Anna Spark - The House of Sacrifice

When Landra had last been here, Ethalden had been a city of workmen, of raw stone slabs and stacked timbers, building rubble, scaffolding, workers’ huts, soldiers’ tents. The air had smelled of sawdust and stonedust, great clouds of it stirred up; the air had resounded with the shouts and songs of labourers and craftsmen. Marith’s fortress had risen up in the midst of this chaos, a glory of gold and mage glass and marble, heavy silk and shining fur and bright gems. Throne rooms, banqueting halls, pleasure gardens, crystal fountains pouring out perfumed water coloured red or blue or deep lush forest green. A central tower like a beam of sunlight was set at its very centre, so high it seemed to come down from the heavens to the earth. It was made of silver and pearl, hung with red banners; on balconies at its heights bells and silver trumpets rang out. Beside it stood two temples, one of gold dedicated to Queen Thalia, one of iron dedicated to Marith himself. In its shadow stood a tomb of onyx, holding the bones of the first Amrath.

Every master builder in Irlast had been summoned to Ethalden. Men who could work stone to create marvels, for whom stone could flow like water, who could pour out beauty onto the bare earth. Men with hands running with magic, with power over stone and metal to raise them up into dreams. Thirty days, Marith Altrersyr Ansikanderakesis Amrakane had given them to build him a fortress. If it was not completed as the sun rose on the thirty-first day, he would kill them. On the morning of the thirty-first day, the feast of Sunreturn, Landra had watched Marith ride into his fortress to be crowned King of Illyr and of all Irlast.

And now around the fortress a city was forming. Palaces for Marith’s lords. Storehouses for the wealth of his empire. Barracks for his armies. Docks from which ships sailed across the world. He had emptied the towns and villages of Illyr, resettled the people here. The streets were wide and well-made, the houses tall.

Landra had once been betrothed to Marith Altrersyr. Her father had been Lord of Third Isle, one of the greatest lords of the White Isles, a companion of King Illyn Marith’s father. Her brother Carin had been Marith’s lover, until Marith killed him. It was in her father’s house of Malth Salene, the Tower of the Shining Sea, that Marith was first crowned king. Marith had killed his own father before Malth Salene’s walls. After he had killed Landra’s father and her mother and her sister, and thought that he had killed Landra herself.

In the ruins of Ethalden, as the great battle for the ruins of Amrath’s city had still raged, Landra had uncovered the bones of the first Amrath, used a power they held clenched within them to try to destroy Marith. Failed. In the new city rising on the rubble of the battlefield she had seen Marith crowned in his new palace he had built himself on the site of her failure. Her brother would have wept for him, she had thought. She had tried herself to weep for him.

Don’t go looking for vengeance : but, oh, it is too late for that. No other arguments left. Anything else is weak. She thought now: I did not want to come back here. I do not want to do this. But I must. I must. It hurt to her soul, guilt and anger mixed together. Shame, dry and crouched, flaked with dried blood. And the joy, on top of it. Perfume to her soul. Landra Relast, who had nothing left. Do it! Do it! You must! She had crossed half the world, to return here, to do this. She was not certain whom she thought of, when she thought of vengeance. Against Marith, or against herself. When she had found him he was dead, nothing, forgotten, a sellsword in a rough company of failed killers. He was content enough with his life, he had claimed. All he had ever wanted: to be nothing. She had brought him back to his kingdom to punish him. Ah, gods, Amrath and Eltheia, she had punished him. The great tragedy of all our lives, she thought: that I walked the wrong way down a street in a distant city, and thought I saw his face, and followed him. If I had been looking the other way, when he passed me … If I had walked left rather than right out of a shop … Through such absurdities the world is brought to this.

A soldier spares a child in the sack of a city: the child grows up to be a man who beats his wife. A cruel master dies, his heir frees his servants: they starve and freeze on the road, homeless, lost. A woman chooses one dress over another: a dressmaker’s child eats or does not eat that night. Deep inside her, a voice laughed and stirred. Rustle of green leaves. Giggle of running water. Scream of grief. It is not vengeance, she thought. It is just and good. He is Ruin. The world will be a better place without him.

What would I have done, Lan thought, if he had asked me to forgive what he did to me?

She spat in the dust, mounted up on her horse, rode slowly down the hill towards the city that shone before her.

Reached the city’s gates in the late afternoon. All of white marble, and the city walls themselves were solid gold. As though he had thought of the bronze walls of Sorlost and promised himself that he would outdo them. Measuring himself by this. And the green and gold walls of Malth Salene, she thought. Somewhere here was a boy clasping Carin’s hand with a smile.

Guards at the gate in bronze armour and red badges, the Altrersyr colour, red banners above the gates snapping in the cold wind. Bored-looking, guarding a city at the end of the world: they must dream of being in his wars. She could feel the spear points whispering to them. A wagon came out through the gates with its cargo safely muffled against the weather. It was so cold that the oxen drawing it steamed out breath like dragons; Landra could smell the sweet hay scent of them, a good smell.

‘What is your business?’ the guard on the gate asked her, when it was her turn to enter.

‘I am seeking work,’ she lied in a flat voice. He looked at her, and she saw what he must see, her head swathed in cloth covering what should be her hair, her scars, the dry cold of her eyes, the stiffness in her body of knotted wounds. Still a young woman, somewhere beneath it all, but her face was the face of a thing carved from rock. ‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ she used to hope for Tobias to tell her, when he caught her looking at her reflection, ‘people always look worse to themselves, yeah?’ It can’t be as bad as you think.

The guard shrugged. ‘Come in, then. Ethalden the City of the King welcomes you.’ A rich man with a guard around him rode in after her and was not questioned. She still noticed that she noticed that. She found an inn, argued with the innkeep over the cost of stabling, argued with the innkeep again until he moved her to a room with a door she could lock. The whole inn smelled of sawdust. Joists still creaking and settling, plaster in places still damp. The stairs to her room were badly made, the steps uneven; the bedroom door struck in the frame. But she had never been in a place so new and clean. They could only have finished building it in the last week.

She ached. Her whole body, aching. Deep pain, down to the bones, in her back, her stomach, in her chest when she drew a breath. In her hands, up her arms, pulling and twisting up her right arm, the fingers on her right hand puffed up red and numb. She spat on her fingers, rubbed the spit into them, took a water bottle from her belt and poured water over them to try to ease the pain.

Chilblains, she told people. Winter is a cruel goddess, gnawing at the flesh. The skin looked heavy, mottled like old meat. She had seen people wince, rub their own hands, when they saw it. She opened and closed her fingers. Shook her hand out. The pain faded a little. It would not heal while Marith lived.

She went over to the window, which faced north over the city out towards the Bitter Sea. The end of everything. An hour’s walk, and then sheer cliffs, and then the sea going on into eternity. No ship would sail on those waters. Wave upon wave upon wave of dark water, on until the world’s end. It was pleasant looking out in that direction, thinking of the sea beyond the walls. Far beyond human hopes or cares. Ignorant of all human things. No hope no pain. Calming. The desire to be herself beyond human things.