The Tower of Living and Dying Read online

  She was the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, the One God of the Sekemleth Empire of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Eternal Golden City of Sorlost. She who brings death to the dying and life to those who wait to be born.

  She knew that he was lying, if he thought he had done any of it for her sake.

  “Thalia,” he said again. “Don’t go. Please. I love you,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed. She held out her hand.

  He said, “Please stay.”

  She smiled. “For now,” she said. “As you ask me so well.”

  Hardly an answer. Yet his heart leapt.

  But things to do, the ragged soldiers of his army must be addressed, some plan must be made. Very well, Marith, you are king of one town on one island, you have an army of fishermen and servant girls, you have a borrowed horse and a borrowed sword. Your father left his ships at Escral a day’s march to the west of here, perhaps even now more of his men are coming for you. You can destroy a tower, yes, granted. Such a display of power, to break mortared stones and bring down a place of peace. But can you hold against warriors, in battle? Killer of babies, you are, Marith. Women. Old men. What can you really do?

  The thoughts drumming in him. Horses’ hooves again, thundering. Beating wings. His eyes itched like fire. He stared at the walls, trying to see. Thalia sat opposite him in silence. A room that smelled of mildew, and a lumpy bed. All this, for you!

  I was going to take you to Ith, he thought. To my uncle’s court there, to make you a princess, dress you in gold and diamonds, we could have spent our days riding in the forests, reading side-by-side by a warm fire, talking and dancing and drinking and fucking and doing nothing at all every day. That dream is over. And what have I got for it?

  Again, he felt her about to speak.

  A confusion in the corridor outside. Knocking on the door, urgent, timid. A relief, even, that someone had come to break the tension, make something happen, give him something to do. Lord Fishmonger, I really must find out his name, Marith thought, Lord Fishmonger at the door with a message: one of the lords of Third Isle had come, Lord Fiolt, with thirty armed men. Said he wished to do homage to his king. Said indeed that he was the king’s particular friend.

  Well now. Thalia looked up, confused. Carin Relast was my only friend, he had once told her, my only friend, and he is dead.

  Marith got up. “Osen Fiolt? I will see him in the main chamber, then. Have wine brought for us.” He tried to look away from Thalia. “I should see him alone.”

  She frowned. Thinking.

  “I need to be sure of him,” said Marith, “before I risk anything.” Again, he knew that she knew that this was not true.

  She nodded. All so fractured and strained. Perhaps she should have left him. He could give her a bag of gold and a horse and send her on her way somewhere.

  He went down the stairs to meet this man who named himself his friend.

  Osen Fiolt was a young man, only a few years older than Marith. Dark haired, dark eyed, handsome, with a clever face. He knelt at Marith’s feet, his sword held out with the hilt toward Marith in offering. Had the sense at least not to look at the crudely carved chairs, the plastered walls, the pewter jug and clay cups.

  Osen said, “You have my loyalty and my life, My Lord King. My sword is yours.”

  Osen’s voice half frightened, half mocking. Marith Altrersyr, crowned “king.”

  “Your life and your loyalty. Your sword.” Marith raised his eyes, looked at the ceiling. A stain up there where the winter storms had got in. The king’s own particular friend. “Yet you did not come, My Lord Fiolt, when my father was besieging Malth Salene. One thousand men and seven trebuchets and a magelord, and you did not come to my aid. So should I not kill you? For abandoning me? For not coming to my aid? Where was your sword then? Your loyalty? Your life?”

  Osen’s face went white. “I … Marith … My Lord King … Marith …” He blinked, his hands working on the blade of the sword. He’d cut himself in a moment, if he wasn’t careful. “I …” All the mockery gone out of his voice. Marith Altrersyr, crowned king.

  Men’s voices drifted in through the windows, soldiers being drilled into some pathetic semblance of order. The army of Amrath. Marith’s army. Marith’s loyal and beloved men. Osen raised his eyes to Marith’s face and Marith could see the thoughts there moving.

  Osen said slowly, “I am the Lord of Malth Calien. I am sworn to Malth Elelane, to the throne of the White Isles, as a vassal of the king. I swore an oath to your father. While he lived, was I not bound to keep it? Whatever my true feelings might have been? Without loyalty, there is chaos. So where does a man’s loyalty lie, then, if not to his king above all else?”

