Beyond the Pale (53 page)

It was Falken.

Several men-at-arms approached, halberds raised, but at a glare from the bard they fell back. Travis had never seen Falken like this. The air of weariness and melancholy he usually wore was gone. Now his eyes flashed like lightning in a clear blue sky.

“What’s he doing?” Travis whispered to Beltan.

“Besides making that vein on Boreas’s forehead explode? I think we’re going to find out.”

Boreas rose to his feet, his coal-black eyebrows merged into one brooding line of anger. “You are going to tell me the meaning of this insolence, Falken Blackhand. And then you are going to leave, before I have to put the rune of peace to the test.”

Falken stood before the table. In his hand was an object wrapped in a cloth. “As a citizen of Malachor, I invoke my power to speak to the council.”

The rulers exchanged questioning glances. Boreas slapped a hand down on the table: thunder. “You will do no such thing, Falken Blackhand! The council will not allow it!”

Falken did not so much as flinch. “Yes it will, Your Majesty. It is my due and privilege. I have lost my home, and I have lost my hand, but this you cannot deny me, King Boreas. None of you can. Ask your Lord Alerain. He knows the ancient laws better than any other.”

Boreas glanced at his seneschal, who stood against the far wall. Alerain gave a reluctant nod. The king of Calavan let out a grunt and returned his glare to Falken.

This didn’t make any sense. Hadn’t Beltan just said Malachor fell seven hundred years ago? But maybe Falken
was one of the few who could trace his lineage directly back to the ancient kingdom.

Boreas spoke, his voice a low growl. “Very well, Falken. It seems the council cannot forbid you to speak, but neither will it forget your actions this day.”

“Nor should it. Let these words I say ring on in your minds, so they are with you always. For the twenty kings before you have not faced such dark times as you do, King Boreas of Calavan—not even Calavus the Great.”

The bard drew the cloth from the object in his hands and slammed the thing down on the table. It was
Krond
, the broken seal from the Rune Gate. Falken’s voice rose like a call to arms to fill the chamber. “The Pale King has awakened!”

There was a moment of perfect silence.

Then the Council of Kings erupted into chaos.

Grace thought she had seen King Boreas angry before.

She was wrong. A babble of excited voices filled the council chamber, along with jeers and catcalls for the bard. Several of the rulers tried to speak, but their voices were lost in the roar. Boreas glared at Falken, and his eyes smoldered with an anger that was far greater than one mere man was capable of: the fury of a king. Even from where she sat—in the first tier of benches next to Aryn—Grace could see Boreas shaking. She expected him to spring to action at any moment and toss Falken aside, a mad bull goring a hapless matador.

Yet Falken did not flinch under the king’s royal rage, even as the scorn of the onlookers grew in volume, and she started to think perhaps Boreas would not be able to dispatch the bard so easily. She knew the hard, impassive expression Falken wore. She had seen the same look countless times in the ED—in the eyes of children undergoing their fifth round of chemo, in the gazes of handsome young men who were far too thin, on the battered faces of women who had just shot their husbands. Something told her Falken had seen things
neither she, nor King Boreas, nor anyone in this chamber could imagine.

The catcalls ended. The roar became a murmur, then a whisper. The nobles sank back to their benches. Even Boreas, although his visage remained angry, lowered himself into his chair. The interior of the tower fell silent.

Now all eyes gazed at the bard. Still Falken did not move. Misty gold light drifted down from the rafters above, along with a soft rustle: the wings of doves. Then another sound rose on the air. In a low but clear voice Falken began to sing:

The bard’s voice merged with the calls of the doves. Despite the press of wool-clad bodies around her, Grace shivered. She did not know what the bard sang of, but never before had she heard a song so forlorn. Next to her Aryn sobbed quietly, tears streaking her smooth cheeks. Grace might have cried, too, if that was something she thought she still knew how to do.

