A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (43 page)

He feels Arsanc there without needing the power of the Blade to
see. The eighteen other dukes of Gracia are with him. The best warriors of two
nations and nineteen armies, but they do not matter to him yet.

Through the mist, he sees a lone pavilion set amid the trees. The
banner of the black boar hangs unmoving in the chill air.

Two more guards pace out slow movement that he reads with ease.
He draws on the power of the Blade, acknowledges its hunger as its sight shows
him the unseen spaces within the mist-shrouded tents. Shows him the empty
shadows he walks through as he finds the single tent he seeks. Shows him the
spot away from the light where the darkness hides him, lets him cut his way
through and into the deeper darkness beyond.

They keep her in darkness for the terror that the darkness
brings. The pain she suffers scars her thought, so that the mind left alone
feeds on itself. Creating terrors more potent than anything that can be visited
by the world outside the mind.

The scent of filth and fear. A faint line of grey light at the
main spar of the tent marks an evenlamp shrouded with black cloth. The White
Pilgrim frees one edge of the glowing crystal sphere, just enough to set the
interior of the pavilion as a silver haze. Enough to show him a rough table and
stools, a brazier burned low, blankets piled haphazardly.

He hears the catch of her breathing in the dark. He follows the
fear to the corner where the Golden Girl lies.

She is opposite the sealed flaps of the doors. He crouches so
that he can listen, can watch for any sign of approach even as he knows that no
one will enter. She is Arsanc’s prize, and none among the Black Duke’s forces
will dare to sully his vengeance. A thing that their duke seeks since before
the Golden Girl is even born. The girl he destroys, will destroy, in the name
of that vengeance.

She is bound hand and foot, eyes shut tight where she curls in
the corner. A blanket of rough homespun is slipped off her, covers only her
legs. The chain shirt of dwyrsilver that is her father’s is worn against her
bare flesh. No doublet or shirt beneath it. He sees where it rubs her raw, her
broken body anointed with the armor that is the sign of her conviction and
purpose. Returned to her as some kind of mocking trophy.

He sees the bruises that color her face, her arms and back. Sees
dried blood streaking her cheek, her shoulder, her belly.

The White Pilgrim shifts closer in the red haze of his sight. He
fights to keep his hands from trembling as he reaches for her. Closer, and he
sees that her eyes are open, faint slits of shadowed steel-blue that gauge his
movement. Close enough that she can spit through cracked lips to catch the
black boar at his shoulder, can swing her legs around, driving them for his
stomach like a ram.

He stops her, gently. Pulls the hood of the cloak back so that
she can see his face.

The sight of the Blade courses through him. It fills him with her
pain in a searing instant of understanding, and in that sight, he realizes how
young she truly is. Understands how much of her strength is the mask of her
father that she wears. He sees the world through the blue eyes that cleave all
life, all things, cleanly into light and dark, right and wrong.

The Blade lets him see himself through her eyes, only for a moment,
so that he can see the horror in himself. The pain and remorse that is the
sight of her. The coldness in his gaze that is the  hunger for vengeance
that is all he knows now.

No words pass between them. He grasps her hands to quell their
shaking as he unties the cords that bind her. She wraps herself in the blanket,
shifts close to the brazier for the last of its heat. From within his cloak,
the White Pilgrim retrieves the bundle he took from the children’s tent.
Clothing, boots, a jacket. Sized for the boy leader, all too large for her, but
it will do.

She dresses in silence, hands shaking as she slips the chain
shirt back on over a dirt-streaked tunic. She covers it with the jacket, sets
her mouth with the pain of each movement. The sleeves of the jacket, she leaves
long. Covering the red welts of ropes at her wrists.

From beneath his cloak, the White Pilgrim retrieves the sword
that is the weapon of the Golden Girl’s father. He hands it to her with head
bowed but she barely looks to it.

“The king’s sword,” she whispers, voice cracked like old stone.
“Where is the king’s sword?”

“It is safe,” the White Pilgrim says. “You must go to Angarid.”
He opens the purse that is the sergeant Gareyth’s. Copper, silver, and gold
gleam faint within as he slips it to her hands. “Take the farm tracks. Pay your
way with copper, keep the rest hidden. The healers will have returned to the shrine
by the time you make your way there. Let them care for your hurts. Let them
keep you safe.”

“Where is the sword of kings?” she cries, and the pain in that
voice threads through the deep sight he feels to bring back the old ache of his
heart. Cutting him with all her fear, and all the longing of her quest. “I left
it for you. You must…”

“A king’s subject does as she is ordered,” he says. He finds the
old voice, sees the force of it reckoned in her weeping eyes. “A king’s
companion does her liege’s will with honor,” he says, more gently, but the
grief as she looks away cuts deep through the Blade’s sight.

