A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (40 page)

Arsanc turns away then. He walks to Gareyth, whose hands hold
down the Golden Girl’s broken arm. The Black Duke nods.

A knife in the sergeant’s hand is pressed to Justain’s throat as
a convulsion of fear takes her. The blade draws blood as it cuts through the
leather thong of the talisman, down the line of her breast as it slashes her
tunic to reveal the armor beneath. Laughter around her as she screams while the
chain shirt is pulled roughly off. A girl who pretends to be a warrior. Shirt
and leggings are torn away by armored hands.

“I am Gilvaleus…”

He whispers it to the silence. The Black Duke is at the altar, a
figure of steel and shadow that shrouds the pale shape beneath him. The Golden
Girl no longer moves, no longer fights through the tears and the terror of what
will come.

“I am Gilvaleus!”

The White Pilgrim shouts it now, and all eyes turn to him. His
voice carries all the weight of that confession, the shadow drawing down on
him. Denying the truth to his own mind even as he fights to hold it clear.
Fights to remember the truth of who he is. Of what he has done.

“I am the source of all your pain, Black Duke. I am the madness
that ordered Nàlwyr to murder. I am the hand that wielded the sword anointed
with your brother’s blood, and I offer my life to you as debt for blood, here
and now.”

He feels the confusion from the scarred sergeant, from the
silver-haired mage, from all the rest. Only Arsanc meets his gaze.

“My blood for your brother’s,” the White Pilgrim calls. “My life
for hers. Let the girl go and my fate is in your hands.”

And Gilvaleus on the Marble Throne of the Kings of Gracia sat
alone, and his Court and Companions were of one voice in their allegiance to
him, for all knew that no treachery could stand against the sight of the
Whitethorn that was their High King’s power, and the sign of the strength of
his reign. And Gracia endured the Peace of Gilvaleus for long years, and sang
of the glories of his rule and the Sword of Kings.

The Black Duke lifts a hand to the White Pilgrim with the effort
that might swat an errant wasp. And in the movement of that hand, he is a
puppet. Lifted and twisted and smashed to the ground in a searing pulse of pain
that is the longing for death that he carries with him for endless years. The
pain of living, which only the release of death can end.

“Fool of a pilgrim. You could have saved yourself.”

He is dying, cannot move where the magic of the Black Duke throws
him a dozen strides across the chamber, breaks him at the foot of the brazier.
He feels his back shatter as he hits, but the sudden numbness is a relief from
the pain of Arsanc’s spell that can only scour his mind now.

He is dying, cannot move, cannot close his eyes, so that he
stares at the altar stone, sees the Golden Girl fighting again as Arsanc strips
away his armor, piece by piece. He sees one of the assembled circle break from
their witness position, Arsanc’s force holding to watch as their master’s dark
revenge is made.

It is the sergeant, Gareyth. The White Pilgrim remembers his
face. Remembers all the anger in the young eyes, remembers how he stole the
warrior’s blade. Humiliated him, enraged him. And all that is gone now. Only
pity in his gaze for an old man dying slowly, in agony. A blade in his hand flashes
bright as he moves closer, but Arsanc’s voice carries, halts the sergeant with
an echo of endless contempt.

“Leave him to his gods…”

‘And now my High King Gilvaleus? What fates are left to me,
now that you turn from me, left alone with all my enemies at hand?’

He is dying, cannot move as feels the shadow slip across his
sight. Blinding him to match the numbness, so that the voice of the Golden Girl
fills all the remaining spaces of his mind, her screams echoing endlessly from
cold stone.

HE IS DYING, CANNOT MOVE. Cannot close his eyes, so that
he stares at the empty altar stone, sees it gleam with the bright lines of dawn
squeezed through shuttered windows.

His back is broken. Limbs numb to all feeling, the freezing cold
of stone against his cheek. He slips into blackness, slips out again.

He is dying, cannot move, feels the pain that is the mailed fist
of the Black Duke’s power fading after endless torment. An endless night. A
trembling in his fingertips, the pinprick pain of frostbite threading his legs.

He tries to think on how long he lies here. Tries to remember
where he comes from. Who he is.

And then Gilvaleus arose in light from the Field of Marthai,
and looked to North and South to the twelve peaks, and East and West to the
Great Yewnwood and the Raging Sea of Leagin that were the bounds of his
Kingdom. And a host of the Twelve descended on chariots of storm and fire to
stand around the High King, and their leader was Denas the High Father, who
spoke and said ‘You bleed for the land, High King, and by your blood the land
will one day be healed. And so come and let your hurts be healed in the halls
of Orosan.’

No. Something is wrong. He feels it.

He is alive. Does not understand. A spike of anguish twists
through his gut like hot iron as he lurches, splays across the floor with the
endless scream of having been reborn. All the memory rushes through him of all
the suffering he ever bears or inflicts in a long life of pain.

“Denas who is my father the storm lord,” he whispers.
“Triad-brothers who are shield and sea, the Orosana who are the grace and life
of us all, why?” But he hears no answer come.

