A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  “Hold now! Hold now!”

  The voice booms out over the chaos of screams and steel. The Black Duke’s warriors respond first to their master’s call, falling back where they press the White Pilgrim, who turns. There at the edge of the broken table that divides the hall, Arsanc holds his sword in one hand, his other clenched within a globe of light that flares to every corner of the chamber.

  As the dukes of Gracia shield their eyes against the brightness, the great doors of the domed hall are cracked wide with the echoing boom of stone on stone. From the corridors and side chambers beyond, the captains and war-mages and guards of nineteen dukes spill through from where they have held their own court, awaiting word of the business of their masters.

  Some dozens make it to the sides of their lieges before Arsanc himself snarls an incantation. A shimmering black fog rises, congealing even as warriors and mages fall back to either side. In its wake, the doorway is sealed in a shroud of dark stone that echoes with the anger of voice that created it.

  “Hold now!” the Black Duke shouts again. “Spell and sword, all stand down!”

  A sudden silence twists through the throne room. The dukes of Gracia, the knights and war-mages who defend them, all fix wary eyes on each other, on the Black Duke, on the White Pilgrim. They cluster around the chairs of the king’s companions, a force of magic and military strength as formidable as any ever assembled in the Elder Kingdoms.

  It would take very little provocation for all the leadership of Gracia to perish here, the White Pilgrim realizes. He senses the power held in dangerous check, the rage and fear that threads the chamber. The Black Duke’s ultimatum.

  One man must die tonight.

  The White Pilgrim steps toward Arsanc. One of the Black Duke’s defenders slips in from behind with axe in hand, ignores his duke’s orders in favor of a perfect unseen strike. The White Pilgrim swings back without looking, takes the attacker cleanly at the wrist, cutting to the bone. Then around from the other side, cutting deep at the shoulder as the axe spins away. His gaze never leaves Arsanc across from him.

  “Hold!” the Black Duke shouts again. No one moves, save for the White Pilgrim as he continues toward the broken cleft of the white table, collapsed inward to a crevasse of rubble and dust.

  He fights the call of the sword to strike again, strike hard. Drink deep of blood and the power it provides. The dead Gareyth, the Black Duke’s men in the orchard all laugh to see him.

  Arsanc is not laughing.

  “I told you I was the source of all your pain,” the White Pilgrim says. “I told her they would not listen.”

  Arsanc does not ask how this ancient man, this wreck of a man could possibly have made his way here, left for dead two days and thirty leagues away. He does not ask how the White Pilgrim still lives. His shadowed eyes betray the darkness of his understanding.

  “Those who would actively seek the crown of kings betray an ambition that makes them wholly unsuitable for rule,” the White Pilgrim says. He hears the tone of command in his own voice, sees the reaction in the assembled dukes as they look from him to Arsanc. They fall back to leave space around the white table where he paces, bare footfalls steady in the silence.

  “You cannot…” Arsanc whispers. “You cannot be.”

  His own blade pulses blue-white in his hands. One of the great blunt-ended broadswords of the Norgyr. Runes of magic flare along the length of its steel, Arsanc channeling its arcane power.

  The power in the sword of kings that is Ankathira that is the Whitethorn shivers through the White Pilgrim, who hears the voice of the Blade as a dark laughter in his mind.

  A hatred flares in the black eyes of the Black Duke. The shadow that a lifetime’s pain inflicts on others, because the target that pain should seek is dead and gone. Forever out of reach.

  The White Pilgrim looks from face to face as he passes the dukes of Gracia in turn. He seeks for familiarity in those eyes, sees only shadows staring back at him. Too much time passes. Old faces that might be faces he knew, reshaped by long years. Young faces to replace the old who fight at his side and kneel in this chamber and pledge their rule to the high king’s law when the fighting is done.

  Sons and daughters. Usurpers and new blood. Time passes for them as it does for all folk, all things. Flesh and life fading, images graven in stone and mosaic, sketched in charcoal or pigment. All worn away in time.

  All things end. All things but him, and the sins he bears that hold him here.

