A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (42 page)

Two stand within reach, their legs kicked out with a
lightning-fast strike, dropped to the ground with muffled cries of fear. Three
eat at the small brazier that is the only light at the tent’s main pole,
upending their trenchers as they scramble back. He catches the scent of
scorched meat and bitter smoke.

The sixth turns to face him, throws up an arm against the
imminent threat. The White Pilgrim is taken for a sergeant or servant-master,
and he is on the boy in an instant, hurling him to the ground, the same fear in
his eyes as in all the rest. They see too late the ragged robes, no insignia or
sign of rank. Not understanding for the brief moment in which he will take what
he needs.

He drops to kneel astride the boy, judges him at fifteen summers.
Older than the others. Hair the color of dead leaves, a twisting scar touching
his face from eye to cheek. Taller, an edge of arrogance in his manner that
speaks to a position of authority that makes him perfect for the White Pilgrim’s
needs.

He has the Blade in hand. He cannot remember drawing it. Its razor
tip is pressed to the boy’s throat, and the White Pilgrim must focus to force
it to stillness. The boy cannot blink, cannot breathe.

He whispers in a voice whose rage he does not recognize. Speaks
to all at once, the leader who is only a boy and the children who follow him. “Any
sound, any movement, this is the first of you to die.”

With the sight of Whitethorn, he sees the Golden Girl curled
tight in shadow. She is not moving, the White Pilgrim hoping that she dwells
still in the painless deep sleep of the mind. Darkness around her, the air
close and stale, her hands and feet bound. No clue as to where her cell is, but
he will learn that now.

“Your Black Duke travels with a girl. He arrived here with her as
prisoner. I would know which tent of the Duke’s company is hers.”

A stammering voice rises across from him. One of the others, a
black-haired girl cringing in fear. “The Duke Arsanc’s forces have brought many
with them, lord…”

The White Pilgrim drops the child with a backhand blow that is unleashed
before he can stop it. It takes all his strength to hold the Blade back from
the throat of the boy beneath him, weeping now. He sees blood there, pearling
as three perfect drops where the tip of the Blade scribes a trembling line in
the flesh below.

“No. Not this girl. She is Arsanc’s alone. A prisoner.” The White
Pilgrim’s voice chokes off, words lost in the desire to strike. A desire to
kill this stripling as a warning to the others, to see if blood will loosen
their wretched tongues.

“The Black Duke holds court within the keep,” the boy leader
whispers, voice twisted through with the certainty of death that he feels. Speaking
not in any hope of mercy, but from the obedience that all grant to death in the
end.

“The Golden Girl…”

“He holds a prisoner there, in his tents. I heard the soldiers
say it. I have not seen…”

“Where?”

“There is a garden, lord. Duke Arsanc holds court in the domed
hall, but the knights who serve him in the conclave have tents in the garden.”

The White Pilgrim sees it in his mind’s eye. He feels the sight
the Blade grants him trigger a resonant rush of memory. He sees the scarred boy
at the altar, holding Justain down while Arsanc strips away cloak and armor,
laughing. He will have his vengeance for her pain, will have the blood that
pain demands.

No.

He shakes his head, tries to clear it.

Something is wrong, but he has no time. He feels the shadow
thread through him, fights it with a will he barely remembers.

“Hold…” he whispers, and he does not know who he speaks to. He
fights to stay the killing stroke, both hands locked to the Blade now, shaking.

“One man must die tonight,” he says to himself, to the weeping
faces cast down before him, to no one. “Along with any others who stand in the
way of that deed.”

And even as he says it, he feels the hunger in the Blade that is
the shadow scouring his sight. The hunger that is the voice that seizes his
mind, tells him who he is now, who he is long ago, who he is again before the
end.

“Do not be in that number,” he says.

The power and the hunger. The desire for greatness. Feeding him
as it always does.

The White Pilgrim feels a chill twist through him. He feels pain
at his arms that are locked to the Blade in a grip of iron.

