“You know this blade!” Arsanc calls. The White Pilgrim feels the Black Duke seize the power of this moment never looked for, never dreamed of. A final and unexpected piece of the fate that will be made here this night. “The sword of kings decides the destiny of Gracia! Returned from the dead to exact the justice denied by the betrayal of a king!”
No one moves. The song of blood and hunger that is the voice of the Blade rises to a new crescendo. The White Pilgrim hears an answer to that song as Arsanc laughs.
He is ready. He walks beneath the dark weight of his sin for a lifetime.
The Black Duke wheels to face him, swings back the sword of kings in an executioner’s arc. In that last moment, the White Pilgrim sees himself reflected in Arsanc’s black gaze.
Looking down on himself, there in his own eyes, the White Pilgrim sees nothing but acceptance.
Then a silent blur of naked steel erupts in a fountain of blood from the Black Duke’s throat.
A scream from somewhere. Arsanc staggers, Whitethorn still held high as he clutches at the rapier punched through his neck like a lance. Choking, spinning, he lurches away from the fallen canvas across the chamber, the wall of shattered glass from which the weapon is thrown.
The Black Duke’s closest warriors are in motion, but none are as the fast as the Golden Girl. She sprints in from the black shadow of the garden, slips past the clutching hands of two, four, a half-dozen frantic figures. She vaults to Arsanc’s back as he stumbles away in fear.
The White Pilgrim cannot move, cannot stand. Forced to watch as the Golden Girl grabs her father’s blade, tears it from Arsanc’s neck with a scream of rage and the grinding of bone. Twisting off, she parries two strikes from guards behind her, spins to run the staggered Arsanc through the hand.
She watches the fight, the White Pilgrim realizes. She sees all the Black Duke’s strengths of magic, the protective power of his armor. All the weakness of his rage carefully assessed while she waits.
In a heartbeat, the domed hall is a battlefield. Arsanc’s forces try to press the Golden Girl but are drawn back by attacks from the followers of the other dukes. An uproar of voices echoes from the buttressed walls, prayers and threats screamed over the clash of steel, the pulse of spell-fire erupting within the chaos.
The White Pilgrim cannot move, cannot stand. All his strength is gone, drained from him as the darkness of his blood is cleared. The memory of the sword’s voice in his mind, its shadow in his heart, fading now.
Unhindered, the Golden Girl presses hard, but Arsanc brings Whitethorn up to parry despite the grievous nature of his wounds. And even as he falls back, the fountain of blood at his throat slows. The White Pilgrim feels the power of the Blade, pulsing in time with the frenzied beating of the Black Duke’s heart.
The Golden Girl spins. Two fast feints, Arsanc slow as he follows, left out of position. The Blade cuts back where he tries to find an opening.
She thrusts with all the strength of her body. She drives her rapier through the unprotected wrist of the Black Duke’s sword arm, drives it further to strike the black armor. The force of that armor’s shielding magic flares within her blade, flowing into Arsanc’s arm through a conduit of blood and steel. Then back into the armor in a blinding pulse of arcane feedback that lets the rapier punch through plate steel, chain and leather beneath, muscle and bone.
Arsanc makes no sound despite the pain as his arm is pinned to his chest. The Golden Girl drives one fist to his eyes, uses the other hand to grasp Whitethorn by the cross-guard and tear it from his blood-drenched hands.
Arsanc screams then. The sound of a soul sundered. A lifetime of vengeance sought and promised and taken away.
The Golden Girl is Justain. The White Pilgrim remembers. Daughter of Nàlwyr, the best blade of the kingdom.
She has her father’s eyes, open wide in blind rage as she twists around Arsanc to punch the sword of kings through his back, shredding cloak and armor, flesh and bone.
The Black Duke staggers, clutching for the Blade with his one good hand as it is torn from him again, ribs splintering, Justain spinning. Using the momentum of her movement to hack Arsanc’s head from his body in a fountain of blood that catches her as she screams.
The White Pilgrim screams with her.
The sword of kings slips from her hand. The Blade drops to the floor as the body of the Black Duke falls.
Something is changed.
The White Pilgrim kneels with the Golden Girl in his arms, feels her body wracked with sobs as she clings to him.
“There is no absolution,” the White Pilgrim says to no one. “There is no ending for Gilvaleus…”
The throne room of Mitrost is in chaos, the forces of the Black Duke fighting to get to his body. Steel and spell-fire ring out loud as the forces of the other dukes of Gracia splinter off to factions, screaming betrayal, calling for justice.
“You lie to yourself. You said it before. Deeds and words are one and the same. You have earned your absolution a thousand times over.”
The Golden Girl’s voice at his ear. He hears the fear in it that reveals the child she is, thirteen summers behind her. He holds her but he does not know why. He tries to remember.
