A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (41 page)

He feels the pulse of power in the Blade as he approaches. He remembers
it. The lifeblood of kings flows through the dweomer of its steel, through him.

Thou must take comfort in thyself alone, and look to the hope
of these days to carry thee. For I am taken into Orosan to heal the wounds that
are my heart and memory.

He should die on the Plains of Marthai that day. It is why he
casts the Blade aside, lets it fall to the blood-mire of that killing field. He
feels the mortal wound that Astyra deals out, lets it take him down into
shadow.

But as long as he is bound to Ankathira the Whitethorn, he cannot
die. This is his fate, he knows now. This is his curse.

Long ago, the faithful of the old gods whisper that the Empire
falls because it seizes and suppresses the gods’ own power. The magic of mind
and mana, life and sun harnessed by mortal hands. The magic that destroyed the
Imperial capital of Ulannor Mor in a cataclysm whose aftershocks set the
structure of Imperial power crumbling.

The practice of the priests states that emperors and kings can
only ever be the supplicating shadows of the gods who give them life. Forced to
bend their reign beneath the same yoke of subservience, of faith, worn by all
mortals. So it is that the Empire’s greed for power pushes its leaders to
hunger for and seize the power of the gods. Until the true gods, grown
impatient in their might and majesty, strike them down.

He awakes alive in Marthai as he awakes alive in the shrine,
feeling the dark power, the hunger that is Whitethorn’s coursing through him.
Claiming him. Accepting him. Healing the wounds of the body but leaving mind
and spirit shattered at the sight of a son’s lifeless form. The memory of a
young girl’s scream.

He draws the sword of kings. He feels the flood of power flow
from Whitethorn to the ancient stones and the portal the Lotherasien built
there. The arch and courtyard are set out by careful hands to take the appearance
of ancient ruin, keystones glowing now with the symbol of the Imperial Guard.
Three blades and three moons are set touching, overlapping, held to each other
in a tight embrace.

Within the archway, a grey light flares and burns away as dark
mist, and all the hundred hundred destinations that connect within the portal
network of the Lotherasien fill his mind.

This is the Empire’s power, which wins him the kingdom of his father,
his uncle, his grandfather with only twenty summers behind him. This is the
Empire’s power, with which he attempts to reforge a nation. And in doing so, he
follows that Empire’s own doomed example.

He remembers the place he goes to. His thought and spirit are
clear now, the shadow gone that plagues his sight through long years of exile
and wandering. The curse he bears. The penance he pays for the sins of the king
he is, long ago.

Over long years of wandering, he hides from the question, hidden
from the essence of what he is, long ago.

Asking himself how he can be punished by gods in which he never believed.

He moves through the archway, through the burning mist, stepping
through to a changed light. The sun still hangs low but the sky is shrouded,
bright but cold above the sea. It is a different ruin whose far side he steps
through. A great stone arch atop the cliffs a league from Mitrost, spread
beneath a sky of dusk and dark cloud that shreds away on the wind. The portal’s
power twists through him as the sign of the Lotherasien on its keystones fades
away.

From the edge of a long grove of green-budded cypress, he looks
out upon the last of a great valley, thick with farm thorps. These crowd
together and push toward the feet of a great stone city set astride the twisting
blue-black of the Vouris as it rolls to the sea. Mitrost is bright against the
dark slopes of that endless water. From long ago, remnants of the glory that is
the legacy of Gilvaleus seep into its shadowed stones, white banners twisting
in the wind.

The last sun casts knives of blood-red light down through the
clouds. The White Pilgrim kneels in shadow, feels the chill of dusk but ignores
it with the warmth of the Blade flooding through him.

He rests with clear mind, no thought, no fear. He sees the light
of fire and evenlamp begin to flare in the surrounding farmsteads and the city
below. He waits for the fall of full darkness that will mark the beginning of
the end.

AS NIGHT DESCENDS ON MITROST, a shadowed figure walks down
from the goat trails of the hills. A pilgrim by his look. He gains the farm
tracks, no notice given him from the lighted windows of sod houses and
weathered huts.

He slips unnoticed onto the main road, which despite the time of
night still runs heavy with wains, merchants, laborers, other pilgrims, all
moving for the city. No one caring that history is made here as sunset marks
the ending of the High Spring. Only seeking the commerce and the blessings that
come with that.

The keep that rises at the center of the city atop its great hill
is all that can be seen over serpentine stone walls. Long years ago, Mitrost is
the White City. Now, those long years cast even longer shadows, the deep scars
of fires arcane and mundane marked as a dark stain upon the stones. Signs of
the battles that erupt in the aftermath of Marthai and bring the reign of
Gilvaleus to its end.

Four decades before that end, his grandfather is Imperial regent.
Elected from among the ranks of the nobility of Gracia the Great, the heart and
most powerful province of the eastern Empire. It is under Empire that these
lands are named the Elder Kingdoms. A legend bestowed with careful thought,
designed to quell the last of the ancient hostilities between Gracia, Norgyr,
Vanyr, Ajelast, Kelistae. A name that speaks to the ancient power of these
nations, but whose official rendering in the common tongue of Lothela makes
clear that none of these five cultures will ever again challenge the Empire for
power.

