The House of Sacrifice. Anna Smith Spark

      Samarnath, he loosed his dragons on. A champion came out, dressed in black armour, a mage blade running with blue fire in his hand. ‘Fight me, Marith Altrersyr! Amrath! Fight me, I will destroy you! I have sworn it! Fight!’ They fought together, Marith and the challenger, wrestled and hacked at each other while all the living men and the dead looked on. He is invulnerable. He is death and ruin. He ached and stumbled and sweated and his mouth tasted of dust and blood and vomit, and he killed the fool in his black armour and sent him crashing down to the earth where his teeth stirred up the dust.

      On again, still southwards, leaving the river Alph behind them. At its mouth was a great delta, a thousand miles of marshland, reeds and waterfowl, the people there lived on islands made of reeds, in huts raised up on poles above the water, in houseboats that rocked on the tide. They lived by hunting and fishing, prowled the wetlands on stilts looking like the wading birds they sought. Some of the marsh dwellers, it was said, had never set foot on firm hard ground. Stone to them was a marvel, more precious than bronze or iron: and what use was iron, indeed, when it rusted away in the constant damp? They worshipped the mud and the waterbirds, believed that the world was hatched from the egg of a giant black-winged crane. It might have been pleasant, Marith thought, to visit there, go hunting in the marshes, it was the season when the cranes would be gathering there to breed, from Theme, Cen Elora and Mar and all of Irlast. The sky would be dark with them; their wingbeats were said to make a sound like heavy rain. It was almost Sunreturn: back home on the White Isles it would be icy cold, dark even at midday, but here they were moving south, the air was warmer, the air had a different feel on the face, a new taste in the mouth.

      The marshes were dying. Scouts brought the news in, proud and delighted to be the first to tell him. The waters of the Alph brought down rotting bodies, blood, disease, banefire, ash. The marshes choked on the poisoned waters, the reeds withered, the birds and the fish floated on the surface of the water bloated and green. Children sickened, their lives dribbling out of their mouths. Babies were stillborn. The old and the weak died of hunger. The strong died of grief.

      So not much point going there, then, to hunt and boat. The cranes, the scouts said, were dying in such numbers that the channels of the river were choked with their bodies and their unhatched eggs.

      The river is cursed. From being sacred, it is a river of death. It is punishing you, King Marith, by destroying itself. It worships you, you see? They marched instead for the Forest of Calchas, fragrant cedar wood, wild pears, walnut trees. Burned it. The dragons swept over it, belched fire, and the smell of the burning was sweet, as it always was. The flames, like the water, worshipping Marith the king.

      Another feast, by the light of the forest burning. Osen had found a troop of acrobats who could jump and tumble higher than should be possible, they wore bells sewn over their costumes, mirrors on their costumes and on masks covering their faces and their hair. The air was warm, they could sit beneath the open sky. A great wall of flame and smoke to the west. The flames must be visible in Issykol, even on the shores of the Small Sea.

      A cheer rose up in the distance. The whole camp was celebrating, the army enjoying itself. Singing and music. It would be lovely, Marith thought, to wander down there, join them, dance and drink with them as a man among them.

      ‘The Battle of Geremela!’ the lead acrobat shouted. The troop formed itself into two sides, took up long poles painted bronze. They vaulted, climbed the poles, flipped and darted over and under each other; clashed the poles together in the air; fell and leapt back up. It did look like a battle, a little, if one had never seen a battle. Osen and Alleen Durith cheered and clapped, their eyes very bright. ‘Do you remember?’ ‘Do you remember?’ ‘Do you remember?’ Gods. He could remember everything, every sword stroke, only had to close his eyes and he was back there. That moment, kicking his horse to charge down on the Ithish ranks, his men and his shadows following him. He had been the point of an arrow, the tip of a sarriss. That moment as he struck the Ithish ranks. So long ago now it seemed. The acrobats unfurled red scarves, whipped them behind them as they leapt, red banners snapped out from the tops of their poles. Bodies falling, leaping over each other. A final clash of all the poles together, the red silk burst over them, a girl threw a clay pot into the air, struck it with her pole to break it: white silk flowers showered down. ‘Hail King Marith! Hail King Marith!’ the troop shouted in unison.

