A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Read online

  Then all at once, a pulse of white light wrapped Morghan like a shroud. The warrior’s battle-scarred voice was choked off with a sudden finality. Rigid, he stood locked in a stillness that captured all the fury of his suddenly silenced attack. His eyes were dark between the line of his steel helm and the carefully trimmed beard. His blade was gripped tight, well-muscled arms locked in the midst of a backhand blow, held unwavering where he was frozen fast.

  Scúrhand alighted on a section of shelf he hoped was sturdy enough to hold him. He saw the red-haired woman step up, hands still twisted in the complex gesture of the incantation that had taken Morghan out, another spell already on her lips that Scúrhand didn’t want to wait to see the effect of.

  “Stand down or die consumed by arcane fire!” he called with what he hoped was suitable bravado. He saw reflexive movement below, bows drawn and arrows nocked with a common bead on his heart, but he was already airborne again. He extended one fist, the plain copper ring there spouting flame to wrap his hand. He saw uncertainty in the eyes of those closest to him, fire flowing up his arm to the shoulder now. Where it billowed around him, the black cape gave him the imposing tone he hoped for, enough to hopefully hide the fact that the ring presented less threat to the foes scattering below him than if he’d simply fallen on them.

  It was a relic claimed when he and Morghan first met, happenstance travelers who found themselves fighting at each other’s backs when a cache of unguarded gold they had pursued independently on the frontier turned out to be less unguarded than was publicized. The ring’s power was defensive, its dweomer swallowing the heat of mundane flame and eldritch fire alike, but its presentation proved almost as effective at keeping him out of the thick of combat as any blade might prove within it. Since that day he and Morghan met, the thick of combat was a place Scúrhand preferred to leave for the warrior whenever humanly possible.

  On the floor below, the red-haired woman took a step toward him, and in her bright gaze, Scúrhand saw suddenly the youth she was trying hard to hide.

  “If you wish to parley, say your piece,” she said in the Imperial tongue. A tone of authority in the words but no strength in her voice to back it up, barely an apprentice’s age by her look. Her accent marked her as Norgyr even if her ruddy features suggested Vanyr or the Kelist Isles. The guards with her all bore the pale hair and blue eyes of the north where they watched him coldly.

  Scúrhand responded in the Norgyr tongue as a hopeful token of concord. “My partner and I mean no trouble nor harm. On the contrary, depending on your business here, we may find ourselves in a position of mutual benefit.”

  “Your partner has a unique way of introducing himself.”

  Scúrhand caught the dark looks of the three wounded men behind the girl, but the fact that they were merely limping was more than fortune. More times than the mage could count, Morghan had demonstrated a ruthless taste for the blood of those who deserved to shed it. However, Scúrhand had just as often witnessed the warrior’s almost preternatural ability to leave less threatening foes standing, if a little shakily.

  “My partner was set upon by your overzealous associates before being given any chance to explain his untimely entrance. Having watched him make it, I assure you that gravity was at sole fault. No one here intends murder. Least of all you.”

  The comment wasn’t subtle, but the sudden darkness of the face beneath the rough-cut red hair told Scúrhand it worked. Not much of a gamble, given that of all the magic she could have cast, this one had chosen to simply freeze Morghan in his tracks rather than attempt to kill him outright. But before she could respond, from behind them both, a third voice barked out suddenly.

  “Presume to know another man’s intent often enough, and it’ll eventually be the last mistake you make.”

  The tone was imperious, edged with a dark smile that Scúrhand could feel even before he saw it. He caught no sign of surprise from the soldiers, but the girl flinched. Scúrhand glanced back, careful not to move too suddenly.

  A figure in silver mail strode up through the shadows at the back of the library, a squad of six archers arrayed to either side, shortbows drawn on the mage where he hovered. Scúrhand fought the urge to lift for the ceiling once more, dropping with a flourish instead, the cloak swirling in a calculated display. He managed not to stumble as he touched down.

  “I am Naethdraca, called by some the Stormhand.” It was the common translation of Scúrhand’s patronymic that he never used himself, but which he had long practiced speaking with just a hint of menace. “That is Morghan. Our business here is research, nothing more.”

