A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (35 page)

Then the hassas and their riders are down to hedge the circle,
dropping to shred the ground as they slow the great speed of their flight.
Countless smaller fires flare to sparks amid clouds of wet-clodded earth, torn
up by gouging hooves. Their light is shrouded in the steam that rises from the
wings and flanks of those great steeds in the chill air.

Aside from the White Pilgrim kneeling alone in the shadow of his
woodpile, only the priest holds fast, anchored to his stone dais by the anger
that turns his hands to fists. The largest of the hassas drops directly before
the grey-robed figure, a great black stallion that rears in seeming rage at
having been reined down to still ground from the endless air. The spike-armored
hooves tear turf and earth to strike sparks off the stones below.

All is silence as the hassa’s rider removes his visored helm. The
Black Duke’s gaze is cold as he lets it wander the huddled crowds, hemmed in by
firelight and the steady circling of his riders in the distance. “A clown in
grey,” he calls to the priest and the crowd at once. “Telling tales of mirth to
please the common folk, no doubt.”

“Show respect for the gods and their servants.” The priest’s
voice is rage, but it carries an edge of dark fear that says he knows who it is
he speaks to.

The Black Duke swings from the saddle to the ground. As he
strides forward, he is taller than he seems against the great bulk of his
mount, which paces back now to paw the ground.

“I mean no offense, priest. Continue with your fables. You have a
rapt crowd. Tell us of your gods. Your dead kings.”

And Gilvaleus fled Magandis that had been his home for five
years and all his memory, and which had shaped his allegiance to the dominion
of Thoradun, who he knew now as enemy to him and his line, who had killed his
Uncle as King, and many lesser Kings and Princes and Knights besides, and for
whom Gilvaleus swore now vengeance in the name of all those dead and his Mother
lost.

No sound but the hiss of the fires and the hassa’s steaming
breath. A challenge roots in the Black Duke’s eyes, the priest’s gaze defiant
in return.

“I can tell you tales,” the Black Duke calls, and all who stand
within sight hear the words. “I can tell you of the kings of Gracia. A hundred
generations of history reduced to an endless slavery of faith.”

And before he left his once-homeland, the Young Prince sent
word by trusted messenger to Cymaris whom he loved and who was in her Father’s
house. And this message said ‘I must leave and thou must follow, for my doom is
told as the Son of Telos and heir to all Gracia, and the love I have borne thee
these years of youth will be a danger to thee when my true name is known.’

“Blasphemy…” Behind Arsanc, the priest finds his voice. “I was a
child at the court of the High King Gilvaleus at Mitrost. I have stood at the
white table, whose stones were cut from the twelve peaks of Orosan, and were
the holy sign connecting the rule of the high king to the rule of the ancient
lines of kings…”

“A sign connecting to the corruption of that line.” The Black
Duke paces, sets his hand on the hilt of his sword as if in warning. “A hundred
generations of mud-streaked priest-lords who fought and died for their gods and
sired sons to kill each other in the name of other gods in turn.”

Then even into Kalista came word by Seer that with fell magic
had Telos brought his armies to face the Usurper at Beresan, which was burning
and all its forces in the South scattered. But as the host of King Astran
gathered to ride racing to Thoradun’s defense, its captain was nowhere to be
found, as Gilvaleus rode out alone, weeping for those who had once followed
him, and cursing the war that would yet divide them all.

“The white table stands sundered now,” the priest says, “as the
sign of the sacrifice that Gilvaleus made, and of the gods’ favor of that sacrifice
that will see those stones made whole when a high king worthy of Gilvaleus
rules this land once more.”

“The white table was cracked by the magic of mortals,” Arsanc
shouts, laughing. “And it will be rebuilt by mortal magic before the Clearmoon
rises full again. The king’s conclave meets when the rites of High Spring are
done, and there will be a high king at Mitrost before that conclave ends.”

And when after sixteen days and nights by dark road, Gilvaleus
sighted the Usurper’s hold at Beresan, he saw how the armies of his Father were
routed by the return of Thoradun’s forces from the South, and all were broken,
and the banners of the Dragon, red on gold, were surrounded and would soon
fall. Then did the Young Prince feel the answer to the call of his mind and
memory, and fought his way through the press of defenders, blade and spell, and
he slew as he cried aloud ‘I am Gilvaleus, come to my Father’s side!’

