A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Read online

  Where the wide track plunged into that green sea, the golden trunks of two great yewn rose and twisted past each other to form an arch five times her height. Beyond them, even greater trees loomed, as tall as any keep or tower she had ever seen. The wind shimmered their sweeping branches as she and Raub walked beneath them, passing suddenly from the open skies of the sunlit world into the dusk of the forest road.

  The yewn for which the endless wood was named stood as gnarled shadow-shapes to all sides. Their smooth trunks were the color of goldenrod, bare where thin bark peeled off and sloughed away of its own accord to cover the forest floor. Though she felt the weight of the dark at first beneath the gently rustling canopy of leaves, it didn’t take long for Cass to grow used to the wind-twisted shadows. All around them was green and gold and silence. A feeling of closeness, of shelter that she found more peaceful than she ever would have expected.

  They met wagons a dozen times as they walked, Ilvani and Human traders greeting them with a wary nod as they and their horses clopped past. Even before they heard the first approach, Raub had pulled the hood of his cloak up to shroud his face, Cass noting it but not bothering to ask why.

  She tried to imagine this moment for him, a half-decade’s homecoming to a dead father, but she couldn’t. This was a blind spot in her. A place of darkness in her memory that made her more than happy to share his silence.

  The road wound its way over long leagues, crossing the flanks of narrow streams where they tumbled down from distant hills. But though Cass was wary of walking through the darkness that would swallow the trees once the sun was down, the gloom of real dusk had barely fallen when they saw the first lights of Anthila ahead.

  There was no sense of entrance into the settlement. No wall to mark a defensive perimeter, no outlying farmlands to announce the slow transition to tightly packed shops and houses. Only a sudden flare of gold that filled the green twilight with the glow of first dawn.

  Cass’s first time in the Free City, she sought out the enclaves of the Ilvani rangers who patrolled the Yewnwood frontier, asking them the questions she always asked. As she walked the city, she had gazed in wonder at the Ilvani wards of the great island-university of Allias, and at the gardens of Gwaleldan and Lomandra Wood along the southern wall. The terraces of those wards rose as waves of white stone, supported on the smooth arches of thousand-year-old yewn. Those great trees had marked the edge of the forest long ago, when rough huts along the great river were the first signs of the city to come.

  The Ilvani of the Yewnwood called their largest settlements muirilna. The forest-homes, great cities set within the trees. In the forest-home of Anthila, the boles of the broadest yewn stood as wide as any city block. Around those gently twisting trunks, great wooden terraces rose. Like the slopes of a sunlit hillside, they climbed on both sides of the road and into a bright haze of sculpted globes hung from low-sweeping branches. The golden light of magical evenlamps blazed here, as it lit the streets of the Free City and the houses of its richest residents. The terraces were connected by wide bridges, and by intricate wooden catwalks and ladderways hanging suspended from webs of delicate white rope, ivy-twined. A loom of light and shadow climbed up into the trees through which Anthila spread.

  “It’s beautiful.” It was all Cass could think to say. She saw a darkness in Raub’s shadowed eyes where he glanced over to her.

  “Wait,” he said.

  As they walked beneath the supports of the great terraces, Cass could see that these were living limbs, curving out from the trunks with the precise arc of a wheel’s rim. Screens of tightly woven branches were their ceilings, and from every platform and ladder came a buzz of motion and voices. Along the ground, the forest was all but silent. Stables were the only buildings she could see, but these were plentiful. Between the trunks of the ancient yewns, smaller sapling groves were clustered and coppiced to create wide-ranging corrals. Here and there, glowing ladders reached down to brush the ground, and where the road opened up to a circle of grey paving stones, two wide stairways of white-trimmed wood rose through the screen of leaves, circling past each other as they climbed.

  Raub led her up the stairs without a word, and as they climbed, Cass looked down to see the sleek horses the Ilvani rangers of the wood rode. Grey and graceful as a morning mist even as they grazed thick grass and milkweed. She heard laughter and voices from within the stables, merchant ponies tethered there, and the carts they drew lined up alongside the fence. These were watched over by a pair of Ilvani boys who danced around each other with long switches of yewn. These were swords in their hands, the two striking, parrying, striking again in a focused skirmish that seemed more dance than combat.