  He felt his dark features appraised as he let his long hair hang to cover them. The girl and the newcomer ignored the theatrics, but a look of sudden unease among the troops behind them told Scúrhand they had done the trick. He saw more than one figure glance to the dragon stitched in gold at the edge of his jacket collar, the mark of his given name. Naethdraca, the War Dragon who had been a grandfather he never met. They were old names, both promising power that the mage had yet to fully live up to.

  “Ectauth,” the mailed figure offered by way of a name, blue eyes ice-bright beneath a shock of pale hair. “My overly talkative servant is Thiri.” Scúrhand nodded to the girl, her green eyes the color of wet leaves in the glow of the evenlamps. “Our business here is none of yours.”

  “Nor would I seek to know it,” Scúrhand said evenly. “But if it please you, accept my services. I could not help but overhear that you search for some key within the lore here. Lore in which I am well versed. If my skills and knowledge can in some way smooth over the potential for conflict, they are yours.”

  Ectauth made to speak, but the girl Thiri cut him off. “Take the mage up on his offer, my lord. The sage’s death has cost us time.” She appraised him carefully, Scúrhand patient, ignoring the silver warrior’s dark look. There was an odd dynamic here, one he wasn’t quite certain of. The girl’s skill with the spellcraft that held Morghan fast was good enough, but her demeanor marked her as a scholar, not a warrior.

  Ectauth was another matter, though. The careful set of the armor, no weapon at his waist. Mail sleeves cut back of the wrist so that the movement of his hands would be unobstructed. He was a combat mage. A battle-caster of the Norgyr, his magical craft was focused and honed as a weapon. Whatever information might be hidden here, whatever this group had come in search of, it would be beyond Ectauth, leader though he was. He was thus obliged to depend on the girl’s scholarly arts, Scúrhand decided. An obligation bound to rankle a combat mage.

  “I expect you intended only to threaten the sage,” Scúrhand said carefully. Another speculation, but a correct one from the reaction in the pale blue eyes. “Let us take the arrival of my companion and I as fortune, then. Or at the very least, let us get on with our research and leave you to yours.”

  Where he stood, Morghan watched and heard it all, motionless within the grip of Thiri’s spell. His intact senses focused past the paralysis that the warrior suspected felt far too much like death would someday, and which was fading with each slow step Ectauth took around him. For all Scúrhand’s postured tact, Morghan knew that the mage’s words were also designed to fill up as much time as possible, allowing him to fight the effect of the spell that bound him.

  From the start, the warrior had still been able to feel the sword against his fingers, the faint warmth of life pushing through his arms even as he forced himself to keep the blade steady in its interrupted stroke. As Ectauth considered Scúrhand’s words, Morghan could feel sensation return to his legs as well, fought to stay steady. Thiri was watching him, though, where she paced around him. Cautious of any first sign that her binding was close to the breaking point.

  The shield was slung to Morghan’s arm, and he could see the faintest sign of the green eyes straying down to the mark there as the Myrnan smith’s had. A thing that only one who knew of it would notice, the dark rune all but invisible.

  Those who know it will kill for this
mark.

  Morghan couldn’t shift his eyes without giving away that the spell’s effect had passed, but at the edge of his vision, he saw the look of shock on the girl’s face.

  Ectauth saw that look, too. He saw the black rune that inspired it. With a shout, he twisted his fingers in a silent summoning of spellpower, a blade of white light suddenly erupting in his hand to stab for Morghan’s heart. The warrior was already moving, though, finishing the stroke he had held motionless, driving the battle-caster’s eldritch blade wide and catching him hard on the backswing as he wheeled away.

  Morghan managed to fall back toward tall shelves at the closest corridor, protecting him from the first volley of arrows. Scúrhand took to the air to twist away from the knot of blades that erupted around him. As he sailed toward Morghan, he heard Ectauth’s voice.

  “Kill them both!”

  “Call it,” Scúrhand shouted.

  Morghan appraised the mass of figures circling, another volley of arrows hissing past as he pressed back.

  “Run,” he said.