      Oh, that was lovely. Nothing like Geremela, but lovely. The acrobats bowed, a servant passed him a pouch of gold to throw to them.

      ‘Very clever. Very fine. Where did you find them?’

      Osen was beaming, ‘Samarnath. Good, aren’t they? And the girl there, the one who threw the pot at the end … the things she can do …’

      Kiana tossed her head at that, like she didn’t care. Which she didn’t. But who wants to be scorned even if they don’t return their suitor’s ardent love? Now you have a wife and a child and a true love and an acrobat mistress, Osen, Marith thought. A positive crowd of women. It was pleasing. The second most powerful man in Irlast shouldn’t just be moping about after Kiana Sabryya. And Alleen has his foul-mouthed singer; isn’t it a joy to see my friends so happy in love? Why else are we conquering all the world, wading through the blood of innocents, if not to meet beautiful young women with unusual talents?

      A few days later he led an assault on a village fortress on the coast south of Calchas, a bandits’ nest, nothing of importance save that it sat on their march bristling with spears, could sit thus on their rear as a threat. Three days alone in command of fifty men, sleeping without tents or blankets under clear skies brilliant with stars, then a short sharp fight hand-to-hand at the end. The fortress was built over a spring of ice-cold water, tasting strongly of iron, Marith bathed in it, drank great gulps of it, it washed away any last memory of sand crunching in his mouth. When he got back to the army Thalia said his hair was curlier, too, from washing in it. In the bandits’ treasure store there was a necklace of rose-pink rubies, made for her, surely, and a string of green pearls that she gave away to Alleen’s foul-mouthed skylark-tongued girl. ‘Osen is happier, also,’ Thalia said, ‘than he has been. His acrobat is good for him.’ She laughed in bafflement at these men.

      ‘Why was Valim Erith such a fool?’ Marith asked. ‘Why? When he could have been part of this?’

      Thalia opened her mouth to speak. Shook her head. ‘Because he was a fool,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

      Thalia dreamed still of sweet water, wild places, birds: the feel of water, the smell of water, would be good for the child, she said. They made a fast ride to the shores of the Small Sea, Marith and Thalia, Osen and Alleen and Kiana and Ryn Mathen, camped there, watched the sun rise over the water. There was a great mystery in its waters, which in places were saltier than the Bitter Sea, in places sweet and fresh, safe to drink. One could swim, even, between areas of the two. It was the season in which the birds of the Small Sea raised their young, and the sky was filled with them, white feathers floated on the water’s edge.

      ‘We will take our daughter here.’ He stretched out full-length on the grass. He could no longer rest his head in Thalia’s lap but she ran her fingers through his hair. ‘We can teach her to swim in the water – much nicer than the freezing ponds I learnt in. The White Isles in winter, for snow and sledging and skating. Illyr in the summer, when the meadows are full of wild flowers for her to run through, as high as the top of her head. The shores of the Small Sea in the spring and the autumn, when it does nothing on the White Isles but rain and Ti and I would go mad stuck indoors for weeks.’

      A great flock of white egrets came down on the water together, churning the water up, sending waves lapping against the sand on which they sat. So thickly packed that where they floated together they looked like an island. There were said to be dolphin in the water, and silver-coloured fish with long yellow curling hair like women. On the further shore the river Ekat ran down from the Mountains of the Heart, tasting of honey, the mountains were so high and so shrouded in ice that no one knew where in the mountains it rose. Some said the river Ekat was the tears of a dragon chained to a mountain. Some said it welled up from a great cavern glittering with diamonds, that led down to another world beneath. Some said there was a valley in the Mountains of the Heart where the people had wings like birds. Some