The House of Sacrifice. Anna Smith Spark

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ it makes me happy just thinking of it. Why else are we conquering all the world, wading through the blood of innocents, if not for people to make you the subject of obscene songs?’

      A loud click of metal as Kiana put her cup down. Alleen went white.

      ‘It’s no worse reason than some.’ Try to laugh. Try to smile. Try to laugh. His face felt so hot. That feeling, that he had had when they were cheering him, singing his name outside the ruined wine shop, joy, bliss, wonder, but I felt shame, he thought, then, hearing them, and I feel shame thinking about it now, and thinking about a girl singing songs about me … My eternal fame, my glory, the songs of my triumphs … His face felt hot and red. Like it’s humiliating, that they praise me. Like they and I are both wrong, should be ashamed.

      My head hurts, he thought. I need to go to bed as well. I should have gone with Thalia just now.

      ‘I won’t have the girl summoned,’ said Alleen. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from. Stay and have another drink, don’t leave looking like that. Please.’

      ‘One drink.’ It is no worse reason. He’s my friend, I …

      Osen and Alleen were singing something. Kiana was crying with laughter at it. He was singing it too. He was stumbling back to his chambers. It suddenly seemed to have got very late. The girl had sung like a skylark. Even Kiana had admitted as much. Kiana had smiled at Osen: it would be so good if she was to return Osen’s feelings. Make him happy to see it. Poor old Matrina, Osen’s wife. He had always rather liked Matrina. But Osen liked Kiana. Kiana didn’t seem to like Osen. I wonder if Matrina would like Kiana? he thought.

      ‘My Lord King!’ his guardsman Tal shouted.

      He was blind. Felt like he was being buried in sand. Thrashed about, gods, it was sticky, coating him. Hands flailing. Filth, coming all over him. His skin burning. Itching. Filth coming up through his skin. He had seen a dog once all covered crawling with ticks and sores and lice, its skin its fur moving. His skin was crawling. Erupting. Rotting. He retched. Vomit filling his mouth, vomit and sand, and he tried to swallow it, he couldn’t swallow it, it burned at his lungs, felt it in his nostrils, his eyes bulging, his head going to burst, choking, trying to claw at his nose and mouth. I’m drowning. Gasping to breathe and there was nothing. His arms and legs trembled. Cold sweat pouring off him. Tore at himself he itched he was crawling his skin was crawling his skin erupting his throat erupting choked blocked crumbling he was choking, drowning, his skin, his throat blocked with filth.

      The sound of metal. Voices cheered. A trumpet rang.

      Swords, he thought. Fighting. A vast battle, men fighting in their thousands in the hallway around him. A hundred thousand shining sword blades.

      Gasped, vomited up sand. On his knees, sand pouring out of his mouth. Great gouts of it, like the dragons pouring out fire. Breathing again. Gasping down air. His throat and lungs raw. Sand and vomit dripping from his nose and mouth.

      A shadow stood over him. A thing like a man. Dark, like a shadow, featureless, an outline of a man, like a man’s shadow in the half-light, and then it moved, poured itself back towards him, a thing like a man but all formed of black sand, crumbling away as it choked itself over him.

      He had seen such things in the ruins of his victories. The destruction of the body in a wave of dragon fire. Flesh and bone turned into black ash.

      Its hands reached again for him. Pouring towards his throat.

      Buried his hands in it. It came apart around him. Flowed over him. The faceless head pressed towards him. Its arms embraced him. Pouring itself into him.

      Threw his hands up over his face. Covered his mouth with his hands, bent down pressing his face into the stone floor. Hugging him to itself, kissing and devouring him. In his eyes. His ears. His mouth.

      Vengeance. Hiss of sand in the wind. Tried to squeeze his eyes closed, tried not to breathe. It clambered itself swarmed itself over him into him. Vengeance.

      A hand on his shoulder. He sat up.

      ‘Easy there, My Lord King. Careful.’ Tal helped him up carefully. Propped him against the wall. Marith bent forward and coughed up a last trickle of vomit.

      ‘Heavy night, was it, My Lord King?’

      Blinked, stared down the corridor. ‘There was … was …’

      Tal helped him up the stairs towards his own chambers; he had hardly gone a few steps when Thalia was rushing down to him, her guard Brychan there beside her with his sword out. Pain in her face when she saw him.

      ‘Marith!’

      ‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’

      Her foot slipped on a step, he cried out but Brychan caught her arm, then she was beside him.

      ‘It was nothing,’ said Tal.

      Black sand gushed off him. When he looked there was no sand on the floor. Sand crunched in his mouth. He spat. Thalia looked shocked at his spit on the floor. Gleaming. Someone else spat, he thought, I saw a man spit green phlegm at my feet.

      ‘Have some water, Marith.’ A cup in his hands, heavy goldwork that heaved beneath his fingers. Itching, crawling, moving. He drank and gulped it down. Tasted so sweet. A grating feeling in his throat as he swallowed. Hair and gristle. Dirt stuck in his throat. His mouth was running with lice. He gagged, his hand over his mouth, don’t be sick here in front of her, my wife, do I want my wife to see that? The shame … once I didn’t want her to see my face, because she’d see it there, vomit and death, I’m human fucking vomit, filth like I’m choking down.

      Thalia brought all the lamps in the room to burning. They were in their bedchamber. He couldn’t remember walking there. The green glass windows were black and hollow, black voids; the lamplight made the mage-glass stars in the ceiling faint and dull. The silver hangings on the bed moved, trembled: the warm air from the lamps, someone had told him, one of the maidservants. Her sweat in the lamplight, running down inside the neck of her dress … The leaves and flowers on the walls looked too real, like wax flowers. Obscenities like a swollen body. Draw his sword, hack them down to bits. The scabs on his left hand were diseased. The scar tissue alive with parasites. The scars on Thalia’s left arm were alive with parasites. The scars on her arm were crusted cracking infested with maggots. His throat was dry with dust.

      ‘You almost slipped,’ he said. ‘On the stairs.’

      ‘Brychan caught me.’ She put her hands over her belly. Her nightgown was very sheer, very fine silk, he could see the swell of the child growing there. No other child had grown this big in her womb. Blood smear things on her thighs. Clots of stinking blood. Pregnancy had made her breasts huge. Sweat on her, between her breasts, staining the sheer cloth. He felt sick. For a moment it seemed to him that her belly was swollen not with a child but with ash.

      ‘He’s safe,’ she said. ‘I was worried about you.’

      ‘He?’

      She blinked. ‘Our son.’

      ‘You know? How can you know?’ I don’t want it to be a boy, he found he was thinking, not a boy, not another murderer, parricide, dead thing, rot thing like I am. Will it kill her, tearing itself out of her? Cut her up into shreds, laugh in her face, curse her, take her heart to pieces slowly over years and years? СКАЧАТЬ