A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (4 page)

Now, as then, he hadn’t been afraid to die. Not exactly.

Among the Vanyr, it was said that all life, all the world was the
balance between dark and light, between good and malice. That great western
realm of the Elder Kingdoms was a land whose folk had clashed with the
brutality of Norgyr northward and the cunning of Ajaeltha to the blistering
south for four millennia, and which had never been conquered.

At nine years old, Morghan had been taken in by a mercenary band
in the southlands, his parents barely a memory even then. He held a dagger for
the first time. He’d been shown how to kill with it, quick and dirty. Over a
fire the night before the young Morghan fought his first sortie, a one-eyed
veteran watched for a long while. And seeing the fear in him, the warrior
quietly told the boy to not be afraid.

We hide from the darkness all our lives, though darkness takes
us all in the end. But those who embrace the dark, those who meet death and are
not afraid, can face that end with power, for we know the voice of death when
we hear the shadow speak.

The memories he carried now were all that remained of those who
had followed him.

We face the dark without fear,
the old warrior said.
We
who know the name of the night.

He had too much left to do.

Vindicator…

He saw the blade then.

Beyond one pillar indistinguishable from all the others, unseen
until he circled slowly around it, a figure sat. The mummified warrior was in
chain shirt and helm, dead for longer than Morghan cared to guess. The clothes
and the leather of belt and scabbard were shredded and split with dry rot and
age. The figure sat upright, back to the pillar, legs crossed and head bowed as
if deep in the throes of some endless contemplation. The sword in its hands
flared in the dagger’s pale light.

It was a hand-and-a-half blade, tapered wide to the base, and
hilt-wrapped with pale leather showing no sign of age. The guard was black
steel in the shape of what looked like the teeth of some creature Morghan was
glad he’d never met. It curved opposite directions at either end, no sign of
where it ended and the steel of the blade began. Down the center of that blade,
a damask pattern caught the light in blue-white lines. The dust that clung to
it was spread evenly, but even as Morghan touched the blade, he watched it
slough off like gently falling snow.

In the center of the pommel, he saw the mark of Barrend. The same
sigil that his shield bore where the Portown weaponsmith had shown it to him. A
black rune that seemed to swallow the light.

Avenge them…

The voice had been calling to him since he set foot within the
citadel, but there was a clarity to it now that left no doubt where it was
coming from. And where it almost seemed his own voice at the outset, his own
thoughts tripping him up as they sometimes did, Morghan felt the words of the
blade now as a metallic echo in his mind.

He crouched low, appraising the body carefully for a long while.
“Barrend’s Bane,” he whispered, and as he spoke, he felt a faint twist of power
thread through him. He ran a callused thumb along the blade, felt its razor
edge draw blood. The dead figure’s hands had kept their grip, fingers locked
tight to hilt and guard where Morghan was forced to snap them off, one by one.

When he finally seized the sword, Morghan felt the power again,
spiking in a sensation like the emptiness of unspoken words. A bloodless rage
twisted through him just as the voice had twisted through him before, and in
that instant, in a heartbeat, in the rawness of memory where it clawed at him
from the dark dreams that the day tried to push away, he knew that anything was
possible.

Too many things still to be done.

So many debts to repay.

Avenge them…

“The black mark, on the girl’s arm. What is it?”

Morghan started, spinning back to where Scúrhand was rising shakily.
“Not important,” the warrior said as he handed the dagger back, tried to mask
the tremor in his hand. He didn’t ask after Scúrhand’s return to consciousness.
No other pleasantries between them. Not necessary anymore.

Morghan raised the new blade carefully, felt its balance send the
subtle signals of control through his arm. “What is this place?” he asked as he
began to swing the sword in long arcs, working to assess its subtleties,
adjusting to them. Working on a level below thought, below consciousness. The
sword seemed almost weightless in his hands, shifting like something alive.

“Old,” was all Scúrhand said. He was pacing slowly, still finding
his strength as he circled along the walls. “Older even than the citadel,
judging by the stonework here. The one built first, then the other raised above
it.”

“What was that one’s story, do you think?” Morghan gestured to
the figure, slumped in shadow now.

