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

and legends. Over the fast-blurred space of a hundred
winter days, the blade is forged within a fallen castle, a shadowed tower of a
distant golden land. A force of spellcasters with power enough to lay waste to
cities gathers to infuse that power into molten steel. New magic, fell and pure
and black as midnight’s storms. A strength in the dweomer of that steel that
will keep the grey blade from ever being destroyed.
    Memories and legends. He senses the hands of the king that wields
the sword, feels the unreckoned hands of other sovereigns seize it from the
dying grasp of the hands before. Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons in a long
line, ruling by dint of history and the blood of kings in their veins.
    Against the shadow of those memories, the Blood Knight takes an
oath that the blade which cannot be destroyed will stay hidden, far from the
hands of those that would wield it. Those that would succumb to its shadow. A
pledge that the Quick One will die to uphold.
    The Blood Knight runs with the blade, even as it feels a dark
despair course through its mind for the oath that cannot he upheld anymore. The
Empire is fallen, and the grey blade is found and stolen back again. But when
he falls as he knows he will, there will be no one to hide it again. In the
aftermath of the Lothelecan, the Blood Knights are cast to the winds. Spread as
a memory already fading to legend.
    Pledged unto death, the Blood Knight seizes the sword and carries
it across dangerous realms to a place of faint legend. A forest where the old
magic might be stronger than anywhere else across the world-land the Quick Ones
call Isheridar. The shroud of magic that is the legacy of this place, that is
his name and birthright. A veil within which the blade might be safe, might be
lost for all time.
    The ancient magic of this place will wrap and conceal the dark
dweomer of the blade. Or so the Blood Knight hopes as it dies driving the sword
into the living ground at his dark and twisted feet.
    He feels darkness again, feels it chill him as the first vision
wraps around him once more. War on the black plain, the sword in the hands of
its first master, whose name is burned away even as the memory shapes it.
    The wind drives leaves turned frost-white and black. He loses
track of time passing, of memories playing out like the songs of wind and rain
that make up each storm scouring the distant mountains.
    He sees himself now, cast in the final memory of the Blood
Knight’s lost gaze as it looks up to the sky. The spread of his own great arms
are a welcoming embrace through the Quick One’s eyes, bright sun flaring to
whiter light that occludes all else, then is gone.
    On my life, the Blood Knight whispers, and its life is no
more.
    Spring blooms again.
    Grey-brown fingers of vine flare green, drinking the life of sun
and sky as they entwine the sword, the skeletal shadows still grasping for it.
Summer comes, and the Green Priestess is all but gone now within the tall grass
and the shroud of sun-touched flowers.
    In his mind, he is moving. Running with blade in hands and across
his shoulder, his body not yet stilled by death as it shadows him close, a
predator’s step running fast behind him.
    Death.
    This is the song sung by all the memories of the grey blade, and
he is joined to them now. Feelings and impressions, a single mind within his.
Broad web of past and futures threading through dull steel from molten birth to
this space of shade and sheltered wind.
    Within that mind, he feels the great distance between the two
lives inextricably bound to this place. The Blood Knight, the Green Priestess.
A clash of spirit and purpose.
    He focuses. Reaches within himself for the selves he has become,
splitting and shaping them. Seasons pass in a blur, the first taste of frost
touching his fingers. The wind turns from the north once more.
    It is the heart of winter, the wolves prowling the deep forest
again, and he is the Blood Knight. He is the Lotherasien in whose