A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales Read online

  The Blood Knight’s dedication burns bright in the dead heart of every oath ever uttered in the Empire’s name, and in the knowledge of a darkness hidden from the world at the cost of blood and in the name of the common good. In the name of the commonwealth of the Lothelecan, gone now.

  The Green Priestess’s hope flares within a shroud of white-hot anger and defiance at the Empire that steals the Kelist Razor away, and the death that shreds the dream of reclaiming the sword becomes the sword, because death and the grey blade are one, the knotted cord of life tearing before its edge like rotted gauze.

  He feels spring turn as he begins it, and by the time of deep summer, he feels nothing at all.

  There stands a place that seethes with the noise of storm wind across the dry grasslands, that burns with the heat of the unseen earth. This is the future beyond which he cannot feel.

  In the blindness of that last moment, he understands what it means.

  • • •

  She awoke in the spring, lurching to life in a wave of pain and bright blindness. She heard wind and water, twisting over her, flowing beneath her, impossibly loud. The sun was high above her, stabbing her eyes as she reflexively turned away. Rolling to her side on her bed of soft grass, she froze suddenly with a guttural fear, seeing the sloping edge of the broad and crumbling ridge she rested upon. She felt a pounding pain in her head, felt a spell of dizziness take her that caused her to seize the very ground beneath her, hold it tight.

  She saw the sword then.

  It stood where her memory placed it, buried to more than half the length of its broad blade in a crest of white stone, as if it had been plunged there to cool its final forging. A vision came back to her in a rush of cold. She remembered running, remembered wolves behind her. She lurched to her feet in sudden fear, half-fell, half-stumbled back and away from the edge of the ridge. She felt her heart race in the expectation of jaws clamping hard against her legs, tearing flesh and muscle, pulling her down. She screamed with the memory, and then it was gone. Just a dream.

  She looked down to see herself, staring in shock. She stood naked as her birth, wrapped only by the crumbling tendrils of dead vines. She brushed them away in frantic fear, felt her pale skin drink the heat of the sun that slowly sent the chill away. Before her, in the space where she had lain, were spread fragments of leather that she knew with unknown certainty were all that was left of the armor she once wore. She picked up a section of breastplate and rusted buckle with shaking hands, felt it crumble with the rot of endless years.

  She remembered running, remembered seeing the sword even as she sprinted for safety and felt herself stumble at that long-dreamed-of sight.

  She remembered running, remembered the sword’s great weight in her hands as she drove it down to shatter the rock and tear the soil that would sheathe the blade until the end of time.

  She blinked, felt both sets of memories twist past each other in an impossible embrace. The sword was three strides away from where she fell. The sword was where she left it, thrust down as a vine-strewn offering into the earth itself.

  Above and around her, a whisper traced the still air.

  She wheeled, stumbling again as she looked up, but all she saw above and around her were the skeletal arms of an ancient oak. Its heavy branches were dead black, leaves hanging dark and slicked with grey mold. The size and spread of the tree spoke of incalculable age, its great base as wide across as a castle tower, countless trunks splitting off from it to spread like a vast wall. Around her, great roots furrowed the ground, touched by rot where winter had peeled their ancient bark away.

  In a shudder of memory, she saw the great tree spreading above the snow, black branches limned with frost. She felt her heart twist with that memory, felt a sudden spike of pain and longing for the mission that set her against the will of a dead Empire. She felt her sight clouded by the dead eyes of the knight who was pledged to die in the defense of that Empire, and who had tried to stop her mission even before she was born.

  Around her, inside her, she felt the old magic sing.

  This was the magic from which life sprung, coursing now in every breath, in the space where that breath became the wind, in the wind’s caress of golden leaves and the white bark of the lesser trees that spread out and around the open space of ridges and ravines above which the great oak had climbed. She felt it in the burning heart of the sun that was the source of all life, watching its twisting shadows across the grove around her.

  She felt a fear she didn’t understand.

