A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Read online

  Hjorn’s house was far from that darkness, set upon its isolated granite shelf and looking out over the steep slopes below. Far south and east were his own folk, who he turned away from in order to dwell beneath the sun. He loved the sun, though it burned his skin sometimes when the weather was hot. He wore a straw cap on such days to keep his eyes shaded, but the sun was cool today.

  That long first summer when his wanderings had led him here, Hjorn built the house with his own hands, cutting and laying the stones in carefully squared lines. He built a guest room, because he always imagined that someone would visit him some day. But through all the long years that he had retired to this place and watched the sky from his porch each night, no one ever came.

  Because the axe was still silent, Hjorn talked to it now. Tentatively, he told it some of his stories, the favorite tales of the clan-singers and the hearth-rites that were the memory of his mother’s sweet voice in the darkness. Hjorn knew the old stories because he told them to himself in the quiet evenings as the fire burned low. He told the stories to himself because he had no one else to tell them to anymore.

  While he lived in the mountain halls of his kin, he told stories to his grandfather and he listened to those his grandfather told. Those were real tales, he knew. Stories of far-off war with the Gorbeyna of Kiengiraka, and of legendary heroes delving deep beneath the mountains of the Shieldcrest, pursuing great wealth and even greater danger in the darkness.

  The stories Hjorn told only to himself were often tales of history and lore and his people’s long travails within the earth. However, more and more often since he had come to his bluff and built his house above the river that had no name, Hjorn’s stories were those he made up himself. Tales and songs of the mountain slopes, and of the wide world under the sun that he had first heard of in his grandfather’s songs but explored now each day in his imagination and his dreams.

  He liked to remember the old days, before his grandfather died. He had so few reasons to remember now.

  He told the axe the story of the sleeping curse that claimed the life of the Ilvani princess Lealyan, but it seemed unimpressed.

  Hjorn spoke of pirates on the wide waters of the Leagin Sea that he had heard of but never seen, and he told of the twelve Kings of Death who challenged the great hero Hjorna for whom he was named. He told how they had been defeated one after the other by bravery and great cunning.

  As he sat at the top of the stairs beneath the spray of stars that slowly revealed themselves to streak the cloudless sky, the axe spoke again to tell him another story of its own. This was the story of a great battle between the kings of three races and the dark sorcerer who stood against them. The dark sorcerer’s warrior-slaves fought with great blades of power whose magic transcended the greatest powers of the gods and titans of old. The axe talked of the endless battle that had laid waste to whole nations, leaving them burned and blackened and leached of life.

  “Do you know any happy stories?” Hjorn asked uneasily.

  I will grant thee the power thou seekest, the axe whispered in a voice like winter wind. I will grant thee all thy heart’s desires…

  Hjorn was confused, and because he didn’t know what to say, he stood. His back was stiff from sitting, so he stretched beneath the stars, scanning the sky above and the bluff below and his house with its shuttered windows and stone walls carefully scrubbed each spring, pale now in the starlight.

  I will grant thee all thy heart’s desires, the axe whispered again.

  Hjorn shrugged. “I have all I need,” he said. And then because he felt a sudden smoldering darkness in the axe’s silence, he added, “We should go in now.”

  Inside the small house, the hearth fire he had left blazing that morning was down to coals and ready to be rekindled. Hjorn soon had the stone firepit burning cheerily with a carefully stacked pyramid of well-dried pine that he cut himself from the slopes of a close-growing grove a half-day’s walk away. Hjorn liked the walk. He made the journey down every other day, cutting deadfall to fill the leather-and-wattle shoulder basket he made himself.

  When he walked to the grove in spring and fall, Hjorn also set snares for grouse in the narrow vales of the wood. He ate them fresh-cooked when he could and salted through the winter. When the weather was nice, he caught fish in the small streams that cut their way through the rough scree slopes of the foothills. It was grouse he cooked tonight, along with sweet snowroot that grew wild in the soft loam of the lower slopes. He ate it with a goblet of last season’s best wild honey wine, which he decanted himself into bottles bought from Garna, then stored in a hidden cellar tucked into the bluff on the far side of the porch.

