had killed the rest, showed the bodies proudly as though we should be glad. Marith paled, halted. His home, running with blood he has caused to be spilled. His eyes went very bright. Glittering. His face was flushed.

  There was a pause then, a silence. Embarrassed. Afraid. All of us, the lords, the servants, all waiting. Knowing. He is come home, and he is waiting for them to come to him, his family, welcome him, and he knows, he knows …

  “Where is she?” he said. “The queen? And my brother?” He stepped forward, looked around him, held out his hands, as though he expected them to come and embrace him.

  A stir in the people there kneeling. Servants looking at each other, nervous, trying not to be the ones to speak.

  He said, “Bring them.”

  It was like the time I had to punish Ausa, in my Temple. Like the way the priestesses looked at me then. She sinned against the God, Lord Tanis. I punished her, and it must be done, and they all looked at me, and knew.

  You will say that he is monstrous.

  You will say that I am monstrous.

  I chose to spare him. Remember that. I chose to let him live.

  They brought them in to us. His brother and his mother, bound and under guard. His mother was injured. Her dress was wet with blood. Marith’s face went white as ashes, when he saw the blood.

  “She tried to kill herself, My Lord King,” one of the men holding her said. “When she saw that it was lost.”

  Marith put out his hand. Stepped forward and touched the blood on her dress. Touched his bloody right hand with his scarred left hand.

  “Marith,” his mother whispered. “Marith. Please.”

  His brother spat at him. “Filth and murderer!” his brother screamed. “They were right! You were right! You should have died long ago! Father should have killed you!”

  They looked so alike, Marith and Ti.

  “I can’t do it,” Marith said. His eyes were like his mother’s wounds. The whole room was screaming, running with shadows. He paced round and round, staring at them. His mother’s blood on his hand. He rubbed at his eyes and cried out as the blood was rubbed onto his face.

  His mother said, “Please. Marith.”

  “What else will you do, then?” Selerie asked him.

  Marith looked at me. Looked at Selerie. Looked at the walls. At the blood.

  “Get out,” he said. “Everyone.”

  “Stay,” he said to me then. “Please, Thalia, no, you stay.”

  I pitied his mother, his brother.

  I stayed.

  I did not stop him doing it.

  It took a long time to do it. His uncle Selerie helped him to do it. His uncle Selerie made it take longer. That much is true.

  And now it is done.

  Hilanis the Young skinned his older brother alive. Such are the stories of his family. The customs of his kingdom. What is done. What it is, to be a king.

  His father abandoned him. His mother hated him. His brother replaced him. They all three wanted him dead.

  What do you expect him to do? Forgive?

  He got drunk and cried about it afterwards. Sat in the hall where he had done it, with his sword in his hand. Screamed as loudly as Tiothlyn did as he died. And I thought of Ausa, and the way that she had screamed. All night, he sat there. In their blood, with their bodies at his feet. I hoped and feared, dreaded, that he would kill himself.

  The next morning he came out as though nothing had happened. Did not speak of it.

  I did not speak of it.

  “I love you,” he said to me.

  The next morning again we were married.

  Our hands were bound together with silver ribbons, in the great hall of Malth Elelane we stood before a blazing fire and cast grain and fruits and oil into the flames. Burning. Oh how much they like to make things burn. Do you worship the fire? I asked him once, watching the way he watched the flames in the desert night in the dark that is not like the dark here. He laughed and said no, not worship, only that they find it beautiful. Perhaps, he said, it is only because it is so damned cold on the Whites. But everything here is on fire. We cast offerings into the fire for our wedding. We burn the dark away with bonfires. We burn the town clean. What comes of burning? But I thought then of my Temple, filled with light where the candles burn. We went for blessing to the Amrath chapel, carried on litters of bare white branches, our hands still bound together so that we were pulled together and twisted apart. It made me think of the long slow walk down the corridors of my Temple on the day I was consecrated, half carried in high copper shoes to keep me from touching the ground. Such strange rituals, I have had done to me. And all to the same end. If he stared at the walls where the bodies are hanging, if he closed his eyes in pain, if he stared at his uncle Selerie with hatred, we ignored these things. If he jerked and cried out when a voice shouted that we be blessed with many children, we ignored these things.

  Days pass. Selerie praises him, embraces him, hails him as king, departs. Marith’s eyes are perhaps easier. He stares less often towards the bodies hanging in the gates. A sudden joy bursts over us all. Wild and mad and bright. We hold the fest of Sunreturn. We celebrate our victory. We do not stop. The hall runs with music and dancing, we go out on the ice to race horses, feast all night and into the next morning, dance by torchlight in the snow. I am enthroned by his side in ice palaces or fur lined tents or under bare trees hung with silver stars. I am dressed in cloth of silver, crowned with winter leaves brown and pale golden and skeletal, fragile a
s silk net. Gold and gems and treasures shower down on me, more jewels than I can wear in a lifetime, gifts from Marith and from all the lords and ladies of the White Isles. He goes out riding with Osen, comes back laughing to order a feast laid, finally collapses into sleep then orders another feast laid as soon as he wakes. Our hearts are filled with wonder. Time and order are lost, no one cares whether it is day or night, the days are so brief here in the heart of winter that all time is lost in the snow. So long ago it seems, already, what we had to do to reach this. We do not think now of the dead.

  I try not to think of the dead.

  I try not to think of killing him.

  Of not killing him.

  So now I am a second Eltheia. I have so many glorious things. Power. Pleasure. Wealth. Love.

  At fifteen I was dedicated to Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, the One God of the Sekemleth Empire of the Golden City of Sorlost. I was veiled so heavily my vision was blurred and buried, wrapped in gold and silver like a burial cloth. I knelt before the High Altar. I walked into the Small Chamber and killed the High-Priestess-that-was with a holy knife. My life then was pleasant enough, I suppose. I could have lived in my Temple, stepped out the rituals, said the words, sung the songs, served the God, done what must be done. I had some little power: in my hands, in the knife; I was the Chosen of God.

  To give that up, it must be for something glorious.

  I have something glorious. You cannot say I do not.

  Power. Wealth. Worship. Pleasure. Love. Living.

  Desire.

  Disgust.

  I have so many glorious things.

  Of course I married him. What else do you think I would do?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Once upon a time, a long, long time ago now, there was a young king who needed a wife. And the wife chosen for him was called Marissa, and she was the sister of the King of Ith. She had yellow hair and grey eyes and she was sweet natured and gentle, kind and fair and wise and good. The young king, King Illyn, his name was, he sailed over the wine dark sea to her, and he married her in great splendour in her brother’s fortress, and he brought her back with him to his own kingdom, and crowned her queen with a circlet of diamonds and silver on her beautiful head.