A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (16 page)

Hjorn spoke of pirates on the wide waters of the Leagin Sea that
he had heard of but never seen, and he told of the twelve Kings of Death who
challenged the great hero Hjorna for whom he was named. He told how they had
been defeated one after the other by bravery and great cunning.

As he sat at the top of the stairs beneath the spray of stars
that slowly revealed themselves to streak the cloudless sky, the axe spoke
again to tell him another story of its own. This was the story of a great
battle between the kings of three races and the dark sorcerer who stood against
them. The dark sorcerer’s warrior-slaves fought with great blades of power
whose magic transcended the greatest powers of the gods and titans of old. The
axe talked of the endless battle that had laid waste to whole nations, leaving
them burned and blackened and leached of life.

“Do you know any happy stories?” Hjorn asked uneasily.

I will grant thee the power thou seekest,
the axe
whispered in a voice like winter wind.
I will grant thee all thy heart’s
desires…

Hjorn was confused, and because he didn’t know what to say, he
stood. His back was stiff from sitting, so he stretched beneath the stars,
scanning the sky above and the bluff below and his house with its shuttered
windows and stone walls carefully scrubbed each spring, pale now in the starlight.

I will grant thee all thy heart’s desires,
the axe
whispered again.

Hjorn shrugged. “I have all I need,” he said. And then because he
felt a sudden smoldering darkness in the axe’s silence, he added, “We should go
in now.”

Inside the small house, the hearth fire he had left blazing that
morning was down to coals and ready to be rekindled. Hjorn soon had the stone
firepit burning cheerily with a carefully stacked pyramid of well-dried pine
that he cut himself from the slopes of a close-growing grove a half-day’s walk
away. Hjorn liked the walk. He made the journey down every other day, cutting
deadfall to fill the leather-and-wattle shoulder basket he made himself.

When he walked to the grove in spring and fall, Hjorn also set
snares for grouse in the narrow vales of the wood. He ate them fresh-cooked
when he could and salted through the winter. When the weather was nice, he
caught fish in the small streams that cut their way through the rough scree
slopes of the foothills. It was grouse he cooked tonight, along with sweet
snowroot that grew wild in the soft loam of the lower slopes. He ate it with a goblet
of last season’s best wild honey wine, which he decanted himself into bottles
bought from Garna, then stored in a hidden cellar tucked into the bluff on the
far side of the porch.

It would be good, Hjorn thought as he ate, to have someone to
talk to. But though the axe hadn’t warmed to his stories, Hjorn was sure it was
going to like the surprise he hadn’t yet talked about. It was an idea that came
to his mind at his first sight of the axe in the back of Garna’s wagon.

Hjorn’s house was three rooms set in a row. There was the main
room that was kitchen and hearth and a place to sit, with Hjorn’s room to one
side and the guest room on the other. Opposite the hearth in the main room was
a rough plaster wall. Set into it were hundreds of gleaming crystal agates,
collected from the banks of Hjorn’s fishing streams over the first year that he
lived here. The wall had been the last part of the house to be completed.

The stones were water-green and sky-blue, red like glowing coals
and gold like the winter sunrise, shining and polished smooth by the scouring
water. He had prepared the wall carefully, plastering it over with white mud he
made from river stone crushed in a rock mill he built himself. Into this, he
set the brightly colored stones with a careful hand. At night, when the fire
was burning bright, the stone wall would gleam and flicker like a rainbow
sunset. He would sit and watch it. It made him smile.

At the head of the shining wall, Hjorn had built a mantle on
which he set a constantly changing collection of interestingly shaped rocks,
and abandoned birds’ nests he found along the autumn woodland trails, and
abstract wood sculptures that he carved himself on the porch on warm summer
nights.

Carefully, he set aside the current collection, which included a
blue-glass prism he bought from Garna the last time the trader passed by, and
which Hjorn thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Until now,
at least.

Carefully, he lifted the axe to the mantle and set it there. He
used one of his wood carvings to raise the end of the haft so that it sat almost
straight. He stepped back and smiled. The blade of the axe gleamed majestic in
the firelight, throwing its shadow against the subtle shift of summer-flower
colors across the wall behind it, and Hjorn thought of how impressive it would
look if only someone came to visit.