“In a tomb, one shouldn’t be surprised to find the dead,”
Scúrhand said. The dagger was still the only light, shadow lurching around them
each time he swung it to scan to either side.

“No dead here except him, though. And usually you arrange to be
laid down, not sit.”

Morghan saw the mark then. At the figure’s shoulder, a faint red
glow flared through a dark shroud of rusted chainmail links. He stepped back
instinctively, the bastard sword up before him as if he expected the figure to
suddenly rise.

Scúrhand saw. He followed Morghan’s gaze to the corpse, staring
for a moment before he stepped up to kneel at its side. He felt the warrior’s
blade follow his movement, ready.

“Unless the one you have to arrange to bury is yourself,” the
mage said thoughtfully. He carefully pulled away the screen of mail to reveal a
mark still etched in the leathery flesh beneath.

It was a shape Morghan had never seen before. Three part-circles
turning around each other, interlocked like a harrier’s claws. At their ends,
three scalloped blades were nocked, their edges locked into a triad. The symbol
pulsed with a blood-red gleam, rising and fading in a steady pattern like the
beating of a dying heart.

Vindicator…

The warrior felt the voice as much as he heard it now. A presence
pressing in on him, threading through his hands where they wrapped the haft of
the bastard sword tightly. He felt that red glow burn his eyes suddenly, felt
the pain of the slave brand at his neck. Three loops, interlocked. Their shapes
were wholly different, but he felt the two sigils reflected in each other in a
way he didn’t understand.

“What is it?” he hissed.

“Was, not is,” Scúrhand said. “Lotherasien. But he’s as dead as
he looks, I assure you.”

Morghan’s eyes narrowed. “The Imperial Guard?” He had little interest
in history, but it was a name he knew.

Morghan’s eyes narrowed. “The Imperial Guard?” He had little
interest in history, but it was a name that even he had heard. For the fifteen
hundred years that the Empire of the Lothelecan held sway across the continent,
the Lotherasien were the force by which they ruled. Elite troops, legendary in
their dedication, falling to shadow just as inevitably as the Empire had in the
end. Fallen to the unnamed cataclysm that turned the distant capital of Ulannor
Mor to a sheet of black glass. “Why is he here?”

Scúrhand said nothing in answer, but he glanced back to the sword
in Morghan’s hand. “Is that the blade they seek?”

Morghan only shrugged. Scúrhand was thoughtful a long while. “So
long as we hold it, negotiations might go in our favor…”

“They won’t have it,” the warrior said.

Scúrhand laughed. “This is hardly the time for trophy hunting…”

“Arsanc will not hold this blade while I live!” Morghan’s cry cut
the silence, cut the cold.

The smile died on Scúrhand’s lips, no sound now except the warrior’s
breath, visible in the chill air. Morghan looked up to see the mage’s gaze
fixed on the guard of the blade, the black mark there.

“This Arsanc,” Scúrhand said carefully. “The one the girl spoke
of. This one you seem to know, who is he?”

“Just a name.”

“Indeed. The Freelord of Thorfin in Norgyr goes by that name.”

Morghan wouldn’t meet his friend’s gaze. “And when did the politics
of the northlands become one of your endless fascinations?”

“When politics crosses over into history, I pay attention. Arsanc
of Thorfin was poised to become High King of Gracia, five years past. The
height and end of the Wars of Succession that restored Gracia to monarchy and
sanity. A long fall from grace for him since then, or so they say.”

“Do they.” Not a question. A spark of anger in the warrior now as
Scúrhand pulled history from memory.

“He was killed even as he tried to claim the throne,” the mage
said thoughtfully. Remembering. “Gone for a time, then brought back to the
light. Or so they say.”

Morghan said nothing, but Scúrhand saw the uncertainty in the
flicker of the warrior’s eyes as he looked away. “He controlled all the northlands
once. Threw it away for the sake of wanting more. Reclaimed Thorfin after a
time, or most of it. You fought in Reimari, you said. The battles for the
borderlands. Those were Arsanc’s lands you were warring for, after he’d lost
them.”

Morghan glanced back quickly. The look in his eyes told Scúrhand
he hadn’t known any of it, and that he was angrier now that he did. He shrugged
coldly. “My interest is more recent.”

