The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

  The sun set. Through the mouth of the cave the sky was liquid gold.

  “Pretty,” said Raeta. “Not much different to yesterday. Bit more cloud.”

  Tobias stared at the sky waiting for the light to fade. Fucking hell. Fucking hell.

  “Come on, then,” said Raeta. She drew out her knife and Landra drew out her knife.

  “Leave the swords and the armour,” Tobias said. They both nodded. Too heavy. Too noisy. Don’t need armour, fighting stuff. Defensive stuff. Landra’s face was flushed and eager. It seemed to take forever, just to walk out of the cave.

  Did this for a living, once.

  Fucking hell.

  “This way,” said Raeta. They crept towards the camp. Crawled on their bellies the last bit, like worms. Like maggots, Tobias thought. Lay on their bellies in the dark watching soldiers and servants moving around, murmured voices, an evening meal being prepared. Marith and Thalia came out of their tent briefly, spoke to someone, went back inside. Tobias’s body tensed and his heart screamed in his chest. A servant went into the tent a little later, carrying a bottle. The camp began slowly to settle for the night. Clouds over the moon. Tobias’s body was aching and his leg hurt like shit.

  The camp silent. Most of the torches were extinguished.

  A few heartbeats left to live. Landra’s eyes shone in the dark.

  “Now,” Raeta whispered.

  Crawling fear all up Tobias’s back, stomach in knots, his bowels churned up to mush. Through the camp, bent low like animals, knifed two guards round the campsite perimeter, knifed two guards dozing outside Marith’s tent. Stopped with a hiss. Raeta reached out. Pulled open the door curtain. Slipped inside. A servant sleeping in the main chamber. Raeta slit the poor bastard’s throat in his sleep. Dim lamplight on fine worked metal tableware, a stand with armour, a table with a pile of papers and maps. A scatter of wine bottles and a smell of alcohol. The air stung like knife blades. Shadows moved in the corners like birds. Raeta hissed through her teeth. It did not somehow sound like a human sound.

  Go back! Go back! every part of Tobias’s body was screaming. Too fucking easy. We’ll all die here. Put out his hand to pull Landra back, run away out of here this place is dying this place is death.

  Raeta smiling, knife glinting in the lamplight, pulling back the curtain to the inner chamber. Something in her hands, in her body, as she moved that rippled like blood.

  And there he is, Marith Altrersyr King Ruin King of Darkness, lying sleeping naked as a baby with his chest showing silver-white. Like a fucking target. White skin shouting “stab here.” Easy. Too easy. Oh gods. Oh gods and fuck. Beautiful Thalia asleep beside him, hair like a waterfall, perfect arched curve of her arm. Strained to see her perfect arched curved bubs. But still the terror in Tobias: go back! Go back!

  Raeta smiled and her smile was reflected in her knife blade. Her eyes and her teeth were huge and sharp and she wasn’t quite a human thing.

  Landra raised her knife.

  One heartbeat left to live.

  Chapter Fifty

  A hissing sound. Marith sat up, jerked, rolled sideways, a blade came down hard burying itself in the bed. Thalia sat up screaming. Silver light flooded the tent. Dark to light was blinding: Marith blinked as a shape threw itself at him, spitting through its lips. Flailed for the knife under his pillow. Thalia! Gods, Thalia, my love! Pain in his shoulder. Bright as the light. His hand closed on the knife handle. A voice shouted. Pain again. Bright in his heart. Thalia! He struck out with the knife, felt it meet something hard and yielding. Sunk in deep. Blood smell. Blood spattering his face. Voices cursing whispering in panic. The light exploded brighter. A kind of howl. Lonely. Heartbroken. Afraid. The weight on the knife jerked away from him. Killed it? Shrieking hissing sound. Smell of hot musky earth. Sweet.

  The light faded. Dim cool shadows, the lamp by the bed flickering into life. Thin traces of dawn coming in through the tent seams. A gentle music of rain on the leather and the smell of fresh damp. Thalia was sitting up in the bed. Naked. Shining. All the light in her face. Landra and Tobias and a woman with yellow hair were kneeling on the ground before him. Blood on Landra’s fingers. Blood on Tobias’s arm.

  That would be what had stabbed him, then. And that would be what he’d stabbed.

  Landra was holding a knife. The blade ended half way in a jagged line of rust. She was staring at it mesmerized, like a woman looking at a snake. Tobias was looking at Thalia. The yellow-haired woman was looking at Tobias. There was blood running down the yellow-haired woman’s cheek bones. Running out of her eyes.