“You look good up there,” he said, and he was happy for the axe
as he turned to take the kettle from the hearth.

A curse on all thy line, caitiff fool, and blessings of power
on all those who will shed thy craven blood in the end…

Hjorn turned back. He stared for a moment.

“Did you say something?” he asked, but the axe was quiet.

It stayed quiet until morning, when Hjorn awoke and ate a small
breakfast of dried sausage and pine nuts at his carefully polished stone table,
sitting and looking at the axe all fine on the mantle where it belonged.

I can help thee,
the axe said.

Hjorn considered this as he scrubbed dishes at his small stone
sink. “I’m fine,” he said.

I can grant thee all thy wants and needs,
came the voice
in his mind, but he thought he heard a subtle tone of anger this time.

“I have all I need,” Hjorn said again, and he heard the axe laugh
darkly.

Seize me, and I will show thee magic…

Hjorn had seen magic once or twice and found it not to his taste.
He didn’t really need to see it again, but he was worried that he had hurt the
axe’s feelings somehow when he turned down the offer of his desires and needs.
When he finished the dishes, he walked over to the mantle. He carefully grasped
the axe, its weight comfortable in both hands.

Now,
the voice said.
Think of some other place, a place
thou knowest. A place to which thou hast a yearning most zealous to go.

Hjorn didn’t know what a yearning most zealous was, so he felt
awkward suddenly. As a result, the only place he could think of was his front
porch, but even as he thought it, his vision blurred out to streaks of grey
like rain against the rippled glass of the windows.

He felt the chill of the morning air and the damp against his
bare feet. The wind was twisting the branches of the closest trees, its hiss
drowned out by the steady roar of the dark whirlpool below.

“That’s unusual,” Hjorn said.

By thinking it, he jumped back to the main room, then jumped
again twice more between the house and the porch. He sensed a subtle thrill of
power flaring within the axe as he did.

Thou seest what I can do for thee?
the voice said. Hjorn
nodded, most thoughtful as he set the axe carefully back on the mantle.

What dost thou?

“Going out to the pine grove for firewood,” Hjorn said. He laced
up his boots, found his good walking jacket.

I can take thee there in the blink of an eye,
the axe
said.
I can take thee to the top of the highest peaks, and to both ends of
the world!

Hjorn was confused. “There’s plenty of deadfall just down in the
grove,” he said.

I mean thou hast no need to walk, impudent fool!

“But I like to walk,” Hjorn said.

The axe said nothing more, so he left. It was likewise silent
when he returned that afternoon with his basket full of firewood. Hjorn thought
he might have hurt its feelings, so he took the axe in hand and jaunted a
half-dozen times from the house to the bottom of the stairs and back again.

“Oh, I hate taking these stairs,” he said loudly, to make sure
the axe was listening. “I am so happy to have this magic.”

That night, as Hjorn baked biscuits he made with ground snowroot
from an old recipe of his mother’s, he told the axe the story of the Dancing
Daughters of the Ilvanking, and of how they were stolen away deep into
Khimerean realms and rescued by the Shieldsons of the first Dwarf Queen. The
axe in turn told him the story of the fall of Sollyra. It talked of great mountain
citadels rising as tiers of white walls, and of the unliving forces of the
Bladelord crashing against them as a never-ending wave, breaking bone and stone
alike and slaying all who fell before them until the mountain slopes ran red
with blood.

“Do you know any stories that don’t have so many people dying in
them?” Hjorn asked when the axe was done.

There are no other stories,
the axe said coldly.

It went on like that for a long week, Hjorn making his regular
trip to the pine grove and the axe lying on the mantelpiece and filling the
room with the unseen shroud of its disappointment. Hjorn could feel the blade’s
dark thoughts, and by the fire each night, he told his happiest stories in an
attempt to cheer it up. Nothing seemed to work, however, and the stories the
axe told him each night got darker as a matter of course.

