A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (30 page)

A leader rides among them, set astride a coal-black stallion
whose hooves are shod with steel spikes that churn the earth as it tears at the
bit. A leader set with visored helm, lacquered black steel to match the plate
of his armor. He wears no armband, no white blades. The others slow as they
move past and around the stallion, hemming the White Pilgrim in.

The dark figure pulls the helm off easily, sets it under his arm
as his gaze meets the White Pilgrim’s. Holds it fast. Lines of age and anger
are etched in a handsome face. A scar at his neck. Hair hanging to shroud eyes
that are black even in the haze of dweomered light.

“By whose leave do you walk this road?”

The Imperial tongue, harsh-clipped in the accent of Norgyr. The
leader’s voice is twisted with fatigue, but an edge of anger covers it. The
White Pilgrim never hears this voice before, but he knows the tone that threads
it. Anger born of no specific event or evil, but simply the way of things. The
rage that is the heart of every leader of warriors who lives long enough to
claim that mantle.

“I asked a question, old man. You would be wise to answer.”

The warrior’s cloak is steel-grey once, but the stain of too many
leagues darkens it to mottled dun and black. A woman rides behind him, hair the
silver of midnight frost, and from her hand flies a standard that is altogether
fresher. The black boar on red. A banner the White Pilgrim sees above a dozen
other warbands in days past. Weeks, perhaps. He cannot remember.

“I walk no road, lord, but the land between roads.” Careful words,
spoken slowly because the White Pilgrim in his penance leaves words behind. He
must think now when he speaks, throat rough with days of silence. Weeks,
perhaps. “I have sought leave from no lord or master save Menos, god of
travelers, whose grace carries with all who walk within his sight and favor. I
make my way in his name and the name of all the Orosana, and have no quarrel
with you or any other.”

He says the words or variations on them uncounted times before.
He is used to the challenge of knight and outrider, farm lord and brigand. From
the glance the leader gives to the rider next to him, he hears words like them
before.

“These are dark times to be abroad, priest.”

“I am no priest. Only a pilgrim in all the gods’ names.”

“And the dead behind us burned themselves?”

The White Pilgrim glances back to the pyre. Brighter now as darkness
and cloud scour the eastern sky. “In the absence of a priest, any of the faith
might perform the rites of new life and death.”

“You and your fellow pilgrims will find precious little new life
in Sannos, old man.”

The Duchy of Sannos. Heart of Gracia. Broad hills rolling green
with forage and cropland. Broad rivers cutting through sable soil to reach the
sea. The White Pilgrim remembers, but he knows not why.

“I am not of these lands,” he says simply. But his vision is a
wash of light suddenly, and he thinks on his endless road.

“Do you have a name, pilgrim?”

“The name I once bore is lost to my sins and past, my lord…”

The Empire is gone, fifty years and more ago now. And with each
year come more folk to walk the leagues-long trek of four seasons. Each year
brings a dozen new fanes along the old roads that carry him between the
mountains, Drachen’s Teeth to Shieldcrest, north to south. Other roads draw him
east and west, sea to forest and all the broad lands between. A lifetime of
wandering. Seeking solace that never comes.

“I am duke, old man.”

“The name I once bore is lost, my duke.”

The White Pilgrim feels the light pass, swarmed by shadow. He
forgets now. Content to live by the shorter cycle of light and dark, step by
step, day by day.

“You are thoughtful, old man,” the dark figure says. “Why?”

“The death you seek is here…”

Only as he hears his voice does the White Pilgrim realize he
speaks aloud. He knows the words, cannot remember.

A subtle shift marks the dark warrior’s gaze. The curiosity of a
man used to being feared, who senses now that the White Pilgrim has no fear
anymore.

“We kill only those who stand against us,” this Black Duke says.
“They will stop, in time, and so shall the killing stop with them. I am come to
heal Gracia. To see it rise once more to the greatness taken from it.”