  Thalia pulled the bedding up around her. Flushed and trembled at Tobias staring. Weeping. Afraid. Ashamed. Her eyes closed, opened weaker and pale. The light flared and dimmed again. The spell broken. Tobias looked away from her. Groaned.

  Hot musky earth smell. Sweet. Like an animal scent. The yellow-haired woman turned away from Tobias. Got up onto her feet. Raised long clawed arms. Like birds’ wings.

  “No!”

  The light bursting out again. Marith threw himself at the woman, hitting out with the knife. He was on top of her, his weight knocking her over, they rolled on the floor of the tent. Her breath stank in his face hot musk and stone. Eyes like furnaces, weeping blood. Cold and hard as iron ingots, writhing dissolving under his hands, he stabbed down at nothing, cold and hard as iron, dissolving like wrestling storm clouds, the stinking breath in his face. All he could see was yellow. Sulphur fires and yellow dust. He hit again and again with the knife blade. Sparks flying. The ring of metal on stone. Keening weeping howls. Yellow, and behind his eyes black star-lit dark. A thing like a hoof struck his shoulder. Earth stink. Life stink. The smell of flowers. The smell of bread baking. The warm smell of sweat and skin. Rolled and got some kind of purchase on it, lashed out with the knife blade, got something soft. His hand sank into it. Growling sound. Pig grunts. Filth like grass blades thrust in his mouth. Taste of flowers. Scalded metal. He spat and bit down. Shrieking. He’d hurt it. His shoulder was bleeding. It had hurt him. But you can’t hurt me, he thought. You can’t! From a long way off he could hear Thalia screaming. Soft floppy things like dead fingers rubbing themselves over his body. His eyes stung worse than hatha. Soft floppy dead finger things peeling at his eyes and mouth. Taste of flowers. Scalded metal. Shrieking. Pain in his chest. Hurting. Hurting me. Taste of blood in his mouth. Hit and hit and hit with the knife blade. Blunted metal. Rang like hammers on an anvil. Bright flashes. Musk. Hit and hit and hit with the knife blade. Shrieking. A soft, warm weight.

  You can’t hurt me, he thought. You can’t. He burned up in white fire. Stabbed out with the knife. Eyes staring at him, huge as mill stones. Bleeding. A vast white explosion of light.

  Thalia’s voice, screaming. Shouting. “No! No!”

  Hit it. Hit it. Hit.

  The lamplight flickering, dawn light coming in picking out the seams of the tent.

  Thalia standing with the light pouring out of her. Tobias crouched in the corner. Landra crouched beside Tobias. The yellow-haired woman lying huddled, blood on her face.

  The door curtain pulled open. Brychan and Lord Durith and Lord Parale and a whole lot of people, all armed, falling over each other to get inside. The thing that was pretending to be a woman spat at them, stretched out her claws. Lord Parale rushed at it. His sword went up like pitch burning. Fingernails long as sarriss tore off his arm.

  “Get back! Get back!” Brychan. Shouting.

  Thalia was still shouting “No! No!.”

  The thing reared up in front of them, huge and silver, shapeless like the branches of a tree. Marith reached his sword where it hung in the corner, so very close, so very far from the bed. Drew it in a shower of white light.

  He screamed, “Death!” and rushed at it, hacking down with his whole strength. The bedchamber filled with shadows. Rainbows dancing on the leather. Rainbows dancing on Thalia’s face. The shadows rose like a maelstrom. The bedchamber stank of rot.

  The sword bit home
.

  All there is, in the end, he thought. The dark. The dust. This creature, this god, this thing is weaker than I am. Is life. Is lies. Death is the one true thing.

  He struck again with the sword, felt flesh and blood yielding. Soft heavy drag of the blade through skin.

  Killing it.

  Landra’s voice, screaming. Shouting. Pleading. “Marith. Please. Marith.”

  The tent exploded in silver shadows. Marith fell backwards. The sword rang in his hand. Thalia’s voice crying out rejoicing. A thing like a great black bird shot upwards into the roof of the tent, a deafening beating of feathers, a smell of burned bones. The leather of the tent ripped open. Dawn light flooding in on them, damp soft morning rain. A mass of leaves swirled up out of the hole. Dead leaves blown on the wind. Black before his eyes a moment, and when he could see again Landra and Tobias and the woman were gone.

