A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  The White Pilgrim is moving with them, does not remember standing. He limps shadow to shadow, pushing for the scattering edge of the crowd where it breaks around Arsanc’s riders and their winged mounts. And even then, the Black Duke motions with a tight circle of a mailed fist for his warriors to unleash the fear for which the banner of the black boar is known.

  The hassas shriek as they charge. Spell-fire flares to all sides, reflected in the clash of blades. The White Pilgrim does not look, seeking only the space to move, but his way is blocked by white wings unfurled suddenly before him and a dozen others. A wind-beating wall lashes him, one of the Black Duke’s beasts vaulting skyward to drop into the midst of the seething crowd.

  The White Pilgrim stops short. He stares at the hassa’s rider beneath his black helm. The face is burned by wind and sun, pale hair long, beard short, both knife-cut roughly. Seamed with the faint scarring that healing magic leaves behind. The scar at his nose, broken and healed, is freshest of all.

  The sergeant stares wide-eyed. Gareyth, the White Pilgrim remembers, though he knows not why.

  “My duke!”

  The shout rises over the cries of the fleeing, reaches the ears of Arsanc as he wheels. The sergeant Gareyth lurches his hassa back with a great beating of wings, his sword drawn. The White Pilgrim holds where he stands, movement to all sides as other riders break away from where they drive into fleeing villagers with spell and blade, wing and hoof.

  At their center, the Black Duke strides forward, still on foot, his night-black steed following two paces behind. He takes in the White Pilgrim at a glance. A flicker of memory in the depths of dark eyes. A look to Gareyth, who speaks. “He travels with the girl.”

  “No, lord.” In the White Pilgrim’s voice, in his eyes, is an honest confusion that drives the young warrior to a state of rage.

  “Perhaps your memory needs refreshing, old man…”

  A quick spur drives the hassa forward, a pulse of wing-beaten air nearly knocking the White Pilgrim off his feet. He casts his head down, does not understand. More hassas rear around him even as the Black Duke stays his sergeant with the barest movement of his hand.

  So did Gilvaleus take a host of twenty Knights once more along the Unseen Pathways, and using the sight of the Whitethorn did he sense a gate close by to the Keep of Kalista. Then riding forth from that gate by cover of dark, the company made for the Keep and made their way within by secret ways known to Gilvaleus, who spoke not of what he sought, which was the King Astran and his Daughter Cymaris. For none knew that the Young Prince had dwelled in these lands, understanding only that they followed their liege.

  “When she escaped, along the farm roads south of the Vouris,” Gareyth hisses. “He was there.”

  “Then search the road and the field tracks from here to the forest,” the Black Duke says, and the bright wings of the hassas are a thundering storm as they take to the air. Their wake batters the White Pilgrim where he stands, stirring all the nearest fires to a corona of sparks and white-hot ash before the silence descends once more.

  “Well met,” the Black Duke says. “Again.” The light plays across the dark eyes, the etched face as he sheathes his sword. Thoughtful.

  And when Gilvaleus found King Astran, he was met with fury, for the King had read the message the Young Prince left in secret for his Daughter, and in it, he saw the confessions of a traitor and intelligencer. So was he sore amazed to see his late captain, for word of Gilvaleus’s flight from Beresan had only just reached the Seers of Kalista, and fearing Sorcery, the King attacked with no warning. And Gilvaleus, though the love he had borne for his King was strong, was blanched in heart by the death of Mother and Father both, and swore ‘So be it,’ and set upon his once-liege with a fury, and by the Sword of Kings was Astran slain.

  The White Pilgrim feels the shadow of memory press down, the pain a burning brand behind his eyes. “You send your riders to search the road,” he says, because he must say something to try to force the vision from his mind. “For the girl. Why do you not search the houses?”

  The Black Duke laughs. “For you to ask the question confirms you do not know her. She is the butcher-knight’s daughter, possessed of all the arrogance, all the hubris of her father and the king he killed for. Whatever else the fault of her blood, this girl does not hide.”

  Then did Gilvaleus see that Cymaris whom he loved was hidden close and had watched her Father die. But even as she came to him, he felt his vision clear as from the shadow of a fever, and saw in her the betrayal of his love, and said to her ‘Thou hast forsaken me who once loved thee, and who might have turned thy Father’s heart against the Usurper and to the cause of right, and dead he lies for thy dark betrayal.’