“The blood of children is on your hands and mine, my duke…”

From the corner of his eye, the White Pilgrim sees the
standard-bearer’s hand come up. A pulse of spell-fire flares there whose power
she draws forth from her blood, her voice. Five other hands hold weapons at the
ready in response to the White Pilgrim’s words, but he does not flinch.

He sees the Black Duke raise his own hand to stop them all. A
dismissive gesture, the warriors under his command obeying without thought. The
black boar charges on its crimson field, twisted by the wind.

“I am Arsanc of Thorfin,” the dark warrior says evenly. “I am a
freelord of Norgyr and duke of Gracia, and I will kill any man or woman who
stands against my rightful claim to the throne of this land. But I do not kill
children.”

“These were boys. By the forge…”

“The villagers are killing their children themselves.” A dark
weariness to the voice speaks to the truth it tells. “Their faith in your gods
of the Orosana runs strong enough that they are willing to embrace the
sacrifice of life that all faith demands in the end.”

The White Pilgrim feels the words twist in his mind. A thing he
cannot think on.

“It is said that the Black Duke fights in the vanguard of his own
forces, while the dukes of Gracia linger behind stone and spell-wall.” The
White Pilgrim recognizes his voice again. He remembers these things, but he
knows not why. “He sweeps down from the snows of Norgyr and through the
borderlands like a dark storm.” Words overheard in shrine and fane. Tales told
by refugees across meager fires in the night.

The Black Duke, Arsanc of Thorfin, laughs aloud. The White Pilgrim
hears the edge of respect in his voice. Does not understand it.

“You are an observant one. Tell me what you see in your wanderings.
Tell me what you know.”

If they are razing homesteads, it means that the main brunt of
the fighting is done. No one risks warriors and mounts in skirmishes against
farmhands if real war yet has any chance to be fought. The forces of the black
boar are moving village to village, seeking fealty to a conqueror. When it is
not given quickly enough, they burn settlements razed and rebuilt in the
aftermath of war a year before, and five years before that, and on and on back
through three generations of war that seeks and fails to claim what little
remains of Gracia’s ancient soul.

“I am only a pilgrim, my duke.”

He tries to not think on it. Tries to drive the sense of what
this war means from his mind, but it lingers like all the rest of his lost
life. Images graven into his dreams by knives of shadow.

“So you said. In all your gods’ names.” Arsanc laughs again.

The doors of the farmhouses are burned with a mark he recognizes.
The black boar of the standard, carved by spell-fire. The White Pilgrim sees
the same mark in every other village he passes through on this leg of the long
journey. Eastbound this time. The light of dawn at his eyes as the endless
leagues carry him closer to the days of the High Spring.

“Your dead gods will stay that way, old man.” The Black Duke
slips his helm back on, but the strength of his voice does not waver. “Take
that message and this one to every temple and mud-shrine you see wherever your
wanderings carry you. Duke Hestyoc has sued for peace, and orders his folk to
accept his fealty to the black boar. The lands on both sides of the Farwash and
the Vouris are under the stewardship of Arsanc, Freelord of Thorfin and
Innveig, Duke of Reimari, protector of Mundra, Liana, Lamitri, and Sannos, and
heir to the empty marble throne of Gracia.”

No sense of hubris carries in the words. Only the dark
familiarity that says they are earned and paid for.

“I am not worthy of a place in the gods’ fanes,” the White
Pilgrim says quietly. “But I will take your message to any who might listen.”

But in that time when name and heart are cleansed by the
memory that takes me, then all Gracia that I saved shall embrace that memory,
and I will return for all who speak this Prayer for Dead Kings.’

The Black Duke laughs. “Your impudence marks you as either wise
or a fool, old man.”

“Very much the fool, my duke.”

And with only a flick of leather leads, the dark figure is gone.
His great steed leaps to the air with an unfurling of black wings, limned by
the last light of day. Shadows slash across the White Pilgrim where he stands.
The other warriors follow, thrashing the air to a sudden storm of thunderous
wing-beats and the cries of the hassas as they climb, racing each other to the
height of the settling darkness.