“The gods have denied me death,” he says, “and I will never know their reasons…”
“Then make your own reason for living. Make that reason count.”
He looks up then, and even in the chaos, he sees the eyes that watch him. Arsanc’s body is gone, figures rushing past toward the garden, toward the main doors where the stone wall is shattered and brought down by the thunder of arcane force.
Something is changed. He is walking, cannot remember standing.
“Tell them who you were,” the Golden Girl says, pleading now. “Tell them who you are.” Her father’s bloody rapier is clutched tight in her hands. The White Pilgrim does not remember her retrieving it from the Black Duke where he lies.
He tries to remember who he is. Tries to recall a vision of peace, of a land freed from the fear of what the future brings.
All he remembers is blood on his hands. All the violence done in the name of that dream of peace.
“If there was some good in what was done in the lifetime of Gilvaleus, take it for what it is,” he says to himself, to no one.
“Make the future,” he says. “Do not mourn what was.”
“Tomorrow belongs to you,” he says to himself, to the Golden Girl where she kneels at his feet, blue eyes bright, blood and tears streaking her face as he turns away.
The Blade is gone but its vision wells in him one last time. Showing him that the Golden Girl will flee this place, hidden safely by the chaos that flows from the death of the Black Duke who would be high king.
The connection from him to the Blade is broken in his anguish. In its anguish. It calls to him, but he will not answer.
She tries to follow him, but the White Pilgrim moves by instinct, taking back staircases and forgotten passageways rank with mold and shadow. He hears her footsteps fade after a time, hears the shouts of panicked dukes and courtiers grow ever more distant in the dark.
The gates of the keep are open, the guards scattered to respond to the madness that this night wreaks. No one notes him as he slips through the frenzied crowd.
The tents of the city are pandemonium as word spreads beyond the keep. No one stops him as he makes his way through the shadows.
The gates of the city are open. He slips out with the throngs fleeing Mitrost, fleeing the darkness of this night, the uncertainty for what the future brings.
Long ago, he does not need the road where it twists away from the city and through the dark farmsteads beyond. The shadow hides a secret way, but he cannot remember. He recalls only that he is walking the grassland border of the river valley, cutting overland on a straight course north and west from the sea.
The Black Duke is dead, and in that death, all the pain of life is done. The White Pilgrim knows that, understands it. Cannot remember how.
He lingers along the riverbank for a time, washing by the light of an abandoned campfire. He cleans blood from his hands, from his robes that are the pilgrims’ white once. Long ago. He is not sure how the red-black stain sets itself there. Then he forgets even that he wonders as he limps off into the night.
IN THE END, THE AIR IS WARM and green, set with dappled shadows that twist across the flaking plaster of the walls.
A last image. A dream he has, long ago.
A memory.
He lies in a bed near the tall windows of the dormitories, a haze of shadow spreading except where the shutters are thrown wide to the sun and air of spring beyond.
He returns here, but from where he does not know. A long journey of days. Water and forest and field, leading him back to isolated stands of black oak, broken walls of vine-cloaked grey.
He knows where he is, cannot remember.
They find him beneath the ancient ash at dawn, sprawled across the stone whose carefully carved letters have worn smooth with the passing of years and the weeping of the sky.
He does not remember them moving him to the dormitory. Does not remember them feeding him, washing him. He only knows the sweet sleep. The light of dawn threading the shutters. The light of real day when the shutters are opened by the Golden Girl who is already there, first to find him. First to his side beneath the great tree, holding him as she weeps.
He sees a talisman at her neck. A dragon rampant in blood-red, claws of black. Eyes of silver gleam where it coils its tail around itself, ready to strike. It reminds him of something.
His days are gold and green, bright sun and the buds of new leaves just starting, spreading through the trees whose wind-song dance he watches from his bed. His nights are dark, and peaceful, and in that peace he finds himself hoping for the end. He does not remember why.
Not yet, he thinks. Fate not done with him. The gods, perhaps.
He does not know anymore. He is content in that, finally.
His wounds are healed by the craft of the acolytes, but his body is old. He spends his days watching sun and sky, and speaking to the Golden Girl when she sits at his side. He tells her tales that she repeats back to him so she will not forget, but he himself cannot remember the words when she is done.
He feels something calling to him. He dreams of Aelathar who is his only love. Dreams of Nàlwyr who is his greatest friend. Dreams of all the rest, the names gone but their faces with him now, shimmering as his mind drifts in the golden light.
He dreams of Cymaris and Astyra and wakes with wet eyes, begging the love and absolution of mother and son. He feels their forgiveness, feels the Golden Girl’s hand in his as a voice tells him that he earns his absolution a thousand times over.
He is glad of that. He feels the faint echo of an ache that dogged him once. Gone now.
