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