  Old magic lingers in these secret places of the world, the high priests said.

  She found a black cloak with which she covered herself. It lay half-hidden beneath a layer of loam and dead leaves, but she knew it was there, had always known it. Two strides from where the cloak was fallen, she saw the same dead vines that had clutched at her twisting through an ancient skull.

  She remembered everything. Remembered nothing. All the hope that brought her here, that had carried her across half a world. She was one of hundreds, scouring the farthest corners of a dozen kingdoms in search of a legacy stolen from her people twelve hundred years before.

  She was one of hundreds taking the oath of blood to defend an Empire against the rise of ancient evil that spread like a dark stain from the deeps and legends of the past.

  She was the last of the Lotherasien, following ancient portents and the shadowed signs of divination to the dark wood. Last of a fated handful who had sworn to die in order to bury the dread blade beyond all thought and memory. Out of the reach of any who might seek it.

  She was the knight whose skull had lain here for uncounted years, twined now by dead vines and wind-touched grass. She was the acolyte that had died within sight of her peoples’ dream, was the spirit of life reborn and hope rekindled, and of a future that dwelt in her as a dark memory she could not name.

  She tried to tear the cloak but its strength was beyond her. She felt the strength of spellcraft in its weave, keeping it whole against the passage of time. In the end, it took the sword itself to cut it, the cloth snapped taut and drawn against the razor edge of grey steel standing immobile in its cradle of stone.

  She wrapped the haft in the shorter piece of cloak, twisting it tight in three layers before she would draw it forth from the ground. Careful not to let any part of it touch her flesh, just as they had all been taught. As he had been taught, she realized. The other mind in hers, all the fear that had been someone else’s once, guiding her now in a way she didn’t understand but could not ignore.

  It took the better part of the day for her to slowly wrench the grey blade free of the grasp of ancient stone. She stood it before her carefully when she was done, only half a head taller than the sword at its full height. She weighed in her mind the difficulty of carrying it, measured out the effort of finding shelter, finding clothing, finding sustenance as she dragged it in secret across the distance home. A journey she would make because there was no one else to make it.

  With the larger piece of cloak, she wrapped herself against the chill that advanced with the setting sun. She would set out in search of a more sheltered space, the open ridges too exposed to spend the night before the first day of that long march.

  She heard the whisper again. But when she turned, she saw only the stooped and twisted trunks, the time-bent limbs of the ageless oak above, its black leaves spreading to cover all the bluff like a shroud. She thought she felt eyes on her, felt a timeless touch thread through her like the incessant stitching of a silver needle. She heard the voice of the wind, heard the hiss that carried a black storm of dead leaves to the air as she turned away.

  THEY WERE FOUND IN THE MIDST of their tryst by the Khanan Irnash’an himself, the steel-bound door of the abandoned White Tower gallery breaking beneath his shoulder like it might have been a courtesan’s cork-paneled closet. The voice of the High Emperor of all Ajaeltha when he saw them was a scream of purest rage. He held the scepter of his reign in hand, hefted like a mace
with all the strength and fury that had conquered the uprisings of three governors before the two of them were even born.

  Jalina screamed, clutching the sweat-stained satin sheet to her as she scrambled back on the cushioned pallet, eyes downcast from instinctive deference as much as fear. Charan met the aging sovereign’s gaze as the scepter swung high. He hit the floor rolling, naked flesh slamming against cold stone as the mass of gilt-edged steel and razor-sharp gems hissed past his head, a finger’s breadth from killing him.

  Across the ancient line of statues set in an uneven colonnade to both sides of the door, his clothing was scattered as an unseemly web. Cloak and leggings, shirt and linens. The stone faces were ancient courtiers and forgotten sovereigns, all of them staring blankly. Banished here to dust and silence, far from the white marble of the khanan’s great halls.

