Clearwater Dawn (42 page)

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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, objects, and incidents herein are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual things, events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Except that Kathlan with her clothes off looks an awful lot like… well, never mind.

ISBN 978-0-9868288-4-3

v1.1

May 2011

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An Anthology of the Endlands

by

Scott Fitzgerald Gray

• In a lost tomb, a warrior haunted by the deaths of those who once followed him hears an offer of redemption in the voice of an ancient blade…

• A sword of kings lingers in a forgotten forest, where dwells a timeless spirit of the wood — a creature able to sense the apocalyptic future that unfolds if the blade is ever reclaimed…

• A prince and princess share a bond of blood and a dark secret, both of which threaten to destroy them when their father is killed…

• A warrior living under a monstrous curse has his wish for death transformed by a desperate young girl with blood on her hands…

• A reclusive storyteller finds himself in possession of an axe that promises he will rule the world — whether he wants to or not…

• The pain of the past haunts a mage sought out by the woman he once loved, who needs his knowledge and power to save the life of the man she loves now…

• A young exile returns home carrying the weight of betrayal and the stolen sword that is the symbol of his people — a blade with which he will destroy the legacy of the father who tried to kill him years before…

• A king long thought dead walks his war-torn homeland as a ragged pilgrim, consumed by the sins of his past. But even as he does, the daughter of his greatest knight hunts him, desperate to convince him to take up the crown once more…

The first Endlands anthology from Scott Fitzgerald Gray,
A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales
follows a disparate group of heroes and villains caught up with the dark history — and darker destiny — of ancient magic lost to time and memory.

In the aftermath of the fall of Empire, magic is the ultimate force for tyranny and freedom in the lands of the Elder Kingdoms. Magic defines the line between right and wrong, life and death that compels countless characters to take up a mantle of heroism they never expected to wear.

However, in the world of the Endlands, even the tales of heroes seldom end as expected…

This collection includes six all-new short stories, the novella
Ghostsong
, and the short novel
A Prayer for Dead Kings
.

RAZEEN WAS STILL WARM when they found him, the rigor just beginning to set. Dead since dusk, no longer. From across the table, Scúrhand prodded the wizened figure with a scroll tube, the lifeless body rocking like a sapling in the wind.

The dark-haired mage spat. “Of course,” he said, only to himself.

Across the tower chamber, Morghan circled warily, his gaze flitting across the destruction that had carried through the room. The subtle weight of the longsword shifted gently in his hands.

All is lost…

The voice was the whisper of a silk-lined sheath as it slipped within the tall warrior’s mind. He spun fast like there might have been someone behind him, saw nothing but the walls of ransacked shelves and the dead sage they’d come to see. Scúrhand inspected the bruising at the pale throat where Razeen had been strangled.

Where it gripped his sword, Morghan’s hand was shaking. He squeezed his fingers shut, forced the tremor from them. Across from him, Scúrhand didn’t see.

They’d been three days on horse from the Highport before they’d reached the citadel, a narrow track breaking from the eastbound trade road to follow a rising line of scrub and sand along the ocean headland. The eastern sky was already dark when they arrived, the sun gone to a molten line beneath a black haze of storm cloud along the opposite horizon. The pounding of the surf was constant past tall columns of stone, the ruins of ancient battlements staggering their way across the rough beach and into black water beyond.

In the end, the shroud of darkness and sound had given Scúrhand and Morghan a chance to see the dozen or so figures hidden in ambush position along the road long before they themselves could be sighted. The sentries wore dark leather and helms of blackened steel, scattered behind scrub trees as they watched for any sign of approach. This meant they left themselves open where Scúrhand and Morghan swung wide to the north and around, tethering the horses in a stand of salt pine and approaching unseen, away from the cliffs.

They moved to within sight of the sentry farthest from the gatehouse, the others unseen but close enough to shout to. Atop a rise, behind a screen of wind-whipped sea grass, they watched for a long while.

“When I was last here, the sage was far more welcoming,” Scúrhand whispered at last. “Perhaps he heard you were coming this time.” The mage noted that Morghan didn’t smile. “We should endeavor to find out who they are and why they’re here.”

“Agreed,” Morghan said. “Take this one.”