The last time he holds the Whitethorn, he kneels on the bloody
ground of Marthai and watches as the hilt of ivory and grey leather twists and
falls from his shaking hand.

He hears the voice of Blade in his mind like the shriek of steel
on stone. He feels its pain as it calls to him. Feels its power as it tries to
hold him, denies the death of the mortal wound that Astyra’s spear makes.
Punching through armor and ribs, heart and spine, armor again even as he raises
the Whitethorn and carves his son from neck to navel with a cry of vengeance
that is the end of all his dreams.

He sees the destruction that his greatness wreaks. Something
moves before him, and he wipes gore from his brow to see Nàlwyr watching. He
sees him speak, his friend, his captain, grown so old in the long empty years
since he fled. But no voice can be heard through the haze of blood and the
scream of the forsaken sword of kings.

A man might turn away from the friend he betrays. Might walk away
from the warrior’s death that the gods deny.

He knows nothing except that he should die. He knows that he is
spared, feels the sins of his reign hanging about him like unseen chains.

He limps from the battlefield. He feels the shards of pain that
claw his chest, his leg with each step.

He does not look back.

The White Pilgrim lies there for time beyond the reckoning of his
senses. He feels a warmth thread through him. Feels it centered in his left
arm, twisted under him where the Black Duke’s magic cast him down.

He struggles to move, fights to breathe as he reaches outward,
fingers clutching spastic against cold stone. His voice is the faintest whisper,
hanging in bright silence.

“Why will this life not end, and why do others still suffer by
this hand, by this madness, by this weakness?”

Then his fingers touch rough homespun, burning with a heat that
no earthly fire ever made.

“What is your plan for me…?”

And in answer, the White Pilgrim hears the voice that calls to
him for the last time on the field at Marthai fourteen years before.

Beneath the brazier, tucked in and out of sight where the Golden
Girl hid it, a bundle wrapped in torn and dusty cloth seethes with a pulse of
white light. The White Pilgrim strains to reach it, feels the power of that
light already threading through him. Keeping him alive even across the distance
between them, long after the Black Duke’s wrath should claim him. Taking all
the pain from him as the Blade touches his hand.

He tears through old cloth with a vigor he does not feel in
fourteen years. He grasps the hilt of ivory and grey leather as he stands,
drawing forth the longsword whose edge and ridge are dwyrsilver steel,
cross-guard and fuller in steeled gold, burning white where ancient glyphs of
prophecy and power speak the name of the sword of kings and send its strength
coursing through him like a dark wave.

Ankathira the Whitethorn. Claiming him. Accepting him.

He remembers.

He kneels at the side of the fallen priest and speaks the rites
of Danassa and Herias, but he has no time to burn the body in his haste. He
walks to the altar stone but will not look upon it in his rage. He sees instead
the broken leather thong cast to the floor, the talisman that once hung at the
Golden Girl’s neck. Justain. The blood-red dragon set in pale gold. Her
travel-stained cloak lies beside it, a dark pool on the floor.

He understands the dreams now. He remembers the sight that the
Blade gives him, long ago. Visions of light and darkness. His mother’s fear as
she dies. His father’s lament for the nation he tries and fails to save. The
dream of the king’s-bastard Astyra sent into hiding by a mother he loves, a
women he breaks in body and mind. The love of his best friend. The love of the
queen he spurns. The sight of them together, a fire in his mind that burns for
long years.

He will not turn away from these things anymore.

He sees the Golden Girl in his dreams. He sees her for long
months, walking the endless road of hamlets and farmsteads as she follows him.
He sees her father in dreams, long ago. Following that same road. He remembers
now.

When he carries it before, the Blade gives him sight beyond that
of other men. Beyond even the vision of his mother Irthna and the sorcery that
is her gift. The Blade in his hand as high king gives him the power that lets him
strike against the usurper Thoradun, lets him channel the magic of Empire to
reclaim the Empire’s glory.

He loses that sight when he loses the Blade, letting it fall from
his blood-soaked hand on the field where his son lies dead before him. And so
separated from him over long years, held tight to the will of Nàlwyr and
Justain as they seek him over endless leagues, five thousand days of hope and
pain, the Blade’s vision watches him instead.

These past seasons, the dreams he has. As the Blade comes ever
closer to him, he sees it because it is the Blade that seeks him. Not the
Golden Girl. Not Nàlwyr, now gone. The two of them are only agents for the
hunger of the Blade that is a sign of his connection to it, manifesting as the
hunger he feels now at the sight of it, the touch of it.

All this time, the Whitethorn, sword of kings, has been seeking
its master. Showing in dreams the way that leads back to its power in the end.

The White Pilgrim steps from the shattered doors of the shrine into
bright morning. He kneels at the torn turf where the hassas descend, sees it
dry and guesses that two nights have passed.

He paces quickly to the great ash. The pain at his chest, in his
heart, his mind is gone. The ache at his leg, the ache of age is gone. He embraces
the rage that replaces it. Kneels in prayer at Aelathar’s stone one last time.

