The Black Duke lifts a hand to the White Pilgrim with the effort that might swat an errant wasp. And in the movement of that hand, he is a puppet. Lifted and twisted and smashed to the ground in a searing pulse of pain that is the longing for death that he carries with him for endless years. The pain of living, which only the release of death can end.
“Fool of a pilgrim. You could have saved yourself.”
He is dying, cannot move where the magic of the Black Duke throws him a dozen strides across the chamber, breaks him at the foot of the brazier. He feels his back shatter as he hits, but the sudden numbness is a relief from the pain of Arsanc’s spell that can only scour his mind now.
He is dying, cannot move, cannot close his eyes, so that he stares at the altar stone, sees the Golden Girl fighting again as Arsanc strips away his armor, piece by piece. He sees one of the assembled circle break from their witness position, Arsanc’s force holding to watch as their master’s dark revenge is made.
It is the sergeant, Gareyth. The White Pilgrim remembers his face. Remembers all the anger in the young eyes, remembers how he stole the warrior’s blade. Humiliated him, enraged him. And all that is gone now. Only pity in his gaze for an old man dying slowly, in agony. A blade in his hand flashes bright as he moves closer, but Arsanc’s voice carries, halts the sergeant with an echo of endless contempt.
“Leave him to his gods…”
‘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?’
He is dying, cannot move as feels the shadow slip across his sight. Blinding him to match the numbness, so that the voice of the Golden Girl fills all the remaining spaces of his mind, her screams echoing endlessly from cold stone.
HE IS DYING, CANNOT MOVE. Cannot close his eyes, so that he stares at the empty altar stone, sees it gleam with the bright lines of dawn squeezed through shuttered windows.
His back is broken. Limbs numb to all feeling, the freezing cold of stone against his cheek. He slips into blackness, slips out again.
He is dying, cannot move, feels the pain that is the mailed fist of the Black Duke’s power fading after endless torment. An endless night. A trembling in his fingertips, the pinprick pain of frostbite threading his legs.
He tries to think on how long he lies here. Tries to remember where he comes from. Who he is.
And then Gilvaleus arose in light from the Field of Marthai, and looked to North and South to the twelve peaks, and East and West to the Great Yewnwood and the Raging Sea of Leagin that were the bounds of his Kingdom. And a host of the Twelve descended on chariots of storm and fire to stand around the High King, and their leader was Denas the High Father, who spoke and said ‘You bleed for the land, High King, and by your blood the land will one day be healed. And so come and let your hurts be healed in the halls of Orosan.’
No. Something is wrong. He feels it.
He is alive. Does not understand. A spike of anguish twists through his gut like hot iron as he lurches, splays across the floor with the endless scream of having been reborn. All the memory rushes through him of all the suffering he ever bears or inflicts in a long life of pain.
“Denas who is my father the storm lord,” he whispers. “Triad-brothers who are shield and sea, the Orosana who are the grace and life of us all, why?” But he hears no answer come.
The last time he holds the Whitethorn, he kneels on the bloody ground of Marthai and watches as the hilt of ivory and grey leather twists and falls from his shaking hand.
He hears the voice of Blade in his mind like the shriek of steel on stone. He feels its pain as it calls to him. Feels its power as it tries to hold him, denies the death of the mortal wound that Astyra’s spear makes. Punching through armor and ribs, heart and spine, armor again even as he raises the Whitethorn and carves his son from neck to navel with a cry of vengeance that is the end of all his dreams.
He sees the destruction that his greatness wreaks. Something moves before him, and he wipes gore from his brow to see Nàlwyr watching. He sees him speak, his friend, his captain, grown so old in the long empty years since he fled. But no voice can be heard through the haze of blood and the scream of the forsaken sword of kings.
A man might turn away from the friend he betrays. Might walk away from the warrior’s death that the gods deny.
He knows nothing except that he should die. He knows that he is spared, feels the sins of his reign hanging about him like unseen chains.
He limps from the battlefield. He feels the shards of pain that claw his chest, his leg with each step.