  Marith stood naked and uninjured, shining white in the morning, rain picking out the fine bones of his shoulders, the muscles of his arms and chest. Blood and leaves and feathers caught in his beautiful blood-clot coloured hair.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “Fucking fucking fucking what the fuck?” Tobias kicked the ground. Stamping and swearing trying to keep the fear out of him. His arm hurt like murder. Like it was alive with insects. Like every crow in Ith was pecking him alive. But nothing compared to the fear and anger. Betrayal. Shock. Failure.

  Humiliation.

  Again.

  I had a shit in front of you once, Raeta, he thought. And you turn out to be a … a …

  They were hidden in the cave. It was dark in the cave. Dark and damp. Landra sat in the corner. She had her scrap of yellow cloth in her hands, kept looking at it, turning it over.

  “Fuck fucking fuck fuck fuck.”

  Stone crunched under Tobias’s boot heel. He kicked the wall of the cave and his leg hurt. A shower of dust from the ceiling. Landra glanced briefly up.

  “He wasn’t injured,” said Landra. “I stabbed him. I did.”

  “Yeah.” Who knew what had happened?

  “My knife … It just … It rusted away. The blade. Stabbed him and it just … rusted away. Didn’t harm him.”

  “Yeah.” Like you stabbed Grav, he tried to think. Like that.

  “Look at it!”

  She held out the hilt of something. All kind of ashy at the base, where it should join to a blade. Looked old as mountains. She prodded it. A bit of it fell off.

  Amrath returned. Dragon kin. Demon born. All that crap.

  Oh, gods. Oh fuck.

  She just missed him, he thought desperately. Missed and her knife sort of … sort of … broke …

  “He’s just a man,” said Landra. “I stabbed him.” Twisting and twisting the scrap of yellow cloth. “My brother bedded him. I used to sit opposite him at dinner. I was going to marry him.”

  “It’s a bloody good thing we didn’t make it into Malth Tyrenae,” said Tobias. “Would have looked pretty dumb, wouldn’t we, rushing him shouting ‘Death to King Ruin!’ and our swords just bouncing off?”

  The thing that was pretending to be Raeta came in through the mouth of the cave. Her breath was wheezing out of her. She was bent over like sticks and looked a thousand years old and a thousand leagues tall. She sat down slow as an old man. Rotting smell. Sweet. Dead animals. Old dead wood. All her different faces. She looked like an owl and a skull and a dead horse and a fallen tree. Bones and splinters poking out all wrong. Lots of different bits of her crawling and moving, like she was covered in insects. Bark and leaves and fur and hide and feathers. Old, old god thing. Old power of earth and life. Whole forest of life growing over and around her. If you listened carefully, you could hear birds singing and beetles’ wings. Gestmet. Wood god. Life god.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “They broke camp. We’re safe for now.” Turned to Landra. “You named him King Ruin, Landra,” it said.

  Landra kept turning the yellow cloth over. Staring at it, not looking anywhere else.

  The thing that was pretending to be Raeta got some bread out of her pack, chewed it. Crack of bones shifting as she ate. She ate very slowly, like it hurt her to move her mouth. Stopped, spat a tooth into her hand.

  Tobias took a drink from his water bottle. Meltwater from the river Sorrow, cold as stars. Got out some bread and chewed it himself.

  Landra kept turning the yellow cloth over. Staring at it, not looking anywhere else.

  The thing that was pretending to be Raeta finished the bread, drank water from her own bottle. Winced. Cold pain on the wounds in her mouth. Her breath reminded him of a loom clacking.

  He could still almost see her woman face. One eye was sealed up puffy. Oozing. Green-blue-purple-red-black. Her real eye stared through beneath it, furnace hot, huge as the world. Kind of like being a weaver, he kept trying to think. Seeing the pretty cloth with its pretty dancing patterns, flowers and swirls and that, masterpiece of the weaver’s art, that is, got to envy the talent what made that, while also seeing the mess there’d be on the other side too, just a whole lot of jumbled colours, the bloodstains from a child’s fingers for the fine bits, the tears of frustration up at midnight bent frantic over the loom, the slowly going blind eyes. Seeing both things, at once.

  Kind of like that. Kind of.

  Blood was beginning to seep out again from the bandage round her left shoulder. Black bones shoved out through coarse skin. He’d had to sew it up. Crack the bones back into place. Looked one way and it was nice white lady skin and pinky lady bits. Then blinked, and … Couldn’t see it. Or could, but couldn’t fix it in his mind.