  They ran. Out and down the narrow course of a winding stair, then into the shadow of uncounted corridors beyond. By an instinct Scúrhand couldn’t name but was grateful for, Morghan lost their pursuit faster than he had any right to hope for. From shadow to darkness to shadow again, they ran blind through a maze of stairs and corridors where Ectauth’s forces were already exploring ahead of them.

  More than once, they tripped across patrols with no warning, the soldiers of the black boar left incapacitated by Scúrhand’s spellcraft. The guards came by pairs, mostly. A squad of six once, but where the mage came up short against them, Morghan’s sword was a blur of red and grey that made up the difference. No quarter given, the warrior slipping into the well-honed reactions of a lifetime at the blade.

  Scúrhand was slower than the warrior, but Morghan kept himself and his armor between the mage and pursuit. He lost track of the turns they had taken, empty and crumbling chambers flashing past to both sides, when he had to signal Morghan to stop. In a five-way staggered intersection, he fought to slow his breathing. Morghan stepped far enough away to listen for any sign of pursuit, but there was only silence above and behind them.

  “Do you have any idea where we are?” the mage whispered. Morghan shook his head. “Just checking.”

  “Traffic through here, though,” the warrior said. He bent low to the floor, traced the dust with one hand, Scúrhand trying in vain to read the faint tracks there. All around them, pale light glowed from the frames of arched doorways, intact here. Marking off the deadly traps of Razeen’s workrooms and archives, which Scúrhand would have struck any bargain to peer into under other circumstances.

  “Where do you think…” the mage began, but then Morghan was on him, one hand pushing him to the wall while the longsword came up in the other. Scúrhand registered the footsteps racing toward them only an instant before he saw motion in the dark intersection, five figures on top of them. Morghan’s blade slashed out even as Scúrhand stumbled back.

  He felt the moment stretch, blind in the near-darkness that crippled his ability to target his magic with any accuracy. However, he knew better than to raise a light. Morghan was at his best in the shadows, able to pick out his targets with an uncanny ease. Scúrhand heard strangled cries, caught the movement of blood-dark steel in the half-light as five bodies fell.

  “Light,” the warrior hissed. Scúrhand set his dagger’s lightning to life as he pressed back, the storm glow illuminating the landing and the stairs around them. Four Norgyr guards were beyond any aid he could give them, Morghan taking no chances in close quarters. The fifth figure was still moving, however, trying to crawl back into the retreating shadows. Morghan was there first, lifting the body as if it weighed nothing, slamming it back to the wall with a force that stunned it, head lolling forward as the figure went limp in his grasp.

  “Blood and moons…”

  It was the girl. Thiri. Scúrhand saw the gash where Morghan’s blade had cut her leg almost to the bone. He noted the pool of blood spreading, the pallor of her face where the red hair framed it. Then he glanced to Morghan, following his gaze to the girl’s shoulder. He realized that it wasn’t the recognition of the young mage that had inspired the warrior’s look of absolute shock.

  Even before they stumbled out through Eltolitinus’s ruined gates and gave thanks to sky above and ground below for their lives, Scúrhand had recognized a darkness lurking in Morghan that hadn’t been there when they parted a year before on the Norgyr frontier. He had gone east then, Morghan catching up to him as promised by the time winter turned. But in that lost year, something had happened to the warrior.

  When they met up in Yewnyr, the great Free City, Morghan had carried only the clothes he wore and an ivory-hafted shortsword Scúrhand didn’t recognize. The wealth and the weapons the warrior spent the previous year amassing were gone, and there was an anger in him, threading through spirit and body alike, that the mage had never seen before. On the road to Myrnan, he loaned Morghan what he could for longsword and mail without complaint. When the warrior paid him back tenfold after the dungeons of Eltolitinus, he no longer needed the money but he knew better than to argue.

  Only once, in the month of recovery from what Eltolitinus had done to them, did he ask what happened to Morghan in that year. The warrior’s stony silence convinced him of the wisdom of not asking again.