“Recent enough to have brought us here,” Scúrhand said, understanding
suddenly. “You knowing that this force of Arsanc’s would be here to meet us.
Yet you asked me of Razeen, said you sought the lore and history of the shield.
That maker’s mark. But that quest meant nothing, didn’t it? A ruse to keep my
company.”

Morghan stood in dark silence a moment. “Can you fly us out?”

“I can fly myself out,” Scúrhand said. He pulled the black cloak
tight around him as he paced away.

Twelve days into the nightmare of Eltolitinus, Morghan had done
his closest dance with death. Twelve days in, fate only knows how many levels
deep into the ancient dungeons of Myrnan that were once the foundations raising
up the entire Sorcerers’ Isle in towers of white stone. In a dead garden of
onyx trees, he was scouting with three mercenaries of the Vanyr,
battle-hardened and senses sharp as slivered glass. He was leading, not
watching behind as they were cut down by living shadow that seeped from the
stones.

Morghan had tried to fight his way through to them, only to fall
beneath the paralyzing cold of living death, nearly consumed. Scúrhand saved
him, pulled him up from a narrow well of black where the shapeless forms of the
three who had already fallen tore at him with taloned fingers, their faces,
their bodies shredded by a darkness with no end.

In their names…
the sword whispered to him. Morghan
started, stumbled back even before he realized he was moving. With effort, he
loosened his grip on the pale leather of the haft, knuckles white where his
fingers were locked tight.

“When I left you in Einthra a year past, I traveled north.”
Against the silence, Morghan heard his own voice, uncertain. Across the chamber,
Scúrhand turned back, the warrior pale at the fading edge of the dagger’s glow.
“I took up a call to arms. Mountain giants of the Ceilamist raiding farmsteads,
sweeping down as far as the Thorann wood.”

“Thorann in Thorfin. Those are Arsanc’s lands.”

“Those were Arsanc’s lands. He abandoned the frontier two days
past High Winter. Didn’t want to commit the resources necessary to defend it.
Homesteaders, farmers. I told myself I could save them.”

In the mountains of Jharlaash, in the blackness beneath Myrnan,
Morghan had learned the name of the night. But rather than quelling the warrior’s
fear, that name had scarred him. Cut him through flesh, bone, and spirit.
Filled his dreams with the faces of those who followed him and were gone now.

Scúrhand was silent a while. “The girl. Thiri.”

“She bears the slave mark. One of those given up, cleared from
the mountains. Marked for sale to Jharlaash along with me. Arsanc must have
found some worth in her. Bought her back.”

Scúrhand felt something change in the warrior’s manner. He
thought he saw the darkness shift just slightly.

“The slavers wore Arsanc’s own black boar. He used the threat of
raid to cut away his own lands. Sell the people that paid him fealty. Betray
them all.”

Through the darkness, within the pain that threaded the voice,
Scúrhand heard the Morghan he knew. The answer unfolded in his mind, making
sense of what he had seen even as it spawned more questions that he ignored for
the moment.

Instead, he asked, “You’ve faced him? This Arsanc?”

“No.”

“Stood against him? Incited uprising?” Scúrhand sighed as the warrior
shook his head. “You know that vengeance really only works best when the other
party has some inkling that they’ve wronged you.”

“This isn’t about vengeance.”

In all their names…

Threading through the warrior suddenly, a shredding pain rose and
faded in a heartbeat. Morghan felt something twist inside him, Scúrhand seeing
it where he circled closer, wary suddenly.

“You see something,” the mage said. Not a question. “You’ve seen
it since we arrived here. What?”

Morghan shook his head slowly. “I hear it. The blade has a voice.
For me, at least.”

Where Morghan held the sword out, the mage appraised it, the blue-white
damask seeming to shift and flow in the dagger’s pale light. He glanced to the
shield, saw a hint of the same pattern in the shimmering steel of its rim. “The
arms of Barrend are too-long separated, perhaps. Anxious to know each other
again.”

Morghan only shrugged. “Arsanc had a people who looked to him for
protection, and he sold them as chattel. I called for those who would follow me
and found six strong enough, six brave enough. If you’d gone with me, you’d be
dead along with them.” The warrior’s voice was even. “Arsanc will not hold this
blade.”