The White Pilgrim watches for a long while, sees them bound for
the east. Gleaming wings dwindle slowly against the black line of the sky.

He walks far by darkness. He passes where the road snakes into
dark woods, so that he might escape the sight of the pyre whose glow will
outlast the night. He sleeps in a copse of sweet heather and spring lilac. Perfume
shrouds the deep descent of night beneath the haze of the Clearmoon, its
clipped face sinking within a dark sea of cloud.

In the darkness of that sleep comes the dream.

HER SKIN IS FAIR ONCE beneath the crust of grime. The
dirt of a long road hides her features, her age. The cusp of womanhood,
thirteen summers behind her.

Early morning, approaching a market village with a name lost to
memory. Within the dream, the White Pilgrim feels a vague recollection of a day
he passes there, long ago, but he sees it now with a clarity of sight beyond
the softness of his aged eyes. In the distance spreads a wide copse of white
cottonwood, branches gleaming leafless and fire-bright as they screen the
rising sun. A tumbling creek wends its way north, the grey walls of a mill
standing mist-shrouded against the forest behind.

Twisting away from the creek, the ruts of a farm track mark the
progress of a wain loaded with flour sacks as it passes. Two emaciated oxen
labor heavily as the cart’s wheels bump along toward fields cut by low stone
fences draped in a haze of hanging smoke.

A few paces behind the wain, caught in the shroud of its dawn
shadow, the Golden Girl walks.

For the better part of a week, she follows the farm tracks that
parallel the twisting course of the wide-flowing Farwash, four leagues to the
east. Her eyes are the blue of burnished steel. Her hair is long, the gold of
rain-fresh straw. Tied back and swept beneath the collar of a travel-stained
and much-patched cloak. The wind catches this as she walks, revealing a
shapeless pack of black leather at her back, a thin blanket tightly rolled.

A third bundle is slung between pack and blanket, more than half
her height across back and shoulder. Wrapped and rewrapped in rough homespun,
concealed again as she quickly wraps the cloak tight around herself.

She slips away from the cart as it rumbles on where the field
fences meet the road. The rough shapes of close-clustered houses stand beyond,
dull with the grime of passing winter. Two reluctant goats are dragged along by
an unsmiling youth. A peddler leading a laden mule calls out his wares with
little enthusiasm.

The Golden Girl ignores all of it. She walks a little more
quickly than casual. Around the closest shanties and the muddy sheep track that
circles them, the smoke-shrouded fane comes into view.

A thatched roof rises over walls of rough fieldstone, primitive.
Shuttered windows are open to the air. The main doors, the two side doors, all
of banded planks, stand closed. Above the main doors, a woven crown of white
beech branches is set with three stones. She eyes it warily as she pushes
inside, is hit by the haze and warmth of the fire that sends a shiver through
her, seems to remind her how cold she is.

A broad rust-iron brazier sits atop three stones where a hearth
once stands, long ago. A memory of when this place is the village’s great hall.
Incense is set along the edges of the great bowl, twice-burned charcoal blazing
within it in a haze of yellow-white flame. A narrow chimney sits above at the
confluence of the ceiling’s great beams, venting twisted snakes of smoke to the
bright sky. The beams are old but newly carved in the signs and faces of the
gods of Gracia. Newly restored to the faith of village folk north and south
from Staris to Kannis, west and east from the walls of the Yewnwood to the
Leagin coast.

The Golden Girl opens her cloak but does not step toward the
fire. A look around to make sure she stands alone, then she adjusts the belts
that hold her gear in place, always shifting as she walks. She feels heat
thread through her, feels the chill of the oblong bundle lashed tight to her
back even through leather, armor, and cloth.

“You are welcome to the fires of the Orosana, pilgrim.”