He remembers now.

He fights to recall where he is, who he speaks to. He kneels in a
darkened tent, six children on the ground before him. All waiting to die.

“Stay here,” he whispers, hoarse. “Say nothing. Do not bargain
your lives for the sins of…”

He loses his thought, cannot focus, cannot think. The haze of
shadow grows stronger on the fear that shifts and washes around him. It
flickers in his mind like the guttering of the brazier’s light as he goes.

HE FINDS HIMSELF ALONG the edge of the encampment, cannot
remember having moved there. In his hands, a dark bundle of clothing. He cannot
remembering seizing it.

The White Pilgrim sees the bright patches of firelight
surrounding the tables where Arsanc’s followers celebrate the events they
expect this night will bring. He cannot be seen in turn where he shifts from
shadow to shadow, sees faces he recognizes. He feels them laid out before him
in the quickening sight of memory. The farmhouse pyre, the night on the road
with the Golden Girl, the song of rage that threads through him that is the memory
of the altar at Angarid.

He sees the young sergeant. Gareyth. Dark eyes bright with laughter
at the head of his table. The two blades of his rank gleam beneath the sign of
the black boar at his arm.

The White Pilgrim watches in silence. He waits, unconscious of
the passage of time, of the muscles of his legs locked to hold him crouched
low. Unconscious of the weariness he should feel after the open road and the
passage along the unseen road. All the things that bring him to this place once
more.

All he feels is the heat of the Blade in its scabbard, his hand
wrapped tight around the grip. A pulsing force that courses through him like a
draught of slow-smoldering fire.

All he sees is Gareyth moving, finally. Staggering to his feet as
he shouts with the easy voice of one whose battles are all done. He walks the
length of the tables, slaps a dozen hands, returns with vigor the salutes he
receives.

The White Pilgrim rises. He drifts through the darkness to shadow
Gareyth as he makes his way to the edge of the firelight. An empty space of
grey grass and rubble spreads between the Black Duke’s camp and the tents of
the dukes he means to rule before this night is done. The young sergeant drifts
with faltering steps toward a twisted stand of scrub oak, gaunt branches
scraping the night sky. He fumbles with shirt and leggings, whistling as he pisses.

The sergeant’s back is to the darkness, from which he hears a
whisper of footsteps across dead ground. He turns back as he finishes. A moment
to scan the darkness, to shake off the torpor of wine that shows in the
dullness of his eyes.

In those eyes, the White Pilgrim reads the suddenness of the
young sergeant’s fear. A stranger behind him. A  moment of distraction
that no soldier ever allows himself in the field, but the Black Duke’s pavilion
is already marked as a site of victory this night. This place is the end and
endgame of the lightning-fast invasion of the northern duchies, from which one
man will remake a kingdom in his own name.

Then comes a moment of recognition, and the fear fades. Gareyth
smiles darkly, appraises the grey face, its gaze as blank as the mist-night
that swells around them. No light to betray the Blade held motionless in the
White Pilgrim’s hand.

“You are a determined fool…” the sergeant begins, and then he
dies.

The darkness swells where the Blade comes up, lances out with all
the strength of a lifetime’s rage held quiescent. A rage confined to the shadow
of memory for long years. The speed behind its force belies the White Pilgrim’s
age, defies the exhaustion that should wrack the hunched figure in the name of
all the leagues of his endless road.

Three strikes. The first is through the throat to silence him,
but a man might die slow, noisily that way. Not enough. Again, through the
spine to drop him, paralyze the pain of nerve and the thrashing madness of the
moment of death, by which a man might alert others to his passing even as he
falls. And again, through the heart because the Blade’s power demands it.
Ankathira the Whitethorn drinking deep of the blood of the unfaithful. Traitors
to the cause of the high king.

He hears dead grass whisper in the rising wind. The
travel-stained cloak that is the Golden Girl’s is dropped to the body at his
feet. The White Pilgrim wears the cloak that Gareyth wore, does not remember
donning it. He sees the red band and its black boar, sees the dark stain that
mars the steel of the Blade.

