Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy)

by James Mallory Mercedes Lackey

  She was not sure why.

  From Sword to Frost life at the Sanctuary of the Star returned to its accustomed pace. Still caught between, Vieliessar spent her days in service and her nights in study, reading through the holdings of Arevethmonion. This year, word came of battles fought between the War Princes, and injured came to the Sanctuary.

  The Long Peace was over at last.

  * * *

  Vieliessar twirled and swayed as she made her way to her sleeping cell, clutching the small silver Unicorn token in her hand—once again, she had taken the luck-token in the Midwinter cake. Around her ankles, her grey skirts furled and unfurled as she moved. She remembered the Midwinter dances at Caerthalien, intricate and elaborate. This year she had stayed at the feast until the very end, drinking all the pledges to health and luck that concluded it. Her head reeled with hot spiced ale, and she thought she would have danced—were there anyone here to dance with.

  The doors to the Postulants’ cells were tightly closed—they were either soundly sleeping or still drinking in the year at Rosemoss Farm—and it was with relief that Vieliessar reached her own room without meeting anyone. Now to bed, and pray that she did not wake in the morning with ale-sickness.

  When she opened her door, her euphoric mood vanished, and she groaned in dismay. The inner shutters were open—the latch was unreliable, and often slipped—and she hadn’t closed the storm shutters. Her sleeping chamber had been open to the winter air for candlemarks and was ice-cold.

  Shivering, she went to the window and closed both inner and outer shutters. The dish of live coals had been blown from the windowsill and lay dead on the stone floor. It hardly mattered; coals took candlemarks to burn down to greatest heat; even if she lit them with her flint and steel, she would spend a long, cold night.

  Ah, if only … She reached out toward the copper brazier, shivering, imagining welcome heat against the palm of her hand. In the next moment, the tinder kindled into flame with a bright flare and blue flames danced over the surface of the coals themselves. A wave of heat rose from the bowl, making the air shimmer. Vieliessar sprang backward as if she’d been burned. She stared at the thing which could not be.

  The coals still glowed.

  Fire is the first spell and the easiest. All the Postulants say so. Anginach Called it while he was still a Candidate.…

  Though the room was warming quickly, Vieliessar felt an inward chill. She was Lightborn.

  And all she could think of was Maeredhiel’s warning. “Think long and hard, Vieliessar of Farcarinon, before showing the Light even if you possess it, for a Mage may be called from the Sanctuary where a servant cannot be.”

  She knew, Vieliessar thought. She knew even then this day would come. Maeredhiel said Celelioniel wished to keep the “Child of the Prophecy” under her hand—the Sanctuary’s hand. Because I am such a danger to the Hundred Houses. If only that were true!

  If she became Vieliessar Lightsister, she would have a greater power at her command than the dragons of the earth … and never be able to use it to claim her vengeance. Had Farcarinon yet stood, Vieliessar Lightsister could not have ruled over it. But Farcarinon had been erased, and her life would be forfeit should she leave the Sanctuary. “A Mage may be called from the Sanctuary…”

  If Maeredhiel had known this day would come, she had given Vieliessar counsel on how she must meet it as well.

  Tell no one.

  Snow Moon became Cold Moon, then Ice, and Vieliessar began to dimly comprehend the world through which the Lightborn moved. Suddenly the currents of magic were as visible—or at least as perceptible—as the ripples on the surface of a lake. There were a thousand things she could compare it to, and none of them was the Light’s true likeness. Vieliessar had listened uncomprehendingly to Thurion describe the process of spellsetting many times, but now it made sense: as a fish moved through water, the alfaljodthi moved through power. The Lightborn could see what others could not: the webs and currents of that power. And seeing it, could draw upon it, shape it, transform it.

  For almost a full turn of the Wheel she fought to step back into the skin of one Lightless. It was a battle she was doomed to lose, for the Light Within demanded to be used, just as limbs and senses did.

  And yet, if she wished to keep her secret, she could ask for neither help nor training.

  But that did not mean she could not practice. Knowing what to do was simple: the Postulants all spoke freely of the training exercises. She must learn to trust the Light above her physical senses. And Calling Fire was simple enough.

  But once a Postulant mastered Fire and Inward Sight, Silverlight was the next spell. It was a thing she dared not attempt within her sleeping chamber.