  Jalina would be safe enough, Charan knew as he scrambled to his feet, feeling the ancient warrior twisting behind him but not daring to look. He understood that the second blow would come for him, just as he knew that it would hit with certainty, no room to maneuver in the narrow confines of the cluttered chamber. Snatching at his leggings and belt, Charan grabbed up his knife, the scabbard left exposed as it always was. Force of habit. He spun as he hurled it with no thought, felt the momentum of his movement twist through his arm like the crack of a teamster’s whip.

  He was planning only to distract the khanan, hoping to divert that follow-up killing stroke to his shoulder or side rather than his skull. What he might do to prevent the next blow was a matter he was still frantically thinking on when the scepter lurched from callused hands.

  The khanan clutched at the knife where a hand’s-length of damask steel had buried itself hilt-deep in his chest. He hit the floor with a soft thud and the gasp of his last breath. All was silent after that.

  Neither of them spoke for a long while. Charan fought to slow his breathing, realized numbly that the continued quiet meant the khanan had made his careful way up the tower stairs alone. He slipped to the buckled door, closed it carefully against its shattered frame.

  “You killed him,” Jalina whispered at last. The ash-brown eyes were wide, set within their frame of auburn hair. Her hands were shaking, fingers reflexively forming the death-sign before her.

  “A knife in the heart will do that.”

  Charan stood over the corpse, turned from her so she wouldn’t see the wonder as he stared. It wasn’t the first body he had seen. Not even the first whose death was nominally his responsibility, but it was the first to have fallen by his own hand. He half-expected to feel something. Fear, perhaps. The weight of hubris, the dread of vague doom. Some guilt or misgiving.

  Instead, his mind was empty. As he looked down absently, he saw his sex still standing rigid, unhooded where it reached for the empty air before him. He tasted metal in his mouth, dull copper like the stippled blood rising in the khanan’s dead eyes.

  “He is the khanan and your father,” Jalina whispered, hoarse. “Is that all you have to say?”

  Charan smiled bitterly. A hand absently ran through the black hair shrouding his face, pushed it back to hang to his shoulders. He turned to his sister with a flash of black eyes that were reflected in her own cold gaze.

  “Gods save the empress,” he said.

  He saw Jalina flush, a rush of crimson rage that made her eyes flash brighter. It twisted from face to neck, pushed down to spread across her breasts as she stood regally, wrapping the sheet around herself. “We bring him back,” she said.

  “He’s dead,” Charan responded idly. “There’s a degree of permanence involved.”

  “I mean bring him to the priests, fool. Impose the rites of return while the spirit still lingers…”

  “When the spirit returns, the memory comes with it. Bring him back to recall how I put a blade in his heart? I think not.” Charan stooped to lift the diadem from his father’s brow, felt the flesh already cooling beneath it. He pulled his shirt from a statue of the great-grandfather who named the empire that his sister had just inherited, dropped it to shroud the face and its sightless eyes.

  There was less blood around the knife than he imagined there would be. He absently tossed the crown over his shoulder, turned to see Jalina snatch it by instinct before it hit her. By a less well-practiced instinct, she recoiled from it like it might have been a serpent, sending it to the ground with the dull thud of its golden weight.

  “I thought you might like to try it on,” Charan said evenly.

  “It fits your ambition best.” His sister’s voice was ice, the full mouth set in an imposing blank line.

  He only shrugged. “Should have thought on that before you clawed your way from mother’s womb ahead of me.”

  He saw her look away, close her eyes and mark the death-sign again in response to the mention of their mother. The maker’s cross, both hands scribing the air before her. The circle of the sun above, the quick intersection of the sword below.

  Charan scowled. “No matter how often you wave your hands to your gods, she stays just as dead.”

  Jalina dropped the sheet as she stood, slunk to the window ledge where she had carefully folded her own clothing. She stood in silence a while. “I want neither the crown nor the throne,” she said at last. “I’ll refuse both. Take them and be happy for the first time in your life.”