He does not look back.
The White Pilgrim lies there for time beyond the reckoning of his senses. He feels a warmth thread through him. Feels it centered in his left arm, twisted under him where the Black Duke’s magic cast him down.
He struggles to move, fights to breathe as he reaches outward, fingers clutching spastic against cold stone. His voice is the faintest whisper, hanging in bright silence.
“Why will this life not end, and why do others still suffer by this hand, by this madness, by this weakness?”
Then his fingers touch rough homespun, burning with a heat that no earthly fire ever made.
“What is your plan for me…?”
And in answer, the White Pilgrim hears the voice that calls to him for the last time on the field at Marthai fourteen years before.
Beneath the brazier, tucked in and out of sight where the Golden Girl hid it, a bundle wrapped in torn and dusty cloth seethes with a pulse of white light. The White Pilgrim strains to reach it, feels the power of that light already threading through him. Keeping him alive even across the distance between them, long after the Black Duke’s wrath should claim him. Taking all the pain from him as the Blade touches his hand.
He tears through old cloth with a vigor he does not feel in fourteen years. He grasps the hilt of ivory and grey leather as he stands, drawing forth the longsword whose edge and ridge are dwyrsilver steel, cross-guard and fuller in steeled gold, burning white where ancient glyphs of prophecy and power speak the name of the sword of kings and send its strength coursing through him like a dark wave.
Ankathira the Whitethorn. Claiming him. Accepting him.
He remembers.
He kneels at the side of the fallen priest and speaks the rites of Danassa and Herias, but he has no time to burn the body in his haste. He walks to the altar stone but will not look upon it in his rage. He sees instead the broken leather thong cast to the floor, the talisman that once hung at the Golden Girl’s neck. Justain. The blood-red dragon set in pale gold. Her travel-stained cloak lies beside it, a dark pool on the floor.
He understands the dreams now. He remembers the sight that the Blade gives him, long ago. Visions of light and darkness. His mother’s fear as she dies. His father’s lament for the nation he tries and fails to save. The dream of the king’s-bastard Astyra sent into hiding by a mother he loves, a women he breaks in body and mind. The love of his best friend. The love of the queen he spurns. The sight of them together, a fire in his mind that burns for long years.
He will not turn away from these things anymore.
He sees the Golden Girl in his dreams. He sees her for long months, walking the endless road of hamlets and farmsteads as she follows him. He sees her father in dreams, long ago. Following that same road. He remembers now.
When he carries it before, the Blade gives him sight beyond that of other men. Beyond even the vision of his mother Irthna and the sorcery that is her gift. The Blade in his hand as high king gives him the power that lets him strike against the usurper Thoradun, lets him channel the magic of Empire to reclaim the Empire’s glory.
He loses that sight when he loses the Blade, letting it fall from his blood-soaked hand on the field where his son lies dead before him. And so separated from him over long years, held tight to the will of Nàlwyr and Justain as they seek him over endless leagues, five thousand days of hope and pain, the Blade’s vi
sion watches him instead.
These past seasons, the dreams he has. As the Blade comes ever closer to him, he sees it because it is the Blade that seeks him. Not the Golden Girl. Not Nàlwyr, now gone. The two of them are only agents for the hunger of the Blade that is a sign of his connection to it, manifesting as the hunger he feels now at the sight of it, the touch of it.
All this time, the Whitethorn, sword of kings, has been seeking its master. Showing in dreams the way that leads back to its power in the end.
The White Pilgrim steps from the shattered doors of the shrine into bright morning. He kneels at the torn turf where the hassas descend, sees it dry and guesses that two nights have passed.
He paces quickly to the great ash. The pain at his chest, in his heart, his mind is gone. The ache at his leg, the ache of age is gone. He embraces the rage that replaces it. Kneels in prayer at Aelathar’s stone one last time.
He takes the talisman that is the Golden Girl’s. The sign of her father’s faith, her mother’s love. He lays it on Aelathar’s name.
“Until you see her,” he whispers, “keep this safe.”
