A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  “Keep this in hand,” he says as he presses the golden token of the Black Duke to her palm. “It will get you past both gates, but do not let Arsanc’s guards find you before you get there. They walk so that the whole world hears them, so listen, wait, move in the silence. Follow the shadows. When they ask at the keep wall, you are sent from the Black Duke himself with a message for the captains of his pavilion in the city. Do not be afraid.”

  The White Pilgrim pushes her hair back, wipes dried blood from her cheek. He stares into the blue eyes that he understands have never known the thought of abandoning her father’s quest. He tries to help her scale the wall, but she is up without the aid of his hand. A strength in her that is Nàlwyr’s, the old determination in her as she holds herself there.

  “My father’s dream,” she whispers, as if she knows the White Pilgrim’s mind. “You remember.”

  Not a question this time. He feels her gaze on him, knows that she senses the strength of mind, of body that floods through him now.

  “I remember,” the White Pilgrim says.

  Her father dreams of this night, long ago. Gilvaleus with the sword of kings in hand, stepping forth to the witness of all the dukes of Gracia. He sees it in his mind. He feels the hunger of the Blade embrace the power in that image.

  “Do not cross over to the side of revenge,” he says. He hears the tremor in his voice, tries to fight it. “To the embrace of hate. For once hate holds you, there is nothing left.”

  She hears it also. An uncertainty threading his words that should not be there. “My king, you must show yourself. Tell them your name. You are the legend, and the legend is all that men remember now…”

  “When the past is reckoned, the future will be made,” he says. “Do not lose what you have. Your life, your faith. Your goodness that is your father’s.”

  “My king…”

  “Go,” the White Pilgrim says, and he is gone from her. Disappearing quickly into the darkness of the sleeping trees.

  WITHIN A SPACE OF SHADOW, he once more approaches the light. Walls of shattered glass are flanked by white stone at the orchard’s edge, marking the gabled exterior of the domed hall beyond. The center of the keep is its highest point, broken like all the rest of its crumbling edifice. Little more than a shadow of the past.

  Crystal shards cling to twisted spindles of rusted steel, the gold leaf that long ago catches the glistening dawn stripped away. Walls of canvas hang here now, spiked to the stones above. Clipped together against the open air, the chill of night.

  He stands at the canvas, can reach out to touch it. No way to see within, but the sight of the Blade takes him there.

  The domed hall. The king’s seat. The throne room of Mitrost that is his, long ago. The great council chamber where the future and fate of a kingdom is decided. Will be decided again.

  A charred haze paints the walls, frozen fast. Signs of the fires that burn here when the keep is lost. White stone mold-streaked to grey rises to curved buttresses overhead, etched with mosaic scars that are the only remnants of the images of legend that adorn these ceilings, long ago.

  Once, the trials of immortal Pheretas are rendered here, who labors across the breadth of the mortal world to return the six lost scrolls of good and evil, life and death, memory and madness to Denas his father. The visions of Acasyma, whose prophecies of the future bring destruction or fortune to all who hear them. Creusa the mariner, who travels the seven Ports of the Dragon Kings around the Leagin and returns with their ancient secrets. The reign of Cassatra who is the dragon queen of Eria, and who all the kings of Gracia that arise thereafter claim for their bloodline until that bloodline ends at the Empire’s word.

  The stories he grows up hearing. The tales of the past that live on as song and shadow play, lesson and memory. A hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, his life should join the lives of those who come before him. Memory turned to legend turned to myth by the passage of time. But he is not worthy of that fate. Not anymore.

  The White Pilgrim hears the words spoken in the domed hall, then hears beyond them. He feels the senses of the Blade slip into mind and heart, reading the fear and rage that threads the room and the small circle of men and women gathered there.

  The nineteen dukes of Gracia stand alone in conclave. No captains or guards at their sides, no entourages of heirs or petty nobles. They meet alone by ancient tradition, face to face so that no shows of false support, no gainsaying of fervent followers can distract them.