Fifteen centuries ago, the Empire claims the mantle of Empire of
all Isheridar. However, the five endlessly warring nations abutting the western
Leagin Sea make that grandiose title a lie as they laugh off the overtures of
the Lothelecan.

Those greatest powers of the east ignore the will of Empire for
two hundred years, their independence a dark stain on a banner of Imperial
unity. They fight that unity for three centuries thereafter. The War Kings of
the Kelist, declaring that their sons and daughters will build a wall of their
own flesh, blood, and bone around the green isles before the Imperial banner
flies there. The Norgyr and Vanyr, never conquered and never at peace, and as
happy to turn their berserker bloodlust against the Lotherasien as each other.

In the end, the corruption of ancient Ajelast is the weakness
that lets the strength of Empire spread. In those desert lands that are Ajaeltha
now, the khanan-emperors fall to the manipulation of the Imperial Guard. As
Ajelast deals in secret with the west for Imperial magic and lore, those riches
are the key that unlocks the gates of Isheridar’s last free lands. However, it
is the lords of Gracia who ultimately make the case for Empire, seeking the
peace with Norgyr and with Vanyr that is long denied them. Peace with which
they quickly rise to dominance in the unified east, spreading their culture,
their language to the Imperial realms on both sides of the sea.

When Gilvaleus names Mitrost the seat of the high king, it is a ruined
last legacy of Gracia’s greatness. A remnant of Eria, whose empire is the
center of civilization in the east for five hundred years, and on whose bones
Gracia is built. A crumbling maze of stone walls, and the legendary citadel of
the Gracian kings of old. Before the long wars of history. Before the peace of
the Empire that rewrote history.

The White Pilgrim follows the road through wagon camps and
farmsteads, pays as little mind to shepherds and mercenaries as they do to him.
The farmlands around Mitrost are fallen into disuse, the city less than half
the size it is when Gilvaleus rebuilds the white table.

He sees this and thinks on all that he does, long ago. All that
is undone in the aftermath of Marthai. All he throws away.

The road swells to its widest where it swallows the last of the
farmstead tracks, passing in through the main gates of the city that are as
heavily guarded tonight as they are at the height of Gilvaleus’s rule. He sees
the armor and livery of a dozen different forces, sees the barely concealed
hostility with which those forces work toward common defense. Banners fly that
he does not recognize. Three score armed and armored figures line the approach,
watching the steady flow of wain and foot traffic.

The black boar of Arsanc is not among the guards of the road, the
White Pilgrim sees. A subtle statement of power from the Black Duke. Already
setting himself above the rank of those he means to rule.

He watches fully a third of those who approach turned away at the
gates, left to drift back to the hamlets and tents that surround the city
walls. Beggars and pilgrims. The desperate, the too well-armed. The White
Pilgrim slows his own pace so that he falls back, walking alone. He approaches
the great bridge whose solid stone deck and columns sweep up in a continuous
line, shaped by the power of animys.

The White Pilgrim feels the eyes of the guards on him. He sees
spears lowered in a gesture of casual threat.

He has the Black Duke’s coin in hand, held out only for their
eyes. He slows. Does not stop. “The Duke Arsanc expects me.” No longer the
pilgrim’s voice. No longer the weakness of age, the shadow that clouds his
sight.

Only a moment’s hesitation before the spears are set aside. He
passes between them, passes between the sullen faces that mark his steady pace
through the cavernous gate house. The evenlamps that once burned here are long
gone. Torches replace them, sending flickering fingers of light along weathered
stone. He feels the cobbles beneath bare feet, hears a familiar echo lost to
the shadows and the noise of the city as he passes through the wall.

Long years ago, when this place is the seat of Gilvaleus the High
King, the tightly set streets of the wall wards are tenements and houses, shops
and market squares, academies and guild halls. When this place is the seat of
Gilvaleus the High King, the ancient ruin of the keep is rebuilt in the white
stone of the Marthai quarries. Surrounded by a royal court of merchant stalls
and sages’ workrooms, of stables and alehouses, courtyards and apartments. All
that space is open to blue sky, and lit at night with a magical glow imbued
into the white stones of the keep itself.

The courtyards are long gone now. The White Pilgrim sees the
streets darkened as he passes through, keeping a bearing for the high hill
where the keep stands. The light of its walls seeps from beneath the grime of
long years, shedding shadows that are the silver-gold of first dawn. A pale
gleam that makes the glow of torches and watchfires along its walls seem
brighter.

Set on the empty coast of Marthai and Veneranda when they are one
land under Prince Sestian, the city is abandoned when Gilvaleus claims it.
Forgotten. The ancient castle is shrouded in legend and rumors of dark magic,
both the legacy of the kings who do not survive their final conflicts with the
Lothelecan. Lords of old Gracia whose memories are quietly swept away.

The White City is built at Gilvaleus’s direction and from his own
design. A citadel whose strength is its isolation, declared as a free capital
separate from the lands that surround it. It is the high king’s wisdom to set
himself above the conflicts that endlessly splinter and cripple this ancient
realm. To show those who will need to follow him that there exists another way.
A shared history that all in Gracia must embrace. A common purpose and culture.