He takes the talisman that is the Golden Girl’s. The sign of her
father’s faith, her mother’s love. He lays it on Aelathar’s name.

“Until you see her,” he whispers, “keep this safe.”

He rises with the strength granted him by the Blade he wears now.
Its scabbard belt is slung below the cord of his robes, unknotted in the manner
of a pilgrim.

“Tell Nàlwyr I am broken for what has been done,” he says.

He goes to the well, to the stone bowl where he retrieves one of
the token-coins Arsanc gave him. The profile face of the Black Duke shivers the
shadow in his mind, whips it to the seething darkness that he welcomes like an
old friend.

“Forgive me,” he says, “for what must be done.”

With the Whitethorn in hand, the White Pilgrim summons up the
sight once more, and in that sight, he sees the Black Duke’s course through a
sky bleeding golden dawn along the line of white sea. A view he knows, rooting
deep in heart and memory.

He looks to glimpse the Golden Girl, just for a moment. He sees
her bound and tied behind the sergeant, Gareyth, where he rides. Her eyes are
closed in merciful sleep.

The blood of children on his hands.

He sets the cloak the Golden Girl wore to his shoulders,
concealing the Blade as he walks off into the dawn.

The voice of the Whitethorn is in his mind now, and he remembers
it all.

The Empire of the Lothelecan falls the year he is born, and
Gilvaleus is the Empire’s child. Grandson of Garneus who is the last regent of Gracia-under-Empire,
then first king of the new Gracia that shares the year of Gilvaleus’s birth.
That new Gracia fractures into petty kingdoms and bloody war the day his
grandfather dies.

Gilvaleus is only a boy, seven summers behind him. Nephew of
Eurymos, who claims the crown from Garneus his father, and who fights and fails
to hold the nascent kingdom together. Son of Telos, who claims the crown in
turn when his brother is murdered by the usurper Thoradun.

The usurper is Lord of Sannos, where stands the shrine of Angarid
and Aelathar’s resting place. Sannos where Arsanc speaks to him outside an
empty village. White Pilgrim and Black Duke, the burning of the dead. Sannos
where Justain comes to him, tells him who he is, where he fails her. Blood on
his hands.

He remembers now. The power of the Blade reshapes his mind as it
mends his body.

He remembers it all.

He is the Empire’s child, is trained to its standards and
tactics, to its ideals and nobility. He has passed twenty summers when his
mother gives her life to channel the power of the sword of kings. When his
father falls in battle against Thoradun. When Gilvaleus rides to his side, too
late. Seizing the sword of kings from dead hands. Vowing revenge.

He is the Empire’s child, and grows up with the faith of self
that denies the old gods their power for a thousand years. The belief that
neither gods nor any other mystical force controls the fate of the world and
its countless peoples. The belief that the destiny of the mortal races is
theirs to decide, safe from the slavery that worship and pantheon make. The
faith of self sees all folk free to seize the powers of mind and magic that
previous generations claim as a boon of the gods, to be bestowed only on the
faithful.

He is the Empire’s child, and he seeks to rebuild its greatness
in Gracia. Seeks to forge a lasting peace, a rule of law. A freedom from fear
and tyranny to last another thousand years.

On the Plains of Marthai, it all ends.

The distance to Mitrost is thirty leagues along the straight line
of the sky. Two day’s journey for Arsanc and his company, the hassas flying at
speed. High Spring is done at tonight’s sunset, and the Black Duke must be in
Mitrost then. The seat of the high king that Gracia is denied for fourteen
years of strife and war.

To walk that distance will be ten days or more along the twisting
tracks that lead to roads that shadow the great River Vouris. Seven days,
perhaps, if the White Pilgrim walks the grassland border of the river valley,
cutting overland on a straight course south and east for the sea. All of it too
long, the king’s conclave starting with Arsanc’s arrival. No time left to him.

He carries the Whitethorn, sword of kings. He knows another road.

A strength he does not know in long years drives the White
Pilgrim as he runs. He passes by the farmsteads and hamlets of these fertile
lands at a distance. He sees the same scars of war that have haunted him on
this spring’s journey. Fields burned, fanes leveled by spellcraft and the force
of blood and steel.

These are old lands. He knows it. Remembers it. The confluence of
cultures that defines the heartland. Gracia that is the war-torn present. The
Aigorani that are the fathers of Gracia, the Aclicians from across the broad
Leagin who settle here even before the first Aigorani city-states are raised.
The Empire of Eria that is built on the bones of Aigoris, and which first binds
these lands as a nation with animys and iron.

These are old lands, and in them are the old ruins in which the unseen
pathways of the Lotherasien are hidden away.

He knows those hidden roads. They are a part of him now where the
Blade feeds him that knowledge. The memories that are his mother’s, long ago.

The sun is setting pale as he finds the archway he seeks.
Standing isolated in a lonely stretch of beech forest whose ground betrays no
sign of any traveler but him. Far from the road, far from the farm tracks. Grey
stone tumbles as if part of a wall once, only a wide archway still standing
along a roughly flattened yard of flagstones slumbering beneath moss and long
grass.