A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (26 page)

Through the shadows came the faint echo of lyre strings, and the
voice that sang in its unknown tongue.

He was wrong, Raub thought suddenly. And in the space of a
heartbeat, he felt himself caught and crushed by the sudden onslaught of despair
that told him he had failed. Failed in his duty, failed in his revenge, because
all the hunger that fed that revenge was built on lies.

His head was pounding, throat dry. He couldn’t catch his breath,
unable to understand how it had all changed so quickly, how the essential piece
of his vengeance had been taken from him. Did his father lose the ancestral
blade? Destroy it? Cast it aside as he cast aside his son, as he cast aside his
family’s honor in the name of the corrupt power he had wielded through the
black shortsword instead?

The memory of the silver pool in the moon-lit copse caught in his
mind suddenly, his eyes burning with a rush of tears. The faces he had seen in
that pool twisted around him.

Through the screen of leaves that surrounded his parents’ biers,
he saw the ghost watching him.

Raub felt all the breath leave him as if he’d been caught by a
horse’s kick. He had the black shortsword and his own emerald-hilted longsword
in hand. He couldn’t remember drawing the second blade as he stumbled back. He
saw the young face as he had last seen it, six years before. The silver hair
was long and tied back in the manner of one just past the rites of
second-naming. The gold-violet eyes glimmered like the stars that shone through
the translucent cast of that face.

They were five who had known each other since their first-naming.
They strove in secret against dark forces, and had listened as Raub told them
they were heroes, all of them.

Four had died to prove how wrong he was.

“Tajomynar…” he whispered, and he heard all the fear, all the
pain of years twist through that name.

A sigh like the last breeze of summer passed between those pale
lips, and Raub heard the sound twist to a whisper of fear that formed words
meant only for him. A flare of white light surged and spread like the sudden
coming of dawn. His hand came up to shield his eyes.

Should have kept flying, Hawk…

He felt something strike him hard across the back of the head. In
the sanguine haze of his sight came ruddy laughter, bright against a looming
darkness. He felt a song slip through him that was the unsung dirge of
everything he had ever lost, and then he heard no more.

• • •

In the end, it was easier than it should have been, but
that only made Cass all the more wary. A canny foe and a sloppy foe could
surprise you just as quickly, she had learned long ago. The only difference was
in their intent, but intent meant nothing once the trap was sprung.

She was nowhere near Raub’s equal at moving above the ground, but
she had no choice this time. She followed the directions the girl gave her
easily enough, to a high hedge-wall three tiers above the market and at the
center of the forest-home. There, the council terrace of Anthila occupied a
tier of its own, a broad expanse of garden and sheltered hall connected by wide
bridges to the adjoining terraces.

Cass’s unfamiliarity with the tangled routes that traversed the
forest-home’s islands of floor and the spaces between them had slowed her at
first. But because she moved slowly, she began to note a flow of figures moving
in the same direction she was. Subtle at first, groups of two of three pacing
slowly where she waited in the shadows for them to pass. But then those groups
met other groups, all moving inward and upward, seemingly following the same
directions the girl had given her.

The figures were all Ilvani, moving with the sure step and
silence of dark purpose. Most wore cloaks against the chill night air, but on
the few that didn’t, she saw the silk and subtle goldsmithing of a noble’s
livery. She stayed well back, shadowing them with the intentionally careless
gait that would let her change direction easily if they turned to her.

She got close enough more than once to catch their eyes. The same
detached gaze, the blank stare of the marketplace, was in all of them as they
hurried on.

By the time she reached the last bridge, she was well back of the
final figures to slip out across the well-lit span of rope and shadow. Unlike
in the noble’s enclave, no barrier walls surrounded the great hall of the
forest-home, a combination public forum, theater, and council chamber by the
way the girl Pheánei described it.

