A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Read online

  She followed him shakily as he followed Morghan in turn. The stairs led on to a passage he recognized from his previous dealings with the dead Razeen. The main doors of the citadel were ahead, open now where the sentinels they first avoided had been called in by Ectauth. The scent of sea air and the rising sun were beyond.

  Scúrhand fought the urge to break for the library, the incalculable worth of lore still scattered there. When he had searched the dismembered Ectauth, he found scroll tubes that he slipped to his pack by quick instinct. Another time for the rest, he thought. He had a more important mystery to assess at present.

  Beyond the doorway, Morghan stood atop a rise of stone a dozen strides away. He had the sword in hand, was swinging it idly, a dark silhouette against the sky.

  “Vindicator,” the warrior called.

  “You?” There was an edge in Scúrhand’s voice. It took him a moment to hear it, then another moment for him to recognize the fear there. “Taking vengeance against whom? You blame Arsanc for what happened here? Ectauth?”

  “I blame myself. For all of it.”

  There was a familiar weariness in the warrior’s voice, but something else as well. A kind of peace Scúrhand hadn’t heard in all the time since Morghan returned from the north, but it chilled him now, the mage not sure why. In any of the previous narrow escapes he had followed Morghan into, fear was never in short supply. But before he could think on it, Thiri’s voice came from behind him, stronger than he would have expected.

  “You seek vengeance against your own past, you fight a foe you’ll never defeat.”

  Morghan turned to appraise her for a long moment, a darkness flashing momentarily in his gaze. And then he laughed out loud. From somewhere below the cliffs, the call of seabirds rang out as if in echo.

  The warrior shook his head. “ ‘Vindicator’ is the blade’s name. He was right,” he said, pointing to Scúrhand. Thiri’s look told him she didn’t understand, but Morghan only laughed again.

  Scúrhand watched, smiling himself after a time. “Are you absolutely sure you’re quite all here?” He caught Thiri’s eye as he glanced back, but it was Morghan she moved toward.

  “More sure today,” the warrior said. He shrugged as he nodded to Thiri. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

  There was nothing more to say as they returned to the horses, just waking from a fitful sleep within the hissing curtain of the wind. They rested themselves only for a short while before they set off, Morghan with Thiri behind him, Scúrhand thoughtful as they rode out against the red flood of dawn.

  WITHIN THE WOOD, yellow-green tendrils of creeping snow-vine thread the eye sockets of a frost-splintered skull. Old magic lingers in these secret places of the world, the Quick Ones say. He hears their songs. Knows that this place that is his is one such place they sing of.

  The skeleton spreads beneath the green shroud of endless branches. Its fingers of grey bone, still as death, clutch the ice that binds them. His fingers of black wood shift slowly with a silent wind, scratching distant sky. Great roots hunch and rise like talons dug deep into freezing earth, a wide swath that pushes up and out as thick ridges of buckled stone. Ice-choked rills mark the shattered lines of the land, root-web twisting down and out through a skin of earth and wood-bark, shrouding the living ground beneath.

  He knows the ancient magic of this place, drinks it deep through the roots that are his feet. He spreads it to sky and air through the ancient bare fingers of his blackened arms. He feels the sun, cast along the edge-precipice of western horizon, jagged gash of crimson flaring beyond cloud and freezing haze. The dome of dark sky presses down, split by pale dusk like cracks in the acorn that let frost seep within. He feels white flowers thread their way between weathered teeth, triggered to life by winter’s first breath.

  He knows the reckoning of seasons since the body fell and turned to bone. Seasons come and pass endlessly for him, each stretched and twisted out to the next, glistening mirror-moments of time catching each other’s reflections like raindrops striking still water. For an age, golden grass grows up and through the skeleton’s weathered bones, fragile mineral of life fissured and broken, overgrown and swallowed in a heartbeat of passing days.

