A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales (38 page)

“The dream still lives in your name,” the Golden Girl says. “The
legend lives, and you are the legend. You can bring back the glory that the
folk of Gracia yearn for. Your story does not end yet. Your right to the marble
throne…”

And the White Pilgrim laughs, the sound ringing out darkly in the
empty shrine. “And tell me, girl, how a dead king proves himself? Fourteen
years have I walked to pay the penance of my sins.” The White Pilgrim knows
that number perfectly now. His mind is clear, all the past laid out before him
suddenly. “Tell me how I walk into the king’s conclave and claim a legacy lost
to mind and memory?”

The Golden Girl undoes the clasp of her cloak then. She lets it
fall to one side as she shifts the bundle that she wears lashed beneath it.
More than half her height across back and shoulder. Wrapped and rewrapped in
rough homespun that she tears free with shaking hands, revealing a gleam of
white and gold beneath. A scabbard of ivory and gilt leaf, no trace of dust
clinging to it despite the grime of a fourteen-year road that sheds from its
wrappings in a dark cloud.

The Golden Girl is on her knees. The White Pilgrim does not remember
her moving.

He stares as she lifts the sword to him, clutches it through the
mask of rags, hands shaking. Without knowing how, he understands that neither
hilt nor scabbard is ever touched by her bare hands. The Blade a thing she
holds for so long, keeps only for him.

Then the horns of war sang in the South, and Thoradun’s forces
of the Norgyr broke and fell even as the Gracian folk of the Northlands took up
arms against them, and so was the rule of the Usurper undone at last. But the
traitor would not yield, and called Gilvaleus to him at Beresan, and stood
waiting at the ruined court where the High King’s Father had fallen.

The hilt where it meets the scabbard is ivory and grey leather,
and he reaches for it by forgotten instinct. Feels a surge of warmth thread
through him as he grasps it. Feels the pain of his heart gone suddenly, the
shadow that clings to sight and mind cast aside as he draws forth a longsword
with a whisper-silent hiss.

The cross-guard and fuller are in steeled gold. Ancient glyphs of
prophecy and power are scribed there in white, pulsing with a faint glow. An
edge and ridge of dwyrsilver steel shed the shadows like water spilling from
oilskin.

And when Gilvaleus came to him, the Usurper laughed with dark
malice, saying ‘Thou art a boy who seeks power he is not fit to hold, and my
lasting curse on this land is to bequeath it to thy weakness.’ But Gilvaleus
said ‘I am the chosen of the Sword of Kings, and carry the age and anger of all
its masters before, and thy power is as a child’s against mine.’

Ankathira. The Whitethorn is held in his shaking hands. He remembers.

And with Dark Sorcery did Thoradun attack, but the power of
the Sword of Kings protected Gilvaleus as he struck. Then long did both battle
within the circle of Companions, and in the end, the Usurper fell. Then with
the King’s Sword the Whitethorn, Gilvaleus ended the dark reign of Thoradun in
blood, and called the name of his Father and his Mother as he did.

“My father carried it from the field,” the Golden Girl says. “He
kept it for the dream of seeing it in your hand once more.”

The White Pilgrim fights to find the words, wracked with a fear
and a longing that he knows once before.

“I saw you…” he says. Not sure who he speaks to. Memory of a
dream, early morning at a market village with a name lost to memory. A vague
recollection of the day he passes there, long ago.

He remembers those visions he sees through the Blade when he
holds it, long ago. The sight it grants him when the Whitethorn is the sign of
his reign, the ancient sword of kings. Resting for the thousand years of peace
that is the Lothelecan, then rising again in a time of war. Seeking the hand
that can wield it to rule this land.

Then the fighting was done, and Gilvaleus in triumph returned
to Mitrost with Nàlwyr at his side. And Aelathar was there, and walked with
Gilvaleus as he called for the Keep to be remade, and for the city he had named
as his capital to be built around it. And in that peace of Autumn and the
Winter that followed, Gilvaleus sealed away the Unseen Pathways that led him to
victory, for they were opened by the power of the Whitethorn, and the power of
the Sword of Kings was to be shaped to peace.

And he understands now. He feels it clearly as the sight returns
to him, the sword of kings in his hand. All the pain of seeing the Blade. Of
understanding how long it is separated from his touch.