  It would be good, Hjorn thought as he ate, to have someone to talk to. But though the axe hadn’t warmed to his stories, Hjorn was sure it was going to like the surprise he hadn’t yet talked about. It was an idea that came to his mind at his first sight of the axe in the back of Garna’s wagon.

  Hjorn’s house was three rooms set in a row. There was the main room that was kitchen and hearth and a place to sit, with Hjorn’s room to one side and the guest room on the other. Opposite the hearth in the main room was a rough plaster wall. Set into it were hundreds of gleaming crystal agates, collected from the banks of Hjorn’s fishing streams over the first year that he lived here. The wall had been the last part of the house to be completed.

  The stones were water-green and sky-blue, red like glowing coals and gold like the winter sunrise, shining and polished smooth by the scouring water. He had prepared the wall carefully, plastering it over with white mud he made from river stone crushed in a rock mill he built himself. Into this, he set the brightly colored stones with a careful hand. At night, when the fire was burning bright, the stone wall would gleam and flicker like a rainbow sunset. He would sit and watch it. It made him smile.

  At the head of the shining wall, Hjorn had built a mantle on which he set a constantly changing collection of interestingly shaped rocks, and abandoned birds’ nests he found along the autumn woodland trails, and abstract wood sculptures that he carved himself on the porch on warm summer nights.

  Carefully, he set aside the current collection, which included a blue-glass prism he bought from Garna the last time the trader passed by, and which Hjorn thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Until now, at least.

  Carefully, he lifted the axe to the mantle and set it there. He used one of his wood carvings to raise the end of the haft so that it sat almost straight. He stepped back and smiled. The blade of the axe gleamed majestic in the firelight, throwing its shadow against the subtle shift of summer-flower colors across the wall behind it, and Hjorn thought of how impressive it would look if only someone came to visit.

  “You look good up there,” he said, and he was happy for the axe as he turned to take the kettle from the hearth.

  A curse on all thy line, caitiff fool, and blessings of power on all those who will shed thy craven blood in the end…

  Hjorn turned back. He stared for a moment.

  “Did you say something?” he asked, but the axe was quiet.

  It stayed quiet until morning, when Hjorn awoke and ate a small breakfast of dried sausage and pine nuts at his carefully polished stone table, sitting and looking at the axe all fine on the mantle where it belonged.

  I can help thee, the axe said.

  Hjorn considered this as he scrubbed dishes at his small stone sink. “I’m fine,” he said.

  I can grant thee all thy wants and needs, came the voice in his mind, but he thought he heard a subtle tone of anger this time.

  “I have all I need,” Hjorn said again, and he heard the axe laugh darkly.

  Seize me, and I will show thee magic…

  Hjorn had seen magic once or twice and found it not to his taste. He didn’t really need to see it again, but he was worried that he had hurt the axe’s feelings somehow when he turned down the offer of his desires and needs. When he finished the dishes, he walked over to the mantle. He carefully g
rasped the axe, its weight comfortable in both hands.

  Now, the voice said. Think of some other place, a place thou knowest. A place to which thou hast a yearning most zealous to go.

  Hjorn didn’t know what a yearning most zealous was, so he felt awkward suddenly. As a result, the only place he could think of was his front porch, but even as he thought it, his vision blurred out to streaks of grey like rain against the rippled glass of the windows.

  He felt the chill of the morning air and the damp against his bare feet. The wind was twisting the branches of the closest trees, its hiss drowned out by the steady roar of the dark whirlpool below.

  “That’s unusual,” Hjorn said.

  By thinking it, he jumped back to the main room, then jumped again twice more between the house and the porch. He sensed a subtle thrill of power flaring within the axe as he did.

  Thou seest what I can do for thee? the voice said. Hjorn nodded, most thoughtful as he set the axe carefully back on the mantle.

  What dost thou?

  “Going out to the pine grove for firewood,” Hjorn said. He laced up his boots, found his good walking jacket.