Falken lifted his head. “It is called
Ulther’s Lament
, that song. Few remember it now, but King Ulther of Toringarth sang those words a thousand years ago. He sang them as he knelt in the scarlet-stained snow before the very door of Imbrifale—cold and wounded and beaten. A thousand lay dead around him. They were Wulgrim, or had been: wolf-warriors, the most fearsome fighters of Toringarth. With Ulther they
had come across the Winter Sea, to stand before the Pale King. They had been cut down like so much chaff. Ten thousand more men lay dead in the vale of Shadowsdeep behind him, slain by a horde of feydrim that clawed, and bit, and tore at the bodies long after they fell, long after their screams ended. But such was the pain of the Pale King’s servants. If the feydrim did not tear at another, then they would surely tear at themselves.”

Falken began to walk now, and he paced around the council table as he spoke. “Save for a small guard of men—his remaining earls, his standard-bearer, his fool—Ulther was alone. He had failed. None would stand against the Pale King now. Falengarth was lost. And even as he thought this in despair, he looked up, and through the Gap of Teeth he looked into the land of Imbrifale and saw the Pale King coming.”

Falken’s voice rose, until it filled the tower to the rafters. The doves flew from their roosts, out high windows, into blue shards of sky.

“On a black horse he rode, its hooves striking sparks against the stony ground, but the Pale King himself was white from head to toe. Three lights gleamed on his snowy breast: one gray, one blue, one red. These were the three Great Stones, set into the iron necklace Imsaridur, which he stole from the dark elfs. With its magic the Pale King could enslave all of Falengarth. And all of Eldh after that. Nothing stood in his way. Only one broken king, and a handful of men, and a fool with crooked legs who sang of stupid good-men and bold goodwives even as his tears fell to the ground and froze there.”

Falken paused, and another voice spoke: deep, gruff. It was Boreas. Anger no longer colored his face, but his expression was hard nonetheless. “You tell a sad tale, Falken. But then telling tales is your trade, and one at which you excel. What do your words have to do with this council?”

“Everything.” Falken brushed his fingers over the broken rune and continued his tale. “In dread Ulther watched the Pale King ride near. His heart turned to ice. Here was his doom, and all the world’s. Then a radiance shone upon him. Across the battlefield three fairies drifted toward the king. They were tall and slender, shining as starlight, and clad all
in gossamer. When he looked upon them his fear was replaced by wonder, and the king of Toringarth bowed his head.

“ ‘The Pale King comes,’ the three light elfs spoke. ‘Yet still it is not too late. Lift up your sword, Lord Ulther, and hold it before you.’

“Such was his awe that Ulther did as the fair ones bid. He gripped his sword Fellring, forged in the same dwarfin smithies as the magic necklace Imsaridur, and held the bloody blade before him. As he did the fairies clasped each other and, as one, threw themselves upon Fellring. Ulther cried out in dismay, but it was too late. The three had been pierced through. Yet the fairies did not shed blood. Instead a brilliant light welled forth from their wounds, so bright Ulther was forced to turn his head. When at last he looked again the light elfs were gone, and Fellring—stained by blood no longer—shone as if it had been forged anew from the stuff of stars.

“There was time no more for wonder, for then the Pale King was upon him, his steed snorting fire. Behind the Pale King stood thirteen whose faces were hidden by black hoods, and whose feet left no imprint on the snow. They were the Necromancers, the Pale King’s wizards, who had forged his army of feydrim.

“With brave battle cries, Ulther’s earls rushed forward, but the Pale King struck them down with his icy sword. The last to stand was Ulther’s fool, still singing songs of good cheer for his master. Then he too fell, his song silenced, to spill his blood upon the snow. Now indeed was Ulther alone.

“Leaving his wizards, the Pale King approached. He did not fear Ulther, for such was the power of Imsaridur that no mortal hand might wound him, dark elfin blade or no. Nor did Berash have a mortal heart to pierce, for his had died long before, and had been replaced in his chest by an enchanted heart of cold, hard iron.”

Grace drew in a hissing breath and sat up straight on her bench. Aryn gave her a puzzled glance, as did Durge and Melia, who sat just beyond the baroness.
No, it can’t be! This is all a story. A myth. Damn it, a myth from a world that’s not even Earth. It can’t be the same, Grace. It can’t
.