He rises with the strength granted him by the Blade he wears now. Its scabbard belt is slung below the cord of his robes, unknotted in the manner of a pilgrim.
“Tell Nàlwyr I am broken for what has been done,” he says.
He goes to the well, to the stone bowl where he retrieves one of the token-coins Arsanc gave him. The profile face of the Black Duke shivers the shadow in his mind, whips it to the seething darkness that he welcomes like an old friend.
“Forgive me,” he says, “for what must be done.”
With the Whitethorn in hand, the White Pilgrim summons up the sight once more, and in that sight, he sees the Black Duke’s course through a sky bleeding golden dawn along the line of white sea. A view he knows, rooting deep in heart and memory.
He looks to glimpse the Golden Girl, just for a moment. He sees her bound and tied behind the sergeant, Gareyth, where he rides. Her eyes are closed in merciful sleep.
The blood of children on his hands.
He sets the cloak the Golden Girl wore to his shoulders, concealing the Blade as he walks off into the dawn.
The voice of the Whitethorn is in his mind now, and he remembers it all.
The Empire of the Lothelecan falls the year he is born, and Gilvaleus is the Empire’s child. Grandson of Garneus who is the last regent of Gracia-under-Empire, then first king of the new Gracia that shares the year of Gilvaleus’s birth. That new Gracia fractures into petty kingdoms and bloody war the day his grandfather dies.
Gilvaleus is only a boy, seven summers behind him. Nephew of Eurymos, who claims the crown from Garneus his father, and who fights and fails to hold the nascent kingdom together. Son of Telos, who claims the crown in turn when his brother is murdered by the usurper Thoradun.
The usurper is Lord of Sannos, where stands the shrine of Angarid and Aelathar’s resting place. Sannos where Arsanc speaks to him outside an empty village. White Pilgrim and Black Duke, the burning of the dead. Sannos where Justain comes to him, tells him who he is, where he fails her. Blood on his hands.
He remembers now. The power of the Blade reshapes his mind as it mends his body.
He remembers it all.
He is the Empire’s child, is trained to its standards and tactics, to its ideals and nobility. He has passed twenty summers when his mother gives her life to channel the power of the sword of kings. When his father falls in battle against Thoradun. When Gilvaleus rides to his side, too late. Seizing the sword of kings from dead hands. Vowing revenge.
He is the Empire’s child, and grows up with the faith of self that denies the old gods their power for a thousand years. The belief that neither gods nor any other mystical force controls the fate of the world and its countless peoples. The belief that the destiny of the mortal races is theirs to decide, safe from the slavery that worship and pantheon make. The faith of self sees all folk free to seize the powers of mind and magic that previous generations claim as a boon of the gods, to be bestowed only on the faithful.
He is the Empire’s child, and he seeks to rebuild its greatness in Gracia. Seeks to forge a lasting peace, a rule of law. A freedom from fear and tyranny to last another thousand years.
On the Plains of Marthai, it all ends.
The distance to Mitrost is thirty leagues along the straight line of the sky. Two day’s journey for Arsanc and his company, the hassas flying at speed. High Spring is done at tonight’s sunset, and the Black Duke must be in Mitrost then. The seat of the high king that Gracia is denied for fourteen years of strife and war.
To walk that distance will be ten days or more along the twisting tracks that lead to roads that shadow the great River Vouris. Seven days, perhaps, if the White Pilgrim walks the grassland border of the river valley, cutting overland on a straight course south and east for the sea. All of it too long, the king’s conclave starting with Arsanc’s arrival. No time left to him.
He carries the Whitethorn, sword of kings. He knows another road.
A strength he does not know in long years drives the White Pilgrim as he runs. He passes by the farmsteads and hamlets of these fertile lands at a distance. He sees the same scars of war that have haunted him on this spring’s journey. Fields burned, fanes leveled by spellcraft and the force of blood and steel.