Then the Kings and Princes who had shown their loyalty to
Gilvaleus were crowned and named the Dukes of the new Gracia, and those who had
too long held fealty to the Usurper were set aside, and new Dukes named in
those lands and in Magandis and in Mundra and in Liana whose Princes and Kings
had fallen in the last of the Usurper’s War. And the High King swore his love
again to the Lady Aelathar, and with all the Dukes of Gracia in attendance and
Nàlwyr at his hand, they were bound in marriage at the High Autumn that marked
the days of Gracia reborn.

“No,” the White Pilgrim says.

He feels that pain like a white fire at his breast as he forces
the Blade back to its scabbard. Feels the hiss of steel and velvet shiver cold
through his hand like a viper’s kiss. The Golden Girl stares in shock as he
returns it bundled to her hand. She makes to speak but is interrupted by
footsteps behind them.

The White Pilgrim turns, sees the priest whose shrine this is slipping
through the canvas with two acolytes at his heels. An older figure, bent and
hairless save for the wisp of a beard tucked into the grey robes. A look of
recognition dulls the anger in his gaze.

“There is nothing to fear,” the White Pilgrim calls to him. The
Golden Girl is on her feet, the Blade behind her suddenly, wrapped within her
cloak. “We will take the healing waters.” The White Pilgrim bows thanks before
the priest can respond, forcing the wizened figure to simply nod as he retreats
back through his curtain.

The White Pilgrim limps once more for the dark oak doors, hands
shaking as he pushes through. The Golden Girl stands alone for a long moment
before she follows.

GREY STONE IS SHROUDED by darkness and the shimmer of
steam that curls along the walls of a broad courtyard. A latticed roof of black
wicker cuts a cloudy twilight sky to grey haze, brighter beneath where
evenlamps hang from posts along all four walls. The magical light of nobles and
lords, a last testament to the status and wealth of whatever family line ends
here in the aftermath of war.

Then the scarred land was cleansed by the healing power of
Druidas and Animys, and Aelathar herself traveled throughout all Gracia to lead
the Druids in the reclamation of earth and soil, glade and stream burned through
by the arcane force that Thoradun’s War-Mages had unleashed.

The baths of Angarid sit in open air within the center of the
four-armed quadrangle of the shrine. The White Pilgrim stands bent along the
edge of the dark pool, sulfurous waters clinging as a crust of yellow to grimed
marble.

And for the love he granted her, Gilvaleus sent Nàlwyr as the
captain of Aelathar’s company, and Nàlwyr swore to his King that no hurt should
come to her while he breathed, and that in the union of Noble King and Fair Queen
was found the beauty that would be the reflection of a land made whole again.

Carefully, he pulls off the robes that are the pilgrim’s white,
long ago. He feels pain flare in his chest and shoulders as he carefully folds
them. He is weary as he catches sight of the faintest of reflections in black
water. A weathered scar rises chest to neck to cheek, half-hidden by ragged
growth of beard the same grey as his hair. He is shorn, but badly, a rough
knife-cut that he administers only when weather and blood-mites remind him to.
The face of an old man.

The Golden Girl carefully closes the doors behind her. A rippling
and a splash ahead heralds the bent and pale figure slipping naked to the
water. The White Pilgrim’s expression is dark as she paces around him, looking
to all four shadowed corners of the open court as by reflex. Making sure they
are truly alone.

Her shock is gone, and the expression of the betrayed that he
will always recognize. The anger threads her voice again. “Why did you walk
away from Marthai? From who you were?”

The White Pilgrim hears her voice as through shadow, must turn to
see her before her words can be heard. He remembers her. Justain.

But in the dark of that Winter of the Peace of Gilvaleus,
there came word from the North of the death of Cymaris, who had been set aside
after her Father’s death, and who fled Magandis for Mirdza and a life held in
secret from her kin and the life she had known.

“You must be weary from your journey,” he says. “You should take
to the waters. One of the customs of the Empire you are so fond of.”

The Golden Girl only sits at the black pool’s edge, lets her
fingers curiously touch its steaming surface. The silence is broken by the
dark-stone echo of faint dripping. The wind is rising, rattling the lattice of the
open roof. The White Pilgrim’s back is to her as he speaks.

“The sins of Gilvaleus cost him his throne.” He fights to find
his voice, hears the weakness in it that he sees in his reflection. “They preclude
him ever taking it again. Sins of avarice and madness and murder that cannot be
forgiven.”