  Marith thought: we were friends, once, I suppose. I killed Carin. I killed my father. I suppose I may need some friends. He looked down at Osen. Tried to smile. Sitting at a table once, him and Osen and Carin, talking, joking, Osen’s half loving half mocking envious eyes. “I don’t trust him,” Carin often said.

  “As far as I can remember, we decided it rather depended on the king.”

  Osen tried to smile. “And on the all else.” Pause. “Though as far as I can remember, we never reached a definitive conclusion, since we had to break off discussing it for you to be sick.”

  Young men drinking together. Drawing plans and dreams in spilled wine on the table top. “I’ll need some other lords around me,” Marith had reassured Carin, “when I’m king. Irlast’s a big place just for me and you.”

  His eyes met Osen’s eyes. The tension broke.

  Friends.

  Marith reached out and took the proffered sword. “Indeed. Very well then, My Lord Fiolt. I take your loyalty and your life and your sword.” He laughed. “Want to drink to the fact I’m still alive?”

  Osen sheathed his sword. Laughed back. “Like I drank to the fact you were dead?”

  “You drank to my being dead?”

  “Drowning my sorrows. It’s what you would have wanted, I’d assumed. No?”

  They grinned at each other and sat down by the fire, and Marith sloshed wine into two of the cups. “It’s utterly vile, of course. Half vinegar. But it was this or goat’s milk … We’ll be in Malth Elelane soon, and then we’ll have a proper feast to celebrate.”

  Osen looked around the room. The rough furniture, the crude wall hangings, the ugly bronze lamp. “We can have a proper feast quicker than that, at Malth Calien. My loyalty, my life, my sword, and all the contents of my wine cellars, I’ll pledge you.” Raised his cup. “King Marith. May his sword never blunt and his enemies never cease to tremble and his cup never be empty of wine. May my sword never blunt and my life’s blood be shed for him.”

  “And your cellars hold better things than this muck.”

  “That I can pledge you unfailingly. If we ride today, I’ll have you drinking hippocras by my fires tomorrow evening.”

  He had friends here. Of course he had friends here. He lived here. Friends and lovers and drinking companions and people who’d known him since he was born. A world.

  Chapter Four

  Thus in the pale afternoon sun they marched out of Toreth, a long thin column of men in armour, with their king and queen at their head. Marith made a speech praising the soldiers’ valour, calling them the first, the truest of his warhost, the army of Amrath that would dazzle all the world. The soldiers beat their swords on their shields, shouting, cheering him. “King Marith! Amrath returned to us! King Marith! Death! Death! Death!” The townspeople mourned to see them leave, the shining new young king who had been made before their walls.

  Familiar to Thalia, marching and riding and the creak and clash of armour and men’s voices grumbling and the tramp of boots. All she really knew of the world of men. She found some comfort in it, riding into the light and the wind. Marith’s face too was brighter, at peace, eyes glittering, looking out over the high curve of the land and the vast sky. The bier carrying his father’s bo
dy followed behind them, the horses drawing it stamped, tossed their heads.

  She turned to look at the soldiers. The survivors of two battles against King Illyn, who had fought to make Marith king. She thought of them as like the priestesses in her Temple. They did as was required by Marith, as the priestesses had done as was required by the God. They died as was required, as the people of her city had volunteered themselves to die under her knife for the God. Life and death balanced. Those who need death dying, those who need life being born. She touched the scars on her left arm, where she had cut herself after every sacrifice. Rough scabbed skin that never fully healed.

  She looked at them, and for a moment, a moment, she thought she saw a face she knew. Tobias, she thought. Tobias is here. And I thought, did I not, that I saw him last night. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she could not see him. Men in armour, marching, helmets over their faces half covering their eyes. Tobias is probably on the other side of Irlast, she thought, with the money he made when he betrayed us. The men shifted position as the road widened coming down into a valley and yes, there was a man who looked a little like Tobias but was very clearly not him.

  “Look,” said Marith, pointing. “The woods we rode in.” Brilliant red leaves clung to the beech trees, but the snow had brought the other trees’ leaves down.