The voice precedes the shuffling steps behind her. The Golden
Girl pulls her cloak tight as she fixes the set of her tunic to cover the
talisman on its leather thong, cover the chain shirt that lies unseen beneath
that. The talisman is the symbol of her father once, who gives it to her
mother, who gives it to her. Steeped in the dweomer of protection by the
essence of her mother’s own life and blood before she dies.

The priest newly slipped out from the shadows wears the livery of
a speaker of the Pantheon. The long-dead Orosana who dwell in the twelve
mountain peaks of the north and south. His body is soft, rippling beneath the
grey robes whose cleanliness shows how infrequently he leaves this dark hall.
Eyes set small in a doughy face, porcine in their gaze. A ceremonial mace hangs
at his belt, strong enough to deal out injury to a not overly large rat if one
happened by.

The Golden Girl takes him in at a glance. She lowers her voice,
lets it find the tone of the fatigue she feels. “I am no pilgrim,” she says. He
will not hear the well-practiced mockery in her tone.

“All travelers are pilgrims in the eyes of the Twelve, and shall
carry the blessings of the Orosana if they walk with faith.”

In most of the fanes she stops in, the faithful whose faces mark
all the endless leagues of her young life are born of the unseeing memory of
youth. The legends of Empire and the traditions of the dead faith of the twelve
gods of the Orosana are both equally mythical to those who never know either.
This priest is older than she expects. Might well remember the last days of
Empire. Seeking solace in a dead faith because at the end of his life, he has
no time left to hope for the return of the world he knows.

“I seek a pilgrim, though,” the Golden Girl says quietly. “An
older man, grey hair and beard. He travels alone in the gods’ names, passing Miandale
four days ago. He did penance at two different fanes outside the city, then
left along the farm roads, they said.”

“Many pass this way, child.”

“He is scarred, this one. On his neck and cheek, an old wound. A
limp that cannot heal.”

“A soldier?”

“Once. Perhaps.” A trace of uncertainty twists through her,
hidden as quickly as it comes. She distracts the priest’s gaze with the sudden
glint of copper in her hand, pressed to his palm.

“I saw one such in the village,” the priest says with carefully
measured gratitude. “He did penance in the dawn rites. Two days past, I think
it was. His health appeared poor, so I bade him take shelter with us, but he
was gone before the morning broke.”

“He did only penance? Did not stay to rest, to sleep, to warm himself?”

“No,” the priest says. “Not while I was here to see, at any
rate.”

The Golden Girl fights to control the hope that threads her
voice.

“Where had he come from?”

“I did not see him arrive…”

“What did he say? What did he speak of, what was his path?” She
does not need to ask the destination.

“That he came from the north is all I know. He talked of having
crossed the Farwash within sight of the Free City at the spring flood. I
expressed surprise that he survived that journey with all the roads of Mundra
and Liana teeming for war, but he showed no sign that it concerned him.”

The Golden Girl knows that road. She walks it often enough. She
turns from the priest as if he vanishes from her thought and attention, already
focused on the end of her long journey.

“If the pilgrim should pass this way again, who should I say is
seeking him?”

In his voice, the Golden Girl hears the twist of uncertainty. Her
focus is back, and sharpened. She meets the priest’s faint eyes in the shadows.
Knows that it is not on his own behalf that he asks. “Only an old friend.
Seeking counsel.”

The pig eyes narrow in dark assessment as she turns, but the
voice calls out in last hope. “Join me at the fire of Denas the all-father
before you go. Join me in prayer for your safe journey in Menos of the road’s
name.” The priest steps to within a pace of the brazier, bends to his knees in
a well-practiced ritual.

The Golden Girl turns back, the cloak swirling to let slip a
glimpse of the scabbard she wears. High and just behind the hip, letting it
slide with her leg as she walks. Easier to conceal but slower to draw. Not that
it matters.

She measures the three paces to the brazier, catches its wide
edge with her spit. It hisses there, the priest stuttering as he starts to his
feet. A look of horror on his face, hands up to make a supplicant’s pleading
motions to the empty images graven across the fane’s smoke-blackened beams.

“I am no pilgrim,” she says again as she turns to go.

