Anna Spark - The House of Sacrifice

The wind was getting up, shaking the branches of a tree opposite the window A birch tree, its bark white as bone. Its branches rattled like bone. ‘ His city is built on bones and blood and tears, His city is built on the flesh of living men ,’ the songs of praise to King Marith said. ‘ Is it true? ’ one of soldiers had once asked her, a new recruit, young and ardent and eager, all his love for Marith glittering out of him, ‘ is it true, that he ordered his fortress to be built on living bodies, that he mixed the mortar with human blood? ’ The Army of Amrath had just taken Raen, had built their towers of skulls where the walls had stood. And the soldier’s eyes had gleamed, looking past the skulls, seeing greater, more terrible things. ‘ Is it true? Really? They say you were there, Lan, they say you’ve been with the army since Illyr. Tell me it’s true, won’t you? ’

She had tried to speak, but no words had come from her mouth.

‘ It is ,’ Tobias had said. ‘ I saw it. I saw .’ And then he’d rolled his eyes. ‘ And other places aren’t, of course. Alborn, Morr Town, Sorlost the Golden, Malth Salene … no one suffered and strained and got hurt building them. Light as air, the stones that built Malth Salene, and the labourers were paid in gold. ’

‘ That’s not the same, Tobias ,’ Lan had said.

‘ No. It’s not. Obviously it’s not. But …’ Tobias had shaken his head. ‘ Never mind, then. I’m being cruel .’

Raen had been chaos, the usual maelstrom after a sack. Landra had taken her knife in her injured right hand, buried the blade up to the hilt in the soldier’s heart.

Filth. Her heart had sung out for joy. One less of them. A tiny bright difference: somewhere in the heart of a loving world a joyous song is rising. Her shame had been a void beneath her feet.

‘ You know what I mean, ’ Tobias had said. ‘ Don’t you? ’

‘ Perhaps. ’

‘ Better get your knife clean, Lady Landra, ’ Tobias had said. ‘ And get away from that corpse .’

She had left Tobias the next morning, fled away north towards the cities of Ander and Balkash. Warn them. Beg them. I can no longer bear it, she had told herself, I must act, make it stop. Something can be done and must be done. She had once loosed a gabeleth , a vengeance-demon; she had once fought beside a gestmet , a god of life. Thus she could do things. A bright light in the world, was Lady Landra Relast. A joyous song, a good sweet song to make the world a better place. Thus every night she cursed him. I will not rest, she swore to herself, until he is defeated and all who follow him are dead.

Knife in her heart. Shame and pity. Her hands ached sore heavy wound red. The wind blew in the branches of the tree opposite, and the branches scratched together like bones, and the bark was white like bones in the fading light.

But in the dawn, ah, Ethalden was beautiful. Grey mist around the towers, fading, they were unreal, they were not buildings but statues, stone dancers, robed in clouds, they were giants dancing, they wore the dawn as jewels on their skin. Landra slept well and peacefully. Her ancestor Amrath’s city: so perhaps He blessed her, eased her pain, let her sleep. Perhaps her hair and her skin were healed a little. Her wounds less harsh. There were a thousand birds in the city of Ethalden, and every one of them seemed to gather beneath her window that morning to sing. She rested her hands on the windowsill and gazed out at the city, over towards the gold walls and away into the horizon where the sea would be. Peace. Peace. The streets already busy with people, animals, voices chattering, the sound of building work. Women in fine dresses, workmen already covered with stone dust clinging damp to their clothes, slave labourers from half the world chained in filth. Trades being made, goods bought and sold, gold and treasure and living men. The patterns and circles of every city: those who dance begin to dance, and those who weep begin. Beggars, naturally, as in every city – but fewer than in other cities, she thought, where the wealth of the world did not now come. Even as she watched, a woman gave a beggar a coin, smiled at him. Children playing – she watched a pair of them, a boy and a girl, from their matching curls they must be brother and sister. The girl ran and the boy chased her, the boy caught her and pulled at the girl’s dress; they began to quarrel, the girl pulling her brother’s hair; a woman ran up to scold them, kiss the boy’s curls, take their hands firmly and walk on. Pilgrims were making for the tomb of Amrath. Strong young men and women were looking to join the Army of Amrath. Some kind of absurdity here that she, Landra, was a descendant of Amrath.

‘ Your great-great-great etc grandma got knocked up by your great-great-great etc grandpa. Get you! Astonishing achievement, having ancestors, isn’t it? Very rare thing. ’

‘ That’s not fair, Tobias. ’

‘ Oh, no, I’m sorry, his great-great-great-grandpa having knocked up his great-great-great-grandma certainly means he’s entitled to all this. ’ That had been on the day of Marith’s coronation. Tobias had spread his arms wide, taken in all the towers of the fortress, the cheering crowds, the banners and petals and jewels, taken all of it into his outstretched embrace. ‘ His birthright. His destiny. For being able to reel off a list of his ancestors’ names .’ As Tobias said it, the sun had put out golden beams that had struck Marith’s face perfectly, lit up his face and his eyes and his crown, made him shine.

‘Honey cakes! Saffron! Curd cakes! Dried plums!’ Landra shook her head. A foodseller positioned himself opposite her window with a tray of cakes, his own face thin and hungry. The children came running back with their mother to buy some. Workers were swarming up a great tower of ivory beside the north gates shouting to each other in a babble of languages, up ropes and ladders, calling, whistling.

‘Get on! Get on! Get it built!’

A great spike of carved sweetwood was rising there: Landra watched the workers struggle with it, drag it awkwardly up the building. Ropes flailing. Many curses. It almost slipped, three men almost fell. It was carved to look like a garland of flowers, gilded in silver leaf, skeletal faces staring empty-eyed between the blooms. They got it upright, finally, struggled and fought with it. Almost done it … then a scream, as a man did fall. His arms flailing as he came down. Horrified cries from his fellows. Landra could not see him hit the earth but turned her face away anyway. Such a long sickened pause. All the men looking downwards, each must be thanking all gods and demons that it had not been him. The foreman shouted at them to get back to it. The carved wood shuddered; they got it steady again, slotted it finally into place. The thud of a mallet on wood. Landra breathed a great sigh of relief. The tower looked beautiful, with the wooden spike at its height. The morning light caught the gilding; from her window, Landra could see the flowers and the faces clearly, like one of Marith’s skull towers, blossom growing up over dead faces all those dead eyes. At the base of the spire, workers scrambled with blocks of marble to build a parapet. I wonder whose palace that will be? she thought. And if they will live to see it? Osen Fiolt? Valim Erith? Alis Nymen, who had once sold fish to the kitchens of Malth Salene? The new lords, his new friends, from all over Irlast. He betrayed Carin’s memory, surely, by making these fine new friends from every corner of Irlast.

A block of stone was being hauled up now, carved with a pattern of hunting beasts. There seemed to be an argument going on over it, the foreman waved his arms, seemed angry, the workers lifting it shrugged and gestured back. The block was lowered down again. The foreman climbed down a ladder, began to argue with someone else, pointed at the block. The two of them disappeared from Landra’s sight, still arguing. The thin-faced cake seller, she noticed, was now eating one of his own cakes. He looked delighted by it. Two men came hurrying up with a bier, to cart off the remains of the workman.