A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (46 page)

He looks up then, and even in the chaos, he sees the eyes that
watch him. Arsanc’s body is gone, figures rushing past toward the garden,
toward the main doors where the stone wall is shattered and brought down by the
thunder of arcane force.

Something is changed. He is walking, cannot remember standing.

“Tell them who you were,” the Golden Girl says, pleading now.
“Tell them who you are.” Her father’s bloody rapier is clutched tight in her
hands. The White Pilgrim does not remember her retrieving it from the Black
Duke where he lies.

He tries to remember who he is. Tries to recall a vision of
peace, of a land freed from the fear of what the future brings.

All he remembers is blood on his hands. All the violence done in
the name of that dream of peace.

“If there was some good in what was done in the lifetime of
Gilvaleus, take it for what it is,” he says to himself, to no one.

“Make the future,” he says. “Do not mourn what was.”

“Tomorrow belongs to you,” he says to himself, to the Golden Girl
where she kneels at his feet, blue eyes bright, blood and tears streaking her
face as he turns away.

The Blade is gone but its vision wells in him one last time.
Showing him that the Golden Girl will flee this place, hidden safely by the
chaos that flows from the death of the Black Duke who would be high king.

The connection from him to the Blade is broken in his anguish. In
its anguish. It calls to him, but he will not answer.

She tries to follow him, but the White Pilgrim moves by instinct,
taking back staircases and forgotten passageways rank with mold and shadow. He
hears her footsteps fade after a time, hears the shouts of panicked dukes and
courtiers grow ever more distant in the dark.

The gates of the keep are open, the guards scattered to respond
to the madness that this night wreaks. No one notes him as he slips through the
frenzied crowd.

The tents of the city are pandemonium as word spreads beyond the
keep. No one stops him as he makes his way through the shadows.

The gates of the city are open. He slips out with the throngs
fleeing Mitrost, fleeing the darkness of this night, the uncertainty for what
the future brings.

Long ago, he does not need the road where it twists away from the
city and through the dark farmsteads beyond. The shadow hides a secret way, but
he cannot remember. He recalls only that he is walking the grassland border of
the river valley, cutting overland on a straight course north and west from the
sea.

The Black Duke is dead, and in that death, all the pain of life
is done. The White Pilgrim knows that, understands it. Cannot remember how.

He lingers along the riverbank for a time, washing by the light
of an abandoned campfire. He cleans blood from his hands, from his robes that
are the pilgrims’ white once. Long ago. He is not sure how the red-black stain
sets itself there. Then he forgets even that he wonders as he limps off into
the night.

IN THE END, THE AIR IS WARM and green, set with dappled
shadows that twist across the flaking plaster of the walls.

A last image. A dream he has, long ago.

A memory.

He lies in a bed near the tall windows of the dormitories, a haze
of shadow spreading except where the shutters are thrown wide to the sun and
air of spring beyond.

He returns here, but from where he does not know. A long journey
of days. Water and forest and field, leading him back to isolated stands of
black oak, broken walls of vine-cloaked grey.

He knows where he is, cannot remember.

They find him beneath the ancient ash at dawn, sprawled across
the stone whose carefully carved letters have worn smooth with the passing of
years and the weeping of the sky.

He does not remember them moving him to the dormitory. Does not
remember them feeding him, washing him. He only knows the sweet sleep. The
light of dawn threading the shutters. The light of real day when the shutters
are opened by the Golden Girl who is already there, first to find him. First to
his side beneath the great tree, holding him as she weeps.

He sees a talisman at her neck. A dragon rampant in blood-red,
claws of black. Eyes of silver gleam where it coils its tail around itself,
ready to strike. It reminds him of something.

His days are gold and green, bright sun and the buds of new
leaves just starting, spreading through the trees whose wind-song dance he
watches from his bed. His nights are dark, and peaceful, and in that peace he
finds himself hoping for the end. He does not remember why.

Not yet, he thinks. Fate not done with him. The gods, perhaps.

He does not know anymore. He is content in that, finally.

His wounds are healed by the craft of the acolytes, but his body
is old. He spends his days watching sun and sky, and speaking to the Golden
Girl when she sits at his side. He tells her tales that she repeats back to him
so she will not forget, but he himself cannot remember the words when she is
done.

He feels something calling to him. He dreams of Aelathar who is
his only love. Dreams of Nàlwyr who is his greatest friend. Dreams of all the
rest, the names gone but their faces with him now, shimmering as his mind
drifts in the golden light.

He dreams of Cymaris and Astyra and wakes with wet eyes, begging
the love and absolution of mother and son. He feels their forgiveness, feels
the Golden Girl’s hand in his as a voice tells him that he earns his absolution
a thousand times over.

