A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (27 page)

As she turned back, she saw the bard’s hand stray to the hilt of
the black shortsword at her waist. Cass smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “All
this talk must be a distraction to you. Far be it from me to interrupt your
little game.”

“This is no game.”
Halessi’s
voice was raised and
pitched to carry, and Cass heard the subtle weave of the charm-song that was
the bard’s power thread through it. From across the room came a sudden swell of
anger. “We are a people whose faith is history. The deeds and words of our kin
go back ten thousand generations.”

“The last generation is the only one I know about,” Cass said
quietly. “Who was Tajomynar?”

Beneath its curtain of silver hair, the narrow face turned pale.
Halessi stood silent for a long moment. “I never dreamed that would be a story
he would share,” she said at last. “I misjudged him.”

“You didn’t,” Cass said truthfully. “Raub shares very little.”

The bard laughed. “A child’s name is what he goes by now?”

“I suspect he has a few more, like you. That one serves him well
enough, though. Ale and memory speaks through him, sometimes. He talked of his
father once, and of someone named Tajomynar who he betrayed.”

Halessi
stepped close now, and Cass felt a shiver
twist through her as the lacquered nails of the bard’s string hand came up to
touch her cheek. Her hand tightened on the Reaper’s haft as she dug deep for
the will to focus.

“That treason was only one of many,”
Halessi
whispered, and Cass felt all the power imbued within the silver-sweet voice
slip through her. “Your lover has betrayed you now, as he betrayed his people
his whole life. As he betrayed what and who he was.”

Cass laughed then, surprising both of them. In the echo of her
own voice, she felt her sight clear against the faint haze that
Halessi
’s
words carried, as a cold wind pushes cloud away. “We’re not lovers.”

“Friends then.”

“Something else,” Cass said, and she was thoughtful suddenly.
More than she had at any point of the journey that brought them here, she felt
the awkwardness of her presence. She felt the urge to turn away, to leave Raub
to whatever dark destiny this place was for him. But against that urge came the
sudden understanding that in following him this far, she had done so for a
reason.

“Some bonds go deeper than that,” she said quietly. “Some bonds
have no easy name.”

Halessi
stepped back then. She hammered the walking
stick to the floor, raising it high as it burst into white light that wrapped
it as a sheet of flickering flame. It was a weapon in its true form, Cass saw.
A single-edged longblade, the image she had seen on the gate, blazing so bright
that its steel could barely be seen within the flames that wrapped it.

“
Iastora
!” the bard shouted, and Cass recognized the
command.
Sing.
Halessi’s voice was pitched again to carry to the crowd.
“The anger that lingers in the heart of Anthila runs deep! Anger for lost sons,
for lost faith!”

The backsword flared even brighter, setting the bard’s face in
stark shadow as the assembled nobles surged to their feet. The diatribe was for
their benefit, Cass knew. Raub’s summary sentence. Judgement, then execution.
True to the Ilvani custom, the nobles were uniformly well armed, most with the
long knives of the woodland hunters, a few with swords of their own. The blank
eyes watched as Cass took it all in, the room around her wholly under the
bard’s direction and the song the sword made.

“You are outnumbered and surrounded,”
Halessi
said.
“Every blade in the room waits for my order to put you down. However, the lives
here have value to me, and I am loath to spend them needlessly. I hope I
needn’t worry about you doing anything foolish.”

“No worry at all.”

With a fluid motion, Cass spun toward the bard, the Reaper a blur
in her hand as she threw it, but
Halessi
was ready. She twisted
away easily to watch the axe sail past, realizing only too late that missing
her was exactly what Cassatra intended.

She had stalled as long as she needed to, watching carefully for
the subtle shift in Raub’s breathing that told her he was finally conscious. As
Cass hoped, whatever injuries he suffered had left him with enough control to
hide his waking. The Reaper spun through the air as a silver blur, slicing
through the leather thongs a finger’s-breadth above where they bound Raub’s
hands. Even as he fell, his eyes shot open, dark gaze fixed hard to the bard as
he hit the ground.

