The Tower of Living and Dying

They would not let her stay another night. Too dangerous, Ben said sadly and shamefacedly, looking not at Landra but at his son playing on the shingle throwing stones. If the king’s men came …

‘I’m nothing,’ Landra said, ‘nothing. The Relasts are all dead.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Riders are out on the road already, proclaiming the new king, calling troops. Can’t risk anything.’ He was young and strong enough to be a soldier, Landra realized then, looking at him. Any danger, however remote, however small, any voice mentioning there was a stranger at his house, his name being spoken to anyone, anywhere, must be avoided.

‘We’ll get your wounds looked to,’ said Hana, ‘but then you must go.’ She too looked at the child. Landra heard in her voice both the kindness and the threat.

Alli the Healer was the village wise woman, witch woman, bone charms at her neck, hagstone beads over her breasts, the green of leaf juice ground into her skin. Kind face. Kind, thoughtful eyes. She smeared a greasy ointment on Landra’s burns. It smelled meaty and fishy and bitter, stung her, shimmered on her arms like a slug’s trail. But she had to admit it soothed the pain a little. The raw red wounds looked softer, afterwards. When this was done the woman rubbed a switch of green marsh hazel over Landra’s scalp, muttering prayers and healing words. Toth, that is the cold of water. Ran, that is the peace of evening. Palle, that is smooth sheen of a calm sea. Broke the stick in two, gave one half to Landra. The other half Alli took herself to cast away into the waves. ‘Keep it safe,’ she bade Landra. ‘Keep it safe and it will help your skin heal.’

Hana gave Landra a cloth to bind up her head, making her look like an old shy widow woman. A dress, also, far too tight at the chest and waist. Stocky plain-faced Lady Landra. Never been pretty and her appearance had never been anything to take pride in and she’d never cared. A great lady, trained to rule a great household, raise a lord’s sons or the sons of a king. A beggar woman, half bald with no home and no name.

‘What will you do?’ Ben asked her. ‘Where will you go?’ he meant, encouraging her to leave. Or perhaps he feared she would throw herself into the sea.

She had tried to think of this. How can I live? Where can I go? What can I be? She said, ‘I’ll go to Seneth. To Morr Town.’

‘Morr Town?’ Ben looked at her sharply. Sadly. ‘That’s where the new king will go.’

Landra looked back sharply. Sadly. ‘Yes. I know.’

Thoughts moved in his eyes. ‘I can take you to Seneth. But not Morr Town. The coast to the south, somewhere well out of sight. You can take the road across the moors.’

Honoured guests disembark from their ships at Toreth Harbour and ride the golden road to Malth Salene. Murderers and outcasts and dead men take the lich way, and come in through the back gates where the middens are piled. So she had told Marith, bound and filthy, her prisoner, when she brought him back to Malth Salene, sealing all their doom. Such scorn in her voice. Cruelty. It had been a cruel thing. And Marith had bowed his head with shame.

‘Tonight, then?’ she said slowly.

Ben nodded. ‘Tonight.’

Hana gave her bread cakes, salt fish, a hard small round of goats’ milk cheese. She gave them in return the gold bracelet she wore at her left wrist. In the dark Ben took her over to Seneth, seat of the kings of the White Isles, where her ancestors Serelethe and Eltheia and Altrersys had once come ashore seeking shelter after the death of Amrath the World Conqueror, the King of Shadows, the King of Dust, the King of Death. Dark and cold, the only sound for long hours the slap of water against the hull, the creak of the oars. No light, for fear another boat would see them. The water in the darkness looked solid like black stone. Had to drop anchor and wait a little, when the mass of Seneth appeared half visible before them, Ben would not risk the cliffs and rocks in the dark, though he seemed to know the water without needing to see.

The light was breaking. A faint lifting of the night. Landra could see the land ahead of them, details in the cliff line, the slump of rocks.

‘You sure?’ Ben asked.

Morr Town, where the new king will go. She almost laughed. ‘Yes. No.’

The oars dipped again. Light enough to see the water churned up before Ben got into his rhythm again. The cliffs in front of them looked like faces. Vast grey stone, sheer up to the sky.

Ben rowed south along the coast, past the first beach they came to, round a sheer point where seals slept. The cliff dipped, scrubland running down to meet the sea. As they rowed closer, Landra saw a rough path scrambling up. Seabirds circling in the morning air, riding the dawn wind. A few seals sat on the rocks and stared at them as they came in. The boat crunched against the shingle. Wave breaking round the sides.

‘You sure?’ Ben asked again. Landra clambered awkwardly out into the water. Cold up to her waist. She gasped at the cold. Sting of the salt on her legs. Ben handed her the bundle of food.

‘Thank you,’ Landra said awkwardly. Ben was already pushing the boat off back into the sea with the oars. She dragged herself over the shingle through the water, her dress clinging heavily around her legs. Slipped stubbing her foot against a rock and plunged her left arm into the water, the salt stinging her burns. Got up onto the steep rise of the beach, climbing upwards like climbing a hill. The pebbles moved down around her feet in a landslide. A thick band of rotting seaweed, alive with hopping flies. Cuttlefish bones and a dead jellyfish, glistening silvery red, tentacles splayed out. Looked like bones and a dead heart. The grey cliffs stared down like faces. Old gods watching. The old things of the land. The gulls circled, screaming at her.

Landra turned to look out to where Ben’s boat was already disappearing into the sea. Raised her hand and waved. Pointless. But he’d been a kind man.