  “She was wrong,” he says to himself, to the faces staring stunned around him, to no one. “The things we remember, good or bad, are no matter.”

  He feels the Golden Girl’s hand at his shoulder. She is tall, he realizes suddenly. Possessing the wide innocence of her father’s eyes, the steadiness of her father’s hand as she grasps his, holds it tight.

  “A king might return from the dead,” he says. “Speak his name and be cast aside as a fool. An old man, senses lost. No face to be recognized because the memories have left him behind.”

  “Only the good has been remembered,’ she whispers, weeping. Long ago. “The people need their king, who vanquished the usurper and restored to Gracia its honor and peace. The darkness will be forgotten. Your legend has undone all sins.”

  He tries to reach for her hand, but she is not there. Only a dream now.

  He tries to reach for Nàlwyr, for Aelathar, but he is alone.

  “Only by deeds,” the White Pilgrim says, shouting now. “Only by what we do are we remembered. The best and worst of what we are. Our humility, our hubris, our fears, our courage. We vow our lives to those who follow us, to those we lead, and so our lives are reckoned in the end only by how we die!”

  He turns back. He looks to Arsanc once more where the Black Duke stands cold, a dangerous darkness in his eyes. The White Pilgrim fights to keep his breathing slowed in the silence.

  “Do you remember me now, my duke?”

  Arsanc is a dozen strides away as he raises his sword for a killing stroke. But then the single step he takes toward the White Pilgrim consumes him in a flash of light that disgorges him again a single step distant. Whitethorn is up to parry, faster than thought, three furious strikes sent wide as the White Pilgrim twists away.

  Arsanc stares in stark disbelief, falls back into a defensive posture as the White Pilgrim counterattacks. Whitethorn is a blur of silver where it lances out, meets steel twice before cutting beneath Arsanc’s sword arm with the force of all the Blade’s hunger behind it. The White Pilgrim feels the sword of kings strike but glance off, the Black Duke’s armor flaring white for a moment beneath a shimmering shield of arcane force.

  He staggers back, watching Arsanc as he halts. A moment’s respite.

  “It does not matter,” the White Pilgrim says. “Who I am. All that matters is what was done. What will be done in answer.”

  Arsanc unclasps his cloak, casts it aside. “Here is my answer,” he whispers, and from a scabbard at the back of his belt, he draws a blue-bladed dirk as he strikes in a blaze of steel. The long looping arcs of the sword set up the dagger as it lashes out like a serpent from the left arm, the Black Duke fighting effortlessly, drawing on the dweomer of the broadsword to augment his strength. The sight of the Blade senses this, the White Pilgrim hearing it in the voice that guides his hand as it parries, blocks, parries again.

  The Black Duke makes a final onslaught, the broadsword howling as it strikes the side of the white table where it slopes up beside them. A chunk is hacked from its marbled edge, smoldering where it falls.

  “Your day is done,” the Black Duke shouts. “My blood’s revenge is on you.”

  A quick strike from Whitethorn arcs off the broadsword cleanly, the Blade shrieking in the White Pilgrim’s ears now, ravenous. “The sins of the father lost cannot be paid for by the daughter,” he calls. “No more than the guilt of the father can be cleansed by the innocence of the murdered son.”

  “My brother’s life is not bartered in platitudes! F
or my brother’s blood, the butcher’s daughter is mine, and I will bestow on her the death that should have been her father’s when she begs me in the end!”

  “I am the one you hate!” the White Pilgrim shouts. “I am the one whose madness cost a brother’s life!”

  “Then show me your children, old man, that they might feel the same pain you will feel when you fall here!”

  “I gave the order that sent Nàlwyr to Stondreva and your brother to his doom!”

  The White Pilgrim feels the weight of the truth slip from him. A confession left unspoken, uttered twice now for the first time in long years. And even as he speaks, he sees and understands the subtle shift in the Black Duke’s gaze where the words sink in through a lifetime of pain.

  “What do you remember, old man?”

  Arsanc strikes hard, a newly fired rage in him flaring as he pushes the offensive. As the White Pilgrim falls back, he understands that something is changed.