  I can take thee there in the blink of an eye, the axe said. I can take thee to the top of the highest peaks, and to both ends of the world!

  Hjorn was confused. “There’s plenty of deadfall just down in the grove,” he said.

  I mean thou hast no need to walk, impudent fool!

  “But I like to walk,” Hjorn said.

  The axe said nothing more, so he left. It was likewise silent when he returned that afternoon with his basket full of firewood. Hjorn thought he might have hurt its feelings, so he took the axe in hand and jaunted a half-dozen times from the house to the bottom of the stairs and back again.

  “Oh, I hate taking these stairs,” he said loudly, to make sure the axe was listening. “I am so happy to have this magic.”

  That night, as Hjorn baked biscuits he made with ground snowroot from an old recipe of his mother’s, he told the axe the story of the Dancing Daughters of the Ilvanking, and of how they were stolen away deep into Khimerean realms and rescued by the Shieldsons of the first Dwarf Queen. The axe in turn told him the story of the fall of Sollyra. It talked of great mountain citadels rising as tiers of white walls, and of the unliving forces of the Bladelord crashing against them as a never-ending wave, breaking bone and stone alike and slaying all who fell before them until the mountain slopes ran red with blood.

  “Do you know any stories that don’t have so many people dying in them?” Hjorn asked when the axe was done.

  There are no other stories, the axe said coldly.

  It went on like that for a long week, Hjorn making his regular trip to the pine grove and the axe lying on the mantelpiece and filling the room with the unseen shroud of its disappointment. Hjorn could feel the blade’s dark thoughts, and by the fire each night, he told his happiest stories in an attempt to cheer it up. Nothing seemed to work, however, and the stories the axe told him each night got darker as a matter of course.

  At the same time, Hjorn couldn’t help but notice that strange things were beginning to happen. Gorbeyna bandits attacked the house just before lunch on the third day, and while it wasn’t the first time, these bandits were particularly tenacious. As he always did, Hjorn simply locked his doors and stone shutters and let them rail away on the porch for as long as it took to appreciate how well he built his house, and that he hadn’t left anything on the outside of it worth stealing.

  On the fifth day, he got back from his journey to the pine grove to find that his porch had become a nest for a giant bird. It saw him as he approached the bottom of the stairs, shrieking a warning as it rose up on great taloned feet and clacked a beak large enough to snap a spar in two. Hjorn spent the night outside, waiting for the bird to budge, then finally drove it off by lighting a green-branch smoke fire at the foot of the stairs.

  The seventh day, a plague of bark beetles came down the chimney to swarm in his kitchen, and as he spent the rest of the day and night swatting and sweeping them out, Hjorn began to grow suspicious.

  He spent the better part of the following day carving and staining a proper stand for the haft and blade, but even that didn’t improve the axe’s foul mood. Then as he was sitting and watching the firelight play across the shining wall and listening to the axe tell him the story of the month-long, limb-by-limb execution of the traitor Moiriar in excruciating detail, Hjorn had a wonderful idea.

  “I have a wonderful idea,” he said. “I know what will make you happy.”

  Thou wilt enter the nearest city and slay its champions like dogs! the axe called with dark enthusiasm. Thou wilt exsanguinate their virgin women at the height of rapture, and all will bow down before us and despair!

  Hjorn was silent a moment. “I have a different wonderful idea,” he said, and he tried to ignore the axe’s bitter disappointment as he stoked the fire and went to bed.

  The next morning, Hjorn ate quickly and left the dishes standing to dry. The axe was silent, but he felt its expectation, its dark will seeking out his thoughts. He did his best to hide those thoughts, wanting to keep his special plan a secret. He took the axe carefully from the mantle, swung it over his shoulder as he headed out.

  The pine grove was still cool, faint trails of mist rising as the heat of the sun worked its slow way down through the trees. Hjorn could sense the anticipation in the axe, even as he felt it silently willing him to break from the trail and run screaming through the dark woods in hopeful search of something to kill.

