The priest’s voice carries, the faces at the more distant fires now turning. Laughter and song are dimming, the warmth of light and laughter twisted through by shadow now in the White Pilgrim’s sight.
“And bestowing the blade upon Telos, Irthna said ‘By the ancient legend of the sword of kings, you shall command the fealty of the lords of the south, who will be the army that rises up against the Usurper as must be. But by the ancient power of the sword of kings, you will gain access to the greatest secret of the Lothelecan, and shall strike into the heart of Thoradun’s force like the most furtive blade, and the Usurper’s blood shall water the grey plains of war where the greatness of Gracia will grow once more.’ ”
The White Pilgrim hears the voice as a harsh echo in his mind. He tries to breath but cannot. He tries to turn away but cannot. Something is changed.
“And in the days of the Lothelecan, it was spoken of how the armies of Empire could cross from any point to any point within the Elder Kingdoms in an eye-blink of time, and of how the forces of Empire would move in a day’s march from Ulannor Mor in the farthest westernmost reaches of all lands to Daegraleth beyond the Leagin in the east. So to Telos, Irthna showed these secret ways, and showed him how the arcane power of the Whitethorn could fuel the portals of the Lotherasien, and so would sweep the forces of Telos past the bulwark of the Usurper’s defenses, then into Sannos in the north that was the heart of Thoradun’s rule.”
The White Pilgrim is on hands and knees. He vomits up the last of what is eaten, swills the dregs of wine from his spilled cup to clear the acrid taste from his mouth. The priest’s voice is a hammer in his head, a searing blade of pain behind his eyes. His vision blurs wet as he tries to stand.
“And so with a force of knights and war-mages that had sworn their lives to the sword of kings, Telos did return to Aldona that was his home and the seat of his line, and announced his return to the Usurper, who laughed in his northern hold. So did Thoradun send his forces to the narrowest breadth of Veneranda and Lamitri, there to forge a wall of steel and spellcraft against which the king’s forces would break. But unknown to even the Usurper’s most powerful seers, Telos and his force took the secret paths of the Lotherasien, and struck from Aldona straight through to Sannos and the great fortress that Thoradun had raised at Beresan.”
The White Pilgrim blinks to see the priest’s face change, the voice shifting. A shimmering panoply of other faces, other voices, comes quickly then is gone again. Then only the familiar echo remains of the words he hears before, hears endlessly through uncounted springs, uncounted summer celebrations, uncounted tales at fires shared to keep off the chill of a winter night.
“But even as the gates of the Lotherasien were opened by Irthna channeling the power of the Whitethorn in Telos’s hand, the Silver Sorceress had held a dark secret from her lover and king, which was that to reopen the gates of the Lotherasien would cost her life. And so she sacrificed herself, and as she died, the Silver Sorceress cried aloud a word of final prophecy that was a vision she would leave to king and son alike, whispering the name of ‘Astyra’ that Telos knew not.”
“Mother…” The White Pilgrim is whispering, weeping, but he knows not why. “Remember me…”
“Then Telos’s pain became the rage that fueled the battle cry of all those who followed him, even as in far Kalista, the young prince Gilvaleus felt that pain that was his father’s heart. For on this day, when he had passed twenty summers into manhood, finally were the sorcerous wards that held his name and memory prisoner roughly shattered with his mother’s death. Then knowing his mind and past for the first time, he shook off the pain as he tore the badge of his once-King Astran from his shoulder, and vowed that he would ride to his father’s side. But Gilvaleus, too, heard the name of Astyra as his mother’s voice echoed in his own mind, and wondered at its dark foreboding…”
The priest’s voice breaks off suddenly. From the darkness above comes the shriek of hassas and a storm of beating wings.
They sweep the fire line like soaring ghosts, low enough that the wake of their passage sends spiral pillars of spark and flame twisting skyward. Cinders tear at the assembled revelers like a blood-fly swarm.
The White Pilgrim hears shouts of fear, cries of attack and treachery in the night, but he does not move. He only watches as the dozen winged horses circle back, carving wide loops around the gods’ fires. In their wake, they forge a frenzy of movement as folk flee for the shadows, are pushed back into a wall of fear that holds fast.
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, weepin
g 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!�
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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.
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Page 30