  The bones are of a Quick One, whose kind pass only rarely through the wood, but who are not of the wood. Born of blood as are all the creatures of the world, the Quick Ones are set above the world by bright minds, by spirits that burn like no other creatures’. Quick Ones come in smooth and tall, scaled and short, the green and grey of forest shadow, the pale rose of first light at dawn. Sharing shapes and colors with other Beasts and Birds, but standing always tall where their kin of blood crouch low.

  The Quick One fallen at his feet had been smooth-skinned, had borne a shell of steel long years before. That shell has long ago turned to rust in his slow senses, fused with bone and rock, flaked finally to nothing. Steel is a secret of the Quick Ones, who collect the soft stones of the open desert to burn and hammer to a cutting brightness.

  From the day when the Quick One fell, only the sword is left behind.

  He knows blades from the past. He feels axe and adze raised against the groves around him when he is young. Even in that ancient youth, though, his visage and power drove the Quick Ones from the wood. In later years, they did the task themselves with dark legends and warning tales, felt through the touch of those few who once walked within his shadow. Warriors, mostly, avoiding the wyrms that prowl the dry wastes and the mountains that are the lands within which the wood is set. The old magic that lingers here is thing that the Quick Ones do not understand, and so their fear builds on the dread rumors of this place that is his.

  His perception is all the living things he touches through the roots that bind him to the land. His perception is all the living things that touch him in return. In the touch of those that once came with offerings of sacrifice and totem, blood and bone, he feels the world. Memory made and unmade. Taken in to become part of the time that is his.

  Along the highest of the narrow ridges outthrust from the great roots that are his feet, the sword is a steel-grey spike buried in white stone. Its edges are straight like the line-paths of shooting stars, tall even with two-thirds of its length swallowed by the earth. Vine-twined and silver-bright in winter. Flanked by flowers in summer whose sun-white cups catch each day’s dew, wind whistling razor-clear through crown of haft and hilt.

  Few Quick Ones have come here since even long before the sword fell. The world outside the wood is changing. No shelter sought at his twisted feet, in cool shade where ever-stretching fingers spread their net of green. The grey blade stands unchanged beyond that green, untouched by winter and summer, never rusted, never weathered.

  Midway along the ridge, shrouded and all but unseen within the green, a cloak of black leather survives the same long cycles of bitter cold, blinding heat. Lost now, covered with layer-years of leaf and mold, creeping tallgrass kept at bay in a twisted circle all around. None see it. None watch the blade mark out the passage of years by the shadow of the sun, moving from horizon to height to horizon again as it circles slowly around the sky.

  With no warning, he feels the shadow cast by the blade flicker in the last light of a winter’s day. A shift of time touches it, twists through him like bitter wind across the white-black etching of his skin.

  The world changes.

  Something catches his indistinct attention then.

  Movement twists beyond the trees that grow to the line of his roots and stop there in a reverent grey-green wall. The howling of wolves, an echo of rasping breath tracing through snow-shrouded silence. An instant later, a Quick One bursts out from frosted shadow, skin limned with a bloody light within the haze of sunset as it runs. A dozen paces behind it, three wolves crash through the screen of trees, flanks winter-lean. Fierce voices lash the air, blood at their tongues.

  The Quick One sees him there, twisted-trunk wall of shadow against the sky. And in the touch of its desperate life that unfolds throu
gh freezing air, he feels a recognition that he does not understand. The Quick One hungrily sucks air, struggles ahead on feet wrapped in leather and fur, red tracks staining the unbroken white of the ground.

  He feels the Quick One’s mind as a blur of fear and shadow. Feels thoughts and future trace out as rippled lines. One step ahead of death’s pursuit across a bloodied crust of snow, it will leap to his lowest branches, his trailing fingers, thick around as the Quick One’s legs. It will climb to safety, rest in resin-scented shadow, cling tight to his blistered skin. He feels that future, as he feels all futures. Feels wolves circle, howl to the black sky, eventually slink off to seek easier prey. Answering the hunger of empty stomachs, starving white eyes.

  A dozen strides away, the Quick One sees the blade.