She keeps her days long. Awake and on the march well before dawn,
then adding the moons’ light to the steady spring lengthening of the sun. She
can only hope that her quarry does not do the same. She takes the time to eat,
gnaws a crust of bread as she moves quickly along the northward track. Her pace
quickens as she shadows the stone
fences
.

Two days. Her face shows the effort of trying to hold the calm
she feels slipping from her. Six seasons of searching, and seven long years before
that, and she is never this close before.

The Golden Girl feels the talisman that is the memory of her
mother and father lying cold against her breast. She presses her hand to it
through cloak and leather. A reminder of the things her father fought for,
dying without knowing whether the lost dreams of the Empire that had been
sacred to him would one day be drawn forth from the
shadow
.

The peddler seen earlier is on his way out of the village
already, no buyers that morning but still shouting out for custom. His voice
punctuates the sucking of his cart’s wheels in the mud.

At her chest, the talisman still held within the flat grasp of
her hand, the Golden Girl feels a sudden warmth like the summer sun.

The heat of the charm’s warning spreads through the chain shirt
against which it rests, pulses in time with her heart, quickening now. The
magic of her mother, long dead but still watching her. Protecting her as it
does so many times before.

The Golden Girl hears the wet thud of hoofbeats on the road
ahead, rising over the shrill cries of a herd of goats that scatters at their
approach. She moves absently off the track, kneels in the shadow of a stone
wall as if searching for something lost in the mire at her feet. From the
corner of her eye, watched carefully, four armed riders appear at a slow
canter. The peddler is forced to scramble, dragging mule and cart aside to
clear their path as they come.

From the corner of her eye, she sees the black boar. Her pulse
quickens.

She rises, keeps her eyes cast down. She feigns a limp as she
hunches low in her cloak. She changes her shape, changes her height, her gait.
Letting their eyes pass over her where they search.

She almost succeeds. But like the tingling that marks a foot
fallen to blood-sleep, she feels the faint trace of spellcraft twist through
her.

A shiver takes her despite her best efforts to quell it. No way
to tell the nature of the spell, but in the instant, she pushes all thought,
all understanding from her mind. In the recognition of magic, she must force herself
to not recognize the magic. She concentrates on the muddy ruts at her feet,
counts her steps, whispers a childhood song her mother once sung to her, a
lifetime ago now.

She hears the muddy drumming of frantic hooves behind her as the
riders rein up, spin around. The thought-magic. The incantation of detection.

She is running, not bothering to look back. Vaulting the low
stone fence takes her away from the road, into the cluster of houses and
poultry pens just passed. A voice comes from behind her, threaded with a rage
she hears too many times before.

“The girl! There!”

But she is already gone.

The Golden Girl runs furiously through the village still just
coming to morning life. She dodges surprised folk at walk, slips with ease
through sheep bound for the spring meadows. Behind her, she hears the horses
thundering along the track, then breaking hard to cross onto the muddy turf of
the common in the direction where she disappears. She counts on that, cuts hard
around a stone shed and back to retrace her steps.

She risks a glance behind her, sees the company slowing,
searching. Their leader is tall, hair shorn in the manner of a seasoned
campaigner. She recognizes him from twice before. Three times? Her memory blurs
the faces, each new set of pursuers. No telling how many of the Black Duke’s
forces are searching for her.

Chaos erupts behind her as the riders plow through the common
without care. Villagers scramble to get out their way, a cart overturning when
its startled horse bolts. She slips beneath the slats of a rude wooden fence, a
handful of goats bleating sudden surprise. A shout from behind, horses spurred
on as she is seen.

As she races toward the cottonwoods where they spread close to
the rutted eastern road, she feels a pulse of power behind her. She drops by
instinct a stride from the low stone fence, hears the crack of shattering stone
as the bolt of white light meant for her bursts to tendrils of seeking flame
above her. Then she is up and over, two more blasts of spell-fire lashing out
behind her as she disappears into the shadow of the trees.