Even as she said these things to herself, Grace knew it
was
the same. Somehow the dead man in the ED, and Detective Janson—and the other ironhearts Hadrian Farr knew of—were connected to this world, to this story. But how? She gave Aryn’s hand a squeeze to reassure the young baroness, even though her heart pounded in her throat, and leaned forward to hear the bard’s story.

“The Pale King descended from his mount and stood above Ulther. Imsaridur blazed upon his breast. He lifted his sword to strike off Ulther’s head.

“ ‘None can stand before me,’ spoke the icy king.

“ ‘Then kneeling I shall strike you!’ Ulther cried.

“The king of Toringarth gripped the hilt of Fellring and thrust up to smite the Pale King. Berash’s white eyes flew wide. Enchanted by the sacrifice of the fairies, the shining sword sank into the Pale King’s breast, and there it clove his iron heart in two. At the same moment Fellring shattered in Ulther’s grip, and a great chill coursed up his arms, deep into his own breast, striking his own heart. The Pale King fell to the snowy field, but Ulther kept his feet, the broken hilt of Fellring in his hand. He stumbled to the Pale King and took the necklace Imsaridur from around his foe’s throat. Then Ulther fell to his knees on the cold ground. He glimpsed the Necromancers approaching, their robes fluttering like black wings. Now his end would come.

“All at once a sound pierced the frigid air, high and clear: the sound of horns. The sun broke through the shroud of mist that hung over the vale, and the horde of feydrim, disheartened by the fall of their master, quailed before the light. The sun glinted off the tips of fifty thousand spears. Again the horns sounded, closer now, as a bright army marched into Shadowsdeep, led by a proud woman on a horse of white. Elsara, Empress of Tarras, had come at last. Ulther laughed, then fell forward and knew no more.”

Falken’s voice grew quiet, and the council chamber came back into focus. For a moment Grace had been there, in the snowy vale, and had seen the Pale King, colorless as ice upon his midnight horse. Yet the story couldn’t be over, Falken hadn’t finished.

“But how did it all end?”

In belated shock Grace realized the voice was her own. She had only meant to murmur the words, but such was the
silence in the wake of the bard’s tale that the words carried across the council chamber. Boreas glared at her, and Grace shriveled inside her gown.

“End?” Falken said. “How did it end? But the story did not end, my lady. It goes on even today, and now we are all players in it, whether we wish it or not. Without their master’s magic to bind them, the feydrim were no match for Elsara’s army. To the last they were destroyed. When Elsara reached the Gap of Teeth, she found Ulther in the snow, clutching the broken hilt of Fellring and the necklace Imsaridur. However, the Pale King was gone. The Necromancers had borne their fallen master back into Imbrifale.

“Although at first Elsara feared Ulther dead, he was not, and after many days under the care of her healers he was able to stand again. He walked back to the Gap of Teeth with a hundred runewielders, the strongest in all of Falengarth. With the help of Elsara’s army they raised a great gate of iron across the door of Imbrifale, and the runewielders bound it with three powerful runes, so the Pale King and his servants might never ride forth again. The runewielders became the first of the Runelords, and Ulther gave them the necklace Imsaridur for safekeeping. Then came a hundred witches to Shadowsdeep, and they wove enchantments of illusion and madness over the mountains, so that none might cross into or out of Imbrifale that way.

“Finally, Ulther and Elsara forged a new kingdom to keep watch over Imbrifale, to make certain the dark Dominion never rose again. They set their children upon the throne in marriage, and thus was Malachor born. For a long age peace and light ruled Falengarth. For an age …”

Falken shook his head. “That age is over. Malachor fell centuries ago. The Runelords are no more. The Imsari, the three Great Stones that once graced Imsaridur, are scattered and lost. And now”—he pointed to the broken rune on the table—“now the Rune Gate weakens.”

There was silence. Then—harsh and jarring—laughter.

It was Eminda of Eredane. “You tell a glorious tale, Falken Blackhand. For a moment I half fancied I believed it. However, if there is any enchantment here, it is simply the spell of your voice, and nothing more.” Now the humor drained from her face, replaced by annoyance. “We are here to discuss
real troubles that face the Dominions. We do not have time for tales meant to frighten children by the fire.”