“An excellent suggestion,” Scúrhand whispered, “and one whose planning is worth long discussion, ideally back in the city.”

“Take him.”

“Or perhaps another city entirely.”

“You take him or I will, and I’ll be a lot less quiet about it.”

The mage sighed. He felt for the power that threaded through him, summoned it with a whisper that knocked the sentry into the air and two strides back. He fell with a muffled thud, Morghan already moving.

Even as Scúrhand followed, however, the warrior slowed to kneel beside the motionless form. He’d seen the mage drop enough sentries in the same way, should have known this one wasn’t getting up anytime soon. As Scúrhand stopped, he saw that Morghan wasn’t checking the pace of blood at the figure’s neck as he’d assumed, but was fingering the insignia on the cloak. A boar’s head sigil was embossed there, black on red, barely visible in the shadows.

“Who are they?” Scúrhand asked. The warrior only shook his head.

The citadel consisted of adjoining ramshackle towers leaning at dangerous angles into the ever-present wind. It was a military ruin, built and rebuilt by the succession of petty lords who had claimed this headland in the endless wars that were Gracia’s past. The space within it held two hundred warriors and their arms when it was new built, before the long peace of Empire and the erosion of the sandy bluff had turned its garrisons to fading memories and left it to be claimed by a lone Gnome who valued his privacy. Peace and the passage of time made for much irony in property values, Scúrhand had noted more than once.

One window lit in the cliffside wall made a gleaming gold beacon against the night. It was there that they’d climbed, out of sight of the sentries below. To be accurate, Morghan climbed, clawing his way up along handholds found and carefully tested in the weathered stone. Scúrhand had an easier time of it, rising effortlessly through the air alongside him. The black cloak he wore was of aristocratic cut but in a style no self-respecting noble had worn in a dozen generations. Scúrhand knew the garment and the dweomer of flight woven into its threads to be older than that by far.

Though the mage was fairly certain he could have carried the warrior aloft as well as himself, he’d been reluctant to test the supposition with slightly more certain death promised on the rocks below if he failed. Morghan hadn’t seemed to mind, not even breathing hard when they finally pulled themselves through the open shutters of some sort of study. It was there that Razeen had been found.

The body was draped across a high table, propped in a chair so ridiculously tall that the diminutive figure must have had to scale it like a ladder. He had a selection of scrolls before him that Scúrhand took in at a glance, mundane alchemical texts.

Morghan was still pacing the room, listening carefully at each of three exits, stairs leading up and down. Velvet drapes in the same indescribable purple the sage wore had been hung from tall pillars of yellowing marble. The air was heavy with the scent of old parchment and dust.

From below, loud enough for them both to hear, came the sound of smashing wood.

“We leave now?” Scúrhand said with little real hope. Again, Morghan didn’t smile.

Vindicator…

Morghan took the stairs first. He didn’t have to look back to know that Scúrhand was following.

Curving columns of black oak rose between levels of shadow above and below as they climbed. A pool of light preceded them, cast from the pulse of lightning that traced the dagger Scúrhand had claimed from the ruins of Myrnan. The Sorcerers’ Isle, legendary across Gracia and the other four Elder Kingdoms and countless lands beyond. During a particularly violent squall that dogged them along the six-day voyage from Myrnan to the Gracian mainland, the mage had christened the blade Storm’s Light. Morghan had spent most of the remainder of the trip offering his opinion of those who named their weapons.

“A blade’s a tool like any other. You don’t name the plow any more than the oxen that pull it.”

“I’ve never had an ox save my life,” Scúrhand said. They were sailing through rain past sunset of the last day, the lights of the Highport visible ahead. “This might do that someday.” The mage was doing handwork with the new blade at the rail. In the twilight, the pulse of its storm light shone.

Now, Scúrhand willed that light to darkness as Morghan waved him back. Where the stairs met an open balcony, they saw a faint light from ahead. Directly beneath them, the undying glow of magical evenlamps was filtered by some kind of latticed ceiling. Narrow beams crisscrossed below an empty space where the stairs turned and climbed once more. There was room enough for Morghan to squeeze through, shifting slowly to spread his weight across the narrow beams. Scúrhand was close behind, perched at the balcony’s edge.