A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (37 page)

“Let him search, so long as he does it from winged horseback so
that even the blind could see him coming.”

“I did not tell him where you were.”

“Tell him what you like,” the Golden Girl says, and he hears no
fear there. “Run where you like. I’ll find you again.”

Doors of oak stand beyond the altar, dark with walnut oil and
framed by torches where they mark the approach to the central court. Canvas covers
the entrances to the two adjacent wings of the shrine. Dormitories, kitchens.
The White Pilgrim remembers.

A handful of acolytes work where a smaller fire burns at a blackened
hearth in the far corner, snowroot bread tended to in the coals. They look up
to acknowledge the White Pilgrim with a nod, his face familiar to them. The lay
of the shrine, its shadowed light and sweet scent are familiar to him. A thing
he knows without knowing.

“We almost found you here. A year ago. The High Spring.”

The Golden Girl stands across from the White Pilgrim as he bows
his head at the brazier, the benediction of thanks for safe journeys. He does
not remember kneeling.

“My father came back to us when my mother took sick. He told me
the story of how he followed his high king. How he lost you, then followed you
again. He told of watching you walk away from the field at Marthai that day,
stripping your armor as you went. Disappearing naked and bleeding into the
night. He said it as if it would make me understand why I couldn’t remember who
he was.”

Her hair is a faint streak of shadowed gold against the dark of
the cloak wrapped tight around her. Her standing at the fire of the Orosana is
in violation of custom, the darkness in her gaze showing how little she cares.
She spits to the coals, a hiss of steam marking her careful contempt.

“I’d seen five summers when my mother died, but I don’t remember
them anymore. Only the road. Across Gracia for eight years. The length and
breadth of the land, beyond the Free City to the borders of Mundra. Almost into
Vanyr. Down through the south, into Aldona. He worried countless times that you
had fled and he had lost you. Across to the Kelist Isles, over the Shieldcrest
to Ajaeltha. The dark of the Yewnwood. But always, you turned back. Wandering
toward the heartland again. My father knew you must be circling back to
somewhere, but he was never close enough to catch you here.”

“They call it Angarid,” the White Pilgrim says. The name is clear
in his mind. “Shrine of Crecinu.”

The Golden Girl appraises him, cannot hide the fading hope of her
gaze. “These things I say to you. Who you are. Do you understand?”

“The queen came here.” The White Pilgrim speaks as though he does
not hear. “After the tryst with your father that drove her from the king’s
side. The love between them that the king’s madness made. Gilvaleus seeking to
hate Nàlwyr for what he was, so I sought to unmake him. Break him to my
obedience. Force him to…”

The words choke off, hanging in a silence marked only by the
White Pilgrim’s suddenly labored breathing, the hiss of the brazier as its
charcoal burns. “He sought to unmake him,” he says, the barest whisper. “In a
dark madness, the high king was…”

He falters as he feels the Golden Girl’s arm at his shoulder. She
kneels beside him, turns her blue gaze to his. Speaking carefully.

“You are Gilvaleus. You are high king of all Gracia and master of
the marble throne of Mitrost. You rose up against the usurper Thoradun who slew
your father, and putting him down, you forged peace. Do you remember?”

“Justain,” the White Pilgrim says. Thoughtful. “Your name.”

“Yes.”

“You are Nàlwyr’s daughter. You bear his blade and mail. His
sword arm. No one else could have trained you to that.”

Her hand is shaking in the manner of one who hopes for something,
then sees that longing turn to the fear of never finding it. “Do you remember?”

“Aelathar was her name. A queen among pilgrims.” His voice falters
as he feels a light flare at the point where the name hangs. Breaking the
shadow in which the visions hide. “She fled Mitrost and left all she was behind.
Made a life here. Became once more the healer she was born to be, but not even
Crecinu’s grace could heal the hurts of the heart that I made for her…”

The shadow rises again, the light draining from the White
Pilgrim’s gaze like a sudden fall of night. He feels the blur of memory and
history, watches it slip away.

“A pilgrim comes to her gravesite that spring,” he says. “He
returns every spring after…”

“You are the pilgrim,” the Golden Girl whispers, and now it is
the light of her voice that cuts the shadow. “You are Gilvaleus. You must remember.
You must!”