Something is changed. The leaves are full, the ash and oak shimmering green in the haze of dawn, the heat of summer. The shutters are open to the day and night now.
He lifts himself from the bed one day at dawn. He feels the ache in his leg and at his chest as he slips on robes that are the pilgrims’ white.
Something is changed. He kneels beneath the ash, crouches at 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.
“It is good,” he says. “To see you again.”
He only realizes he is fallen when he feels the Golden Girl lift him. A last dream. Long hair tied back, the gold of rain-fresh straw. The red dragon on gold, hanging now from a chain at her neck.
A rapier at her waist, the gleam of dwyrsilver beneath her tunic. Her father’s blade, the chain shirt he once wore. The only burdens she carries now.
The memories are gone. All set to rest by what the future might hold.
Then was it told how Gilvaleus the High King returned from the dead and from the court of the Orosana to stand against the Black Duke as he had stood against the Usurper in life. And with the Sword of Kings in hand, he slew Arsanc of Thorfin and Reimari as he would slay all those who would covet the glory of Gracia for their own.
In his life, he has been light and shadow, bright king and killer of children. In his life, he has claimed a kingdom but let wither the heart and soul that might have ruled it.
And when it was done, Gilvaleus walked back into shadow, but said first to those Dukes of Gracia who knelt before him ‘Know, all of you, that I shall not return again, and so let my name now be lost to that memory that takes me. Then each of thee, take comfort in thyself alone and yourselves as one, and look to thy faith of self to carry thee. And let all Gracia know that the greatness of this land is in all folk and the Lords who lead them justly. So shall you say to all folk, Seize the peace that is this land’s destiny in each of thy thousand-thousand hands. And speak no more prayers for Dead Kings.’
In the end, all is darkness. But from the shadow comes the light.
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.
In the end, all is as it should have been, and he accepts in that end the darkness and the light, and is cloaked tight finally in all of eternity’s welcome embrace.
WE CAN BE HEROES
A PRAYER FOR DEAD KINGS and Other Tales
CLEARWATER DAWN — Book One of “The Exile’s Blade”
BLACKHEATH (with Quinn Hamilton)
THE VOICES OF THE DEAD — Dark Tales & Lost Souls
TALES OF THE ENDLANDS
The Twilight Child • Shadow to Shadow • The Moonsign Scar • Daeralf’s Rune • The Game of Heart and Light • The Voice • Black Run • A Space Between • Stories
ONE SIZE FITS ALL (as Gary Scott)
Scott Fitzgerald Gray is a specially constructed biogenetic simulacrum built around an array of experimental consciousness-sharing techniques — a product of the finest minds of Canadian science until the grant money ran out. Accidentally set loose during an unauthorized midnight rave at the lab, the S.F. Gray entity is currently at large amongst an unsuspecting populace, where his work as an author, screenwriter, editor, RPG designer, and story editor for feature film and fiction keeps him off the streets.
More info on Scott and his work (some of it even occasionally truthful) can be found by reading between the lines at insaneangel.com.
In the convoluted process by which the disparate pieces of A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales have come together, the following people have been instrumental. This will undoubtedly come as a surprise to many of them, but life’s like that.
The Dukes of the White Table
David Otterson, Mitchell Wylie, Ron Graves, Kevin Harris, Mark East
The Clan-Singers
Colleen, Shvaugn, and Caitlin
Razeen’s Library Scribes
Colleen Craig, Shvaugn Craig, Mitchell Wylie, Gerrard du Flanchard
Chief Mosaicists of Mitrost
(studio)Effigy, Alex Tooth, Ricardo Guimaraes, Jose A.S. Reyes
The Imperial Guard
Dead Can Dance, John Debney, Harlan Ellison, Lisa Gerrard, Mike Grell, Richard Harris, Ernest Hemingway, Robert E. Howard, Guy Gavriel Kay, Joe Konrath, Fritz Leiber, Thomas Malory, Bear McCreary, Neal Morse, Vangelis, Hans Zimmer
Published by Insane Angel Studios
insaneangel.com
Copyright © 2011 Scott Fitzgerald Gray
All rights reserved
Cover, Design, and Typography
by (studio)Effigy
Cover Illustration by Alex Tooth
alextooth.com
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, objects, and incidents herein are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual things, events, locales,
or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Except for that one bit? Where that guy does that thing? That’s totally about you.
ISBN 978-0-9877257-0-7
v1.1
November 2012
We try to make sure that no errors creep into our work, but publishing is a chaotic enterprise at the best of times. If you spot a typo or a formatting glitch in an Insane Angel Studios book, email [email protected] with details (including which e-book version you’re reading, if applicable). If any errors you spot are ones we haven’t yet caught and are in the process of fixing, you’ll receive one of our e-books of your choice for free.
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Page 40