  Arsanc is as ready to kill as ever. But more than that, now and only now, the Black Duke is ready to die. Finally. No way out anymore from the pain he carries. Nothing else beyond this moment when everything ends.

  “I remember it all,” the White Pilgrim says, and he does.

  The power of the Blade clears his mind, feeds him the hunger that is the lifeblood of his reign. The power of Whitethorn threads through him, replaces his strength of self as if his blood were black shadow suddenly, fed and pumped by the heart of steel in his hand.

  “Havar was the brightest light,” the Black Duke screams in a voice churned of raw malice. “My brother was a scholar. A poet. Something better than the bloody line that got him.”

  The White Pilgrim feels the Blade begin to lead him in, too close. He leaves himself open as Arsanc attacks in a relentless flurry. The dirk takes him clean through the side to slash skin and muscle, staining the robes that are white once with a stream of blood. The pain staggers him even as he feels the power of the sword of kings staunch the wound, begin to knit torn flesh whole again.

  The assault gives him an opening as the Blade cuts for the throat. But the Black Duke only disappears, flashing back a half-dozen steps to let Whitethorn cleave empty air.

  “I sent him into Stondreva,” Arsanc shouts, “so that he might become more than what I was. The potential in him to lead, and to follow his conscience like he did the night he stood against Nàlwyr and laid down his life to protect children who were nothing to you!”

  The White Pilgrim feels a sudden chill root deep in his heart. He feels the pain at his leg flare, only for the instant that the hunger of the Blade abates. Long enough for him to feel the shadow twist inside him.

  Arsanc sees it. A realization shines bright in the black eyes. “What do you remember, old man?”

  Whitethorn makes a brutal slashing attack against the leg, the broadsword down to deflect it. The backswing comes in high, straight for the chest, but the dirk sends it wide. The flare of white light again as the dweomer of the Black Duke’s armor turns the glancing edge of the blow.

  Another flurry of strikes is exchanged, Arsanc shifting backward to cross-parry. And then he slips in the loose rubble of the floor. Only a moment to regain his footing, but it is enough.

  Waiting for this moment, the White Pilgrim lets himself succumb to the fury of the Blade. He feels the shadow take him, lets it call his body to service as he lunges, strikes hard. He ignores the wards of the black armor, finds the softer flesh of the Black Duke’s dirk hand. He drives through and back so fast that the Blade shows blood only as it pulls away.

  The dagger spins away as the White Pilgrim blocks a desperate swing from the broadsword. In a flare of light, the Black Duke is gone, drawing on the power of the sword once more to cast himself back across the chamber, to the far side of the shattered table.

  The White Pilgrim is ready for him. Already moving with the warning of the sight that is the Blade’s, he leaps across the table to slash down as he drops, cutting deep against the Black Duke’s sword arm. The spell of shielding flares again, but the Blade tastes blood, cutting through spell and armor, flesh and bone.

  The broadsword falls from the Black Duke’s hand. He tries to grab for it but Whitethorn bites a third time, taking him through the shoulder as he staggers back.

  An absolute silence hangs in the domed hall of Mitrost, chamber of marble throne and white table and the fate of a nation. Arsanc twists his fingers as he snarls, the distant broadsword torn from the ground with the power of spellcraft, but the White Pilgrim catches it with his bare foot, slams it down hard.

  The Black Duke stands weaponless. No fear in his eyes. Quick movement comes from behind the White Pilgrim as Arsanc’s own men break for him. A half-dozen are seized and held by the captains and bodyguards of the other dukes, as many breaking free to rush the frozen figures at the center of the hall.

  A flick of Whitethorn brings the tip of the Blade to the Black Duke’s throat. Holds it there.

  Arsanc makes no move to wave his warriors back, so the White Pilgrim does it for him. The Blade trembles in his hand, tastes a trickle of blood along its razor edge. Six swords are drawn against the White Pilgrim. The Blade senses the threat of spellpower from two of those closest to him, two more in the crowd that he can see.

  But farther back, around the great chamber and from the corner of his eye, the White Pilgrim sees the dukes of Gracia kneeling.