The words ring out loud against the silence of the shrine. The acolytes
at their fire look up, uncertain gazes focused on the White Pilgrim. He glances
up, makes his apology for the outburst with a nod.

“We show our faith by silence in the gods’ houses,” he says.

“Your gods can do without my silence, and darkness take them
all.” But the anger that threads the Golden Girl’s voice carries an edge of
pleading now. “You are Gilvaleus.”

He stands quickly, no time for the pain in his leg and his chest
to stop him. The Golden Girl falls back where the force of his movement shrugs
her off, but she is on her feet before he takes his first step away from her,
toward the darkened doors ahead.

“My father’s only god was his faith in the greatness of the folk
he served and died for,” she shouts. “For the high king he served and died
for.” Her voice is knife-sharp, echoing from the blackened rafters.

The acolytes stare darkly. One rises as if expecting
confrontation, but he shrinks back from the chill of the Golden Girl’s gaze.

“My father told me you carried the faith of self in your heart.
He spoke of you with the reverence you show for your dead gods. He spoke of
hope that the peace and greatness of Empire could be restored in a Gracia
fallen to plague and war and the ambitions of petty kings.”

Then with the host pledged to him as High King, which held
Knights of Marthai and Veneranda, and of Cosiand, and of Valos, and of Magandis
and all the free lands of the South, Gilvaleus set forth his challenge to
Thoradun, sent by arcane craft and voiced to all who stood at the Usurper’s
side.

“What changed you, then? What made you embrace a mythology dead
and buried a thousand years? What made you afraid?”

The White Pilgrim stops before the doors as her footsteps approach
from behind. He does not look back, cannot see through the storm of shadow that
breaks like a thundering wave within his mind.

And the voice of Gilvaleus rang out there, saying ‘The time of
the Usurper hath ended, and in the name of the gods of the Orosana who have
returned the Sword of Kings in this darkest time, the High King of Gracia will
make amends.’ Then did Thoradun’s forces forge a wall of iron and spell-fire
around Beresan, and waited for the host of Gilvaleus to break upon that wall as
a single storm wave upon the unyielding stone of endless cliffs. But Gilvaleus
had learned from his Father’s death in the siege of Beresan, and was content
with dark purpose to let the Usurper await his assault.

“My father knew he was dying and he wept for you,” the Golden
Girl says. “He wept for Aelathar. But he never gave up the faith of heart and
mind. He never once gave up the dedication to life that is the first thing
sacrificed on the braziers of your Orosana. The dead gods buy the faith of folk
with promises that this life means nothing, and so can be thrown away because
the next life promises so much more.”

For when the forces of Gilvaleus set forth, with Nàlwyr in the
van and the greatest hundred Knights of all the Free Lands and Peoples,
Gilvaleus took them to a great stone arch atop the cliffs a league from
Mitrost. And those who had ridden with him from Beresan knew this entrance to
the Unseen Pathways of the Lotherasien, but Nàlwyr and others were left to
amazement when Gilvaleus cried ‘Behold!’ and drew forth the Sword of Kings,
whose power set the archway stones alight, and set open the Secret Gate through
which all Gracia lay waiting.

“Life is its own end and purpose. This was the faith you embraced
as a son of Empire. The faith that drove you to save Gracia…”

“I broke my faith,” the White Pilgrim says. Voice low, wracked
with a pain that is a part of him through every step of a pilgrimage toward a
death that will never come. “I failed. In everything I tried to do.”

“Then fix that now. Fix what has been done. Change what will be
done.”

Then with the war cry that was the Triad and his Nation’s name
and the name of the Sword of Kings, Gilvaleus led his host through the Gate and
along the Pathways of the Lotherasien to the city of Aradorg, a two day’s ride
from Beresan and head of the great supply convoys that fed the Usurper’s
fortress. And in the gloom of dusk, the forces of Gilvaleus fell upon the city
and its defenders, and all were surprised, and most were lost, so that
Gilvaleus and his army slipped back to the Unseen Pathways and returned to
Mitrost before the moons had risen in that night sky.

“The past is the past,” he whispers. “There is no future except
that which pays for the past. You live in dreams, girl.”