In the end, he cannot bear that pain. Cannot stop his hand as it
flips his cloak aside, reveals the ivory scabbard slung there. The White
Pilgrim sees a light return to the blue eyes. He sees a hope there that he does
not recognize anymore.

He takes her hands in his. Draws her to the dark back of the tent
and the entrance he makes there. The sight of the Blade shows him the silence
beyond, lets them slip safely out and through.

The Golden Girl’s hand is in his as he draws her quickly through
shadow and shrouding branches, leads her to the wall of white stone. He senses
the movements of the distracted guards in the darkness around him, pacing his
approach to their silence.

“Keep this in hand,” he says as he presses the golden token of
the Black Duke to her palm. “It will get you past both gates, but do not let
Arsanc’s guards find you before you get there. They walk so that the whole
world hears them, so listen, wait, move in the silence. Follow the shadows.
When they ask at the keep wall, you are sent from the Black Duke himself with a
message for the captains of his pavilion in the city. Do not be afraid.”

The White Pilgrim pushes her hair back, wipes dried blood from
her cheek. He stares into the blue eyes that he understands have never known
the thought of abandoning her father’s quest. He tries to help her scale the
wall, but she is up without the aid of his hand. A strength in her that is
Nàlwyr’s, the old determination in her as she holds herself there.

“My father’s dream,” she whispers, as if she knows the White Pilgrim’s
mind. “You remember.”

Not a question this time. He feels her gaze on him, knows that
she senses the strength of mind, of body that floods through him now.

“I remember,” the White Pilgrim says.

Her father dreams of this night, long ago. Gilvaleus with the
sword of kings in hand, stepping forth to the witness of all the dukes of Gracia.
He sees it in his mind. He feels the hunger of the Blade embrace the power in
that image.

“Do not cross over to the side of revenge,” he says. He hears the
tremor in his voice, tries to fight it. “To the embrace of hate. For once hate
holds you, there is nothing left.”

She hears it also. An uncertainty threading his words that should
not be there. “My king, you must show yourself. Tell them your name. You are
the legend, and the legend is all that men remember now…”

“When the past is reckoned, the future will be made,” he says.
“Do not lose what you have. Your life, your faith. Your goodness that is your
father’s.”

“My king…”

“Go,” the White Pilgrim says, and he is gone from her. Disappearing
quickly into the darkness of the sleeping trees.

WITHIN A SPACE OF SHADOW, he once more approaches the
light. Walls of shattered glass are flanked by white stone at the orchard’s edge,
marking the gabled exterior of the domed hall beyond. The center of the keep is
its highest point, broken like all the rest of its crumbling edifice. Little more
than a shadow of the past.

Crystal shards cling to twisted spindles of rusted steel, the gold
leaf that long ago catches the glistening dawn stripped away. Walls of canvas
hang here now, spiked to the stones above. Clipped together against the open
air, the chill of night.

He stands at the canvas, can reach out to touch it. No way to see
within, but the sight of the Blade takes him there.

The domed hall. The king’s seat. The throne room of Mitrost that
is his, long ago. The great council chamber where the future and fate of a
kingdom is decided. Will be decided again.

A charred haze paints the walls, frozen fast. Signs of the fires
that burn here when the keep is lost. White stone mold-streaked to grey rises
to curved buttresses overhead, etched with mosaic scars that are the only
remnants of the images of legend that adorn these ceilings, long ago.

Once, the trials of immortal Pheretas are rendered here, who
labors across the breadth of the mortal world to return the six lost scrolls of
good and evil, life and death, memory and madness to Denas his father. The
visions of Acasyma, whose prophecies of the future bring destruction or fortune
to all who hear them. Creusa the mariner, who travels the seven Ports of the
Dragon Kings around the Leagin and returns with their ancient secrets. The
reign of Cassatra who is the dragon queen of Eria, and who all the kings of
Gracia that arise thereafter claim for their bloodline until that bloodline
ends at the Empire’s word.

The stories he grows up hearing. The tales of the past that live
on as song and shadow play, lesson and memory. A hundred years from now, a
thousand years from now, his life should join the lives of those who come
before him. Memory turned to legend turned to myth by the passage of time. But
he is not worthy of that fate. Not anymore.

The White Pilgrim hears the words spoken in the domed hall, then
hears beyond them. He feels the senses of the Blade slip into mind and heart,
reading the fear and rage that threads the room and the small circle of men and
women gathered there.

The nineteen dukes of Gracia stand alone in conclave. No captains
or guards at their sides, no entourages of heirs or petty nobles. They meet
alone by ancient tradition, face to face so that no shows of false support, no
gainsaying of fervent followers can distract them.