  The dukes of Gracia are secure in the power of spellcraft that each brings with them. Ancient incantation, the dweomer of armor and cloak, charms and wards. The strongest magic in the nation, perhaps. Granting each ruler the power of a demigod, even as it reduces each to equals. Nothing to mark the conflict of this night except sheer force of will and the strength of the followers that each holds beyond the walls of the keep, the city around it.

  But that strength is broken tonight, and Gracia will never be the same.

  Through the sight of the Blade, the White Pilgrim sees nineteen thrones of stone that circle the sundered white table. All that remains of the court that once stood here. The thrones are the chairs of the king’s companions, long ago. The table’s great panes are split and shattered, broken down the middle and cracked to two crumbling sections across the floor.

  For this endless day, the dukes of Gracia are on their feet. They speak to show their rank and strength without break or surcease. They fight with word and threat since before the sun fades. Sparring and shouting endlessly all the earlier day, even though by tradition and agreement, the conclave begins only at the mark of night that is the High Spring’s end.

  This is the king’s conclave. The summit started by his grandfather, who is Garneus the Great and Imperial Regent. In the aftermath of word from the distant west that Ulannor Mor has fallen, it is Garneus alone who can bind together the lords of Gracia to acknowledge the need for one leader. One voice who speaks for all. One king whose rule reclaims the greatness that is and is always.

  That first king’s conclave is in Orlach in Aldona, long ago. The great city of gardens where Gilvaleus is born in the year of the Empire’s fall.

  The second conclave is in Mitrost, the seat of power that Gilvaleus forges to mark the rise of a new age that he vows will equal the old. He is the High King, who slays the usurper Thoradun and drives his forces back to the ice lands of Norgyr once more.

  Within the circle in which the dukes stand, the White Pilgrim sees in his mind’s eye the great slab of stone as it shatters and is thrown down by the sorcery of Astyra, the night he challenges his father for the throne. An assault of sorcery breaks even the magical defenses of the keep, the high king cast down as the white table is sundered by the king’s-bastard’s unbreakable adamantine spear.

  Long ago, the white table is the seat of the high king’s companions and the symbol of the justice of his reign. An artifact of the city of kings, lost to time but rebuilt at Gilvaleus’s direction by sorcery and engineering when the walls of Mitrost are raised.

  Its circular face comprises twelve interlocking panes of stone, recut from the twelve holy peaks of the Drachen’s Teeth and the Shieldcrest. Assembled by spellcraft and ground to a clear mirror-brightness.

  Along its edge stand a score of kings and princes, who by threat of war or love for Gilvaleus name themselves dukes and accept the reign of the high king that will make Gracia whole once more. A sign to connect his rule to the rule of the ancient lines.

  Astyra’s assault is put down that night. And in the end, the companions of Gilvaleus the High King ride to the Plain of Marthai to meet the warriors of the king’s-bastard. The swords he calls to him from the duchies of the Northlands. Uncounted blades of the Norgyr, who seek revenge against Gilvaleus for Thoradun the Usurper, their long-dead lord.

  At the head of the white table, a single figure from among the nineteen commands the attention of all. Armor of black lacquered plate. Lines of age and anger etched in a
handsome face. A scar at his neck, hair hanging to shroud eyes that are black even in the light.

  “Consider the choice before you.” The Imperial tongue, harsh-clipped in the accent of Norgyr.

  Arsanc stands before a high seat of white stone, pitted and cracked with endless age but standing tall by virtue of its ancient dweomer. The throne carved of a single block of Magandis marble, it is said. An artifact of an age before history, beyond even the Empire’s power to destroy, so they simply erase that history. Leave the marble throne empty so as to be forgotten.

  The sight that is the Blade’s lays out the endless threat and debate that leads to this point. It focuses the White Pilgrim’s mind and senses to the final ultimatum that the Black Duke lays this night at the feet of those he means to rule.

  Arsanc is a freelord of Norgyr, one of the dozen war-clan chiefs and tribal kings who rule a disparate collection of nation-states that collapses to blood and chaos when the Empire is lost. He is young when his father dies and leaves him the lands of Thorfin in the far north. A hardscrabble spread of steppe and forest that is perfectly set to the Black Duke’s ambition. An isolation there that reminds him he is alone. A starkness that cannot warm the cold of heart that comes with a brother’s death years before.