  He stopped instead at the black tangle of a deadfall snag he had been working around for the better part of the previous week. Its brittle branches were picked clean, cracked and snapped and carted back up to the house. However, the main bole of the ancient pine was thick and gnarled, and had resisted all Hjorn’s attempts to break or cut it.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  He swung fast. The blade was sharper than anything he had ever seen, chopping through the sun-kilned hardness of the snag like it might be a sheaf of dry grass. He felt a quick rush as he swung again and again, and he imagined himself suddenly as the wood-ranger Dyssa, who had been the protector of the Mosstwood and slayer of the dread war-trolls of the Bone Fens. Only he and his trusty axe would slay deadfall instead. No stand of firewood would be safe.

  He stopped suddenly. Where his hands gripped the axe, he felt a kind of buzzing.

  A silent horror twisted through the blade, the voice in Hjorn’s mind speaking not in words suddenly but in raw emotion that made his head ache. His heart was pounding. His hands shook, and he had to squeeze them tight to keep the axe from slipping from his grasp.

  “I thought you might like something to do,” Hjorn stammered. “Always lots of firewood to chop.” He suddenly had the feeling that this might not have been as wonderful an idea as he first thought.

  Thou wilt die the death of body, spirit, and mind, the axe said on the walk back home, and only the worms that feast on thee will remember thy passing in the end. It said nothing else after that.

  The axe drew the first foes to him the next day. These were real threats, not just the dark distractions of the previous week, which Hjorn belatedly realized must have been attracted by whatever dark magic had been kindled by the axe’s even darker mood. These were warriors, Gorbeyna from the closest tribes to start. Hjorn recognized them by their livery, shields and faces war-painted with a dark red X. As he had with the bandits, Hjorn was content to let the first two waves batter themselves senseless against the great stone door, and finally to turn against each other as their level of frustration rose.

  The axe still wasn’t talking to him, but he could hear it darkly muttering that night from its place on the mantle. It was a language he didn’t understand, but he sensed the rage that underlay the unknown words all the same.

  Three more Gorbeyna warbands came the following day, but Hjorn was ready for them this time. Before dawn, he toted three barrels from the cellar
and set them out and open on the front porch. The first group threw themselves at the wine with unbridled enthusiasm, drinking themselves into a stupor and collapsing in a snoring, sodden heap. The second group drank was what left. The third turned on the first two when they found the barrels dry.

  They left six dead on the porch before they fled back to the forest, Hjorn sadly rolling the bodies over the edge of the cliff as a fourth group, newly arrived, burst from the tree line at a run. He waited until they were halfway up the steep stairs. Then he rolled the empty barrels down one after the other, the shrieking Gorbeyna bowled over to tumble back down in an undignified and badly bruised heap.

  Hjorn watched them slink off, but he stayed out past the rise of the Clearmoon on the porch, watching carefully for any further movement along the narrow paths below. The night passed quietly, except that over the hiss of wind and the roar of the river below and even in the short stretches when he could sleep, Hjorn could hear the voice of the axe faint and dark in the back of his mind.

  The Hogorba arrived shortly after dawn, great hairy brutes that were twice the size of their Gorbeyna kin and proportionally unpleasant. Torches and guttural war chants heralded their movement up the switchback paths. Hjorn watched them from the porch and lost count of their number. He saw the mark of a white dagger on their shields and breastplates, the sign of a tribe he didn’t know. He also saw the steel-spiked battering ram they carried as they eyed his front door.

  He went inside to retrieve the axe, its hilt strangely cold in his hands. The tight-wrapped black leather had taken on an oily texture that made his skin crawl, but he held it firmly as he strode to the edge of the porch, raised the blade above the horde advancing now with shields up. Then he carefully chopped away the supports that held the stairs in place, the closest Hogorba only halfway up as the long flight of steps collapsed beneath them and sent them screaming to the ground below.

  There will be more, the axe whispered unhappily. Hjorn only shrugged. He dug out his knife and hatchet and filled a small pack with rope. Then he held the axe tight and thought about the edge of the ravine where the trail squeezed through a gloomy grove of close-growing willow, and suddenly he was there.