  At the head of the stairs, the haze of light and sound became a storm of activity, and they found themselves at the center of a vast market court, what would have been the central square of any Human city of the Gracian plain. The floor they walked on was smooth-worn wooden tile, dusted with golden leaves and set over a frame of woven branches. This was visible through intermittent gaps that Cass guessed were meant to sluice away rain. The throng was thick even against the rising of the night, and the voices of merchants and shoppers alike rang out like song beneath the sweeping canopy of the leaf-ceiling and the rising ranks of higher tiers overhead.

  To all sides, market stalls and peddlers selling from packs and handcarts created a maze of narrow paths between them. The vendors were Ilvani, and locals by their look. Their customers were a mix of the forest folk and travelers on the long road that ran between the eastern forest and the great Ilvani cities at the Yewnwood’s heart. A good number of rangers walked easy among them, armed with bow and blade. The soldiers of the Ilvani realms, aloof and deadly.

  Cass caught the nods of greeting as they passed, the careful respect of a trade-city’s folk, accustomed to strangers. She returned each pleasantry, saw Raub ignore them. From across the market, voices called out the virtues of silks and leatherwork, stonework and jewelry, harvest fruit and fresh nut-bread. The scent of this filled the air around them, and reminded Cass that it was a week since she had eaten anything but dried rations on the road. Successive flights of narrow stairs led to higher platforms and terraces above them, their balconies spilling over with laughter and song, and the scent of honey mead and roast meat. Beyond those were shaded terraces with what looked to be walls of wicker and woven bark. Apartments, Cass guessed, rising high into the cool Yewnwood night.

  She shifted closer to Raub as they walked, spoke low to his ear. “I never took you as being one from such a place.”

  Raub didn’t look over. “What did you take me for?”

  “One of the city Ilvani,” she said. “You seemed at home in Yewnyr. You must have been there a while.”

  He said nothing in response, changing course through the crowd. Rising ahead, wrapped tight around the bole of a massive yewn split and regrown as two intertwining trunks, a wide staircase of grey wood was their destination.

  But all at once, he slowed. Cass was beside him, catching as he had a sudden ripple of anticipation spreading through the crowd, not sure where it started. All around them, conversation suddenly flagged. Cass saw Raub’s hands drift to the hilt of sword and dirk beneath his cloak, but she couldn’t mark the threat he felt. Couldn’t catch his eye.

  Down the grey staircase, a white-cloaked figure was descending. A woman, older, Cass judged at first by the slowness of her step. But as the figure stepped out of shadow, she saw a young Ilvani face, silver hair hanging to frame eyes that blazed gold and violet in the light.

  The woman was limping, a white-and-silver walking stick in her hand as she made her way carefully across the market court. Like a wave, the crowd pushed back from her. The Ilvani vendors nodded with familiarity, an almost universal reverence in their gaze. The local buyers did the same, the other folk of the market looking on with interest. Sensing a significance to the woman’s appearance as they fell back to watch.

  A wooden bench appeared from somewher
e, set down carefully where the silver-haired woman stopped near a wide cistern, spellcraft animating the bubbling flow of its water this high above the ground. She nodded thanks as she sat.

  There was a voice at Cass’s ear suddenly, a hand tugging at the shoulder of her cloak. The girl who had slipped up from behind as they walked was young, slender as the Ilvani tended to be where she slipped close between them to match their pace. Cass always found it hard to judge the age of the graceful forest folk. She guessed at eight years in the girl’s height, though the pale face seemed younger, set within a heart-shaped frame of golden hair.

  Cass had to grab the sleeve of Raub’s cloak to stop him, watching his dark gaze beneath the hood as the girl raised a well-laden wicker basket. On the air came the sudden scent of spring berries and sweet spices Cass couldn’t name. The buttery aroma of still-warm pies drifted up in faint traces of steam caressed by the golden light. The girl peeled back the clean white cloth that covered them.