“I will tell you a story of your Gilvaleus,” the Black Duke cries
with a sudden dark rage. “Hear the story of the high king and his lords of Mitrost.
Hear the tale of brave Nàlwyr, betrayer of his king, lover of his queen.
Butcher of children.”

And many fell before Gilvaleus, and more fled from his wrath
that was a burning fire in his heart, let free and unleashed of all the full
passion that his Mother’s magic had long denied in him. Then did many of his
Father’s side that were surrounded and threatened with surrender and death
throw off their chains of fear and fall in beside him, lending their voices to
his as they cried ‘We follow Gilvaleus returned, Son and Best Blade of the
King!’

Where he huddles still in the shadow of the woodpile, the White
Pilgrim convulses. An unnamed fear wraps around him like a tightening noose,
his eyes closed, opening again so that the dark dreams might pass once more.
But even against the bright light of fires and the Clearmoon, the shadow twists
across his sight.

Then coming finally to the ruined court where Telos his Father
fought beneath the Great Dragon that was the banner of his company, Gilvaleus
and his newfound troop shattered the press of Thoradun’s force to free the
King’s position and the guard who fought around Telos and had sworn their lives
to the last. But then did the Young Prince weep to see his Father already
fallen, and there was a darkness in his flesh as of black Necromancy, so that
the magic of his loyal Animysts could not heal or bring him back from the
threshold of life that he had passed. And in the bloodied ground before him was
thrust the Whitethorn, Sword of Kings, which Telos’s dead hands still clutched
and which none of his retinue dared to claim.

The memories almost gone now.

Then did Gilvaleus seize the Sword of Kings and draw it forth,
and he held it aloft to feel the power of the line of Kings that had claimed
the Whitethorn before him, and to understand his destiny in that power as he
cried ‘Warriors of Free Gracia, rally to me and to the Sword of Kings!’ Then
with all the survivors of Telos’s sortie did Gilvaleus fall back from Beresan,
with his Father’s body and the Sword of Kings, whose power was bound to the
Unseen Pathways that the Lotherasien once walked.

He tries to not think on these things.

“Liar and blasphemer and heathen in the sight of Denas!” The
priest shouts to match the timbre of the Black Duke’s voice, but he cannot
equal its rage. “The gods curse you and all your heathen line!”

“And there is the voice of your dead gods.” The Black Duke laughs
darkly again. “A fool in grey shouting whispers of vengeance in the night. The
Empire’s only failing was not burning the old gods clear from history and the
hearts of the weak as well as they did from the mind and memory of the world.”

So were the Unseen Pathways of the Imperial Guard made known
to Gilvaleus, that were the gates whose sites and secrets were held now within
the Whitethorn, and he was sore amazed to seem them all in his mind’s eye. Then
did Gilvaleus lead the surviving forces of his Father’s assault, and many in
those ranks were sore wounded, and all were weary, and even in their amazement
as they followed Gilvaleus, they despaired to return across endless leagues of
enemies to their homes in the Southlands from which they had followed Telos.

“Heathen masters for a heathen age.” Even standing as tall as he
can, the priest is still stooped beneath the gaze of the black-armored figure before
him. “Lost to a millennium’s decadence and the consort of fiends that rained
down death and black fire on Ulannor Mor and all its host of darkness!”

But within Gilvaleus now was all the knowledge of all the
Pathways of the Lotherasien that crossed the Elder Kingdoms, and in the
Whitethorn was the power that Irthna his Mother channeled with her life to open
those ancient gates. And even as Thoradun’s forces pursued them, Gilvaleus and
his army passed onto those Unseen Pathways and vanished as if taken by the air.

“Fifteen hundred years of glory,” the Black Duke shouts. “A hundred
centuries of peace in the Elder Kingdoms, until a king of deceit abandoned the
faith of self and let the land suffer the fate of all those who embrace the
faith of lies that dead gods make. Whole generations lost to war under Eurymos,
Telos, and Gilvaleus. Uncle, father, and the son who imposed his will with the
magic of Empire but turned from its example. Letting the treachery of his own
soul infect a land that still bleeds for his sins.”