Ankathira that is the Whitethorn pulses in his hand with the
steady frantic rhythm of the heart that it stills this night. The first blood
the Blade draws since Marthai.

The White Pilgrim remembers the madness in his son Astyra’s eyes
that is a mirror to the madness in his own. He remembers the mud of the field,
blood-black and glistening. The bodies scattered across it swallowed as if by a
drowning pool.

He remembers the young sergeant’s face as he turns from the altar
at Angarid, moves toward the White Pilgrim lying broken in the shrine. Pity for
an old man dying slowly, in agony.

He tries not think on these things.

He bends to adjust the cloak to cover the body. A darker stain in
the fog-shrouded shadows, invisible from the pools of light and laughter beyond.
As he does, he sees the scabbard at Gareyth’s hip.

He recognizes the hilt. The Golden Girl’s blade that is her
father’s. The young sergeant dies with no chance to even reach for it.

The White Pilgrim takes the rapier that is Nàlwyr’s, lashes the
scabbard to his waist below the rope belt that now carries the Blade in its
scabbard of ivory and gilt leaf. He takes the young sergeant’s purse, covers
himself with the dark cloak that is the sign of Arsanc’s guard. He draws the
hood up as he slips away.

Toward the main gate of the keep, the White Pilgrim walks with a
purpose and detachment that carries him through the shadows between the
watchfires of a dozen different camps. He returns salutes where members of
Arsanc’s contingent pass him, not acknowledging any face directly. He ignores
the dark stares that come from beneath other banners, other badges of loyalty
at shoulder and sleeve.

No challenges are made. No one even in Arsanc’s own force looks
past the sign of the black boar, the rank marked there. Soldiers’ instincts
softened by drink and the more potent elixir of assured victory.

Their master is the most powerful freelord of Norgyr. The newest
duke of Gracia. Arsanc will be high king of Gracia by the time the king’s
conclave ends. Tonight, perhaps. If not, tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that.
Nothing left that might stand in the Black Duke’s way.

Torches and braziers burn bright against the fog at the perimeter
of the keep’s curtain wall, its towers rising to their crumbling height of
shadow above. It is quiet here. No traffic save for those on the
business
of the conclave. Knights and lords, foot-couriers under close scrutiny.

The White Pilgrim watches from the ruins of an abandoned stable,
scorched stone and timbers cracked and open to the sky like an empty tomb. Two
score guards are stationed at temporary shelters where the crumbling gatehouse
once stood. Wood and canvas and steel form a bright wall, the old guard posts
broken like the stables. All the rubble that is a monument to that day when
Mitrost falls.

The gates are closed, the guards stepping forward at their first
sight of him, swords drawn. A routine antipathy marks their movements, focusing
on the lateness of the night, the dark importance of the business unfolding
within the keep’s walls. The same knife-edge of open antagonism in them as that
seen between the factions outside the city wall. The warriors of lesser dukes,
staking out their claim to Arsanc’s service while they can.

“Speak your business at the king’s seat at Mitrost,” the closest
guard says in Gracian, “and swear your fealty and liege to Gracia.”

The old oath, or an approximation of it. He hears it uttered countless
times, long ago.

“Arsanc,” the White Pilgrim says simply. He hunkers down in his
stolen cloak, lets his gaze drift face to face. He feels an anger thread
through him. The voice of Whitethorn unspools shadow as it whispers, sends his
gaze across the closest guards. His hand strays to the hilt of the Blade beneath
his cloak.

He fights to clear his vision, forces his hand away from the scabbard
and into the sleeve of his unseen robes. When he brings it out, it holds the
token of the Black Duke, pale gold gleaming in the swirl of mist and torchlight
from high along the walls.

“Arsanc,” he says again. He sees eyes slip from the token to the
sign of the black boar at his shoulder.