He is glad of that. He feels the faint echo of an ache that
dogged him once. Gone now.

Something is changed. The leaves are full, the ash and oak shimmering
green in the haze of dawn, the heat of summer. The shutters are open to the day
and night now.

He lifts himself from the bed one day at dawn. He feels the ache
in his leg and at his chest as he slips on robes that are the pilgrims’ white.

Something is changed. He kneels beneath the ash, crouches at the
stone, squeezes one hand to a shaking fist that is touched to his dried lips
and kissed. Pressed down to the cold of the graven name for a heartbeat that is
a life of lost time.

“It is good,” he says. “To see you again.”

He only realizes he is fallen when he feels the Golden Girl lift
him. A last dream. Long hair tied back, the gold of rain-fresh straw. The red
dragon on gold, hanging now from a chain at her neck.

A rapier at her waist, the gleam of dwyrsilver beneath her tunic.
Her father’s blade, the chain shirt he once wore. The only burdens she carries
now.

The memories are gone. All set to rest by what the future might
hold.

Then was it told how Gilvaleus the High King returned from the
dead and from the court of the Orosana to stand against the Black Duke as he
had stood against the Usurper in life. And with the Sword of Kings in hand, he
slew Arsanc of Thorfin and Reimari as he would slay all those who would covet
the glory of Gracia for their own.

In his life, he has been light and shadow, bright king and killer
of children. In his life, he has claimed a kingdom but let wither the heart and
soul that might have ruled it.

And when it was done, Gilvaleus walked back into shadow, but
said first to those Dukes of Gracia who knelt before him ‘Know, all of you,
that I shall not return again, and so let my name now be lost to that memory
that takes me. Then each of thee, take comfort in thyself alone and yourselves
as one, and look to thy faith of self to carry thee. And let all Gracia know
that the greatness of this land is in all folk and the Lords who lead them
justly. So shall you say to all folk, Seize the peace that is this land’s destiny
in each of thy thousand-thousand hands. And speak no more prayers for Dead
Kings.’

In the end, all is darkness. But from the shadow comes the light.

Then her laughter rang on the white stones that glimmered by
the stars that were fair Aelathar’s name, and whose light was in her silver
hair and pale eyes. And Gilvaleus the High King kissed her for the first time
beneath those stars, that watched them both with all of fate and history’s
unseeing eyes.

In the end, all is as it should have been, and he accepts in that
end the darkness and the light, and is cloaked tight finally in all of
eternity’s welcome embrace.

WE
CAN BE HEROES

A
PRAYER FOR DEAD KINGS
and Other Tales

CLEARWATER
DAWN
— Book One of “The Exile’s Blade”

BLACKHEATH
(with Quinn Hamilton)

THE
VOICES OF THE DEAD
— Dark Tales & Lost Souls

TALES
OF THE ENDLANDS

The Twilight Child • Shadow to Shadow •
The Moonsign Scar • Daeralf’s Rune • The Game of Heart and Light •
The Voice • Black Run • A Space Between • Stories

ONE
SIZE FITS ALL
(as Gary Scott)

Scott Fitzgerald Gray
is a specially
constructed biogenetic simulacrum built around an array of experimental
consciousness-sharing techniques — a product of the finest minds of
Canadian science until the grant money ran out. Accidentally set loose during
an unauthorized midnight rave at the lab, the S.F. Gray entity is currently at
large amongst an unsuspecting populace, where his work as an author,
screenwriter, editor, RPG designer, and story editor for feature film and fiction
keeps him off the streets.

More info on Scott and his work (some of it even
occasionally truthful) can be found by reading between the lines at
insaneangel.com
.

In the convoluted process by which the disparate pieces
of
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales
have come together, the following
people have been instrumental. This will undoubtedly come as a surprise to many
of them, but life’s like that.

The Dukes of the White Table

David Otterson, Mitchell Wylie, Ron Graves,
Kevin Harris, Mark East

The Clan-Singers

Colleen, Shvaugn, and Caitlin

Razeen’s Library Scribes

Colleen Craig, Shvaugn Craig, Mitchell Wylie,
Gerrard du Flanchard

Chief Mosaicists of Mitrost

(studio)Effigy, Alex Tooth, Ricardo Guimaraes,
Jose A.S. Reyes

The Imperial Guard

Dead Can Dance, John Debney,
Harlan Ellison, Lisa Gerrard, Mike Grell, Richard Harris,
Ernest Hemingway, Robert E. Howard, Guy Gavriel Kay,
Joe Konrath, Fritz Leiber, Thomas Malory, Bear McCreary,
Neal Morse, Vangelis, Hans Zimmer