And Gilvaleus heard at night the voice of Cymaris that he
knew, which spoke to him as cold bitterness and said ‘Thou hast a Son, my king,
who is born and raised in secret, and will be the legacy of the love and hate
thou grantest me…’

“You are king,” the Golden Girl says, and in her tone, he hears
that she does not understand. “Kings will kill for the sake of what is right.”

“You do not know…”

And Gilvaleus awoke in a fever, not knowing whether it was
Sorcery or Dream that filled him so with dread, but even as he rose came word
from Mirdza that Cymaris was dead by her own hand. So it was learned that in
the time before, she had given birth to a boy whose Father she had not named,
and which she had sent away with trusted servants before her end, and whose
place and whereabouts where known by none now. And the name of the babe was
told to Gilvaleus, who fell to dark thoughts when he heard it as ‘Astyra,’ that
name of prophecy that had been his Mother’s last word to him.

“A king must slay those who stand against him,” the Golden Girl
says.

The White Pilgrim shivers even in the heat of the ancient spring.
Alone in the darkness. A frail old man.

“The blood of children on my hands…”

Then Gilvaleus drew upon the sight of the Sword of Kings that
had shown him the treason in Cymaris’s heart, and he saw her dead and on her
bier, and the child gone as the messenger had spoken it. And he felt again the
moment of his Mother’s own death in his mind, and heard the fear in her voice
as she spoke the name of ‘Astyra.’ Then accepting the sight of the Whitethorn,
he knew that his Mother’s final word was a warning to him, and that all he had
built was threatened by the babe that was the fruit of Cymaris’s betrayal, and
that the peace of his new Kingdom was in peril unless that threat was faced.

“Do you know why Arsanc’s forces pursue you, child?”

“He hates my father as he hates all the companions,” she says,
too easily. “His lackeys brag of it. They say he killed Fossa himself, two
years past. He drove Baethala into exile and death beyond the Shieldcrest. He
found where Gauracta and Ilfamor and Lutain were burned and interred after
Marthai, then he scattered their bones for the dogs.”

The shadow twists through the White Pilgrim, squeezes tight his
heart. They are old names, the memories of them burning like cinders in his
eyes.

“My father was the last,” the Golden Girl says, “and his burial
place is what Arsanc seeks, but he will not find it through me.”

“No, child.”

And through endless long days, Gilvaleus sent forth the sight
of the Whitethorn to seek the babe that Cymaris sent away, but the power of her
own sorcery had bred with the subtle treason of her heart and mind, and the boy
Astyra was hidden from even the sight of the Sword of Kings. Then came the turn
of the third year of the Peace of Gilvaleus, and the return of Aelathar and all
her Healers, and Nàlwyr her servant leading them.

He rises slowly, feels where the heat turns the pain at his leg
to a duller ache. The pain at his heart still burns, no balm that can cure it.
He pulls himself to the slick stone steps and ascends carefully, claiming his
robes where he left them.

“Against you, it is a darker revenge that Arsanc seeks,” the
White Pilgrim says. And though he tries to push the shadow of memory away, he
feels it weave around him as dark mist and chill light, drawing forth the
dreams like venom from a wound.

And that High Spring was the most joyous celebration of peace
across all Gracia, but the mood of Gilvaleus at Mitrost was dark, for in both
Aelathar and Nàlwyr upon their return, he felt a change in the love they
granted to their High King. And using the sight of the Whitethorn, the High
King saw for himself the secret ardor that had developed between his Captain
and his Queen, and the darkness of Cymaris’s betrayal paled beneath the pain of
this new deceit. And the vision of the Whitethorn counseled patience, for
Gilvaleus knew that more years would pass before Cymaris’s betrayal could be
met, and he knew what must be done.

He tries to not think on these things anymore.

“The Black Duke calls your father the butcher of children,” the
White Pilgrim says. “I do not know yet why it tasks him, but in the fifth year
of Gilvaleus’s reign, your father went in secret to a Reimari refuge on a
mission of murder. The high king believed that the prophecy that Irthna had
made held the kingdom, held the future of Gracia in its grasp. Only by the
death of the king’s-bastard Astyra before he came of age might the doom of
Gilvaleus be undone. For the sake of the kingdom, Nàlwyr went to ensure that
the child king’s-bastard would be slain.”