  Thalia smiled, remembering. They went through the wood for a while. The ground was soft and pleasant, their horses’ hooves made a lovely sound in the dried leaves and the beech mast. Thala saw a rabbit, its white tail flashing as it ran from the soldiers, and squirrels in the trees. Rooks cawed overhead.

  “I like woodland,” she said to Marith. “I like this place very much.”

  As he had done when they rode in the wood before, he turned his horse, rode to a beech tree in glory, brought back a spray of copper leaves. She placed them in the harness of her horse, like a posy of flowers. Soon after, they came to a river, forded it with the horses up to their knees. The river was very clear, the bottom smooth and sandy. Marith pointed out a place in the bank upstream where he said there was an otter’s nest. There were yellow flowers still in bloom on the further side of the river, and a mass of brown seed heads covered in soft white down that caught on their clothes and on the horses’ coats.

  “This is a good place for fishing,” Marith said.

  Then the land rose, the trees ended, they came out across the moors, riding into the wind. Thalia’s hair whipped out behind her. Marith’s vile blood-covered cloak billowed like a flag. In the last of the evening sun the hills were golden with sunlight, purple with heather flowers; a great number of birds turned and wheeled in the sky. This too, thought Thalia, this too is a beautiful place. They followed the banks of a stream for a while. In one place the water made a song as it rushed down over rocks.

  I thought I could live here with him, Thalia thought. I don’t know, I don’t know … Why did I let him live? Not just for his beauty. For the beauty of this place?

  They slept that night in a way house, built down in a valley between the sweep of two bare hills. The men set up the few tents they had or slept wrapped in their cloaks with fires against the cold. All so familiar. The god stone by the entrance made her shudder; she saw some of the men nod their heads to it, place little offerings of pebbles or a coin, a lock of their hair. But the things that walked on the lich roads were silent and afraid.

  A crown, she thought. For that? Only for that?

  A soldier came running, eager-eyed, with a dead hare still warm as a gift. They had brought food up from Toreth, bread and wine and meat, but Marith smiled in pleasure, ordered it prepared for cooking, thanked the man. You can keep the skin, he said cheerfully. Make yourself some good mittens out of it. You’ll need them, on campaign. Gets cold guarding the king’s tent at night. Guarding the king’s tent? the man echoed, breathless and radiant. Oh, I think you’ve earned that, don’t you? The man’s face lit like a lover’s. What’s your name? Tal? A good name. Start tonight?

  They are falling in love with him, Thalia realized. There was a light to Marith’s face as he spoke to them, savouring the fact that they bowed to him, gazed at him with rapture, their beloved, they looked to him already as something fixed and certain, King Marith, Great Lord Amrath, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. She remembered the people of Malth Salene hailing him as king, clapping their hands and chanting his name. The people of Toreth Harbour, throwing flowers, cheering his entry through their gates with his sword still dripping his father’s blood. A few months ago he was believed to be dead. But they followed him now as though they had done so for years. As though all this was natural and real.

  A bed was made up for them, blankets piled up on the hard stone bench of the way house. Outside the soldiers fussed, talked, sang, cooked food. Tal proudly served them the hare, roasted whole on the blade of his knife. Marith and Osen Fiolt ate it off the bones, licking grease from their fingers, laughing as they ate.

  “It’s better than the ground,” Marith said cheerfully. “And only for one night.” He would have pressed on, she thought, marched them through the dark, except that he had seen her tired face. “When we get to Malth Calien we’ll be able to arrange things properly.”

  Unless you decide to burn that too, Thalia thought for a moment. The shadow of the godstone loomed in the firelight like it was burning. The fire rose up and the flames flickered on the thin silver band of Marith’s crown. Osen and Marith passed a wineskin, laughing. Poked at the fire to send up showers of sparks. Outside Thalia could hear the men talking, the stamp of horses, the clatter of bronze. Some animal cry, off in the dark: she started fearfully, then heard the men laugh. This darkness, alive and heavy with life. There was a smear of fresh blood, a tiny pile of entrails, at the foot of the godstone. She tried to look away from it, up through the doorway at the stars. So many stars.

  “Open another wineskin?” Marith said behind her, to Osen.

  “It tastes like goat’s piss,” Osen replied. “And you need to get some sleep, My Lord King. Save yourself for tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, dull. All right, it does.” Marith poured the last dregs of the wineskin onto the fire, sending up a cloud of acrid black smoke.