In the play of the Clearmoon through the wind-twisted trees, the
seat of power in Anthila was a huge expanse of garden set with paths and
courtyards of white tile. The hall itself was a broad web of gently sculpted
wicker, set high upon a second terrace suspended by five great ropes from the
spread of primal branches above. Cool light blazed within, a flight of grey
steps rising to dark portals of polished wood. These seemed more about ceremony
than security, however, set as they were within their screen walls.

The four rangers who stood in pairs on opposite ends of the
bridge were the hall’s only visible defense. From the shadows, Cass watched
them for a time. She noted the same blank stare in them as in all the rest, but
knew that having to rush the bridge to get to them would erase it quickly
enough.

She went around and over them instead, scaling the walls of an estate
on the adjacent tier and making her way through the shadows of its overgrown
garden. At the edge of that garden, she found herself on a close-cropped common
fronted by a half-dozen smaller terraced apartments. Steering clear of the
lights that flickered beyond their walls of woven branches and white wicker,
she slipped into the trees, climbing, then clambering carefully across a
natural ladder of foliage that led her through the darkness and to her
destination.

She went slowly, timing her movement with the rising of the wind
that would screen any sound. Beyond the bridge and out of sight of the guards
there, she saw a second rank of six sentries tending a fire on the great hall
grounds. Her senses were sharp, every nerve on edge. The Ilvani held a lax
attitude toward security, she knew, but not without good reason. Fighting side
by side with Raub, she had witnessed more than once the combat prowess that the
Yewnwood taught.

She dropped before her grip on the perch of branches could grow
any more tenuous. The ranger guards were on their feet before she hit, the
closest of them hurling two long knives in greeting. Cass spun the Reaper in
front of her to cut the missiles cleanly in two an arm’s length from her face,
hafts and blades ricocheting loudly where they struck the tiled ground to
either side.

The axe was a weapon whose very appearance frequently guaranteed
that Cass wouldn’t have to use it, which suited her well enough. In the center
of the blade where she held it up now in warning, a death’s-head skull grinned.
Its gleaming image was embossed there by dweomer, brilliant white and edged in
dark lines that clung to it like living shadow. The spellcraft that created
that dead face saw it shift with the viewer’s movement, its dark gaze burning
into the eyes of the guards as they charged.

It wasn’t much of a fight as fights go. When it was done, Cass
paused to check the strength of the blood at the guards’ throats. Two of them
were dead despite her best effort. The rest she left inert but alive. It was a
risk, she knew, but she had little stomach for execution when justice wasn’t
involved.

She didn’t know how much time she had before they awoke, but she
suspected it wouldn’t be enough. As she slung the axe back to her belt, she
felt its wordless voice calling to her. The confrontation at Garania Hall had
made it anxious for blood, but Cass didn’t share the weapon’s hunger. Not yet.

Four people were alive in the shadows behind her as she climbed
the stairs, because it was easy enough to leave them that way. From childhood,
Cassatra had been trained to a path of bloodless combat, the way of the refuge
that was the only home she had ever known. Those instincts had stayed with her
despite the long years since she turned her back on that path. Long years since
she set out on another path whose destination still eluded her.

The doors were unlocked, a tumult of voices beyond covering her
entrance as she slipped inside the wide white hall. The great ropes that supported
the tier platform ended at its edges in thick wooden bolts, the wicker above
them arcing out like filled sails. At the center of the space, a flight of
stairs curved up to a second platform some ten strides across, a dais slung
from a lighter web of rope that met the main supports high above.

Arched wooden rails lined the ceiling, tapestries hanging there between
wall-mounted evenlamps. Rich dioramas detailed the forest and the faces of
Ilvani that Cass guessed were heroes of Raub’s folk, or leaders, or both. The
face closest to her was a more-than-life-sized rendering of an older Ilvani
male, silvering hair swept back and woven in the old style. He wore dark robes
that concealed his hands but showed the hilt of an Ilvani longblade at his
belt. His face was fair, but in the figure’s bark-brown eyes, she saw Raub’s
dark gaze staring back at her.