Halessi
was sprinting toward him as he kicked the
Reaper back across the floor, Cass scooping it without looking. The violet of
the bard’s eyes was black now, burning against the gold with a seething rage.
The bright blade flared white-hot as the silver-sweet voice summoned up a spell
of command.

“Kneel!”
Halessi
shouted, and Cass saw Raub stumble
with the effort of resistance. It was the moment’s distraction she needed to
leap the distance between her and the bard, hitting hard from behind, a solid
slash to the shoulder that cut through the robe and what felt like tempered
mail beneath it and the bone beneath that.

As Halessi staggered forward, Cass reached for the dwyrsilver
belt. She drew the black shortsword with her free hand, the bard too slow to
grab it. Halessi had taken the crippling strike in silence, but she screamed
now.

The white-flaming backsword flared again as she lunged, but Cass
was faster, lashing out with a kick that shattered the bard’s jaw and forced
the spell she was speaking to die in her throat. The Reaper followed, arcing
for
Halessi
’s neck even as a desperate thrust shot her sword up to
meet it, a gout of white flame arcing off as the axe was deflected wide.

That the bard’s blade could survive the Reaper’s touch showed the
strength of its magic.
Cass
stumbled back but Raub was there. As
if they had practiced it, she threw the black shortsword to him, Raub catching
it as he slashed down, hitting Halessi at the line of shoulder and neck with a
two-handed killing stroke. A gout of blood sprayed to the air, catching him as
the bard twisted and collapsed to the ground.

The flaming backsword was sprawled across the floor. The wooden
tiles burned beneath it,
Halessi
’s fingers still traced across the
grip. Cass was wary, watching the crowd of nobles where they shifted in
silence. She waited for a sign that
Halessi
’s control was broken.
In the instant, she realized what not seeing it meant.

Looming over the fallen bard, Raub reached down to liberate the
burning blade. Even as Cass shouted a warning, the sword came up, slashing hard
at an impossible angle. It struck Raub with enough force to knock him back, his
jerkin smoldering.

As
Halessi
lurched to her feet, she laughed. The
runes on the bright blade flared ebon black within their shroud of white flame,
so dark that it hurt to look at them. Raub and Cass moved at the same time, but
the bard was faster, scrambling back with blade up, blazing as it blocked
attacks from both sides.

Blood mottled Halessi’s cloak and tunic, but the gaping wound at
her neck was already healed. White flame was flowing up her arm, coursing
across her body as her strength returned. The voice of sweet silver that Cass
had crushed a moment before rang out with mocking laughter now.

“Your legacy,”
Halessi
said to Raub. “This blade you
dreamed of wielding some day. Yet your father knew your weaknesses so well that
he would not trust you with the knowledge of its power.”

Raub’s eyes were locked tight to
the bard’s as they circled
each other
. And in that gaze, Cass saw a recognition she didn’t fully
understand.

“This blade has a name.
Palas Eryvna
, it is called. But
your father never even told you that. Did he?”

“Show yourself,” Raub hissed, and that dark whisper held all the
anger of his exile. All the anger that had sent him to the Sorcerers’ Isle and
underground, and into a dark madness that Cass hadn’t understood until it was
almost too late.

The bard laughed as she paced past him, the silver voice bright
as she discarded her ruined cloak behind her.

“Do I know you, friend?”

“Aside from myself and my father, only four others knew of that
blade’s power to control the minds of those around it. Because I told them of
that power the night we swore to seize and throw it down.”

“And you succeeded, young Talmaraub. Succeeded beyond your wildest
dreams. The old order put down and a new hope for freedom in its place. You
never came back to the glory you sought, though. You were the Hooded Hawk, a
hero to them all. At least you were until your father and I told them
differently.”

And even as Cass watched, the silver hair blurred. The eyes shimmered
as the body beneath the bloodied grey tunic changed. It was done in a
heartbeat, and standing in
Halessi
’s place was an Ilvani male who
could have been the bard’s brother. Their features were the same. The silver
hair, the gold and black eyes bright in the magical glow of evenlamps all
around.

