It was well into winter, raining cold when he heard from a group of Gracian traders that his father was alive and well. The one called the Hooded Hawk had disappeared, they said. The fools who followed the traitor had been slain by his own hand.
For six years, Raub felt his father’s corruption lurking in the shortsword that had slain him. For six years, he fought and failed to shed the dark spirit that dwelled beneath that tight-wrapped black cloth.
When he left the Free City, he fled by horse across the plains of Munychion with the thought of abandoning Valaendar in the dragon deeps of the south. More than once, he almost left it behind in the depths of Eltolitinus, dreaming of the black blade lost in that place of death and madness until the end of time.
On the ship back to Highport, his spirit broken by a darkness that eclipsed even the night of his exile, Raub decided to cast the sword overboard, watch it sink deep into the blue-black depths of the sea. He unwrapped it that night for the first time since he fled, trying to find the strength to follow through. In the end, though, he felt the hold the blade of the Anthiliar had on him. A feeling finally laid to rest now.
At his belt, the black-runed backsword hung, imbued with the ghostsong of countless older generations whose presence would wash away his father’s darkness in time. A deeper history, waiting for him to set aside who his father was. To become who his father might have been.
For long years, he wondered why fate had spared his father that night. Tajomynar was right. His father never told him of the sword’s powers, save for the strength over other’s minds that Raub had discovered on his own. His father had rejected him from the start. His legacy and the blade that was the symbol of it, both denied to Raub. He had never even known the sword’s name.
“You carried that knowledge all this time and never spoke of it,” he said to Cass at last. “Why?”
“Because if you’d remembered that you told me your story, I would have had to tell you mine.”
They sat in silence a while longer. Then, as if they were in touch with each other’s thoughts, both rose.
They slipped out of Anthila easily enough, Raub taking them down little-used paths and ladderways that descended in time to the forest floor. By side trails, they made their way to the road, and though they passed couriers riding at speed in both directions for the better part of the day, they walked unrecognized and, finally, alone.
The sun was down and the Darkmoon up when they passed beyond the forest wall, the shadowed scrub plain and the southern mountains seeming larger somehow after the close confines of the great forest. They made camp in a pine bower atop a rise whose crest was a shattered stone dyke, the last vestige of a frontier outpost tumbled and fallen in one of Gracia’s endless ancient wars.
They walked the day in a silence both welcomed, neither speaking more than was necessary until they had eaten by the fireside. Cass felt the ache of the night before and the long road in every joint, even as the last of Pheánei’s pies filled her with the warmth of a forgotten spring and the urge to do nothing but sleep. But as she watched Raub throw scattered deadfall to the flames, she suddenly spoke.
“I don’t know who I am.”
She hadn’t realized she was going to say it. Hadn’t felt the words slip out from the place where they had been held tight inside her for long years.
Raub looked up, dark eyes catching the firelight where Cass watched him.
“I have a past,” she said, “but it’s closed off to me. I have a family I don’t remember. My father, my mother. A brother. I can see them sometimes. Only their faces, not even names.”
In the refuge where she was raised, they were taught to look within. But in looking inside herself, Cass had only ever seen the emptiness that her memory made.
“I remember… a castle. Where I was born, I think. A man in armor, wearing a crown. I seek out the rangers, the loremasters, the bounty hunters for word of old stories. A girl, lost. To see if anyone’s looking. There’s been too much war, though. Too many lost…”
It was the emptiness that had forced her in the end to look outside herself. To look back on the past that was lost and leave all else behind.
“You can’t blame yourself for being the one who survives,” Cass said. “The one left behind.” And in saying it, she realized how long she had waited to speak those words.
She laid down then, curled close to the fire. Raub watched her for a while, feeding wood to the flames as the Clearmoon rose and the distant call of wild dogs sounded out against the silence of the night.
“Where are we bound for tomorrow?” he said at last, but she was already sleeping.