These are old lands. He knows it. Remembers it. The confluence of cultures that defines the heartland. Gracia that is the war-torn present. The Aigorani that are the fathers of Gracia, the Aclicians from across the broad Leagin who settle here even before the first Aigorani city-states are raised. The Empire of Eria that is built on the bones of Aigoris, and which first binds these lands as a nation with animys and iron.
These are old lands, and in them are the old ruins in which the unseen pathways of the Lotherasien are hidden away.
He knows those hidden roads. They are a part of him now where the Blade feeds him that knowledge. The memories that are his mother’s, long ago.
The sun is setting pale as he finds the archway he seeks. Standing isolated in a lonely stretch of beech forest whose ground betrays no sign of any traveler but him. Far from the road, far from the farm tracks. Grey stone tumbles as if part of a wall once, only a wide archway still standing along a roughly flattened yard of flagstones slumbering beneath moss and long grass.
He feels the pulse of power in the Blade as he approaches. He remembers it. The lifeblood of kings flows through the dweomer of its steel, through him.
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.
He should die on the Plains of Marthai that day. It is why he casts the Blade aside, lets it fall to the blood-mire of that killing field. He feels the mortal wound that Astyra deals out, lets it take him down into shadow.
But as long as he is bound to Ankathira the Whitethorn, he cannot die. This is his fate, he knows now. This is his curse.
Long ago, the faithful of the old gods whisper that the Empire falls because it seizes and suppresses the gods’ own power. The magic of mind and mana, life and sun harnessed by mortal hands. The magic that destroyed the Imperial capital of Ulannor Mor in a cataclysm whose aftershocks set the structure of Imperial power crumbling.
The practice of the priests states that emperors and kings can only ever be the supplicating shadows of the gods who give them life. Forced to bend their reign beneath the same yoke of subservience, of faith, worn by all mortals. So it is that the Empire’s greed for power pushes its leaders to hunger for and seize the power of the gods. Until the true gods, grown impatient in their might and majesty, strike them down.
He awakes alive in Marthai as he awakes alive in the shrine, feeling the dark power, the hunger that is Whitethorn’s coursing through him. Claiming him. Accepting him. Healing the wounds of the body but leaving mind and spirit shattered at the sight of a son’s lifel
ess form. The memory of a young girl’s scream.
He draws the sword of kings. He feels the flood of power flow from Whitethorn to the ancient stones and the portal the Lotherasien built there. The arch and courtyard are set out by careful hands to take the appearance of ancient ruin, keystones glowing now with the symbol of the Imperial Guard. Three blades and three moons are set touching, overlapping, held to each other in a tight embrace.
Within the archway, a grey light flares and burns away as dark mist, and all the hundred hundred destinations that connect within the portal network of the Lotherasien fill his mind.
This is the Empire’s power, which wins him the kingdom of his father, his uncle, his grandfather with only twenty summers behind him. This is the Empire’s power, with which he attempts to reforge a nation. And in doing so, he follows that Empire’s own doomed example.
He remembers the place he goes to. His thought and spirit are clear now, the shadow gone that plagues his sight through long years of exile and wandering. The curse he bears. The penance he pays for the sins of the king he is, long ago.
Over long years of wandering, he hides from the question, hidden from the essence of what he is, long ago.
Asking himself how he can be punished by gods in which he never believed.
He moves through the archway, through the burning mist, stepping through to a changed light. The sun still hangs low but the sky is shrouded, bright but cold above the sea. It is a different ruin whose far side he steps through. A great stone arch atop the cliffs a league from Mitrost, spread beneath a sky of dusk and dark cloud that shreds away on the wind. The portal’s power twists through him as the sign of the Lotherasien on its keystones fades away.
From the edge of a long grove of green-budded cypress, he looks out upon the last of a great valley, thick with farm thorps. These crowd together and push toward the feet of a great stone city set astride the twisting blue-black of the Vouris as it rolls to the sea. Mitrost is bright against the dark slopes of that endless water. From long ago, remnants of the glory that is the legacy of Gilvaleus seep into its shadowed stones, white banners twisting in the wind.
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Page 35