A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (28 page)

Six years before, they fled the forest-home as outlaws and had ridden
unseen in the deep woods for more than three seasons.
Arnos Iranthilia
,
they called themselves. Anthila’s Watch.

Raub had seen Tajomynar die that night. He saw them all die, felt
their blood wash over him like a red-black rain.

Over long years before his exile, the ranger garrisons of the
Ilvani had slowly begun to shift out from the deep woods to the unstable
Gracian frontier. The destruction of the Imperial capital at Ulannor Mor was on
the far side of the world and a lifetime away now. However, every province
of the Elder Kingdoms, every forest-home in the Yewnwood had its stories of the
breakdown of rule in the aftermath. Gracia and Vanyr, straddling the mighty
Yewnwood like a yoke, had fought wars for the throne of their long-lost kings.
In the northern freeholds of Norgyr and in Ajaeltha to the south, they were
fighting still. Would-be tyrants and warlords forging new conflicts from the legendary
wars of the past.

In the aftermath of the Empire’s fall, Raub’s father played the
fear and ambition of his people like a bard bent to a dark song. Under his
hand, more and more power was drawn to the center, concentrated in the nobles
and the merchant lords he controlled. Anthila prospered, even as the outlying
villages became little more than work camps, their people toiling in the name
of tithes and fealty to the new order.

As the Arnos Iranthilia, Raub and the others made short work of
the bosses and bandits that ruled in his father’s name, drawing the folk of the
outlying villages to their cause of freedom. The five were the strong core at
the center of something larger, putting Raub on a collision course with the
rule of a father whose name and corruption he had turned away from. In short
time, the talk of uprising that spread throughout the deep wood made its echo
felt in the forest-home. Anthila’s own rangers were sent to hunt them, and
with the four he had set out with a year before, Raub crafted a daring and
dangerous plan.

They rode for Anthila that night, determined to bring an end to
it. One swift stroke, the blade falling on the soft neck of the elder Talmaraub’s
corruption. They had the advantage of surprise, of strength, of youth and
purpose.

None of it mattered in the end.

As they made their careful way up the forest-home in the dead of
night, Raub’s father was ready. He had known their every move to the great
terrace of Garania Hall, it seemed, where the seneschal should have been
sleeping, alone.

Raub and four others rode for Anthila that night. Only he rode
out again.

On the twisted floor below him, Cass was fighting for her life.
Six foes pressed in around her, half of them young gentry with long knives in
hand and a speed that suggested they practiced hard with them. She had already
seen the guards she left outside fighting their way toward her, caught up in
the spell of the bright blade as were all the rest.

Like Raub, the Ilvani were natural climbers, slinging their way
one-handed through the shredded rigging of the walls. She had to work to stay
in position without slipping, the platform twisting now beneath the weight of
combatants whose weapons threatened to turn it into a killing floor.

Most of these weren’t warriors, she reminded herself. These were
nobles and merchants years away from hard labor or the warbands, but they were
Ilvani all the same. A lifetime’s training to blade and bow burned in them, one
grey-haired elder demonstrating that prowess with an elaborate double-feint
that made it past her. He tagged her shoulder, a flare of white-hot pain rising
where he cut her to the bone.

In the end, she let the Reaper sing. She felt the scene around
her slow to a precise storm of movement, dropping to take out two
knife-fighters with a pair of back-to-back strikes that bit deep. Their blank
eyes showed no pain, no understanding as the life flickered out behind them.
Cass watched their bodies slide in pieces down the slanted tiles, but if she
hoped to give the others pause where they fought to close in, it seemed only to
increase their rage.

Above her, Raub and Tajomynar fought in a blinding fury, but with
every strike, Raub felt his strength flagging. Steel wasn’t enough, he knew.
Steel alone had never been enough. He needed more, needed to push against the
fear he saw now reflected in the bard’s black eyes.

Since the year he was born, his father had been seneschal in Anthila.
His father was lord of the forest-home and the wide wood beyond it, the borders
of the Ilvani dominions of the Yewnwood marked by secret sign and ancient
treaty. But for as long as Raub could remember, he had seen through the facade
of nobility that his father wore like armor against any threat to his
increasingly dark rule.