  The world changes.

  The figure lurches, slowing. Stares in wonder. Recognition. Fear. It looks back behind it, sees the wolves but its eyes are glazed, blue like summer sky beneath a dirty shroud of sun-red hair.

  The ripples of the future twist through him, then are gone. Swallowed by shadow. In its moment’s hesitation, the Quick One has turned from him, turned from the future in which it climbs to safety. He feels those almost-moments fade, shred like morning mist beneath bright sun.

  The Quick One runs again, bolts for the narrow ridge of ice and stone, but the wolves are already there. It stumbles on the snow-shrouded skull of the one who is there before, falls to its knees and claws forward, thrusts gloved hands toward the blade even as the wolves hit.

  Forgive me…

  He feels words slip into chill air. Feels the screaming start and finish in an unmarked moment of time.

  The wolves feed until long after the pale Clearmoon rises, sets again. More wolves come, following the faint scent of offal on the frozen wind. He feels their voices, feels them fight for the life they take from the dismembered body, but his thoughts are gone from the moment, gone from this place.

  He is in the past. He remembers when the first Quick One falls.

  It is warm. He remembers the moment of it. Feeling and fear as the Quick One crawls forward from the thick shadow of the closest trees. The sun is high, the red of the Quick One’s life marking its path back across the green as that life drains away.

  That first Quick One finds its way beneath him, lingers within his shadow for an unmarked moment of time. Its eyes are bright, taking in the wonder that is the wood. Cicada song is a silver haze, but against the chill of death, the Quick One wraps a cloak of black leather tight despite the heat of sun and air. The black leather is clasped at its neck, pinned with metal in the circle-shape of three twisted lines, linked and intertwined. Sharp-edged like the unsheathed blade in its gloved hands.

  It crawls up and along the ridge, scrabbles across the mounded crowns of white stone thrust up through grass and vine. It weeps in the honey scent of flowers gold and white as it moves to the edge, to that highest point that marks the unseen vortex of the old magic that threads through this place.

  That first Quick One lies there, weeping. It has no strength left. It rises all the same. He feels dying fingers drive the grey blade down, down, striking the crown of white rock with a scream of dweomered steel. Sending it deep within a sheath of stone and black soil.

  He feels the clasp that holds the cloak rend as the figure falls, dead weight tearing it free. Unhooked, the cloak touches the rising wind, pulled back to twist like broken wings along the ground.

  On my life, the Quick One whispers. Then impression and memory and deed are done.

  Cold metal cuts deep, slices through leather gauntlet, finger flesh and bone as the Quick One dies.

  Its hands are tight around the blade of the sword. Clinging vines wrap its dark metal with a longer grip as the land brightens, darkens, fades.

  A ripple in the long line of time twists through him. A moment whose power he feels but does not understand. But it passes, disappears in the name of new moments, new days, new seasons.

  Time shifts. The world changes.

  Winter again. Now. Bone and sinew spread in the flat-pounded circle of blood-streaked snow, all that remains as the last of the wolves slip away to the wood and he is alone once more.

  Memory twists through the silence of his senses. Faint resonance. A shimmer though black air and white ground. In the lingering energy of the Quick One’s death, he reads the impressions of a life, feels names and memories flit unfiltered through his mind.

  Holy woman. Priestess of the Green Path.

  The days slip past. Light to dark again a dozen times by the time he absorbs those names, makes them part of his understanding.

  For the first time, he reckons the seasons back to that bright-sun day when the first Quick One falls. A different creature than this second Quick One, whose blue eyes are plucked out by the crows at dawn. The second Quick One is slight, fair of hair and flesh. The first is taller, thicker, eyes dark, skin dark beneath its metal shell.

  The first Quick One has a mark at its shoulder, revealed when the carrion cats dig in through the seamed metal skin, burst it blood-bright from the inside. The same mark as the clasp that holds the cloak, and which breaks and fades away in time to rust. But this second mark is carved into blackening flash. Burning with a red glow that pulses and fades in slow rhythm.