  The meditation and practice chambers were heavily Warded against the mishaps of Candidates learning to wield the Light. One of her tasks was to clean and prepare the chambers for use. No one would notice if she spent a few more minutes on the task than it actually took. All she needed to do was wait until that duty fell to her once more in the natural way of things.

  And a few days later, it did.

  She hurried through her midday meal, for Cindil-chamber would be needed in the first candlemark after midday. Vieliessar had once thought the chambers unpleasantly stark. Now she could see the colors of the Wards which made the stone walls a tapestry of shifting opal and turned the polished wooden floor into a mosaic of amber and gold. Her servant’s tasks occupied only a few minutes—to bring fresh incense of the proper kind, to fill the water jug, to make certain the chamber was clean and orderly—and then she was free to work undisturbed.

  “You breathe the power in, then you imagine how you wish it to go. But it isn’t really like that, because in a way you’re actually remembering something you never saw. Oh, I can’t explain it, Vielle—I can just do it!” Thurion’s frustrated words echoed through her memory.

  All that was required for Fire was to scoop up a scrap of the power that surrounded everyone and concentrate it for the instant needed to kindle something into flame. It was not so with the thousand other spells the Lightborn could command. Each one had a name, a shape, a presence, as if it were something one might hold in one’s hand, like a xaique piece—and for each Lightborn, there was one spell that was theirs above all others to command: their Keystone Gift. That Gift shaped their training and their studies: a Keystone Gift was the strongest talent a Lightborn possessed, from which they might weave a new spell to add to the Sanctuary’s store of Light. Spells could not be written down, nor could the knowing of them be spoken into the ear. The shapes of the Greater Spells could only be passed mind to mind, so that any Lightborn who wove and crafted a new spell must come to the Sanctuary to pass it to as many other Lightborn as possible. It was against Mosirinde’s Covenant to keep a knowing restricted to the Lightborn of one’s own House. Spellcraft must pass among the Lightborn as freely as wind across the land.

  Lesser spells were bound into the stones of the practice chambers, so that the Postulants might See them and take them for their own. Vieliessar knew as well as any Postulant the order in which the spells must be learned, for there was a Teaching Song about it: Fire and Sight and Silverlight, Find and Fetch and Send and Shield, Weather and Ward, Keep and Heal …

  She’d seen Silverlight cast all her life. She closed her eyes and held out her hands …

  And Silverlight rushed into her mind as if she had opened a floodgate. Suddenly there was brightness behind her closed eyes, as if she held the moon between her open hands. With a startled cry, Vieliessar flung it away, only to see the spell-symbol in her mind become another equally familiar shape as the power did her bidding. She opened her eyes, and saw—in horror—that the bowl of the brazier was now shining with an all-too-familiar light.

  No! Don’t!

  In vain, she tried to douse the glow. All she managed to do was make the metal glow even more brightly. Sadimerial Lightsister would soon arrive; Vieliessar’s breath came hot and hard with fear. The Lightsister wo
uld see Silverlight cast on the brazier.…

  Darkness! I want it to be dark! Vieliessar thought in blind panic. Unmade! Untouched! As if I never—

  She felt something shift inside her mind, but before she could turn her inward eye to see it, a wave of cold sickness washed over her. She staggered backward, her hands covered with a sticky dust.

  The brazier had gone dark.

  But it had also turned to grey stone and was crumbling away.

  If she had not been so terrified of discovery, horror and disbelief would have held Vieliessar frozen. What had been, moments before, a bright copper bowl on a bronze tripod was now … rock. Ore.

  Unmade.

  She was on her hands and knees, trying to scoop the pieces into her skirt, when she felt the now-familiar tingle of the presence of one of the Lightborn. She looked behind her apprehensively. For a long moment she held Sadimerial Lightsister’s gaze.

  “The work will go faster if you use a broom, girl,” Sadimerial said at last. “And have a new brazier brought from storage. I had not known Filgoroth wished to challenge me again so soon.”

  Vieliessar fled, holding a skirt full of dust.

  * * *

  Who Filgoroth was, and why he would challenge Sadimerial, and how, Vieliessar never found out. All she knew was that no one accused her of being Lightborn. She swore she would never again do anything so unsafe, but a few sennights later she was in Oiloisse-chamber. Oiloisse was utterly empty, for some practice had gone awry and its furniture had not yet been replaced. This time the Silverlight came easily—a moon-pale globe she could hold in her hands. She could feel the spellshape in her mind try to twist from simple conjuration to bespelling an object, but there was nothing within the bounds of the Wards for it to fix on.