  “I do not know her…” The White Pilgrim tries to hide his uncertainty, feels the Black Duke’s dark gaze on him.

  “But you met her.”

  “She came to me,” he says slowly. Remembering. “On the road. She spoke to me.”

  “Spoke to you of what?”

  “She spoke… words, but I cannot…” The White Pilgrim tries to summon up her voice to mind, but all that comes is the memory of the blue eyes, burning bright with accusation. A name slipping down into shadow.

  And Cymaris denied her deceit, saying that the messenger it was who was betrayer, whose trust Gilvaleus had claimed. For with devious thought had the words of the fleeing Young Prince been brought to Astran his King, whose wrath was great. Then did Cymaris tell how she had been brought before her Father, who accused her of complicity in Gilvaleus’s plots, and though she swore her innocence, she was kept under guard and lost favor in her Father’s sight.

  No. Something is wrong. He feels it.

  Cymaris does love him. He feels the pain of her lost touch, knows that the messenger betrays them both. He remembers, but he knows not why.

  And Gilvaleus was sore enraged, and with the power of the Sword of Kings, he saw through the fair Cymaris’s deceits, and thought of all the times of their love turned to ash in memory now, and so he made their love one last time at the place where her Father lay. And when it was done, she had paid for her unfaithfulness, and Gilvaleus raised the Whitethorn in triumph over her and in warning, and spoke, saying ‘This blade of my Father and of the Kings of Old is the scale of my justice, on which all my betrayers shall be judged.’

  “I have forgotten many things, lord…”

  He loves Cymaris with all the passion of his youth, but the memory is cut through by seeping shadow. Twisting within the grain of his mind like the rot that sets into aging wood.

  “Including forgetting to name me duke, old man. That can be dangerous.”

  “I am sorry, my duke.” The White Pilgrim feels a shame he cannot explain. He will not meet Arsanc’s gaze.

  “For the girl’s interest in you, I might have taken you for one of the companions. The butcher-knight’s fellows of the white table. All the blades of Gilvaleus and of Mitrost who stood by and watched their king debase and abandon the throne they won for him. But the companions are dead. I’ve made sure of that.”

  Arsanc paces to circle the nearest of the gods’ fires. He wraps his cloak around himself, thoughtful. A weariness fills him suddenly that the White Pilgrim senses more than sees. A thing that the Black Duke will not show.

  “High Spring is done in three days, and my company and I must be in Mitrost then,” he says. “I have captains there already, who curse me quietly for my absence, but the girl is near and I have searched for too long. Do you know Mitrost, old man?”

  Then when Gilvaleus and his Twenty fled the Keep of Kalista, they returned not to Aldona where his host rested and spread the tale of the new King. But instead, Gilvaleus sought in the Unseen Pathways of the Lotherasien a route to the Ruin of Mitrost, which once had been the seat of the Kings of Old but was now fallen and forgotten. And Gilvaleus saw the Domed Hall where stood the Marble Throne, impervious to time and age by the ancient Sorcery that pervaded its stone. And he saw the floor where the W
hite Table once stood, whose twelve panes of stone were cut from the Twelve Peaks of Orosan, and which was a sign of that gift of the Gods that was the rule of Gracia, united as it once had been.

  “Aye, my duke…” The White Pilgrim feels the touch of a chill he cannot name.

  “The king’s conclave convenes there when the High Spring passes. When the conclave is done, it will have named me Gracia’s high king, and I will be the easiest man in the nation to find.”

  And before all his company, Gilvaleus named Mitrost the seat of a High King, and vowed that though his home was the Southlands, this place would be the center of his rule. And he said ‘So shall these ancient stones form the foundations of a great city that shall be capital over all Gracia, as the greatness of our past shall form the foundations of the future!’ And the Twenty of his company became Heralds and the first of the King’s Companions, riding forth from Mitrost even before dawn to send the word forth in Marthai and Veneranda that Gilvaleus was High King, the first that Gracia ever knew and a King to rule all other Kings and Princes of the realm, and that the Usurper’s time was done.