Raub had challenged his father even before his own first-naming,
possessed of that arrogance of the Ilvani that makes all things seem so possible.
He challenged his father with what he had seen, accused him of controlling his
people. Bending the will of the forest-home to his own ends, manipulating the
nobles, the merchant lords.

His father laughed then. The voice that carried the fate of a
people sounded out bright, sunlight on water.

“Minds as weak as these call out to be controlled. You will
understand some day.”

Tajomynar struck hard, pulling him back from the darkness of
distraction. The bard was defiant, Raub’s blows ineffectual even when he landed
them. The bright blade that had been his father’s healed away all hurt as its
master fought on.

“You held the right to both these swords your whole life,” Tajomynar
laughed. “Son to the seneschal. Last of your line. You threw both away to play
the rebel. Breaking your father’s law in the name of village rabble. I had more
ambitious plans.”

“I do them a favor,”
his father said.
“I grant them
direction. I shape their collective fears to contentment, twist the conflict in
their hearts to peace.”

“You rode with us, Mynar.” Raub had to fight to force out the
words. “You believed in the greater good before you betrayed us to my father.
Or have you rewritten your story so effectively that you’ve come to believe it
yourself?”

“You were a coward,” Tajomynar hissed. “You are a coward. Afraid
of what you should have been.”

Raub raised the shortsword, defiant. He slashed out twice to lock
with Tajomynar, the black blade and the white crossed for a long moment between
them.

“These weapons are what I am,” he said coldly. “This blade, I
brought back in the hope that Anthila might raise up a leader worthy of
carrying it again. That blade you hold is coin for my father’s treachery, and
in my hands, it will mete out a lifetime’s justice to pay that balance in full.
For your betrayal, Mynar, the first blood it claims will be yours.”

The white flames that wreathed the backsword flared as Tajomynar
grinned. “Your father is dead, Hawk. Your line ended when he placed this blade
in my hand and let its power pull me back to life that night. When he bade me
sing the ghostsong over his passage to memory.”

Below him, Cass felt the surge against her redoubled, but three
clashing strikes set the Reaper hacking through a half-dozen blades. The
closest attackers leaped back, a haze of blood telling her the axe had cut
through bone and flesh as well in its cleaving arc.

“Anthila is mine!” Tajomynar shouted in triumph. “Palas Eryvna
the bright blade and the name of
Thrasus is mine!” He stepped back,
pointed the white-flaming longblade at the black shortsword in Raub’s bloodied
hand.
“Valaendar
of the Anthiliar is mine!”

“Then take it if you can…”

Steel had never been enough.

Tajomynar lunged again, three quick strikes parried and returned
as he shifted, but Raub was ready for him. He swung up and to the side, so that
the burning blade slipped wide to block. It was a fool’s parry, Tajomynar’s
left side wide open for the moment it took to make it.

Raub hit hard, drove his fingers deep into Tajomynar’s eye even
as he slammed forward, smashing into him shoulder to chest.

He felt the edge of the dais slip away beneath them. They fell
for a timeless moment, then hit hard, Tajomynar shrieking as blood fountained
from his ruined eye. Raub managed to find his feet as he swung down hard. The
bard was faster, raising the bright blade to block as he rolled away and
scrambled up.

They were at the top edge of the upended central platform, feet
set to find a precarious balance. Cass was a half-dozen strides below them, but
a sudden silence fell around her now. Where Tajomynar’s scream rang out, it
stilled the crowd in a way she didn’t understand. The power in the voice was
broken somehow, the surging horde stopped where they clung to the ruined
platform or spread out across the garden tier below it, blank eyes gazing
upward.

Raub had to fight to find the breath to spit, thick with blood
and bile where it hit the tiles at the bard’s feet.

“You’re finished,” he hissed. “You’re a shadow that the light
will wipe away. This performance you play is as false as the face you wear…”

“All life is performance, fool.” The silver hair was hanging in
red streaks now, Tajomynar’s face a mask of blood. Already, the eye was healing
itself, its torn tissue knitting, but his voice was still shrill with the pain.
“You play a role now as false as the one you chose for yourself as a child.
Pretending to be the outlaw, the rebel. The hero.”