THE CHAR-BLACK DRIFT OF CROWS writhes like smoke above distant fields. Rising wind flows cold from the east, carrying the echo of a woman’s laughter. A ringing like a clear bell, faint shimmering of silver on the air. The dawn-sweet scent of spring’s thaw. The foul air of the unburned dead.
And when Gilvaleus first saw the Lady Aelathar among the ranks of the Healers, he swore his love for her upon the Sword of Kings, saying ‘Thou art most fair of all the courts of Gracia, and the Forest Kingdoms of the Ilvanrand, and all the isles and far lands of these Elder Kingdoms, and when this war is done, with my love will I honor thee.’
He sees the thorp from the little-used forest road. A league distant in the light of dawn, but he recognizes at once the stillness of death that feels far closer. This place has a name, once. No more. A cluster of a dozen farmhouses, sod walls and ridgepoles. Canvas and plaster and thatch are shimmered by the gusting wind as he approaches. Broken doors are burned by a mark he does not recognize.
He walks through a score of bodies lying unmoving, blood anointing frost-kissed ground in a dark benediction. He is an old man, feet bare. Back bent as he drags each corpse in turn to lie in rows beside the mound he builds from fence posts and deadwood, lamp oil and the last hay of winter, unneeded by the horses found slaughtered in the grange.
In the smithy, he finds flint and steel with which to light the pyre. He finds three boys there, throats cut. Left to slip slowly to the darkness that comes for all the others in the end.
He hefts the bodies as if they weigh nothing. The muscles of arms and back twist like double-knotted leather beneath his tattered rags. With an old strength, he lays the fallen to their makeshift bier one by one, but the limp that carries with him speaks of wounds even older.
He burns the boys first.
“Take this offering to the mountains’ winds,” he whispers, only to himself. “Ash of the body, heal the spirit now set free.”
And Aelathar’s power was the old magic of the Druidas, so a garden Gilvaleus vowed to make for her at the King’s Seat at Mitrost, to which she would call the splendor of Summer in all seasons. And they walked together in the empty ruins where that wonder would be raised, and he told her they would pledge their love beneath bowers white and green.
Blue sky flares, breaking through cloud only to be scarred by the reek of black ash. Thick columns of smoke rise and are torn away on the wind. One by one, the dead receive the rites of Danassa, goddess of the harvest who watches over them while they live. The rites of Herias, god of the long night of death where they walk now. Folk of the fields, living lives unchanged for ten centuries of Empire.
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.
Stone walls twist across fields, rubble-strewn. Thin grass breaks the dead-brown stubble of winter, the green left gleaming where frost turns to dew, then mist.
And in the end, the Companions of Gilvaleus the High King rode to the Plain of Marthai and met the Warriors of Astyra the King’s-Bastard, who had called to him swords from the Duchies of the Northlands, and uncounted blades of the Norgyr besides, who sought revenge against Gilvaleus for Thoradun
the Usurper, their long-dead Lord.
He thinks of the boys. Tries to remember their faces through the black shroud of burning. He tries to think on how many winters it might be since they last sleep in their mothers’ arms, before the gods’ call and mortal steel makes men of them.
He feels a wetness at his eyes that he does not understand.
Then the skies were shrouded black with cloud and crow-wings so thick as to block the sun, and a dark rain fell that covered all the field with a clinging mist to thwart the eye of Archer and War-Mage alike. And the High King was wrathful, and fought with the strength of ten, killing the best Knights of the Northlands. And all the while in the fray was heard his voice, calling for his Son to come to him, and to embrace the dark destiny of his betrayal.
He tries to not think on these things anymore.
The day waxes, wanes as he keeps the fire burning and throws each body to it in turn. Dawn sun rising weakly, pale gold in the east, grazing clouds born of the distant sea. High sun passing warm, touching his robes that are the pilgrims’ white once, long ago. Stained by countless leagues of travel but still recognizable by their shapeless cut, by the cord belt, unknotted.