  The White Pilgrim starts as something flashes before him. Two coins that the Black Duke tosses to him, fumbled and caught with unexpected dexterity. Not just coins, he sees. It is the Black Duke’s face struck there in profile, his name beneath. The pale gleam of gold is bright against the grime of the White Pilgrim’s hands.

  “I know wealth means nothing to a man of principal like yourself,” the Black Duke says. “So I will ask your favor instead. Do you know the story of Nàlwyr?”

  A heavy silence. The crack of pitch flares white-hot in a dying fire at the White Pilgrim’s back. “I have forgotten many things, my duke…”

  Where it stands stock still behind him, the Black Duke’s hassa watches the White Pilgrim with a too-thoughtful gaze. Its bright eyes catch the fire, pulsing blood-red.

  “You might have forgotten the legends. Not many ever knew the truth behind them.”

  In the sky above, a flare of white wings eclipses the Clearmoon’s light. The hassa riders are returning, no sign of their quarry. The Black Duke looks up, staring to the darkness. “I seek the butcher Nàlwyr’s daughter,” he says at last.

  The White Pilgrim simply nods. He knows that the Black Duke carries more that might be said, but he does not ask. He cannot ask.

  “There is unfinished business between my house and hers. For the blood of a brother.”

  Through the shadow of his sight, the White Pilgrim sees the Golden Girl’s face through firelight for a moment. Then gone. “I understand, my duke.”

  “Understand this. One of the coins is for you, and spend it well. Save the other. Use it as a token. If the girl seeks you again, whatever her reasons, stay with her and send coin and word to Mitrost by any soldier of the black boar you find. Keep her close until we get to you. Deliver her to me and your reward will be yours to name.”

  The great shrieking crashes down on them as the hassas alight. The sergeant catches the White Pilgrim’s eye, staring darkly. The Black Duke turns to where his own steed stands behind him, vaulting to the saddle with a single swift leap.

  As he seizes the reins, he looks down to the White Pilgrim. Considers. “For most of a man’s life, he has the luxury of killing only when he needs to. For honor. Against the threat of being killed.”

  “Yes, my duke.”

  “I live a life wherein people die at my word only because killing them is easier than finding a reason to let them live. You are alive because you amused me once, pilgrim. You are alive again because I have use for you. If we meet a third time, I might need more.”

  The night passes with no memory. The White Pilgrim is walking, recalls having slept but not where.

  The sun is barely risen, mist hanging between him and the dawn that tells him he makes his way east. A muddy pathway follows the edge of orchard and field, the village familiar to him from one of the endless seasons that bring him here before. Passing out of mind again as it disappears into the long shadows, a bright crown atop the green hills behind him.

  He glances back at intervals, looking for something. Someone behind him. Images like sifting sand in his mind.

  He sees movement against a distant stone fence. A dark figure walks a white horse turned to gold where the dawn touches it. The image blurring from the wet of the White Pilgrim’s eyes as he strains to see.

  He looks back again, sees the horse and the figure gone. A great white bird soars above where they stood just a moment before.

  The image is fled from his mind by the time he no longer turns back from the light of the eastern sky.

  THE SUN IS LONG BEHIND HIM when he finally stops, a hard day’s walking firing the pain in his chest, in his leg to the touch of a white-hot blade. He does not slow, does not stop save to drink at a stream reached at midmorning, whose banks he follows in the time since with a hazy familiarity. A winding ribbon of muddy water twists west, joining other streams, other rivers in a chaotic course to the sea. A path starts, disappears, starts again before it finally becomes a rutted track that makes him quicken his painful pace.

  Now in Hypriot, the Prince Sestian had long held Marthai and Veneranda from the conquest of Thoradun, as the Usurper directed the iron and fire of his armies against Telos in the South. And from his Seers at dusk of one day, Sestian heard of the fall of Telos who was his friend and King, and the Prince despaired, having pledged his sword and his realm to Telos who was fallen, and he wondered at what fate and the gods might hold for Free Gracia now. But then came the name of Gilvaleus who had returned and who carried the Sword of Kings, by Herald at the rise of sun. And the call was sent forth through the Northlands by spellcraft and messenger that the new High King was come, who would revenge himself upon the Usurper for his Father and his Mother and for all Gracia.