Only closest to the keep does the city cling to new life now.
Pavilions and tents dot wide fields of dead grass and rubble that are the
grounds and stables where the king’s companions of the white table train, long
ago. Couriers and servants, skalds and whores throng here this night, a
shifting storm of figures drifting from flag to flag. Following the unseen
courses where Fossa and Lutain, Ilfamor and Gauracta and so many more once
faced each other in tests of strength and loyalty to their high king.

The White Pilgrim knows that the king’s conclave brings all
nineteen companies of the duchies of Gracia to assemble here. Ten thousand
troops at a guess, and he recognizes the banners and standards of fewer than
half of them. Flags change over time. The dukes of old are long dead, or break
with the past. The dukes of a new day come together at this site of ancient
power to seek a king and an end to fourteen years of war.

Hostility rages here this night between the nineteen factions.
Knife-sharp and seething like the mist that settles within the walls to turn
the firelight to yellow-orange islands in the dark. The Second Wars of Succession
they call these days. The tales told by refugees across campfires in the night.

In the fourteen years since the fall of Gilvaleus, the eighteen
dukes of Gracia govern and fight and push constantly to the crumbling brink of
civil war. For fourteen years, folk call for a new high king to rule the dukes.
Four conclaves are set and summoned in those years that all end in dark oaths,
pledges of war. Assassination, more than once.

At this conclave, the nineteenth and newest duke of Gracia will
see it done. Things the White Pilgrim hears on the roads, in the shrines.

Garneus it is, Gilvaleus’s great-uncle, who calls the first
conclave so many lost years ago. In the aftermath of the fall of Empire, Gracia
is a void within which seethes a storm of fear that will sweep ten centuries of
peace away. Garneus is Imperial regent, respected for the quickness of his
mind, the slowness of his temper. To his castle in Aldona, he calls the lords
of Imperial Gracia, speaks to them of a vision for the future. A Gracia united
under common law, common will, with Garneus as the first king to rule this land
in a thousand years.

For too many centuries, the only tools known to the princes and
petty kings of Gracia are strength and spellcraft, starvation and steel. Tools
whose edge is too easily broken. Telos is Gilvaleus’s uncle, and heir to the
nation that Garneus built in the aftermath of the Empire’s fall. But Telos has
not his father Garneus’s heart for diplomacy and easy reason, and attempting to
rule from strength, he sees his power crumble. Each declaration of a new
kingdom outside his rule, each new border marked and claimed comes at the cost
of Gracian blood.

In those years, the land turns against itself, ready for the
strength of Thoradun of Sannos to claim. Thoradun the Usurper, who knows only
how to break the will of those he rules, and who wields the strength of ten
thousand Norgyr who are the heart of the mercenary force on which he builds his
power.

Around the keep of Mitrost, the factions of Gracia have carefully
staked out positions according to allegiance and strength. The flags of what
the White Pilgrim guesses are the northlands are clustered tight away from the
castle, the white bear of Kannis the only banner he knows. Isolated and distant
from the larger pavilions of Marthai, Veneranda, what he thinks he recognizes
as Lamitri in the west.

And at the center of all, the banners of the black boar twist in
the mist-white wind. The abandoned ruin of the once-great temple of Mitrost
rises behind them, spectral in the firelight. Its twelve pillars are pulled
down, the twelve faces of the Orosana little more than remnants of colored
glass. Arsanc chooses the site of his troops’ encampment for its symbolism. A
calculated display.

The Black Duke’s camp is alive with firelight and revelry, music
and drunken shouting, the hiss and crackle of pine fires. The fat-sweet scent
of venison rises, roasting whole on the spit. In the shadows at the periphery,
the White Pilgrim slips close along the edge of the stores tents, servants
racing to and from the fires with torch and lantern, cask and crate. Tents and
pavilions are marked with the sign of the black boar, long tables set with
cloths and laid in with heaped trenchers and overflowing mugs. All the
trappings of a royal banquet, the image adding to the strength the Black Duke’s
force presents here this night.

The hassas rest nearby, the great beasts herded within a wide
patch of muddy field nearly as large as that claimed by Arsanc’s tents. They
are penned in by stakes of black oak whose heads pulse with the violet glow of
protective spellcraft. The White Pilgrim sticks to the shadows there, ignored
by the winged horses in their slumber. He avoids the bright fires and the
brighter laughter that spreads beyond as he circles, appraises the tumult
before him.

He sees officers, soldiers of the forces of the Black Duke that
sweep their way south from Reimari in six short weeks of devastating war. The
tales told by refugees across campfires in the night. But the warriors are not
what the White Pilgrim seeks, cannot give him what he needs. Not without the
battle he does not want to make. Not yet.

At a secondary barracks, haphazardly raised beyond the crisp
lines of the soldiers’ tents, he slips in through the crack of canvas. He sees
rough bedrolls spread direct to the ground. Six children within. Pages and drudges,
stable hands and couriers look up in surprise as the White Pilgrim pulls the
tent closed behind him.