  Then long ago, word from the south changes all that.

  From a skald sent into Gracia in exile, a tale returns to Arsanc’s court, bargained against clemency for the various crimes that see the bard exiled in the first place. The story he offers is the truth of what happened to Arsanc’s brother Havar that night in Stondreva, gleaned from the drunken rantings of squires and fallen knights. Proven in the confession of a blue-eyed warrior who wanders the fallen lands of Gracia in constant search of a thing he will not name. A broken knight who confesses to the murder of children. Whispers of the dark rot of the spirit that eats away the heart of Gilvaleus’s reign.

  His whole life, the Black Duke lives with the sadness that lingers now in the space where the love for his brother is once held. Now, that sadness is replaced by a dark hatred and a thirst for vengeance against a king long dead. A vengeance that will be taken against all Gracia in the end.

  War is a constant in Norgyr, though the Black Duke spends his life avoiding its costs. He builds his forces claiming the need to defend his lands, holding a peace that means nothing to him anymore, as striking from Thorfin, his forces take Innveig Freehold to the south. Then into Reimari where his brother dies, long ago, and down to the borderlands of the Duchy of Mundra that is the wall of Gracia to the south.

  The fields and steppes of Reimari have long been disputed territory. A realm of rich grasslands that are the frontier between Vanyr and Norgyr, Norgyr and Gracia. Then so does Arsanc who is freelord of Reimari in Norgyr declare himself duke of Reimari in Gracia. And only then is the Black Duke’s ambition revealed.

  With the strength of three freeholds behind him, Arsanc is the most powerful lord of Norgyr. He leads an army of the north that perches above Gracia, waiting like a tide to be unleashed. Even before the invasion of Mundra begins, the threat of invasion is enough to cripple the northern duchies and their leaders, weakened by the years of deadly struggle between themselves that the fall of Gilvaleus wreaks.

  “The newest duke of Gracia will lead you,” the Black Duke shouts. “Or the war that begins today will shatter the shadow that is all that remains of this land.”

  The White Pilgrim feels an ache twist through him as shouted voices erupt throughout the domed hall. Capitulation and defiance, the dukes of Gracia jockeying for power in the midst of the unthinkable change this night will bring. He feels the Blade echoing the hunger of the Black Duke’s words. He remembers Marthai. Remembers his son’s blood on his hands as he forces the hunger away.

  “Hold…” he whispers, and he does not know who he speaks to.

  Arsanc’s forces push across the border, engaging in isolated strikes. Mercenary tactics, hit and run assaults on merchant trains and farm towns shatter the resolve of Mundra’s people, just as the tactics of the usurper Thoradun do four decades earlier. Truces are forged quickly in fire between the Black Duke and those who cannot stand against him. Treaties open the roads into Lamitri and Liana, the green fields and mountain mines of northern Gracia that are the anvil on which the hammer of destruction will strike.

  Around the broken white table, the three dukes of Mundra, Lamitri, and Liana stand closest to the Black Duke. Marshalling support for an ultimatum.

  Arsanc’s forces wage a lightning war in Sannos and in Mirdza. Mirdza will yield up Marthai when it falls, and fair Hypriot at Marthai’s heart. With Hypriot comes control of the Sea of Galvas and its great cities and its hundred smaller ports, from which comes control of Cosiand and Valos and Aynwel in the green south. The trade of Galvas and the south pushes north through the Free City of Yewnyr, whose wealth and power stand in Mundra, and so back to the north, where the Black Duke’s forces form a wedge set to thrust down and into the heart of Gracia like a bloody spear.

  “This is the doom before you,” Arsanc says in triumph. His voice threads the White Pilgrim’s mind as the Blade feeds the words, the haze of emotion into him. “This is the weakness of your race, your kings, your gods. Gracia was the jewel of the east, and will be again. But you are children, and your games of rule and conquest and petty wars are over.”

