The shadow is sharp behind his eyes as he collapses before an ancient ash. Its black branches are limned with green and gold in the first days of spring, the last light of the sun. Its twisting trunk is the span of his outstretched arms, for so he kneels before it.
He cannot remember how he comes to be here. He stares to see the shrine before him. The acolytes finish in the fields, the faint echo of a day’s-end song heard above the call of crows that rises with the dusk. He turns behind him, looking for something. He tries to recall what it is, but his gaze is blank.
And Nàlwyr would not take the King’s Commission, which was the Dragon of the High King’s house in red on gold, and he spoke to Gilvaleus, saying ‘These acts of thine were not the acts of a King, nor of the Captain I fought with honor. And if that honor I saw is not the true heart of thee, then I cannot follow thee.’ And Gilvaleus was chastened, and said ‘Then stay by my side, my friend, to help remind me of what I have done in anger, that such anger might not be part of me again. For thou must be sent to me by the grace of the gods, thou whose heart will not quail beneath any darkness, and who will help guide my own heart when the haze of loss and anger obscures my sight.’
The White Pilgrim gazes upon the ash as he does long ago. The ground is loam and gravel where he kneels. It is spring now, but in his memory, he kneels in the spring before, and the spring before that. At the base of the great tree, he sees the stone whose carefully carved letters are flecked with mold, worn smooth with the passing of years and the weeping of the sky.
A single name is graven there. He reads it. Remembers.
Then in Cosiand and Valos, the forces of Thoradun held all folk and Knights in a dark grip of ruin, but there were many who broke and fled north, and so did even more Warriors and War-Mages and Healers and Seers come to Mitrost and pledge themselves to Gilvaleus for the freedom of all Gracia. And in the ranks of those Healers was the Daughter of two noble Gracian lines of Human folk and Ilvani, but her Father and Mother had been executed for fighting against the Usurper’s rule, and her name was Aelathar.
“Nàlwyr is dead,” he says. He recognizes his voice as he speaks, but the words take longer.
The name of Aelathar atop the stone echoes in his mind, half-remembered at first. Held for a moment, gone again. And then it is there and a part of him, and all the pain of all the lost years twists through him like a blade.
From the shadow comes the light. He remembers where he is. Touches the stone with a shaking hand. “It is good,” he says, “to see you again.”
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.’
“I should have wept before,” he says. “There should have been tears for you then. For all the grief I caused you, and for all the thousand hurts I inflicted upon you for the love you granted me.”
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.
“I curse this fate,” the White Pilgrim says. “I curse this life that denies me death and the chance to be in your arms once more. And so I am glad,” he says, “that Nàlwyr is with you again. Watching over you as once was his charge. Kept for too long from the side of those who loved him…”
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.
“And when you see him, tell him that folk still remember the good we did. Tell him the virtue and greatness of Empire lived in him. Tell him he was the best of us all, and bound to the goodness that lived in him as in no other.”
His eyes are wet, voice breaking. The wind is rising from the east, stealing the last warmth of the day. His sight blurs through shadow and tears, the visions faded but the gloom of sunset wrapping him now.
“Tell him I am broken for what I have done, and that the sins of his king are washed from him by the penance and pilgrimage I make. And by the grace of the Twelve that keeps me alive to pay the endless price for the blood on my hands. And when you see Astyra, tell him his father weeps for his birth and life, and pays now for ending that life before its time. And when you see Cymaris, tell her I loved her, and that I beg forgiveness of her and will always, and that I am spared the death that should be mine to spend a hundred lifetimes in pilgrimage that might pay for my sins.”
He hears footsteps behind him. A faint whisper of boot leather and gravel caught by the wind. He turns slowly, feels the ache of the road in his chest, his back, his legs.
The Golden Girl stands there. Watching him.
He remembers the road. Remembers her blade bright in the firelight.
He turns back to the stone, squeezes one hand to a shaking fist that is touched to his dried lips and kissed. Pressed down to the cold of the graven name for a heartbeat that is a life of lost time. “I bring the greeting of spring,” he whispers, as he whispers every year on this day for long years. “Fare you well, my love. I pay the price that must be paid for wronging you.”
Familiar words. The memory twists through him for a moment. Gone again.
He rises stiffly, shaking as he limps toward the lantern light glowing warm now at the shuttered windows of the shrine. He hears a whisper of leather and gravel behind him, remembers that the Golden Girl is there. Following him. He does not look back.
Incense mingles with a haze of smoke to shroud pillars of blackened pine, marching in ranks down the length of the main hall of the shrine. The White Pilgrim slips in the open doors, the Golden Girl behind him, still silent. Rough stone walls are smooth with whitewash, ash-flecked from the fire that smolders in a great brazier. Set on three stones to mark the triad, venting smoke to a rough hole in the rafters above. The healing altar stone of Crecinu stands beyond it. The shuttered windows are touched by rising wind that twists the light of torches along the walls.
“The Black Duke searched for you,” the White Pilgrim says. “At a village…” He remembers suddenly. He holds the image in his mind’s eye, feels it fade.
“Let him search, so long as he does it from winged horseback so that even the blind could see him coming.”