For a timeless moment, all Raub could do was stare. Then he feinted,
struck hard, but the flare of white fire sent the black shortsword wide as this
new figure let the burning backsword bite deep at the shoulder. Raub’s cloak
flared and smoldered, blood suddenly welling there in a wide swath.

“The bright blade has many powers,” Tajomynar said. The voice had
changed, but it carried the same confidence, the same silver sheen that
threaded through Cass’s mind. “Your father had no need for this one, at least
as far as I know. It takes some getting used to, but it makes a powerful
disguise for a dead man.”

The bard glanced to Cass, raising his voice to the nobles below
him. “Kill the outsider! Justice for the traitor is mine!”

Raub and Tajomynar traded off a fast flurry of strikes as the
Ilvani of the council swarmed toward the stairs and Cass like a living wave.
She didn’t wait for them to reach her. Leaping from the edge of the dais, she
hit hard in the heart of the frenzied crowd as she let the instinct take her.
The training that was her childhood had taught her to fight by the sheer grace
of every balanced motion, by sense of touch as much as sight. As fast as they
came within range of fist or foot, the Ilvani dropped around her.

In all their eyes, she saw the same emptiness she had seen in the
guards outside, and as it had then, that blank stare kept the Reaper at her
side. However, Cass already had her sights set on a better target for its edge.

On the dais platform above, the glow of the black shortsword was
bright in Raub’s hand, a dull blue cast washing across his features as he
circled. Tajomynar was across from him with the backsword that was the blade of
Raub’s line, the two trading strikes as they tested each other.

In a moment of brief respite, Raub whispered. “It was you…”

Tajomynar laughed again, the silver voice threading through the
chaos of the chamber. Below, Cass was moving. In the circuit she made earlier,
she had carefully noted the lay of the guy-ropes whose thickly woven trunks
suspended the floor of the hall. Now she retraced that route, twisting past the
blades of a quartet of young nobles that she clubbed senseless one by one with
the Reaper’s haft.

“It was me,” the bard said. “So wonderfully obvious that it took
only six years for you to understand. All that time, blaming yourself. All that
time, seeing our faces…”

“Get out of my head,” Raub hissed.

Tajomynar laughed again. “Your mind is an open book, Hawk. I need
no more skill than a carnival soothsayer to lay open its secrets.”

As the bard struck, Cass jumped, flipping backward over two more
sets of outstretched arms. Within reach of the closest rope, she slashed out at
its thickly wrapped pillar of steel-strong Ilvani weave. It would have taken a
dozen blows from a woodcutter’s axe without so much as fraying, but she felt it
part like paper at the Reaper’s touch.

With a sickening lurch, the central platform of the hall
collapsed. From all around came the tearing of cord and screen as the sculpted
walls tore free, twisting in a sudden storm of white. The remaining four ropes
were more than enough to hold the floor up, but with its balance lost, the
chamber dropped and lurched. The nobles who were closing in around Cass a
moment before were upended, spilled to open air and the outside terrace below.

The dais platform in its own web of ropes remained level, but the
stairs were torn away above the sloping floor of the main chamber below. Still
trading blows with Tajomynar, Raub swung wide, watching the bard step back from
it easily. His arm was aching, the lighter weight of the shortsword unfamiliar
in his hand. He was overcompensating, hitting from the shoulder, too hard.

“We are alike in all ways,” the bard said, smiling. “I was angry,
as you were. I sought to make things right, to reclaim the glory that was
Anthila as you did. Like you, I saw the weakness in your father. Unlike you, I
saw the opportunity there.”

Below him, Cass was clambering up to the high side of the fallen
floor, trying to close the distance to Raub. She found her footing easily
enough away from the severed anchor point, pulling herself up along a makeshift
ladder of shredded wicker and fallen ropes. Unfortunately, more than a few of
the combat-ready nobles were doing the same.

“You betrayed us to him,” Raub whispered, and he understood it
now as he should have understood it long before. He cursed himself for his
folly. Cursed the memory of that face framed by silver hair, and of the love
held in his memory that had turned to bile in a heartbeat.