  Charan’s dark eye followed the curve of her back as she fastened her underskirts, the faint gleam of lantern light showing the wetness at her thighs and in the dark tangle of her sex. He felt the ache in his loins thicken. “Our first purpose here will make us both happier by far,” he said carefully. “For a time, at least.”

  He saw the shudder of revulsion slip through his sister. As from a sudden shock of cold water, his tumescence waned.

  “You stopped needing to prove your depravity to me long ago.” Jalina’s hair showed whorls of sun-brightened copper in the light as she tied it back, tightened a belt of spun sheen-silver to fasten her shift. This she adjusted to the courtly style, the globes of her breasts revealed from the wide-cut sleeves.

  “My so-called depravity has had no shortness of call from you these past years.” But his sister was silent as she slipped her knife in its scabbard to her thigh, adjusted a patterned skirt of blue and yellow silk over it.

  Charan turned from her in anger, tripped over something. At his feet, their father’s body. He stared at it like it a thing suddenly and somehow forgotten. “We need to think,” he said.

  “Match our stories up.” Jalina’s voice was a child’s suddenly. Charan heard it as he dressed with his back to her, saw a vision of her in his mind suddenly at age twelve, their mother dead that summer. In her chamber in the White Tower of the Empress, in the scant time before the priests arrived and the body was whisked away, both he and his sister had seen the marks of his father’s hands at her throat.

  When the spirit returns, the memory comes with it.

  Charan remembered the brown eyes wet with tears, his sister’s hand in his as the sepulcher stones were sealed in a haze of blue-white fire. An eldritch consumption, the healers called it. Beyond their skill to pull her back from the darkness. The people had believed them, because it was easier that way.

  “We can say we found him,” Jalina whispered. “Throw a concubine or two to the councilors. A crime of passion.”

  “No.”

  “Assassination, then. Lure a guard here, make it look as though…”

  “No,” Charan said carefully. “No story. Anything we do, any involvement with the body, no matter how fleeting, makes us suspect.”

  “Then what…”

  “We dispose of it.”

  In the sigh that followed a sullen silence, Charan knew that Jalina had already realized there was no other way forward. She needed Charan to be the first to voice it, though. As always, he thought.

  “A place no one will ever go.” He prodded the body with his foot, felt it unyielding but with no stiffness of the blood yet. The last of his own
stiffness had finally faded.

  “They won’t believe we know nothing of this.”

  “They will when we show our surprise. Show our uncertainty along with everyone else at the khanan’s disappearance…”

  “You’re as big a fool as he was. The councilors will look to us…”

  “They won’t dare. The hint of murder puts the empire in their hands, yes. But an unexplained disappearance creates a constitutional crisis that threatens the council’s hold on power. Let them come up with the idea of covering for it. They’ll invite the two of us to rule as regents in father’s place. Tell the people he’s gone in secret to the temples at Terhetu, or leading a warband to the Dragonspires.”

  He looked back quickly, saw her force the quiet smile from her lips. Her eyes were ice where she watched him. Dry, suddenly. He hadn’t seen her wipe the tears away.

  “What do we do?” she said.

  The castle was dark, the corridor lanterns shrouded, but the light of the near-full Clearmoon at the windows was a bright guide as they made their way slowly from the White Tower, down to the distant kitchens far below. The first leg down the endless winding stairs was the hardest, both of them staggering. They had stripped the body, using the robes to staunch the slow flow of blood. Then they wrapped their father in the silk sheets, Charan taking him by the shoulders, descending backwards to watch Jalina struggle as she gripped his feet and followed. The scepter, Charan had lashed tight to his father’s waist with the jeweled belt he wore, its bone-crushing weight a scarcely noticed addition to their father’s well-muscled bulk.

  They moved in a regular pattern, setting the corpse down so that Charan could scout ahead, listening with held breath and pulsing heart for the telltale sound of footsteps. It was late enough that there was little chance of them being seen in the side corridors and wall-passages they moved along, but he had no great desire to explain his presence. Or, more inevitably, to make more murder against whatever courier or wayward servant they happened across.