The Tower of Living and Dying

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 (#ulink_61c08a1b-d410-5e87-a389-c7b92eb0fdb8)

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 body 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—?’