  His own arm wasn’t much better. Wouldn’t stop bleeding, no matter how tightly Landra tied it.

  “Who’s the bloke in the boat you say is your brother?” he asked. “You really got a dead ma back on the Whites?”

  The thing that was pretending to be Raeta spat blood, laughed then caught her hands to her chest. “You’ve got a god sitting beside you and that’s what you want to know? Who’s the bloke in the boat? You really got a dead ma?”

  “Gods and demons, Raeta!”

  The thing that was pretending to be Raeta laughed again, wheezed her breath. “The bloke on the boat had a sister called Raeta. They had a ma back on Fealene.”

  “Had?”

  “I told you: she’s dead. I am that Raeta, Tobias. I’m just … this, as well.”

  “A gestmet. A wood demon. A failure. A not actually all that powerful god thing.”

  “His destruction.” Wheezing breath like a loom clattering. “Basically, yes.”

  Best part of two months, he’d had Marith poxy gods’ cursed Altrersyr King Ruin King of Shadows the second coming of Amrath marching around making him tea and digging the fucking latrines.

  Best part of six months, he’d had Raeta whatever the fuck she was god thing nagging at him and being whined at back. He’d shat himself in front of her. Very nearly once asked her if she’d be interested in having a feel of his cock.

  Still saw it. Every time his eyes closed. Every time he stopped concentrating on not seeing it. Fire blast. Blinding. The two of them fighting.

  Death and Life. White light and shadows. Wingbeats. Knife blades. Seeing things it wasn’t possible for a man to see.

  Seeing Raeta fail. Seeing Raeta dying. Seeing what Marith really was.

  Running in the dark. Lost. Running. Back to the cave, with Grav dead behind a pile of rocks.

  Failure.

  Again.

  Oh, gods.

  “So,” said Landra. “What now, then?”

  “We die,” said Tobias shortly. “Or I do and you do.”

  The thing that was pretending to be called Raeta’s breath came even worse, clacking like loom weights. “I’m not far off dying, Tobias,” she said. “A lot closer to dying than you are. But yes, we go on after him.” She said. “What else is there we can do? Our death and his death.” Bent her head. “I had not realized he was so … so strong,” she said.


  Landra looked at the hilt of her knife and laughed.

  “We should get out of here,” said Tobias. “There’ll be men out looking, I should think.”

  “You’re both wounded,” said Landra.

  “Rather wounded than dead.”

  Grav’s body fucking stank already. The clouds had come down very low, thick like fog, hiding everything.

  Tobias drew his sword. “Come on, then. His death and our death.” Or just our death, more like.

  The thought of what would have happened if they’d been a day earlier in Tyrenae again. Really clear image of it: him running at Marith screaming, the sword hitting, the sword bouncing off in little bits of rusty metal, Marith grinning at him. Invulnerable! Gods, yet another reason to hate the poisonous little shit. I risked my fucking neck, he thought, in Sorlost, warding a sword stroke off him.

  “Did you magic me?” he said to the thing that was pretending to be Raeta. “Did you maze me, make me follow you to help you kill him? Like he magicked me to fight for him on the White Isles? Is that why I’m here, not safe in a warm bed somewhere? Did you magic me?”

  “Did he magic you to fight for him on the White Isles?” said Raeta.

  Thought about this. Malth Salene, Marith’s voice screaming “Destroy it,” killing everything.

  Landra looked at him. He looked back at her. Met her stare. Held it.

  “Go back to Immish, then,” said Raeta. “Find a warm bed.”

  “Fuck him. Fuck him.”

  Got up, shouldered his pack, began to walk on. Bent over, limping and gasping with pain.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Marith thought: I’ve always known.

  And it did not surprise him. But it felt almost … almost shameful.

  He had been injured before. Of course he had. Many times. Had his hand half burned off by a dragon. Torn all the skin off his knees slipping in a rock pool. Put a broken branch through his arm falling out of a tree. That last had almost killed him, the tree had been rotten, the wound had mortified, wept pus. He remembered, dimly, his mother kneeling by his bedside holding his hand, crying, begging Eltheia for aid. Heal him. Heal him. An older woman’s voice in the background, chanting over and over the old rune words. Hel benth, tha: health, safety from disease, hope. The weight of stone charms and wood charms pressing on his arm.