The dukes of Gracia are secure in the power of spellcraft that
each brings with them. Ancient incantation, the dweomer of armor and cloak,
charms and wards. The strongest magic in the nation, perhaps. Granting each
ruler the power of a demigod, even as it reduces each to equals. Nothing to
mark the conflict of this night except sheer force of will and the strength of
the followers that each holds beyond the walls of the keep, the city around it.

But that strength is broken tonight, and Gracia will never be the
same.

Through the sight of the Blade, the White Pilgrim sees nineteen
thrones of stone that circle the sundered white table. All that remains of the
court that once stood here. The thrones are the chairs of the king’s
companions, long ago. The table’s great panes are split and shattered, broken
down the middle and cracked to two crumbling sections across the floor.

For this endless day, the dukes of Gracia are on their feet. They
speak to show their rank and strength without break or surcease. They fight
with word and threat since before the sun fades. Sparring and shouting
endlessly all the earlier day, even though by tradition and agreement, the
conclave begins only at the mark of night that is the High Spring’s end.

This is the king’s conclave. The summit started by his
grandfather, who is Garneus the Great and Imperial Regent. In the aftermath of
word from the distant west that Ulannor Mor has fallen, it is Garneus alone who
can bind together the lords of Gracia to acknowledge the need for one leader.
One voice who speaks for all. One king whose rule reclaims the greatness that
is and is always.

That first king’s conclave is in Orlach in Aldona, long ago. The
great city of gardens where Gilvaleus is born in the year of the Empire’s fall.

The second conclave is in Mitrost, the seat of power that Gilvaleus
forges to mark the rise of a new age that he vows will equal the old. He is the
High King, who slays the usurper Thoradun and drives his forces back to the ice
lands of Norgyr once more.

Within the circle in which the dukes stand, the White Pilgrim
sees in his mind’s eye the great slab of stone as it shatters and is thrown
down by the sorcery of Astyra, the night he challenges his father for the
throne. An assault of sorcery breaks even the magical defenses of the keep, the
high king cast down as the white table is sundered by the king’s-bastard’s unbreakable
adamantine spear.

Long ago, the white table is the seat of the high king’s
companions and the symbol of the justice of his reign. An artifact of the city
of kings, lost to time but rebuilt at Gilvaleus’s direction by sorcery and
engineering when the walls of Mitrost are raised.

Its circular face comprises twelve interlocking panes of stone,
recut from the twelve holy peaks of the Drachen’s Teeth and the Shieldcrest.
Assembled by spellcraft and ground to a clear mirror-brightness.

Along its edge stand a score of kings and princes, who by threat
of war or love for Gilvaleus name themselves dukes and accept the reign of the
high king that will make Gracia whole once more. A sign to connect his rule to
the rule of the ancient lines.

Astyra’s assault is put down that night. And in the end, the companions
of Gilvaleus the High King ride to the Plain of Marthai to meet the warriors of
the king’s-bastard. The swords he calls to him from the duchies of the Northlands.
Uncounted blades of the Norgyr, who seek revenge against Gilvaleus for Thoradun
the Usurper, their long-dead lord.

At the head of the white table, a single figure from among the
nineteen commands the attention of all. Armor of black lacquered plate. Lines
of age and anger etched in a handsome face. A scar at his neck, hair hanging to
shroud eyes that are black even in the light.

“Consider the choice before you.” The Imperial tongue,
harsh-clipped in the accent of Norgyr.

Arsanc stands before a high seat of white stone, pitted and
cracked with endless age but standing tall by virtue of its ancient dweomer.
The throne carved of a single block of Magandis marble, it is said. An artifact
of an age before history, beyond even the Empire’s power to destroy, so they
simply erase that history. Leave the marble throne empty so as to be forgotten.

The sight that is the Blade’s lays out the endless threat and
debate that leads to this point. It focuses the White Pilgrim’s mind and senses
to the final ultimatum that the Black Duke lays this night at the feet of those
he means to rule.

Arsanc is a freelord of Norgyr, one of the dozen war-clan chiefs
and tribal kings who rule a disparate collection of nation-states that collapses
to blood and chaos when the Empire is lost. He is young when his father dies
and leaves him the lands of Thorfin in the far north. A hardscrabble spread of
steppe and forest that is perfectly set to the Black Duke’s ambition. An
isolation there that reminds him he is alone. A starkness that cannot warm the
cold of heart that comes with a brother’s death years before.

Then long ago, word from the south changes all that.