“I did not tell him where you were.”
“Tell him what you like,” the Golden Girl says, and he hears no fear there. “Run where you like. I’ll find you again.”
Doors of oak stand beyond the altar, dark with walnut oil and framed by torches where they mark the approach to the central court. Canvas covers the entrances to the two adjacent wings of the shrine. Dormitories, kitchens. The White Pilgrim remembers.
A handful of acolytes work where a smaller fire burns at a blackened hearth in the far corner, snowroot bread tended to in the coals. They look up to acknowledge the White Pilgrim with a nod, his face familiar to them. The lay of the shrine, its shadowed light and sweet scent are familiar to him. A thing he knows without knowing.
“We almost found you here. A year ago. The High Spring.”
The Golden Girl stands across from the White Pilgrim as he bows his head at the brazier, the benediction of thanks for safe journeys. He does not remember kneeling.
“My father came back to us when my mother took sick. He told me the story of how he followed his high king. How he lost you, then followed you again. He told of watching you walk away from the field at Marthai that day, stripping your armor as you went. Disappearing naked and bleeding into the night. He said it as if it w
ould make me understand why I couldn’t remember who he was.”
Her hair is a faint streak of shadowed gold against the dark of the cloak wrapped tight around her. Her standing at the fire of the Orosana is in violation of custom, the darkness in her gaze showing how little she cares. She spits to the coals, a hiss of steam marking her careful contempt.
“I’d seen five summers when my mother died, but I don’t remember them anymore. Only the road. Across Gracia for eight years. The length and breadth of the land, beyond the Free City to the borders of Mundra. Almost into Vanyr. Down through the south, into Aldona. He worried countless times that you had fled and he had lost you. Across to the Kelist Isles, over the Shieldcrest to Ajaeltha. The dark of the Yewnwood. But always, you turned back. Wandering toward the heartland again. My father knew you must be circling back to somewhere, but he was never close enough to catch you here.”
“They call it Angarid,” the White Pilgrim says. The name is clear in his mind. “Shrine of Crecinu.”
The Golden Girl appraises him, cannot hide the fading hope of her gaze. “These things I say to you. Who you are. Do you understand?”
“The queen came here.” The White Pilgrim speaks as though he does not hear. “After the tryst with your father that drove her from the king’s side. The love between them that the king’s madness made. Gilvaleus seeking to hate Nàlwyr for what he was, so I sought to unmake him. Break him to my obedience. Force him to…”
The words choke off, hanging in a silence marked only by the White Pilgrim’s suddenly labored breathing, the hiss of the brazier as its charcoal burns. “He sought to unmake him,” he says, the barest whisper. “In a dark madness, the high king was…”
He falters as he feels the Golden Girl’s arm at his shoulder. She kneels beside him, turns her blue gaze to his. Speaking carefully.
“You are Gilvaleus. You are high king of all Gracia and master of the marble throne of Mitrost. You rose up against the usurper Thoradun who slew your father, and putting him down, you forged peace. Do you remember?”
“Justain,” the White Pilgrim says. Thoughtful. “Your name.”
“Yes.”
“You are Nàlwyr’s daughter. You bear his blade and mail. His sword arm. No one else could have trained you to that.”
Her hand is shaking in the manner of one who hopes for something, then sees that longing turn to the fear of never finding it. “Do you remember?”
“Aelathar was her name. A queen among pilgrims.” His voice falters as he feels a light flare at the point where the name hangs. Breaking the shadow in which the visions hide. “She fled Mitrost and left all she was behind. Made a life here. Became once more the healer she was born to be, but not even Crecinu’s grace could heal the hurts of the heart that I made for her…”
The shadow rises again, the light draining from the White Pilgrim’s gaze like a sudden fall of night. He feels the blur of memory and history, watches it slip away.
“A pilgrim comes to her gravesite that spring,” he says. “He returns every spring after…”
“You are the pilgrim,” the Golden Girl whispers, and now it is the light of her voice that cuts the shadow. “You are Gilvaleus. You must remember. You must!”
The words ring out loud against the silence of the shrine. The acolytes at their fire look up, uncertain gazes focused on the White Pilgrim. He glances up, makes his apology for the outburst with a nod.
“We show our faith by silence in the gods’ houses,” he says.
“Your gods can do without my silence, and darkness take them all.” But the anger that threads the Golden Girl’s voice carries an edge of pleading now. “You are Gilvaleus.”
He stands quickly, no time for the pain in his leg and his chest to stop him. The Golden Girl falls back where the force of his movement shrugs her off, but she is on her feet before he takes his first step away from her, toward the darkened doors ahead.
“My father’s only god was his faith in the greatness of the folk he served and died for,” she shouts. “For the high king he served and died for.” Her voice is knife-sharp, echoing from the blackened rafters.
The acolytes stare darkly. One rises as if expecting confrontation, but he shrinks back from the chill of the Golden Girl’s gaze.
“My father told me you carried the faith of self in your heart. He spoke of you with the reverence you show for your dead gods. He spoke of hope that the peace and greatness of Empire could be restored in a Gracia fallen to plague and war and the ambitions of petty kings.”
