In the tall house in Toreth Harbour, the High Priestess Thalia lay awake in the darkness, listening to her lover’s breath. Faint noises outside the window: a woman’s voice calling, drunken singing and a shriek and a crash. Laughter. The wind had risen again. She could hear the sea, the waves breaking on the shingle, the gulls.
I have seen a dragon, she thought. I have seen a dragon dancing on the wind. I have seen the sea. The sky. The cold of frost. The beauty of the world. I have felt the sun on my face as it rose over the desert. I have felt clear water running beneath my feet. I have known sorrow and pain and happiness and love.
She sat up and brought a candle to burning. The man beside her stirred at it, clawing roughly at his face. She smoothed her hand over his forehead, and he sighed and relaxed back deeper into sleep.
King Marith Altrersyr. Amrath returned to us. King Ruin. King of Shadows. King of Dust. King of Death.
Dragonlord. Dragon killer. Dragon kin. Demon born.
Parricide. Murderer. Hatha addict.
The most beautiful man in the world.
She went over to the wall where his sword hung, took it up, walked back to the bed. For a moment her hands shook.
A kindness, she thought.
The gulls screamed at the window. Shadows crawled on the walls.
She raised the sword over his heart.
Looked at him.
A kindness. To her. To him.
But he’s so beautiful, she thought.
She put the sword down and curled back beside him.
Slept.
Full morning. The green moors above the town of Toreth Harbour. Grass and wild flowers running down to the cliff top, dark rocks, weathered stone, the steep drop to the churning sea. Grey sky. Grey earth. Grey water. A rent in the world, a scar, a sore, where the tower of Malth Salene had stood proud above the town and the water, where a battle had been fought, where a young man had been crowned king.
Marith Altrersyr stood on the cliff top, looking at the ruins. In the light of day the battleground was a desolation. Rock and earth and flesh and blood that had cooled and set like poured glass. A sheen on it, also like glass. In places human faces stared up through the surface, drowned and entombed. A great fortress had stood here. Bedchambers, feasting halls, the chapel of Amrath the World Conqueror where Marith had knelt to receive his ancestor’s blessing as king. Treasures, beautiful objects, silks, tapestries, gold, gems. In a few hours, the army of the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane had destroyed it utterly. His soldiers’ horses snorted and shifted uneasily at the death stink. Even the gulls and the crows had flown.
I did this, Marith thought. So strange, to know that. I did this, I made this. This ruin, this triumph of ending: mine. The summation of my life, perhaps. I killed a man and razed a fortress to ashes and thus I must be a king.
Or nothing at all. A ruined building. A bit of burned ground, where men will rebuild the walls and the grass will regrow.
It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen, he thought then. Seeing it fall. Destroying it. The most wondrous thing I have ever done.
The memory of it, burning: the walls had run with fire, liquid fire pouring over it; it had shone with fire like stones shine soaked in water, like rocks on the tideline washed with the incoming sea. Its walls had glowed, they had burned so brightly, the stone had been red hot and white hot. Banefire shot from trebuchets, hammering the walls to dust, eating the rocks and the dust and the ground beneath. The men fighting around it, over it, inside it: armed men of his father’s army, his own pitiful host from Malth Salene, unarmed servants, old men, kitchen girls. Struggling with each other, killing each other. Tearing down the walls of the fortress. Killing the animals in the courtyards. Cutting down the trees in the orchard beside the south wall. Such utter destruction. He remembered the trees burning, their branches red with fire; they had looked like a glorious forest of autumn beech trees. Sparks rising. Filling the sky. Blotting out all the stars. The earth churned with mud, black in the firelight and the evening darkness. His men dancing and clashing their swords, shouting for him, singing out his name, their faces stained with blood and smoke.
Glorious. Astonishing. Beautiful beyond all things.
They did this at my bidding, he thought. For me. I killed so many of them. They killed, they destroyed, they followed me. I killed them, he thought. And still they followed me.
And the killing. The killing, the fighting, it had been … ah, gods, it had been sweet.
He had left this place once with his best friend’s blood on his hands. Come back here bound and humiliated, a prisoner, contemplating his own death. And now here he was made king. I didn’t used to think I wanted to be king, he thought.
A strange thing to think.
A voice called, loud in the still cold air. ‘We’ve found it.’
Ah, gods. Marith turned, walked to where his soldiers were moving. He walked slowly. His heart beat very loud.
‘My Lord King, we’ve found it.’
Marith rubbed at his eyes. Looked down. Looked away. Looked down.
His father’s body was stretched on the earth before him. Face down in the dust. Broken apart. Torn into shreds by