  The same circle-shape of bright-edged lines. Three crescents all interlocking, set at their edges with straighter shapes, sharp like the razor edge of the grey blade thrust deep into rocky ground as the first Quick One dies. Only when all its flesh is gone, bones all that remains, does the magic of blood-red mark fade beyond the threshold of his senses.

  The bright Clearmoon in the sky those nights is the crescent whose shape echoes the bright marks at the Quick One’s shoulder. It swells to full as he thinks, then wanes again, days turning colder in a haze of hoarfrost and grey skies. Snow falls to shroud red ground with white. Then the bones of the flame-haired Green Priestess are gone to all senses but memory.

  He remembers the future of the Quick One who is the first to die. That day, he feels the mind of the steel-shelled figure, a blur of fear and shadow. He feels future-lines twist out from the Quick One’s staggering steps, spread like ripples in the unseen shroud of the old magic where it circles him like an endless storm.

  He hears names then, as he hears names now. He casts himself back, digs deep as days lengthen one by one and snow melts to rivulets of blue water curling between the roots of his feet, eddying along the rills and away. The bones of the Green Priestess are kissed by the sun, last remnants of flesh scoured by the first flies and stripped clean by the warmer day when he finally recalls the name.

  Lotherasien.

  The Quick One who died and thrust the sword deep into stone and ground names itself thus. Names its place and purpose as a knight of the Blood of the Commonwealth, and in the last will and purpose of that dying mind, this name is all the Quick One is and was and will ever be.

  He remembers now.

  Twenty-one full cycles of the sun, carefully reckoned, reckoned again. Brief pulse of time and time passing, barely visible within the record of his endless memory. Back to times before time, seasons without end that flare, pass, fade before him.

  The Blood Knight is running, but no wolves follow this day. Only staggering footfalls, tracing back beyond the edge of the grove and past him. His long fingers trace the air as gently hanging curtains of green leaves, drinking rain and sun as the figure falls.

  He feels the Blood Knight’s desire then. Its eyes are set on the edge of the ridge that crests beneath his outstretched arms. It feels the ancient life that steeps these stones, the power of this place that is the power of earth, of heat and deep magic pulsing within the earth.

  The power of the sword fights against the old magic that is here. The power of the sword knows what is coming.

  To hide the sword is the vow the Blood Knight has made, but the strength that is its will and purpose is nearly consumed by the sword. Nearly consumed by the ancient hun
ger that is the birthright of the great grey blade. A power that pulses like the red flow of life that marks Beast and Bird and Quick One alike. A power all but drained from the Blood Knight as it collapses at his feet.

  Twenty-one years ago, the sword is the fulcrum around which the Blood Knight’s life ends. The momentary distraction of life and death so quickly embraced by earth and time.

  Twenty-one years later, the grey blade calls the Green Priestess through the gate of life to death, and he feels a darkness spreading out from the great sword, twisting through the wood around him.

  He ruminates while the dull bruise-light of the Darkmoon trails behind its brighter brother, blooming to its fullness over long nights, fading again. He feels the blood-black shadow the blade casts upon the open space around it.

  He tries to understand this thing, but he cannot.

  Twenty-one years ago, the Blood Knight’s goal is to bury the sword in the ridge of stone and earth that thrusts out at his gnarled feet. The old magic that is the magic of this place is a thing the Blood Knight feels, a thing it seeks over the endless leagues and hardships that bring it here. The desire to lose the grey blade in this place that is his. To see it hidden for all time.

  He feels that desire reaching for him, feels it twist through his awareness with an acuity that slows all thought for two seasons. Then winter is done, and other things must be thought on, and only in the passage of time has that long-ago day now come back to him.

  The Blood Knight dies in anguish as its goal is met. Embracing the death it sought. And as he feels that death resonate again, he casts back through time and memory to taste the sorrow that died with the Quick One that day.

  Through the spring and into the close days of the long sun, he thinks. Then finally, he decides.