Eltheia. Fairest one. Keep safe. Keep safe. Him, and Hana, and the child.

She sat down on the shingle. The pebbles pressed uncomfortably into her skin. She picked up the first pebble her hand rested on. A hagstone, grey-greenish, the hole blocked by a smaller pale grey stone. An omen? She threw it wide into the sea. Made a lovely deep sound. She chewed a little bread, drank from the skin of water. Nasty, fishy, stale taste.

She got up and began to walk stiffly up the cliff path, a weary peasant woman in an ill-fitting dress, smelling of fish and tallow and herbs.

Chapter Seven (#ulink_3c99a071-6c48-5a21-8239-167c06e12963)

A month, they stayed at Malth Calien.

‘What are we doing here?’ Thalia asked Marith, after a few long dull days.

‘Waiting.’ He smiled with terrible heavy sorrow. ‘Calling in all who will come to me.’

‘For what?’ she asked, feeling her ignorance. The place bustled with men, soldiers, business; a ship had gone out at dawn the first morning and Marith chafed after its return, watched the sea every day.

Marith said slowly, ‘To claim my throne.’

‘But … you are crowned king.’ A crown of silver in your shining black-red hair.

‘King of what, exactly?’ Irritation in his face, that she did not understand this world of his. ‘Third Isle is one island of the White Isles. The seat of the king is Malth Elelane, on Seneth, the Tower of Joy and Despair, the tower raised for Eltheia, the tower from which Altrersys ruled as the first king. There is my throne. My crown. My home. I have told Ti that I am coming. That I am king, returning home. Ti and … and Queen Elayne. They do not answer. So I must come with swords and spears, and make them kneel to me as king.’

‘They thought that you were dead,’ said Thalia. ‘They may not even believe that it is really you. Tiothlyn only saw you so briefly.’ You killed your father, she thought. What else are they likely to do?

‘They never believed I was dead,’ said Marith. ‘That would have been too much for them to hope for, that I was dead.’

So bitter. So bitter his voice. But what do I know, she thought, of family? I who was given up at birth to the God. And yet … the petty rivalries of the Temple, the little slights over nothing that grew and festered over the years into mortal wounds. Yes, she thought, perhaps I do know of these things.

She said after a while, ‘And if they do not kneel?’

He laughed bitterly. ‘What do you think? But they will.’ His eyes rolled in his head, he looked mad as he said it. She shivered. So vile. So much hate in him. Kill him, she thought then. You are wrong to feel for him anything but disgust. But he woke that night sweating, whispering his father’s name. Thalia gave him water, stroked his face. His eyes burned like fever. ‘But I had to do it. I did. I did. He would have killed me. Killed you.’

‘Yes. You did.’

He had been drinking heavily at dinner, as he did every night, laughing and shouting with his lords in Malth Calien’s great hall, rough and violent, a thing she hated and thought from everything he had said to her that he would hate, but he seemed so caught up with them, a man among men, a king in his court, a warrior boasting of his deeds. He sucked up their adoration, the envious among them raised endless toasts to Marith the War Leader, Marith the Conqueror, Marith who would outshine even Amrath; he laughed about it to Thalia, mocking them, but it pleased him, his pale flushed face shone; the next morning he would smile and tell her they were empty craven fools and then in the evening he would drink it up again with his wine and come stumbling to bed filled with their praises, laughing with pride.

‘He hated me.’

‘Yes.’ She thought: he did not hate you. I saw that, I who have never known a father. He did not hate you, any more than you hated him. But there is nothing else that can be said. If we repeat the lie, it is true, is it not? Without that lie … without that lie, we are nothing.

I could have stayed in my Temple, when the men came to kill me. Woken the other priestesses. Called the guards. I did not call for help. I ran. Two slaves died. I ran.

‘I’ll bury him with all honours.’ Marith rubbed painfully at his eyes.

He is almost pitiful, Thalia thought. And I … I do pity him. So indeed we shall be happy. If pity and lust together can make love and happiness.

‘All honours.’ He was drifting back towards sleep. ‘He would have killed you … He told everyone I was dead … King Illyn …’ he muttered again, rubbing at his face, ‘King Illyn Altrersyr …’ The walls of the Great Temple rose up in Thalia’s mind, high and huge, the faint glimpse of golden domes and silver towers, the sound of voices talking about things she had never seen. High great walls, shutting out the world.

The weather changed, becoming bitter cold, hard frosts, one morning a faint dusting of snow. The marshes froze over, a thin skin of ice that cracked beneath the weight of a man’s foot. The reeds stood out bare and black. The birds fled with the ice, the last flocks of them gathering on the roofs of Malth Calien and flying into the west like long plumes of smoke. Lone deer picked their way through the frozen landscape. The trees bent furred under the frost. The last few lords of the furthest islands came, of those who would come, and the news ran down from Seneth that Tiothlyn was crowned king at Malth Elelane and was raising his own troops.

‘Why does he hate him?’ Thalia asked Matrina Fiolt, Osen’s wife. At first Thalia had not liked her at first, golden haired with deep, heavy breasts and round cheeks, making eyes at Marith, smiling with him as a woman who had known him for longer, who knew how to say things that Thalia did not understand but that made him laugh. ‘My Lady’, she called Thalia, but with something in her voice that Thalia recognized from her Temple, meekness cutting like knives. But it was so dull, sitting in this cold place looking out at the marshes with nothing to think of but what was to come.

‘Who? Hate who?’