Then with the host pledged to him as High King, which held Knights of Marthai and Veneranda, and of Cosiand, and of Valos, and of Magandis and all the free lands of the South, Gilvaleus set forth his challenge to Thoradun, sent by arcane craft and voiced to all who stood at the Usurper’s side.
“What changed you, then? What made you embrace a mythology dead and buried a thousand years? What made you afraid?”
The White Pilgrim stops before the doors as her footsteps approach from behind. He does not look back, cannot see through the storm of shadow that breaks like a thundering wave within his mind.
And the voice of Gilvaleus rang out there, saying ‘The time of the Usurper hath ended, and in the name of the gods of the Orosana who have returned the Sword of Kings in this darkest time, the High King of Gracia will make amends.’ Then did Thoradun’s forces forge a wall of iron and spell-fire around Beresan, and waited for the host of Gilvaleus to break upon that wall as a single storm wave upon the unyielding stone of endless cliffs. But Gilvaleus had learned from his Father’s death in the siege of Beresan, and was content with dark purpose to let the Usurper await his assault.
“My father knew he was dying and he wept for you,” the Golden Girl says. “He wept for Aelathar. But he never gave up the faith of heart and mind. He never once gave up the dedication to life that is the first thing sacrificed on the braziers of your Orosana. The dead gods buy the faith of folk with promises that this life means nothing, and so can be thrown away because the next life promises so much more.”
For when the forces of Gilvaleus set forth, with Nàlwyr in the van and the greatest hundred Knights of all the Free Lands and Peoples, Gilvaleus took them to a great stone arch atop the cliffs a league from Mitrost. And those who had ridden with him from Beresan knew this entrance to the Unseen Pathways of the Lotherasien, but Nàlwyr and others were left to amazement when Gilvaleus cried ‘Behold!’ and drew forth the Sword of Kings, whose power set the archway stones alight, and set open the Secret Gate through which all Gracia lay waiting.
“Life is its own end and purpose. This was the faith you embraced as a son of Empire. The faith that drove you to save Gracia…”
“I broke my faith,” the White Pilgrim says. Voice low, wracked with a pain that is a part of him through every step of a pilgrimage toward a death that will never come. “I failed. In everything I tried to do.”
“Then fix that now. Fix what has been done. Change what will be done.”
Then with the war cry that was the Triad and his Nation’s name and the name of the Sword of Kings, Gilvaleus led his host through the Gate and along the Pathways of the Lotherasien to the city of Aradorg, a two day’s ride from Beresan and head of the great supply convoys that fed the Usurper’s fortress. And in the gloom of dusk, the forces of Gilvaleus fell upon the city and its defenders, and all were surprised, and most were lost, so that Gilvaleus and his army slipped back to the Unseen Pathways and returned to Mitrost before the moons had risen in that night sky.
“The past is the past,” he whispers. “There is no future except that which pays for the past. You live in dreams, girl.”
“My father had a dream,” she says.
The White Pilgrim hears the dark determination that threads her voice to replace the fear, the pain. A thing she waits to say. A thing she tries to tell him at night before a fire beneath the watch of the standing stones.
Something is changed, but he does not understand.
She steps past him where he stares at the shadows of the doors ahead. He remembers that he was walking there, but he knows not why.
“My father searched for you because he carried something of yours, my high king. Found on the field at Marthai. He knew you were alive, even as the lies and legends grew like weeds in the aftermath of that battle. Gilvaleus claimed by the gods and waiting to return in Gracia’s time of need. But he did believe that you would return before the end. His dream was to make that happen, but seeing you now, I give thanks he died when he did, for to look upon what you’ve become would have killed his spirit as surely as fate took his body in the end.”
So began the breaking of Thoradun, whose forces soon were enraged with the fear of the High King Gilvaleus and the Knights he named his Companions. And for bloody month after bloody month, Gilvaleus led his Companions along the Unseen Pathways, and passed through and across every part of Gracia in the course that the High King’s strategy made. Then one by one, the Usurper’s strongholds were assaulted, and many were broken, and those that were not broken were left scarred with the fear of a foe who traveled seemingly along the air itself, and descended like the most sudden storm.
“You do not know…” the White Pilgrim says, but the pain in his heart has spread roots to his throat. He is pacing, does not remember walking.
“I know there is war to all sides of us,” the Golden Girl says, dogging the White Pilgrim’s steps as he circles between the brazier and the altar’s shadowed slab. “Or had you not noticed? Arsanc the Black Duke forges a hold over the northern duchies with Norgyr steel. He is the usurper reborn, and he will claim the marble throne because the only one who can claim it from him is you.”
“Arsanc can have his throne. Him or any other. No difference…” The White Pilgrim fights to breathe. He forces the words in a rush of anger that builds, kindles itself with the heat of all his pain. “The dream died when the Empire died. A world at peace. A hundred nations, a thousand peoples spread across five thousand leagues of Isheridar. Have you ever seen a map of the world-land? Seen the scope, seen the impossible vision of a world’s worth of life held together as one?”
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Page 32