From a skald sent into Gracia in exile, a tale returns to
Arsanc’s court, bargained against clemency for the various crimes that see the
bard exiled in the first place. The story he offers is the truth of what
happened to Arsanc’s brother Havar that night in Stondreva, gleaned from the
drunken rantings of squires and fallen knights. Proven in the confession of a
blue-eyed warrior who wanders the fallen lands of Gracia in constant search of
a thing he will not name. A broken knight who confesses to the murder of
children. Whispers of the dark rot of the spirit that eats away the heart of
Gilvaleus’s reign.

His whole life, the Black Duke lives with the sadness that
lingers now in the space where the love for his brother is once held. Now, that
sadness is replaced by a dark hatred and a thirst for vengeance against a king
long dead. A vengeance that will be taken against all Gracia in the end.

War is a constant in Norgyr, though the Black Duke spends his
life avoiding its costs. He builds his forces claiming the need to defend his
lands, holding a peace that means nothing to him anymore, as striking from
Thorfin, his forces take Innveig Freehold to the south. Then into Reimari where
his brother dies, long ago, and down to the borderlands of the Duchy of Mundra
that is the wall of Gracia to the south.

The fields and steppes of Reimari have long been disputed territory.
A realm of rich grasslands that are the frontier between Vanyr and Norgyr,
Norgyr and Gracia. Then so does Arsanc who is freelord of Reimari in Norgyr
declare himself duke of Reimari in Gracia. And only then is the Black Duke’s
ambition revealed.

With the strength of three freeholds behind him, Arsanc is the
most powerful lord of Norgyr. He leads an army of the north that perches above
Gracia, waiting like a tide to be unleashed. Even before the invasion of Mundra
begins, the threat of invasion is enough to cripple the northern duchies and
their leaders, weakened by the years of deadly struggle between themselves that
the fall of Gilvaleus wreaks.

“The newest duke of Gracia will lead you,” the Black Duke shouts.
“Or the war that begins today will shatter the shadow that is all that remains
of this land.”

The White Pilgrim feels an ache twist through him as shouted voices
erupt throughout the domed hall. Capitulation and defiance, the dukes of Gracia
jockeying for power in the midst of the unthinkable change this night will bring.
He feels the Blade echoing the hunger of the Black Duke’s words. He remembers
Marthai. Remembers his son’s blood on his hands as he forces the hunger away.

“Hold…” he whispers, and he does not know who he speaks to.

Arsanc’s forces push across the border, engaging in isolated
strikes. Mercenary tactics, hit and run assaults on merchant trains and farm
towns shatter the resolve of Mundra’s people, just as the tactics of the
usurper Thoradun do four decades earlier. Truces are forged quickly in fire between
the Black Duke and those who cannot stand against him. Treaties open the roads
into Lamitri and Liana, the green fields and mountain mines of northern Gracia
that are the anvil on which the hammer of destruction will strike.

Around the broken white table, the three dukes of Mundra, Lamitri,
and Liana stand closest to the Black Duke. Marshalling support for an ultimatum.

Arsanc’s forces wage a lightning war in Sannos and in Mirdza. Mirdza
will yield up Marthai when it falls, and fair Hypriot at Marthai’s heart. With
Hypriot comes control of the Sea of Galvas and its great cities and its hundred
smaller ports, from which comes control of Cosiand and Valos and Aynwel in
the green south. The trade of Galvas and the south pushes north through the
Free City of Yewnyr, whose wealth and power stand in Mundra, and so back to the
north, where the Black Duke’s forces form a wedge set to thrust down and into
the heart of Gracia like a bloody spear.

“This is the doom before you,” Arsanc says in triumph. His voice
threads the White Pilgrim’s mind as the Blade feeds the words, the haze of
emotion into him. “This is the weakness of your race, your kings, your gods.
Gracia was the jewel of the east, and will be again. But you are children, and
your games of rule and conquest and petty wars are over.”

The Gracian dukes have only one option, all knowing it even before
Arsanc speaks. Arsanc is to be made high king, elevated from the ranks of the
fractious dukes that have fought over Gracia for fourteen years and could do
little more than watch while it crumbled away. All have heard their doom that
day in ultimatum and private audience, and in the days before that in the whispers
of advisors and courtiers.

“The king’s conclave is the assembly of dukes, who will choose
from among their own ranks a high king to rule all Gracia, and in whose name
the dukes will uphold the peace and law of Mitrost.”

The White Pilgrim hears the power in the Black Duke’s voice,
hears the echo of history in his words. The same words Gilvaleus speaks in the
domed hall when the usurper falls.

“You will know greatness again by my hand,” the Black Duke
shouts. “You will know peace, or your people will know death. Your choice
stands before you.”

The White Pilgrim feels the shadow press down upon his sight. He
hears a voice thread that shadow to tell him that there stands a third place
between peace and death.