A weathered scar rises chest to neck to cheek, half-hidden by a ragged growth of beard the same grey as the White Pilgrim’s hair. He is shorn, but badly. A rough knife-cut that he administers only when weather and blood-mites remind him to. His knife is a slip of rusted steel, barely a blade at all. He uses it to cut the ropes that bind the three boys, keep them from struggling in the end.
And ere the battle was done, the Field of Marthai ran red and black with blood from steel and spell-fire that rained dark as night, bright as noon. And all around them were the dead that lie and the dead that walk, returned to the fight by the dark Animys of the Necromancers of Astyra’s ranks, and denied the gods’ blessing and the long rest of earth and sky. Then the mottled light of the Darkmoon shone down upon the plain to stain the mud of the field blood-black and glistening, like the blood that stained Ankathira the Whitethorn, Sword of Kings, that cut fearless through the ranks of the Kings’-Bastard’s unholy force in Gilvaleus the High King’s hands.
He lets image and memory-scent flit past his mind’s eye, a constant shadow play of blood and memory. By day, he sacrifices himself at the altar of madness remembered. By night, he sleeps the sleep of no dreams.
“This is the bargain the gods have struck,” he whispers, only to himself. This is who he is, is why he lives. A new lifetime of atonement for the life, for the future, that ends so long ago.
Then Gilvaleus looked about him, and saw that all the Kings’-Bastard Astyra’s force was broken but circled. And with weeping eye, he beheld that of his Companions, yet lived only Nàlwyr, who had returned to his High King, and Baethala the brave, and Fossa who was his Brother, but all were near death and fighting far from the High King’s side. And Gilvaleus cried out, saying ‘Woe to all that this day should come, and an end to all we fought for.’ And from the dark smokes around came the voice of the King’s-Bastard, who cried ‘Father, thou hast won the field but lost all thy cause, and thou must face me now!’ So did Gilvaleus the High King spy through shadow the adamantine spear of he whose treachery so much death had sown, and drawing strength from the Whitethorn did he advance against his Son, crying ‘Traitor, the death thou seekest is here!’
This life is given back to him, then given in turn to the gods whose gift life is. A new lifetime of dark dreams to pay for the old lifetime that spawned those dreams.
Then did the power of the Whitethorn cut down Astyra the traitor, but the King’s-Bastard drew breath through foul Animys even after blood and spirit had left him. And with his spear, he slashed at his Father’s face to scar him cheek and neck, and Gilvaleus fell back with rage in his heart and bloodied gaze. So did Astyra rise to thrust his spear through the heart and spine of the High King, who fell at last. Then with his final breath, Astyra witnessed this curse upon Gilvaleus his Father, saying ‘I die at dismal peace with knowing that thy last sight will be the Son thou slayest, sired in the darkness of thy heart, and the price of all thy sins. Father, remember me…’
Dusk and sunset are blood-red across darkling sky to the west, and the burning is complete. The last of the dead are set to the cleansing flame that their fate denies them. The village is scoured two days past, to judge by the state of the bodies. Eyes gone to the birds, maggots not yet unweaving pale flesh.
The White Pilgrim sees death too many times before. He knows what these things mean.
He works with no scarf or scent to mask the rankness. For him, the air carries no stench to note because the taint of death is always with him. Carried from the Plains of Marthai a lifetime ago. Blood on his hands slick like oil, burning like spell-fire as he plunges them through the mud crust of a filthy trough to wash them by the failing light.
And as Gilvaleus the High King lay dying, he was cradled in the arms of Nàlwyr, who spoke his grief and rage to the empty field.
He tries to not think on these things anymore. The memories all but gone now. Gone for good, soon. Taken by the darkness that is all he has left.
‘I ayra la mea Gilvaleus Haroya? Quèla sort es déicen a mai, ayra que vou apartes de mi, resta seol amba tos els meus nemicas a la mà?’