Grudgingly, the guards step back, swords lowered as a knock is
hammered out at the gates. The scraping of bar and bolt, a flare of firelight
and evenlamp. The brighter light of magic slips into the fog like white fingers,
the gates swinging wide. Another six guards stand within, their dark looks
joining with the looks of those outside as the White Pilgrim passes them.

He walks down a wide hall, floor set with flagstones that were
white once, long ago. They spread splintered now, ground grey with dirt and
ash. He hears the gate crash shut behind him. Hears the murmur of voices fall
and fade as he passes by empty alcoves, walls lined with the cracked shadows of
shattered mosaic and relief.

Within a great circular courtyard, four staircases climb. Pillars
circle around him like advancing giants wrapped in white. The open air above
shows a wash of stars, the sky pale in the west where the Clearmoon wanes. A
blood-red haze to the east shows where the Darkmoon climbs.

He feels the last fragments of the scales of time fall from his
eyes. He gazes out upon the ruin that is his legacy.

Long years ago, Mitrost is the White City and the keep is its
gold and silver heart. A castle-town within a city. Home to five thousand of
the high king’s closest companions and servants, mages and scholars who are the
backbone of a reign built on visions of greatness. Now, those long years leave barren
shadows in their wake. Apartments and markets, emporiums and barracks are long
gone. Only carcass stones remain, as fragile in appearance as the wall of
wind-shivered bark that lingers when the great oak is eaten away by rot from
within.

These crumbling foundations are still strong enough to support
the battlements and halls that are the heart and height of the keep. Firelight
burns bright there this night, in the domed hall where the white table stands
shattered. The king’s conclave is there. Deciding the fate of all that Gracia
lost in the tale Gilvaleus tried and failed to write.

The White Pilgrim hears voices in the distance from two
directions. Heavy steel footsteps. Guards on patrol, at least as many as those
that watch at the gate by his guess. He tarries too long.

Cursing memory and vanity, he slips past the closest pillars and
into the shadow of a passageway. This twists within the north quarter of the
keep, largest of the four wings set off from the circular courtyard. He watches
the guards pass, sees not the mix of uniforms and sigils of the gate but a
singular slash of red on all the dark cloaks. Arsanc’s troops, patrolling out
from where their master holds court in the domed hall above.

He feels the routes he must take there, locked into a memory
untouched now by age or shadow. He knows the way he must walk before this ends.

He knows it is time.

He moves by instinct, taking back staircases and forgotten passageways
rank with mold and shadow. He listens for footsteps ahead and behind, shifts
all but silent around them. An unseen shade in his cloak of black. Bare feet a
whisper across the rubble that dusts the ancient marble of empty corridors, the
crumbling stairs he climbs.

From the darkness ahead, he catches the sweet scent of rot and
age, and he is there.

When Aelathar comes to him, her power is the old magic of the
druidas, and so a garden he promises to make for her at Mitrost. With walls of
glass and shimmer-glowing gold, it opens up beyond the domed hall and the
king’s seat, and from that throne of state, he watches her distant figure walk
paths of white gravel in the company of doves and summer moths.

He clambers over a wall of white stone that glimmers silver in
the starlight. He pushes through a shroud of grey boughs and bearded moss. The
low walls of the garden are crumbling in the embrace of ivy and decay. The
regular ranks of smooth-barked peach and apricot and plum that once marched
here spindle to intermittent stands now, splaying moss-crusted fingers to the
air.

He watches two guards walking the near edge of the darkness, easily
times his movement between them. He knows that more lurk within the light that
seethes in the distance, the glow of fires and evenlamps bright beyond a
twisting wall of mist and shadow. He knows that they do not matter to him yet.

The trees are ranked like dark sentinels, but he holds the
allegiance of the night as he slips through them, bare feet silent across loam
and leaf fall. The haze of light swells, and through mist and distance gleams a
weaver’s loom of glittering shards that he knows marks the shattered windows
that are the garden’s edge. The lost entrance to the domed hall where the
future is made.