  “Cakes and pastry,” she called in a clear voice, overly loud as the crowd stilled. “Fresh baked, my lady and sir. The best in Anthila.” A jangle of coins came from her apron pocket as she bowed low, waiting for a nod from them both before she rose again. The mark of one brought up in servitude, Cass noted, most likely to the baker whose wares she carried now. But from all around, she could feel the sense of anticipation.

  Across from her, the silver-haired woman unslung a lyre from beneath her cloak. Its strings gleamed in the golden light, its wood varnished black and set with filigree in white.

  The girl dipped deftly into the basket with one hand, which she brought up holding a trio of stuffed pastries no larger than her thumb. Distracted, Cass accepted one. She took a bite and felt a sudden rush of summer. She tasted the sweet nectar of honey and wildflowers, felt a warmth thread through her that pushed away the advancing chill of the night.

  The silver-haired troubadour bowed low, grimacing subtly as she shifted her injured leg. She began without speaking, made no introduction to a crowd that obviously knew her. Her fingers plucked out a gentle melody on the strings, a silver echo that rippled slowly through the silence.

  “Try these,” Cass whispered to Raub as she took another pastry. But her words were cut off by an expression on his face that chilled her. He was staring at the bard, seemingly caught up in the song with a degree of rapt attention that echoed that of the vendors and travelers around them. She realized that his hands were shaking.

  “The pastry is my master’s own creation, my lady.” The girl spoke now in a bright whisper, glancing to the bard but ignoring the music. “From the ancient forest lore of our folk, a recipe known to none but the Ilvani.”

  Cass only nodded, watching Raub as he stepped erratically away from her. He stared around him as if he was searching for something.

  The girl seemed not to notice the warrior’s mood. She looked to Cass expectantly, silver brows arched above eyes the green of rain-washed spring leaves. A nod signaled the girl to scoop up another dozen of the delicacies, which were quickly wrapped in smooth white paper and slipped into Cass’s hands.

  “One silver, if it please you, lady.”

  As if the girl’s voice had broken some spell that held him rapt, Raub suddenly tore himself from the view before him. He met Cass’s gaze for a moment, but in response to the question there, he turned quickly away, tossing the girl a coin as he went. But he saw Cass stretch her hand out, catch it in midair. She passed the girl a silver from her other hand, and it wasn’t until she tossed Raub back his payment that he noticed its weight as he should have the first time.

  If the back-and-forth confused the girl, she didn’t show it, nodding thanks to both of them as she slipped away into the crowd. The coin Raub had pulled absently from his purse wasn’t silver, but the cold platinum whose worth gave it no value anywhere outside the largest Human cities. But even as he turned away from the girl, he stopped short, staring wide-eyed. The coin slipped from his hand.

  The shimmer of the Clearmoon’s light flared in a rush of wind that scoured the trees overhead, sent a sudden gust of golden leaves to the air.

  Raub saw the ghost.

  His gaze flitted past the troubadour again, heart tripping heavy in his chest. In her face, shining through for just a moment, he saw a flash of the one who was gone. The silver hair, the gold and violet eyes were common enough among his people. But where he watched those eyes, he saw in them the gaze of a friend dead for six years. A shaking reflection, blurred as if caught by poorly polished steel.

  The name came unbidden to his mind, forced itself out through all the will that kept it hidden. Tajomynar.

  Raub stared in disbelief. If the ghost had a sister, the bard might have been her. However, Tajomynar was the older of two sons, both of whom followed Raub that night long ago. Pride of father and family, one of the oldest lines of Anthila and the northeast wood.

  It was a mistake coming back, he thought, and a sudden fear rooted deep inside him that he couldn’t name. Nothing for him here. A useless errand clouded by the anger of six years and his need for revenge against a dead man. Revenge in the name of all the other dead. The faces in the silver water.

  Revenge on the dead, for the dead. A fool’s game.

  “Are you all right?” Cass asked at his shoulder, and Raub felt himself pulled back. He met her gaze for a moment, turned quickly away, pacing toward the grey stairs and trusting her to follow.