  One by one, they slip to the ground. Captains and war-mages follow their lead, all staring at a sight that cannot be. A sight denied by all the history, all the legends they have ever learned.

  The White Pilgrim shakes his head. Does not want to see. “One man must die tonight,” he shouts to himself, to no one. “Along with any others who stand in the way of that deed.”

  Down the gleaming length of the sword of kings, he meets Arsanc’s black gaze. “Do you remember me now?”

  The Black Duke spits his answer, catching the White Pilgrim on the cheek. He wipes it away absently with his free hand. He shakes his head to clear the shadow, tightening like a noose around him now.

  “My brother did not yield when your noble Nàlwyr cut him down,” Arsanc says, pitching his voice for all to hear. “Do you expect different from me?” A moment’s defiance before the end.

  And the White Pilgrim steps back. Lowers Whitethorn to his side.

  “No. The mercy denied your brother by the high king’s order is yours.”

  The Black Duke’s warriors are too startled to react, holding where they stand. Arsanc’s eyes are black pits, seething with a lifetime’s rage. But the White Pilgrim sees uncertainty showing in that gaze for the first time.

  He feels that same rage coursing through the Blade where it and his hand are locked tight together. Something is changing. Something is changed, and the Blade knows it.

  Its shrieking fury pounds through him, the memory of all the nights of darkness spent alone. The taste of the long campaign in which he raises the banner of his father and uncle before him, hunts the usurper’s forces across burning fields and through gates of magic to north and south, to the coast, to the forest wall. The scent of death that threads the mist of Marthai as falling bodies churn the mud of the field to bloody foam.

  Of all the things lost to him, this is the last to return. The memory of the voice that whispers to him when he first takes the sword of kings from his dead father’s hand. Telling him of the things he will do, the power he will wield. The land he will unite under his banner.

  Then comes the memory of that voice as it whispers of other things. Betrayal of the heart. The thirst for vengeance that drives him against Thoradun, that spikes the hunger for retribution against Cymaris. The shadow that turns his heart to ice for the sake of a lost son and the prophecy he is become.

  The White Pilgrim takes a step back. He does not think on what must be done, because he knows that to think on it would betray the action to the Blade where its sight twists through his mind. He thinks instead of a woman’s laughter, ringing
like a clear bell, faint shimmering of silver on the air.

  His thoughts are clear. Truly clear for the first time in all the long years of exile that scar body and heart and mind.

  It takes all the effort of his will and the strength of both hands to let Whitethorn drop to the ground before him.

  The White Pilgrim feels a peace that he never knows. He lets it settle in on him, slowly. A chill threads through him that is the cool touch of old stone, the heat of blood suddenly stilled where the Blade hits the floor with an echoing clash.

  “Too much of the blood of fathers and sons, daughters and brothers has already been spilled in the name of this same madness,” the White Pilgrim says. “My blood must end it. My life is yours.”

  He drops to his knees.

  In another place, in another battle, another lifetime, he falls into the embrace of death because death is promised to him. He falls at the hands of his son, the legends say. He feels Astyra’s spear like a dream of endless falling, endless agony as it shatters ribs and spine, pierces his still-beating heart.

  In that moment of dying, as in this moment of dying, he realizes how long he waits for that death. Biding time for the chance to make atonement for the darkness he carries. A death at the hands of the son destined to slay him will somehow wash away the blood on his own hands. Astyra, Cymaris. Aelathar, Nàlwyr. Havar, who is a scholar and poet. So many more who die so that the marble throne might be his.

  “Forgive me,” he says to himself, to no one.

  A step away from him, Arsanc flicks his fingers. The sword of kings is pulled from the floor on threads of unseen force, snatched up to his hand. The White Pilgrim sees the Black Duke measure the weight of the Blade, feels the shudder as its power threads through him.

  Arsanc turns so that the light of the domed hall shimmers on the cross-guard and fuller in steeled gold. Ancient glyphs of prophecy and power are scribed there in white, pulsing with a faint glow. An edge and ridge of dwyrsilver steel shed the shadows as the light of the Blade draws forth the dark murmur that is risen from the kneeling dukes, their war-mages and sword captains.