  The Gracian dukes have only one option, all knowing it even before Arsanc speaks. Arsanc is to be made high king, elevated from the ranks of the fractious dukes that have fought over Gracia for fourteen years and could do little more than watch while it crumbled away. All have heard their doom that day in ultimatum and private audience, and in the days before that in the whispers of advisors and courtiers.

  “The king’s conclave is the assembly of dukes, who will choose from among their own ranks a high king to rule all Gracia, and in whose name the dukes will uphold the peace and law of Mitrost.”

  The White Pilgrim hears the power in the Black Duke’s voice, hears the echo of history in his words. The same words Gilvaleus speaks in the domed hall when the usurper falls.

  “You will know greatness again by my hand,” the Black Duke shouts. “You will know peace, or your people will know death. Your choice stands before you.”

  The White Pilgrim feels the shadow press down upon his sight. He hears a voice thread that shadow to tell him that there stands a third place between peace and death.

  Death is the ending of things. Death is a part of the natural order, the settling of accounts, the passage from what is before to what is now and what is tomorrow. Peace is the beginning of things, the time before the breaking that comes when all the natural forces of life and nature are unleashed.

  The place between is his life. All the peace from long ago, burned into memory like a book of scars that he must read and read again. All the pain that is tomorrow’s, driven into his flesh like iron nails as punishment for what he is.

  “My lord?”

  The voice rings out loud in the stillness of his mind. He feels the echo that differentiates it from the voice of the Blade, repeating the signs and shadows of the conclave in dark whispers.

  The White Pilgrim wheels, finds himself face to face with four guards. The armor and cloak of the Black Duke. Faces he does not recognize. Two have swords already in hand, the other two drawing as they see him. No warning of their approach, his mind and senses focused inward, into the domed hall and what unfolds there.

  He feels the hunger twist through him like something alive. Through the Blade’s sight, he sees himself through these strangers’ eyes. An old man, bent. The black boar at his shoulder makes them approach carefully, taking him for one of them until he turns to show the road-grimed robes beneath the cloak. A belt of frayed rope is loose above a scabbard, from which the White Pilgrim draws a longsword whose weight is seemingly too much for him. It hangs in his hand, trembling with the effort of clutching it.

  Their looks are something between humor and pity. The warrior with the t
wo blades of a sergeant at his shoulder detaches himself from the others.

  “Yield,” the White Pilgrim says. He hears laughter from all four as the sergeant strides forward. “One man must die tonight,” the White Pilgrim says. His voice has an edge they too easily ignore. “Along with any others who stand in the way of that deed.”

  The guard sergeant raises his blade, a slow arcing strike. In a flash of silver, his sword is gone from his hand. A second flash and the hand is gone.

  He stares in shock as the White Pilgrim grabs him, spins him, anchors all his weight and strength by deadly instinct to send the sergeant hurtling through the remains of the garden’s wall of glass with a scream.

  All the shouting, all the blustering and bravado of the domed hall is shattered in an instant. The canvas that blocked the night and the open air of the garden comes down as the sergeant flies through it, hitting hard and sprawling in a nest of blackened shards.

  More figures follow a heartbeat behind. Three in the uniform of the Black Duke swarm the fourth at their center, a blur of grey and white, silver and red. The White Pilgrim fends off attacks from three directions, the Blade singing in his hand.

  Chaos erupts in the hall, a dozen blades drawn at once. Skirmishes flare between the leaders of Gracia, who are reduced to brawling fear in the instant. Accusations shouted of ambush and betrayal, the incantation of spellcraft, animyst and arcane power filling the air.

  The White Pilgrim threads through it like a deadly shadow. He discards the cloak of the black boar where it limits his movements, spins at the center of a web of blood and steel. The three guards who pursue him are fought to a standstill, screaming for aid as they fall back beneath a staggering series of fast strikes.

  He attacks relentlessly. He feels the hunger of Whitethorn even as he fights it, forcing his strikes to sword and armor rather than the soft flesh of arm and neck. He parries without counterstrike as he feels his way through the movement around him, feels the sight that is the Blade’s mark out the field of combat. Feels it flood him with the fury that will drink deep of the blood of betrayers this night if he will only let it.