“Even as you play the dead man.” Raub felt the leg that the bard
had cut threatening to buckle, had to lock it to prevent himself from falling.
“You’ve walked the ground these six years in another body. Hiding behind
another face. Who’s the pretender, Mynar?”

The eye would heal as long as Tajomynar held the blade, Raub
knew. The time it would take was all the time he had.

“Tajomynar died, Hawk. I believe you were there.” With a surge of
speed, the bard struck twice, the black shortsword up barely in time to parry.
“By your father’s grace and the passing of this blade to my hand do I live and
breathe,” he hissed, “but your death is the only thing that wipes away the pain
of that night.”

Below them, Cass had the Reaper balanced in her hand, ready to
throw. She had a straight line and clear sight to the bard, but Tajomynar was
in command now, his strikes coming fast enough that the slightest distraction
would be Raub’s last.

A feint. Strike and counterstrike. Raub nearly slipped, catching
his balance only by luck.

“You killed them,” the bard whispered. “You killed us all.”

Raub felt the words burning in his mind like sudden fever. Something
dark passed across his eyes, and then he was looking down to see Cass below him
suddenly. She was caught up in a tight press of attackers even as she shouted a
warning he couldn’t hear.

In a blur of steel, Tajomynar cut him across the forearm even
through the haze of his bloodied vision. The black blade of the Anthiliar
lurched where Raub’s hand spasmed, and he saw Tajomynar almost break his defensive
posture to lunge for it. Through blurred red, he saw a trace of madness
suddenly. The bard’s hunger for the shortsword and the power it promised
showed raw for an instant in the gleam of his black eyes.

“Should have kept flying, Hawk…”

Raub lunged. He threw all he had at Tajomynar, watched him easily
evade the uneven thrust as he knew he would. The bard struck hard on the
return, wheeling as the white-burning blade cut under and past the black
shortsword.

Raub was waiting for it. He took the lunge, twisted to catch it
straight on. He felt the flaming blade punch through his shoulder, a moment of
numbness there flaring to a crescendo of pain like he had never known. Tajomynar
was an arm’s length away, but Raub twisted in and down. With the guard of the
black shortsword, he caught the flaming steel of Palas Eryvna just above the
hilt, twisting his body hard. His shoulder was the fulcrum on which he wrenched
the bright blade from Tajomynar’s hands.

With a surge of white flame, the backsword sang, punching through
Raub where he stumbled back. He let
Valaendar
slip from his grasp,
tossing it up before Tajomynar. He saw the black of the bard’s eyes flash suddenly
back to violet, glazed over with mad desire as he snatched his prize from
midair. He had a moment to shout in triumph before he died.

Raub wrenched Palas Eryvna from his shoulder with a scream. Then
the last of his strength drove an arm’s length of flaming steel through the
bard’s heart, the blade that had been his father’s shunting out through ribs
and mail and a spray of blood across the white floor.

He blacked out for a moment. When his head cleared, he was on his
knees. He heard the sudden silence in the wide chamber around him, broken by
the pounding of his own heart. He smelled the tang of blood, tasted metal in
his mouth. He saw Tajomynar lifeless in a spreading pool of red before him.

Raub’s blood-soaked jerkin was still smoldering where the burning
blade sundered it, but he felt no pain. There was a warmth at his ribs and in
his leg where Tajomynar had cut him. The bleeding had stopped, torn flesh
scarring over as the power of the bright blade restored him. He lifted it
slowly, felt the unfamiliar weight in his hand. His father’s sword, and
everything it meant.

That night six years before, they had been caught with ridiculous
ease. His father was alone as Raub knew he would be, a brazen assault within
the forest-home inconceivable even to his dark paranoia. But even alone, his
father’s sorcery was a storm that struck them down in a hail of black fire the
moment they set foot within the house.

They had been brought from Garania Hall to the council. Put on
display and bound as the condemned. With his will controlling the minds of the
nobles who would have decided their fate, his father didn’t bother with the
pretense of a trial. Just killed them all, one by one.