  There had been a moment within the ruins. Morghan was dressing a neck wound after a particularly brutal skirmish with Eltolitinus’s undead hordes. Scúrhand saw the mark. A narrow sequence of three interlocking loops, barbed like links of spiked chain. It was set in black ink at the warrior’s shoulder, tattooed with a precision that suggested whoever had done it meant it to last. Now, where Thiri’s shoulder had been bared by her torn tunic bunched in Morghan’s fist, Scúrhand saw the same tight knot of jagged line on her pale skin.

  In the ruins of Myrnan, close to the breaking point already, Morghan had drawn steel against the mage when he caught Scúrhand’s gaze on the black mark, seemingly ready to kill. He spoke of it much later, only to apologize. Never an explanation.

  From behind and far off came faint footfalls. Scúrhand willed the dagger’s illumination away, startled suddenly to find Morghan’s bloody hand at his wrist, squeezing with a strength that the mage had seen break bones.

  “Light…”

  In the warrior’s voice, Scúrhand heard a need he didn’t recognize. In the pulsing gleam that the dagger’s lightning conjured again, Morghan was on his knees. His sword was cast to the side as he pulled out his own dagger, laying the girl gently to the floor. He checked her breathing as he cut the legging away to fully expose the wound beneath. A deep gash, dangerously close to the fast blood.

  Morghan motioned to Scúrhand for his waterskin. He flushed the wound, hacking an edge from Thiri’s cloak to bind it. He motioned again, Scúrhand digging within his cloak, pulling free a carefully packed glass vial. A healing draught within it, gleaming pale blue with its own light. The mage thought to remind Morghan that the two of them might have better need for it later, but he said nothing as the warrior slipped the vial to the girl’s lips, checked her suddenly even breathing, her eyes still closed, face ashen.

  Scúrhand wasn’t watching, focused only on the footsteps getting closer. “She’ll have aid soon enough,” he whispered. “Or we could take her. They might ransom…”

  “No.” Morghan’s voice held a dangerously dark edge as he grabbed up his sword and stood, appraising the girl’s unconscious form. He pointed down the passageway in the direction that Thiri been running. “Move,” he said.

  As they pounded along endless corridors of black stone and dark stairs, Scúrhand lost track of time, lost track of where the noise of pursuit was coming from. He was already gasping air, Morghan barely breathing hard. They hit more patrols twice, Scúrhand taking them out with routine spellcraft, leaving the Norgyr warriors to slumber or to wander befuddled, stripping th
eir armor and weapons off as they went.

  Against a foe set for the fight, the subtler spellcraft was often the best offense, Scúrhand had discovered long ago. As he always did when the stakes were high, he felt the call of the eldritch power in him. The darker energy of his blood, the birthright of the names he bore. Waiting always for its chance to be unleashed, but he was content to hold it back for now. It was more than a hunch that told him he would be needing it later.

  Ahead, there was sudden darkness. They skidded to a stop where the corridor seemed to disappear into empty space.

  “Light,” Morghan whispered. Scúrhand obliged.

  At the end of the finished passageways they passed through, a space of raw stone opened up. A blister of shadow, a rough-edged rock dome rising where the floor suddenly fell away. It was cold there, Scúrhand feeling it in the air, in the stone at his feet. Across a space of perhaps a dozen strides, a narrow stone bridge arced into shadow, open space to both sides.

  Far below them, a pool of black water faintly caught the light of Scúrhand’s blade and the gleam of lamps where Ectauth’s force was spreading on the opposite side, shifting into defensive positions along a wide terrace.

  Footsteps grew louder behind them. Scúrhand glanced ahead and back as Morghan stepped up. “Call it,” the mage said.

  “We fight here, we’re closed in. We break for the bridge fast enough, we have a chance.”

  “Of course.”

  With a snarling cry that he could only hope sounded like battle-ready rage, Scúrhand soared out across the stone arch, Morghan one stride behind him. The first hail of arrows hit like black rain, Scúrhand summoning up the dweomer that sent each dark-barbed shaft splintering off into empty space. Morghan ran the rough stone of the arch at a speed that made the mage’s stomach turn, the warrior already shouting tactical directives for when they hit the other side. Scúrhand only dimly registered them, all his focus directed to protecting them and hoping that Morghan could avoid looking down to the dark water below.