The lower tier was strewn with cushions that might have served to
sit ten score people in the wide-open meeting space. Only a quarter of that
number were present here now, mostly nobles, a handful of guards spaced around
them. All were standing, circling close to the raised dais platform where an
unfamiliar shape stood darkly framed by the light.

Cass saw what it was. She felt her fingers tighten on the
Reaper’s haft.

“You are welcome to Anthila, stranger.”

Over the noise of the crowd, the voice called out in Ilvani from
the shadows of the high platform. Its tone was light, but Cass felt a trace of
fear across the back of her neck as the words twisted through her. She focused,
found the strength to shake them off. The telltale tapping of the
white-and-silver walking stick preceded the silver-haired bard as she limped
slowly out from the shadows.

All around the chamber, the voices of the assembled Ilvani
trailed to silence. Fifty sets of eyes turned on Cass as she shifted through
them, the nobles she had followed staring with a look that showed no surprise.
Not that they expected her, she knew. They just hadn’t been told yet what to
think.

Cass wrapped her cloak tight around her as she ascended the
stairs, the Reaper out of sight, warm in her hand.
Halessi,
seneschal
of Anthila, was in the same white cloak she had worn in the marketplace,
but a diadem of gold was set upon the silver hair now. The mark of the
seneschal’s office, Cass guessed. Hanging from a belt of pale grey dwyrsilver
that cinched a tan tunic inlaid with twisting vines of yellow and green, she
wore the black shortsword that had been Raub’s burden for so long.

“As you can see, this a private meeting of the council of the
forest-home,”
Halessi
said as she gestured to the impassive faces
to all sides. “However, you are as much a witness as any of us to the events
that will transpire here tonight. More so, perhaps.” The thin lips pursed to a
cold smile as the gold and violet eyes flicked back to the dark shape behind
her.

Raub.

Cass was close enough now to see that he was alive, the fear dimming
that she had felt and focused past with her first glimpse of him from the
doorway. Beneath an arch of wooden beams descending from the ropes of the
ceiling, he was hanging by his wrists from a set of braided leather thongs. The
seamless crafting of the scaffold was clearly Ilvani, but it had an
intentionally rough quality to it that spoke to its purpose.

His eyes were shut, his breathing shallow. His bow, the dirk he always
carried, the emerald-hilted longsword claimed from the darkness under Myrnan
were nowhere in sight.

“We have not been formally introduced,”
Halessi
said.

“When you’re short on time, ceremony is the first thing to go.”

With a smile, the bard limped across the pale white floor. “The
creature of impulse seeks always the superiority of the moment. Perhaps at the
cost of failure in the long term.”

“I expect so,” Cass said thoughtfully. “Sorry about shooting you
this morning.” It was little more than a guess, but a correct one judging from
how the smile flickered.

“I’ve suffered worse,” the bard said. She put a little more
weight on the walking stick, her leg twisting beneath her as if to underline
the point. She came to a stop before Cass, appraising her thoughtfully.

“You’ve been watching for him,” Cass said. She nodded toward Raub
without looking, tried to appear more thoughtful than afraid.

“Since the moment Irasol rode north with word of the elder
Talmaraub’s death.”
Halessi
spoke with a candor that told Cass no
one else in the room would remember the words once this was done.

“I met Irasol,” Cass said, remembering. “A spy of yours?”

“A spy of Talmaraub’s, actually. Watching his father.”

“But under your control.”

Halessi smiled. “When it suited me.”

“As you control all the rest of them. In command, always.”

“When I need to be.”

“And that’s why Raub scares you.”

In the light of the evenlamps, the gold-violet eyes were suddenly
cold.

Cassatra scanned the wide chamber as she paced, making a mental
note of potential defensive points, the lack of other exits, the best places to
cut through the walls to make up for that. “Because last night wasn’t about
killing him,” she said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t have come alone. A
half-dozen Yewnwood Ilvani against two of us in the dark, asleep. It doesn’t
get any easier than that, but you kept your distance.”