So did Gilvaleus cry to his company to follow him, and through
dark archways of shadow did they come at once to the Vale of Cotanas in Aldona,
which were the lands of his birth upon which he had not gazed in long years.
And he brought his troop hence even before the sun had set on the battle at
Beresan, twenty days and more of road to the north and west.

“Gilvaleus betrayed the power he stole.” The Black Duke presses
closer to the priest, circling the white stone now. “He and his faithful
succumbed to the base temptations that are the gods’ promises of power. The
lust for blood and the weaknesses of the flesh. Not worthy of the faith of
self. Not worthy of the crown he wore.”

And Gilvaleus did not rest, saying to all ‘Bring the worst
wounded to where they might heal, and those wounded who can, ride in search of
healing and return, and those who cannot, build a bier for my Father where he
might lie. But those who can yet fight, for the glory of Gracia and the Gods,
follow me!’

The Black Duke draws his sword in a smooth motion, swings to
strike the spring stone. But even as he does, a pulse of black fire explodes
from the ground before him, rising as a roiling wall from which he steps back.

A shout comes from somewhere. Four of the Black Duke’s warriors
are moving where their hassas circle, two with bows drawn, two with spell-fire
at hand even as the Black Duke waves them to a halt. The priest is drawn up to
full height where he clenches his staff tight, controlling the black fire that
pulses with the power of animys, channeled by his spirit and flesh.

“Show respect for the gods and their servants,” he says, cold.
“Leave this place.”

The Black Duke only laughs.

“Fifteen hundred years of Empire showed that the gods are nothing
more than a child’s fear.” Arsanc turns his back to the priest, a dangerous
show of defiance as he calls to the shadowed eyes still watching. “This priest
claims to channel the power of your dead gods and holds sway over you in that
power’s name. But any of you can command that same power, shaped and honed by
animysts of Empire for a thousand years after the last gods were only memories.
No prayers shape the magic of life. No begging power from unseen masters, for
the Empire taught us that we are our own power. Humankind and all its kin.”

“You will kneel before the altar of Denas!” The priest’s voice is
a knife’s edge of purest contempt, but the White Pilgrim hears the fear there.
That voice and the Black Duke’s spill over into the voice of mind and memory
that he tries to force away. “You will beg mercy to north and south and all
twelve mountains of the Orosana for your insolence! You will worship the truth
of their power!”

A crack like shattering stone splits the air as the priest
screams an incantation born of blood and thunder. “Denas! Rhilos! Phion!” He
swings the staff around and down in another pulse of black fire that lashes the
ground, burns earth and rock to ash in a bright circle around the white shelf
of stone.

The burning flare of shadow threatens to blind the White Pilgrim.
But he forces his gaze back, eyes open when he hears the Black Duke laugh.

Dark fire surrounds Arsanc, the full force of the priest’s spell
caught and held by the Black Duke. Twisting like pale smoke on an unseen storm
wind. “You will worship none but the high king of Gracia,” Arsanc shouts. “And
you will recognize me when I sit on the marble throne at Mitrost and my power
has made the white table whole.”

The Black Duke directs the power of the magic he steals, shaping
and reshaping it as lines of molten fire that spin around him, wrapping him
like armor. “You will worship me!”

And with fingers twisting tight to fists, he pulls both hands downward
with a shout of rage. In a sudden screaming storm of light and brimstone, a
column of white fire descends from the clear sky, the priest wide-eyed in his
fear as he disappears within it.

“Call the power of your storm god!” The Black Duke screams it,
the conflagration shaped by the power he controls flaring brighter with his
anger. “Call the shield of Rhilos, call the rains of sea and sky to quench
you!” But no calling comes. No spell or prayer to protect the priest where his
figure is a skeletal outline of white and black now. Just the guttural voice of
a dying man, abandoned by the gods whose names are lost in the endless scream
that is his last benediction.

In the space of heartbeat, it is done. The fire fades, boiling
down to the ground and seemingly swallowed by it where a mound of ash and bone
smolders atop the charred white stone. In the crowd that watches, the panic
spreads with the horrific speed of the fire itself. Folk scatter, shrieking.
Falling back to the darkness of wall and field, meadow and orchard.