“You lie…”

The new anger in the Golden Girl’s voice has the edge of splintered
stone. She is away from the black water, bootsteps ringing out loud as she
paces to the White Pilgrim, the steel-blue gaze holding him fast. “My father
was no murderer. My father was the soul of the honor of your court. Nothing
could have made him take such a path.”

The White Pilgrim does not remember the Golden Girl standing,
does not remember having dressed again. The shadow roots deep in his mind,
feeds the dreams in the name of the pain he cannot fight.

But in the end, the sight of the Whitethorn found the boy
Astyra whose name was as a wound in the High King’s mind for long years now,
and saw him dwelling in a refuge that was called Stondreva, where the Sons and
Daughters of nobles were schooled. Then Gilvaleus called Nàlwyr to his side and
found the words that had burned in him for just as long, and speaking, said
‘Thou art my Captain and my friend, and I know the love thou bearest me. But
also I know of the deceit thou weavest with thy love for my Queen, and by my
name and the power of the Whitethorn by which I rule, I call on thee to pay the
price for thy betrayal.’

“An order from his king would have.”

The Golden Girl’s eyes are bright in magical lamplight, blue and
gold like the summer sunrise. An age in those eyes beyond the paltry years of
her childhood.

“An order from his king did,” the White Pilgrim says.

And when Gilvaleus gave his order, Nàlwyr fell to his knees
and despaired, and pleaded innocence in the matter of the love that Gilvaleus
had seen pass from him to the Queen and back again. But the Whitethorn saw
through the deceit of his friend, whose lies cut as deep as any blade, and
Gilvaleus ordered Nàlwyr to stand before him as a Knight, and his Captain wept,
and pleaded ‘What dark counselor hath directed thee so?’ But Gilvaleus only
turned away, and Nàlwyr was broken by the will of the Whitethorn and the weight
of his betrayal, and determined that Gilvaleus’s will be done.

“Gilvaleus believed that your father loved Aelathar the queen,
and he was consumed by madness as he watched the love grow between them.
Knowing that he loved both too much to send either from his side.”

And that night, Nàlwyr went to the Queen Aelathar, and the
darkness that was in him shocked her to grief, and she begged him ‘What hath
been done to my Captain that looks to have broken all the goodness in thee and
sown this darkness in its place?’

“Gilvaleus in his madness, in the fever of dark dreams, believed
that ordering Nàlwyr to break his own code of morals would force him to fealty.
Shatter his love for the queen. And instead, it pushed the great knight to the
place where having lost his honor, he had nothing left to lose by that love.”

And Nàlwyr wept, and would say only ‘Not what I have done but
what I will do, in my High King’s name.’ And Gilvaleus was watching with the
sight of the Sword of Kings as Nàlwyr and the Queen held each other, and he watched
as Nàlwyr rode out alone at next dawn.

“An order was given on a dark night of rage.” The White Pilgrim
cannot meet the Golden Girl’s gaze. Cannot fight the tremor at his hands, the
racing of his heart. “To break the will of the strongest of the king’s
companions, an order to kill all children in the refuge, and thereby ensure
that the king’s-bastard would be among them…”

“You lie!”

The Golden Girl’s scream hangs in the darkened silence, is swallowed
by mist and lamplight. The White Pilgrim seeks to lose himself in that silence,
feels it fight the shadow of memory. But in the end, the words are stronger
than he is.

“The madness of the high king scarred those closest to him.
Aelathar, betrayed by despair and come to Angarid to forget. Nàlwyr, broken by
conscience. Fleeing the court at Mitrost, not to be seen by Gilvaleus again
until he came from the mists that morning at Marthai. To stand by his king’s
side one last time, and to watch Gilvaleus slay his son in a last act of
madness and accept the retribution of the gods for all his sins.”

The Golden Girl wipes away her tears, consumed by anger and by
the terrible uncertainty and fear of a life betrayed. Memories and lies. But
through her tears, the White Pilgrim feels the strength renewed in her voice,
fighting to keep from breaking as she speaks the words again that are the
legacy of the father she knows.

“You are Gilvaleus.”

“No…”

“You are Gilvaleus,” she says. “Nothing else matters.”

Then to the refuge of Stondreva came Nàlwyr, who in the
madness of his High King’s order slew the guards and masters of that place,
shouting aloud the name of Gilvaleus his High King, and told himself he did
them mercy, that they would not live to see the children slain. But as he
advanced upon the dormitories, there stood one child against him with blade in
hand, and all the other children standing fearful behind him.