A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales by Scott Fitzgerald Gray Page A

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 through
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