“My father had a dream,” she says.

The White Pilgrim hears the dark determination that threads her
voice to replace the fear, the pain. A thing she waits to say. A thing she
tries to tell him at night before a fire beneath the watch of the standing stones.

Something is changed, but he does not understand.

She steps past him where he stares at the shadows of the doors
ahead. He remembers that he was walking there, but he knows not why.

“My father searched for you because he carried something of
yours, my high king. Found on the field at Marthai. He knew you were alive,
even as the lies and legends grew like weeds in the aftermath of that battle.
Gilvaleus claimed by the gods and waiting to return in Gracia’s time of need.
But he did believe that you would return before the end. His dream was to make
that happen, but seeing you now, I give thanks he died when he did, for to look
upon what you’ve become would have killed his spirit as surely as fate took his
body in the end.”

So began the breaking of Thoradun, whose forces soon were
enraged with the fear of the High King Gilvaleus and the Knights he named his
Companions. And for bloody month after bloody month, Gilvaleus led his
Companions along the Unseen Pathways, and passed through and across every part
of Gracia in the course that the High King’s strategy made. Then one by one,
the Usurper’s strongholds were assaulted, and many were broken, and those that
were not broken were left scarred with the fear of a foe who traveled seemingly
along the air itself, and descended like the most sudden storm.

“You do not know…” the White Pilgrim says, but the pain in his
heart has spread roots to his throat. He is pacing, does not remember walking.

“I know there is war to all sides of us,” the Golden Girl says,
dogging the White Pilgrim’s steps as he circles between the brazier and the
altar’s shadowed slab. “Or had you not noticed? Arsanc the Black Duke forges a
hold over the northern duchies with Norgyr steel. He is the usurper reborn, and
he will claim the marble throne because the only one who can claim it from him
is you.”

“Arsanc can have his throne. Him or any other. No difference…”
The White Pilgrim fights to breathe. He forces the words in a rush of anger
that builds, kindles itself with the heat of all his pain. “The dream died when
the Empire died. A world at peace. A hundred nations, a thousand peoples spread
across five thousand leagues of Isheridar. Have you ever seen a map of the
world-land? Seen the scope, seen the impossible vision of a world’s worth of life
held together as one?”

He is shouting, voice breaking with a strength he does not hear
for so long. The acolytes at their fire rise as one suddenly, slipping through
the canvas-curtained doorway at a run. His mind is clear. He does not understand.

Then battle after battle, Gilvaleus and his Companions cut
away at the cords of steel and stone and spell that held the Usurper’s Kingdom
strong, striking without warning in the Far South of Charath, then appearing
days later in the Spring snows of the Mundra Mountains. And folk called the
host of Gilvaleus the Ghost Dragons, whose red-and-gold banners blazed in the
light of dawn as his force rode down garrison and patrol, then vanished again
to elude the pursuit of the anguished captains of the Usurper’s scouts.

“Fifteen hundred years, the Empire held a world,” the White Pilgrim
says. “Created a golden age by the wisdom of its masters and the knights of the
Lotherasien who were its virtue. A thousand years of peace in the Elder
Kingdoms, and I sought only to remake that glory in this smallest part of the
world, then destroyed all I worked for in a single lifetime of hubris and
deceit.”

And though Thoradun in his rage did threaten and pledge that a
hundred years would be only the beginning of his dark reign over Gracia, it
took but a single year through which Gilvaleus did harry and assault the forces
and citadels of the Usurper, and day by slow day did his Companions win back
the hearts of Gracia and break the will of those who were yet bent to the
Usurper’s rule.

“No nation can rise above the weakness of those who lead it,” The
White Pilgrim says, quieter now. “Weakness is a scourge that plagues us all.”

Then in the bright Spring of that next year, the realms of
Charath and Staris were reclaimed, and the lands of Andrezou and Aynwel by
Summer, and then Valos and Cosiand, and Eudorin, and the Southlands were united
once more, as the Kingdom that Eurymos held before the Usurper’s black
treachery on the Day of Death. Then was Maris routed by the armies of Prince
Sestian and claimed by his line, and the Usurper’s forces driven back across
the River Vouris for the first time in nine long years.