Anna Smith Spark - The Tower of Living and Dying

He opens his eyes. Looks at the calm clear water, the calm clear sky, the pale liquid light. Birds dance on the horizon. The marsh reeds whisper behind him in a soft breeze. His weather hand speaks. Shouts.

The air shimmers. The storm comes. Vast black clouds pile on the horizon, rushing in on a warm, strange, savage wind. He watches the rain coming, a wall of black water, the sea churned and shattered with the weight of it, so heavy it rips the canvas of His army’s tents, breaks down branches, bruises the skin. The ships dragged up on the beaches tremble in it. Like iron falling from the sky. Like the stars are falling. Like there are no stars left in the dark.

Hours. Days.

Waves batter the rocks high as buildings. Their crests are furious white with foam. Sea bulls, His men call them. As the storm goes on He begins to see things floating on them. Tree limbs. Bits of boats. Bits of houses. Dead things. In a lull in the storm some of His men find the bloated carcass of a horse, its hooves painted in gold. They eat it raw, the wind being too strong to kindle fires. Two men die of it. Should not take that which belongs to the old gods. Sea and sky and earth and stone. And it’s bad meat, being drowned.

He sends men over the cliffs of the headland, to spy out the land nearer to the storm’s heart. For they are only on the edge of it. Shielded. The men go on hands and knees in the darkness, heads wrapped in leather against the rain and the earth blown by the wind. He has promised them their own bodyweight in gemstones if they bring back news of His enemies. They cannot get far, in the storm, the first stream they come to is a raging torrent, the path up the high steep cliff is a knife blade, three of the ten slip and fall. The sea at the cliff’s foot boils like a cauldron. They are hurled around in the water and the rocks show briefly red. Three go back, shaking. Four go onwards, reach the top of the climb where the land sweeps down to a wide golden valley and a river mouth. A long view across the lowlands, before the sea-girt hills and then the forests that rise slowly to the north. They cannot see beyond the length of a spear thrust, in the wind and the rain and the whipped-up spray. The waves are tall as battlements, their white caps huge as drifts of snow. When they break on the fields they shatter rocks and tear the earth. Lightning rolls and roars and hangs as cracks in the world through which another light burns. Stormspirits shrieking, dancing with long teeth and long nails. His troops cower in their shelters. He stands on the shore with His face in the rain.

The sky is boiling. The sea is boiling. There is no sky. No sea. No earth. All that exists howls in the wind.

Days. Nights. No sun. No dawn. No dusk. Men drown standing on the cliff top, from breathing in the rain. The waves are huge as towers. Sea dragons. Harder than stone. The air is screaming. A man’s mouth opens, pleading, and he cannot hear his own voice. The rain is rock and metal, crushing, shattering down the world. There is nothing left.

And then calm.

The storm fades to stillness. Slow, heavy beat of the wind. A heart slowing. The rain stops and the air is fresh and sweet. Cold. Pure. Washed clean. The land is transformed by wind and water, raw holes in the land, broken stone where the earth is ripped open like a miscarried womb. Piled mounds of muck and filth. Scar tissue across the landscape. Pus. Timber and flesh litter the beaches, stranded by the outrunning tide. The sky and the earth are silver, shining water that laughs musically as it runs back down into the sea.

The shattered remains of ships begin to float in at the mouths of the marsh channels. Black wood. Red painted eyes. Dead men in armour, heads and limbs. Ripped metal, its surface pitted by the rain. Dead women. Dead babies. Broken walls.

He walks the tideline, wondering. Bids His men ready their own ships for sailing. Today He will come into His own.

The sea is choked with rubble. Dead people. Dead animals. Broken trees. Broken houses. Broken ships. They sail slowly, prows brushing through the bobbing ruins of lives. The wind is against them, but the sails fill and they sail.

They come again around the headland. A flash of white on the high cliff. The smooth waters of the bay open before Him. Winter sunlight. The sea welcoming Him home. His fortress rises before Him. The harbour is broken, its wall shattered into pebbles, not a single ship remaining whole. The war engines are missing. The houses and taverns of the lower town have been swept away like sand.

On the broken stones of the harbour His people are waiting. They cheer Him, receive Him kneeling, throw open every door and window of their town as a sign. He walks up the high road to His fortress, the whalebone gates that were raised for Him a thousand years before He was born. The grey towers of Joy. The golden tower of Despair. His fortress. The stones bid Him welcome. His fortress, built for Him and Him alone. His servants kneel before Him in a blare of silver trumpets, holding bloody offerings in outstretched hands. They spread the victory feast before Him. Wine and honey and plates of gold. His soldiers raise the paean, shout His name. Victory! Victory and triumph! Rejoice! Rejoice! And then His bedchamber, with the crimson hangings and the windows open to the sea, and the woman with her eyes wide.

And He is home.

A wedding party in Sorlost.

It was painfully hot. Yellow dust piled in the streets, thick with dead insects, dead leaves. The skin felt grimy, gritted by the heat, eyes stinging, bodies sticky and overripe; people clung to the shadows, poured lemon scented water on the parched flagstones, drank tea under wilting trees. Birds hung in cages from heat cracked branches, singing out notes to cool the ear. The street sellers sat by the fountains, kohl stained faces rank as peaches; at dusk the knife-fighters grappled, sodden with each other’s sweat, warm metal slipping over warm bone. In the corners bodies mounted: firewine drunks and hatha eaters and beggar children, mummified and wet lipped. The air moved sluggishly. Dust in the shafts of light. Curse this city in her burning. Her body and her soul are silver mirrors, heated with solipsistic lust. Like a dog she pants and scratches, the sweat of her lovers coalescing on her azure tiles. In her dust is her voice harsh as trumpets. Her dust chokes me as it fondles my mouth. Hot dry air of the furnace, drawing out all of my waters, salt fingers sucking me dry. In her desiccation her stones drip perfume. In her desiccation I am entombed in ecstasies of rain. Her rough stones enfold me, the arid depths of her passion, her kisses an abrasion dry as desert sand. Oh city of shit and sunlight! Oh city of dawn and the setting sun! In your embrace I dream of water. In your embrace I am withered to broken straw. Curse you, and yet I will lie forever in your burning, my body wracked with the heat of your love.

Serenet Vikale, The Book of Sand. New and popular, much quoted, certainly caught the sensation of the current heat. But, if one were feeling uncharitable, one might be inclined to ask questions about the state of the man’s private life.

Anyway. A wedding party in Sorlost. The meeting of two great families, a symbol of peace and stability in an uncertain time. That the two great families concerned were the cause of that instability is to be ignored. Get some money moving around the city, largesse distributed, gifts and jewels and silks bought. Demonstrate to the masses that all is secure and perfect. There is no reason to be concerned. Why should anyone in Sorlost be concerned?

Whisper it: there is discord in the Sekemleth Empire of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Eternal Golden City of Sorlost. Two high lords, Orhan Emmereth and Darath Vorley, conspired against their Emperor, hired assassins to kill him and all his court. The Emperor survived their manoeuvrings. The assassins all died in the attempt. But Orhan is now Nithque to the Emperor. The Emperor’s hands and eyes and mouth. He has the power to rebuild the Empire’s armies, restore its glory, rehouse its starving poor. Inevitably, such power has brought opposition. Enemies. For a brief few days, there was fighting in the city streets. The price of Orhan’s power is the sacrifice of Darath’s brother Elis to a rival nobleman, March Verneth. The weapon of choice is March’s daughter Leada’s wedding veil.