  Cass scooped the platinum from the ground where it had fallen. She tossed it to the cart of a bookseller who seemed not to notice her as she passed, listening like all the rest. Behind them, the silver tones of the lyre fell away to silence as they climbed.

  Cass had turned her back on the wealth of platinum in the dark aftermath of their escape from Eltolitinus. But even then, she found herself in possession of more riches than she had ever imagined. It was a thing she would never get used to. A thing she never wanted. Watching Raub drink himself into an ever-deeper state of darkness over the past months, she came to understand that she wasn’t alone in that.

  With the other survivors, they spent a week in Mooncastle, Myrnan’s central keep, whose ruling mages were the custodians of the hidden entrance that was the ruins’ Black Stair. They had healed, and they had given their thanks to fate or their gods, and they had divided the spoils of those four weeks beneath the earth. Cass took two handfuls each of gold and silver, then packed up the rest of her one-eleventh share of coin and gems whose luster was a haze of blood to her weary eyes.

  She had to strain to lift the bag when she was done, but she handed it over to the mercenary boss who called himself Lárow. He knew most of those who died, or so it seemed by the darkness in his manner each time they interred what remained of them. Cairns of cold stone marked where they fell, deep in those ancient catacombs that no blessing of sunlight would ever touch.

  Quietly, Cass asked him if he could arrange for the families of the dead to share out what she didn’t need. Lárow had simply nodded, adding Cass’s bag to a laden leather pack. Before she and Raub left that night, she saw him pass the pack on to a trio of boys, fourteen summers on the oldest. One of them was crying, but in his eyes, she thought she sensed the grim determination of the sword fighter cut down by an arcane nightmare none of them had seen, a flurry of spectral blades hacking him to ribbons as he screamed.

  Jeray was the fallen fighter’s name, or so she thought. She hadn’t had time to remember it. But it was then that she realized the mercenary boss had already given up his own share of the ruins’ blood money for the same purpose. He looked up then to see her watching, but Cass didn’t speak to him, didn’t ask his reasons. She didn’t give him a chance to ask her own.

  She was reminded of that in Hypriot, when that first week of taverns told her that Raub had no idea why he kept his full share of the spoils. That realization cast a dark shadow in her, as it forced her to dwell unwilling for a time within her own mind. Forced her to think on her own reasons for taking the road to M
yrnan, for following Raub and the barbarian from the Free City as she had.

  At the time, she told herself that if anyone ever asked, she would simply echo Raub’s reasons for the month-long trek east and across the water and beneath the dark earth. But in the aftermath, as she watched him collapse in on himself from an ever-increasing distance, Cass had come to understand that Raub’s reasons for venturing into the shadow beneath the Sorcerers’ Isle were something she might never know.

  She took only one trophy from the ruins. The handaxe she now carried, which had turned the Myrnan loremasters pale when they inspected it. As with all such forays into the ruins named for the mage whose hubris and power had built the island-castle, then reduced it to rubble and ash, their group’s exploration of the dungeons of Eltolitinus was sanctioned by the Myrlins, the master arcanists of Mooncastle. Some of the relics of those lost depths were claimed even before they were found, she knew. More than a few would-be fortune-seekers were distressed to see their most valuable finds stripped away in the end. Declared too dangerous to be set loose in the wider world.

  Raub had lost a ring to the Myrlins, a band of linked platinum facets with a blue-red gem inset with strange symbols. It seemed no more than an arcane trifle, some dweomer of protection within it, but the masters had seized it at a glance. They wrapped it with thick layers of wool and lead foil, none of them touching it. They handed him a purse of platinum coin in exchange, Raub adding it to the fortune that was his now.

  Whatever power was in the axe they called the Reaper, it had scared the loremasters, even as their unknown code gave them no claim on it. Walking past the silent warning of their eyes, Cassatra followed Raub out of Mooncastle and south for Claygate. That day was bright, she remembered, the fields to the south shining green. In Raub, she thought she felt a sense that the experience of passing through peril and winning its riches should change things.