Benediction in the tongue of Gracia, echoing through long years.
‘And now my High King Gilvaleus? What fates are left to me, now that you turn from me, left alone with all my enemies at hand?’
A man might turn away from the friend he betrays. Might walk away from the warrior’s death that the gods deny.
The warrior’s death is good enough for some. Not for him.
A man might walk away from a killing field. A man might turn his back on the past and disappear into history.
He tries to not think on these things anymore.
And the High King spoke, and said ‘Thou must take comfort in thyself alone, and look to the hope of these days to carry thee. For I am taken into Orosan to heal the wounds that are my heart and memory. But in that time when name and heart are cleansed by the memory that takes me, then all Gracia that I saved shall embrace that memory, and I will return for all who speak this Prayer for Dead Kings.’
He is walking along the farm track that twists between the wan mud of spring fields, bare feet not feeling the cold. The pyre’s last bodies spill fat-black smoke to the shrouded sky, and that sky is split suddenly by a shrieking cry and the storm of wings above him.
A howling rattle on the wind is the passage of a phalanx of hassas overhead. He counts six of the great winged horses, circling back with a speed that belies their sheer size. Soaring low enough that even through the falling dark, he sees bright eyes watching him, sees the darker masks of helmed riders tracking as they pass. Their tightly reined movement on the air, the faint glow of their dweomered barding marks them as beasts of war. They circle to drop around him one by one, touching down at speed to stop in a storm of dust and shredded turf.
Light springs from hand and sword. The White Pilgrim is caught in a shimmering circle of white, against which the dusk beyond can no longer be seen. The riders are warriors by their look. Dark leather, weather-stained. A red band at the shoulder of each cloak is set with the sign of the black boar. The White Pilgrim recognizes it. Cannot remember. Bright tokens are pinned there, blades in white that mark some manner of rank.
The closest hassas rear up, cry out a challenge. They expect him to run through the spreading shadow and the mud of track and field, but no thought of running enters his mind. The great beasts shake foam from their flanks as their wings are furled. They trample dead-grey earth as they circle, upthrust stands of winter grass shading newer green beneath.
A leader rides among them, set astride a coal-black stallion whose hooves are shod with steel spikes that churn the earth as it tears at the bit. A leader set with visored helm, lacquered black steel to match the plate of his armor. He wears no armband, no white blades. The others slow as they mov
e past and around the stallion, hemming the White Pilgrim in.
The dark figure pulls the helm off easily, sets it under his arm as his gaze meets the White Pilgrim’s. Holds it fast. Lines of age and anger are etched in a handsome face. A scar at his neck. Hair hanging to shroud eyes that are black even in the haze of dweomered light.
“By whose leave do you walk this road?”
The Imperial tongue, harsh-clipped in the accent of Norgyr. The leader’s voice is twisted with fatigue, but an edge of anger covers it. The White Pilgrim never hears this voice before, but he knows the tone that threads it. Anger born of no specific event or evil, but simply the way of things. The rage that is the heart of every leader of warriors who lives long enough to claim that mantle.
“I asked a question, old man. You would be wise to answer.”
The warrior’s cloak is steel-grey once, but the stain of too many leagues darkens it to mottled dun and black. A woman rides behind him, hair the silver of midnight frost, and from her hand flies a standard that is altogether fresher. The black boar on red. A banner the White Pilgrim sees above a dozen other warbands in days past. Weeks, perhaps. He cannot remember.
“I walk no road, lord, but the land between roads.” Careful words, spoken slowly because the White Pilgrim in his penance leaves words behind. He must think now when he speaks, throat rough with days of silence. Weeks, perhaps. “I have sought leave from no lord or master save Menos, god of travelers, whose grace carries with all who walk within his sight and favor. I make my way in his name and the name of all the Orosana, and have no quarrel with you or any other.”
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Page 24