  He cannot recall how long the visions walk with him. He knows where he is, cannot remember it against the storm of shadow that scours his mind. The waking, walking dream.

  But Sestian asked how it were possible for the Son of Telos to appear at his Father’s side and claim the Sword of Kings, it being known that the Young Gilvaleus had been hidden away far from Thoradun’s dark magic long ago. And Nàlwyr, captain to Sestian, came to the Herald as he rested with his Prince and awaited fresh horse, and he heard the tale of Guderna who had been Captain in Magandis and was Gilvaleus, Son of Telos in secret hiding for long years. And Nàlwyr remembered the ceding of the River Konides and the honor of this Captain, and said ‘My Prince, I know this High King, and as I will follow any King with a heart as noble as he hath shown me, so must you.’

  Isolated stands of black oak shimmer leaf-bare branches, a rising wind driving shoals of cloud before it, wet from the east. Beyond the trees, broken walls of vine-cloaked grey mark the edge of a once-great estate, lost to the upheaval of the half-century since the Empire falls. A manor house beyond it slumbers now as shards of marble swallowed by grass, scavenged to the bare bones of rubble too large to carry away.

  Then Nàlwyr assembled a host in Hypriot and rode for Mitrost before six days had passed, by which time all the North knew the name of Gilvaleus the High King. But the Usurper Thoradun, laughing dark in his citadel in Beresan, called his allies and armies of the Northlands to him through Mundra and Liana, and bade his forces of the South turn toward Veneranda and Marthai. For there, Prince Sestian declared openly his allegiance to Gilvaleus at Mitrost, whose ruin was a camp now, where all the forces of Sestian were gathering to the High King’s side. And Thoradun’s challenge was to cage the upstart High King, and press him on the field with forces to all sides, and destroy this Gilvaleus as his Father was destroyed.

  In the fading light beyond the ruined house, he sees the shrine that is raised where once stood an outbuilding of the main. Weathered fieldstone is packed with sod, growing green on three sides. Blackened by mold along the northern wall, out of sight of the sun.

  A bathhouse, the White Pilgrim thinks. He knows it, cann
ot remember. A hot springs that are once a noble’s private retreat, benched with white marble and gold leaf. Turned to a shrine of the Twelve and Crecinu the healer now. A quadrangle of four long wings flanks a central open court unseen at the center, hidden behind roofs of cracked and weathered slate. Tall windows bound with white shutters. The sign of snake and staff above the rough-hewn planks of the door.

  And many Knights were wary, for Gilvaleus tarried to build his force, but knew that even all the host of Marthai and Veneranda would not stand long against Thoradun’s unified strength. But Gilvaleus told them ‘Fear not, for the power of the Lotherasien is ours to command, and as the Empire held peace through the Unseen Pathways, we shall now wage war, and the strength of Thoradun’s host will not avail him.’ And saying so, he chose just one hundred of the best Knights who swore to serve him, saying to the Prince Sestian that all the forces pledged to the High King would be his to command, and would defend the lands and folk of Marthai and Veneranda from the Usurper’s spells and steel.

  A half-dozen acolytes break the ground of spring fields, digging in the winter-rotted vines of pumpkin and snowroot as he approaches. They pay him no mind, recognizing him as one of their own. The last sun passes cold, touching his robes that are the pilgrim’s white once, long ago.

  He stops at the well for water, finds two coins in his pocket. The pale gleam of gold is bright against the grime of his hands. He sees them before. Cannot remember as he places them in the stone bowl before the well. A scattering of copper is set there. Polished stones, tokens and totems of wood and bone for those who carry no coin but give the thanks of travelers to Menos all the same.

  But though Nàlwyr had shaped the will of his Prince and led Sestian’s host, and was accounted First Captain of Marthai and Veneranda, he turned away from Gilvaleus when called to the High King’s company. And Gilvaleus was sore amazed, and asked him why, to which Nàlwyr said ‘In the host of the new High King come many from Magandis, and the most of those speak only of their love for the Captain Guderna who was Gilvaleus. But from Magandis also comes word of the High King’s killing of the King Astran, who was a noble man, and of the High King’s defilement of Cymaris, his Daughter.’