  “Oi!” Osen shouted. Laughing. “What—?”

  “I didn’t realize there was that much left,” said Marith. His eyes were watering. He poked at the fire with a stick, trying to make it burn up again. “Sorry,” he said to everyone and no one. The man Tal came forward to rebuild the fire.

  Yesterday he was at war killing his own father, Thalia thought.

  The country grew wilder the next day, grey rocks clawing up out of the earth, coarse grass and a harsh wind. The mountain of Calen Mon rose up to the south. Its peak shone gold in the pale sun. They marched on fast, meeting no one, following the old straight track of the lich roads across the moor. No people. Where were the people? Thalia wondered. This land was emptier than the desert. An empty land and an empty king. Behind them, the bier of the old king Marith’s father followed, drawn on a cart with a red cloth covering the barrel in which the body lay. A dead land and a dead king. She could see, though she had not seen it, the rotting crow-eaten face lying in the barrel, just visible through thick black-yellow honey, eyes open, drowned.

  Did I let him live out of pity? she thought.

  Around midday it began to rain, a fine grey damp that misted Marith’s hair and the filth of his cloak. Rainwater glistened on the men’s armour, blurred Thalia’s vision, vile and cold. The peak of the mountain disappeared in cloud. They marched on and the rain ceased; she could see off in the distance where it fell on the hills behind them, like a great dark stain.

  Coming on towards evening they crested a ridge. Lights below in the gloom: Osen pointed, shouting triumphant. The road fell away steeply; beneath in the shadow of the hill a town huddled, gathered around an inlet fringed with marsh. The sea beyond shone silver dark, a hump of land rising in the distance that must be another island off to the south. On a hummock of dry lan
d out in the marshes, the high walls of a fortress keep.

  “Malth Calien!” Osen shouted. “The Tower of the Eagle! Malth Calien! I offer it to you, My Lord King!”

  Another hour’s hard marching and they were in the marshes, picking their way with care along the winding causeway that led through them up to the tower. It was made of wood, slippery underfoot, narrow enough that they could walk only two abreast. On either side the reeds grew up high as a man’s shoulder, rustling in the wind. A strong, dank smell of salt. A heavy, pressing silence, save the whispering of the reeds. They cut the skin if you brushed against them. And then breaking the silence the honk of geese flying white over them, shaped like an arrow pointing out into the sea.

  The causeway crossed a creek busy with wading birds. A few men, too, picked their way across the banks, lanterns bobbing, bending to poke in the mud with long sticks.

  “Lugworm gatherers,” Marith explained to Thalia, seeing her look at them curiously, black with mud, bent over, filthy wet sacks over their backs. “Razor clams. Samphire. Good eating, samphire.” Mud worms? Thalia felt her stomach turn.

  Reed beds again, then the path broadened and rose and they were on dry land, a round hill rising clear of the marshes, bigger than it had looked from a distance, crowned with a stone tower, a dark palisade of sharp spikes. On the other side, the hill ran down into mud flats and the sea.

  In through the wide wooden gates. A handful of men cheered their coming with a crash of bronze. They pulled up to a stop before the gates of the central tower, where a woman in a green gown stood waiting, a jewelled cup in her pale hands. She sank down to her knees as Marith dismounted.

  “My Lord King. Be welcome here.” The woman’s voice was thin and sweet, like the chatter of birds. She held out the cup to Marith, who drank deeply then passed it to Osen who also drank. A servant came to help Thalia dismount. After the muck and emptiness of the marshes, the sudden contrast was startling: the woman, young and rosy fair, her dress worked with silver, jewels at her throat; the doors thrown open to show a chamber hung with bright tapestries; servants with fireside warmth pouring from their coats in the cold outside air. Osen took Thalia’s arm and led her in after Marith, an antechamber and then a great room with high carved beams, small narrow windows to keep out the wild of the marsh. She stood gratefully by the fire while the men of the place knelt in turn to Marith, kissed his hand as king. Then up to a high-roofed bedroom at the top of a steep spiral stair. Gloomy, with a strong scent of beeswax candles that made Thalia shiver, more small narrow windows giving glimpses of dark sky.