At the same time, Hjorn couldn’t help but notice that strange
things were beginning to happen. Gorbeyna bandits attacked the house just before
lunch on the third day, and while it wasn’t the first time, these bandits were
particularly tenacious. As he always did, Hjorn simply locked his doors and
stone shutters and let them rail away on the porch for as long as it took to
appreciate how well he built his house, and that he hadn’t left anything on the
outside of it worth stealing.

On the fifth day, he got back from his journey to the pine grove
to find that his porch had become a nest for a giant bird. It saw him as he
approached the bottom of the stairs, shrieking a warning as it rose up on great
taloned feet and clacked a beak large enough to snap a spar in two. Hjorn spent
the night outside, waiting for the bird to budge, then finally drove it off by
lighting a green-branch smoke fire at the foot of the stairs.

The seventh day, a plague of bark beetles came down the chimney
to swarm in his kitchen, and as he spent the rest of the day and night swatting
and sweeping them out, Hjorn began to grow suspicious.

He spent the better part of the following day carving and
staining a proper stand for the haft and blade, but even that didn’t improve
the axe’s foul mood. Then as he was sitting and watching the firelight play
across the shining wall and listening to the axe tell him the story of the
month-long, limb-by-limb execution of the traitor Moiriar in excruciating
detail, Hjorn had a wonderful idea.

“I have a wonderful idea,” he said. “I know what will make you
happy.”

Thou wilt enter the nearest city and slay its champions like
dogs!
the axe called with dark enthusiasm.
Thou wilt exsanguinate their
virgin women at the height of rapture, and all will bow down before us and
despair!

Hjorn was silent a moment. “I have a different wonderful idea,”
he said, and he tried to ignore the axe’s bitter disappointment as he stoked
the fire and went to bed.

The next morning, Hjorn ate quickly and left the dishes standing
to dry. The axe was silent, but he felt its expectation, its dark will seeking
out his thoughts. He did his best to hide those thoughts, wanting to keep his
special plan a secret. He took the axe carefully from the mantle, swung it over
his shoulder as he headed out.

The pine grove was still cool, faint trails of mist rising as the
heat of the sun worked its slow way down through the trees. Hjorn could sense
the anticipation in the axe, even as he felt it silently willing him to break
from the trail and run screaming through the dark woods in hopeful search of
something to kill.

He stopped instead at the black tangle of a deadfall snag he had
been working around for the better part of the previous week. Its brittle
branches were picked clean, cracked and snapped and carted back up to the
house. However, the main bole of the ancient pine was thick and gnarled, and
had resisted all Hjorn’s attempts to break or cut it.

“Here we go,” he said.

He swung fast. The blade was sharper than anything he had ever
seen, chopping through the sun-kilned hardness of the snag like it might be a
sheaf of dry grass. He felt a quick rush as he swung again and again, and he
imagined himself suddenly as the wood-ranger Dyssa, who had been the protector
of the Mosstwood and slayer of the dread war-trolls of the Bone Fens. Only he
and his trusty axe would slay deadfall instead. No stand of firewood would be
safe.

He stopped suddenly. Where his hands gripped the axe, he felt a
kind of buzzing.

A silent horror twisted through the blade, the voice in Hjorn’s
mind speaking not in words suddenly but in raw emotion that made his head ache.
His heart was pounding. His hands shook, and he had to squeeze them tight to
keep the axe from slipping from his grasp.

“I thought you might like something to do,” Hjorn stammered.
“Always lots of firewood to chop.” He suddenly had the feeling that this might
not have been as wonderful an idea as he first thought.

Thou wilt die the death of body, spirit, and mind,
the axe
said on the walk back home,
and only the worms that feast on thee will
remember thy passing in the end
. It said nothing else after that.

The axe drew the first foes to him the next day. These were real
threats, not just the dark distractions of the previous week, which Hjorn
belatedly realized must have been attracted by whatever dark magic had been
kindled by the axe’s even darker mood. These were warriors, Gorbeyna from the
closest tribes to start. Hjorn recognized them by their livery, shields and
faces war-painted with a dark red X. As he had with the bandits, Hjorn was
content to let the first two waves batter themselves senseless against the
great stone door, and finally to turn against each other as their level of
frustration rose.