  She still did not know how to unmake what she had made, but forcing it against the Wards worked well enough.

  And time passed.

  * * *

  Each year, the hot breathless days of Thunder Moon brought a pause in the Sanctuary’s unceasing labor, for the days were hot, and many in the Sanctuary—save those Candidates who had incurred Maeredhiel’s special displeasure—came to the gardens take a candlemark or more of ease when the sun had passed its fiercest. Behind her, Vieliessar could hear the shouts and laughter of a group of Postulants playing a counting game, the soft distant sounds of someone practicing upon the harp. The song of a flute wound through its soft sweet notes—hesitant, unpracticed, but holding the promise of mastery to come.

  The chirring of insects, the soft hot breeze, the smooth warmth of the Vilya’s bark beneath her hands, all lulled her. Was I ever so young as these new Postulants? she wondered in bemusement. They had all thought themselves on the verge of adulthood when they came to the Sanctuary, but it had been a very long time since she had been a Postulant. To number those years Vieliessar must think hard, and count Midwinters upon her fingers.

  She ducked back against the trunk of the great Vilya that dominated the garden as two of the Postulants ran past her, shrieking excitedly in their play. They reached the low wall and scrambled over it, racing along one of the narrow paths between the fields of standing grain in the field beyond. Landbonds, she thought to herself, seeing cropped hair and faces narrow with a lifetime of starvation. At least they return to a better life than that, Twice-Called or not. One trained at the Sanctuary could be sure of a place in a Great House, for the Lightborn preferred Sanctuary-trained servants. One thought blended inevitably into the next: Soon Thurion will go. It is already past time.

  It was not that after a dozen short years of study Thurion could know all the Light held …

  … but that the knowing came from the Light itself, not from Lightborn teachings.

  I could be happy here blended, in a seamless instant, with: I am happy here. Vieliessar no longer wondered at her good fortune in remaining hidden from discovery. She had wished for nothing else, desperately, for moonturns. A wish, a desire, need, was the beginning of a spell. She could spend the rest of her life learning all the Light had to teach.

  She got to her feet, shook her long skirts free of grass, and walked slowly across the garden. The low stone wall at its edge marked the boundary between the Sanctuary gardens and Rosemoss Farm, and its smooth grey stone was hot against her hands. Beyond the farm and its fields lay Arevethmonion. She could feel the radiant beat of its life against her skin like a second kind of sunlight. She would never walk beneath the Flower Forest’s canopy save as a fugitive or a prisoner. The thought had brought her reflexive rage and sorrow since the first day she had come here, but she could not remember the last time she had looked upon Arevethmonion and thought of herself as a captive: the wall beneath her hands marked the outermost possible bounds of her world, but at last the thought gave her no pain. Nothing endured forever, and what must be, must be.

  Suddenly she heard a thin wail of distress from the direction of the young Postulants. One was standing. The other was huddled at his feet. As she watched, he tried to pull himself upright.

  The front of his grey tunic was dark with blood.

  She did not stop to think. She vaulted the wall and went running toward them. When she reached the pair, she knelt down beside the wounded Postulant.

  “Go—Rian?—and fetch Mistress Healer Hervilafimir from the healing chambers—or any you find there! Go!”

  Rian fled toward the Sanctuary as if the Starry Hunt Itself pursued him.

  “Here, let me see,” Vieliessar said, trying to pull the child’s hands away from the wound. To truly Heal required Light, but for small wounds and sickness there were many things one could do to ease suffering, even without the Light, and Nithrithuin Lightsister had begun to teach Vieliessar these minor mysteries.

  Bright blood welled from between the Postulant’s fingers and he whimpered in fear.

  “What is your name, child?” Vieliessar asked.

  “Garwen,” he said. “Of—” He gasped, and the blood ran more strongly. “It hurts!”

  As if that cry were a summons, Vieliessar felt the power rise up in her, forming its spellshape in her mind. She could see the dark flaw in the brightness Garwen showed to her inward eyes. A sharp stone. A careless fall. Before she could stop herself—before she could think—the Healing broke free. Blue fire leaped from her hands, and she could See it pour into the dark wrongness. Garwen’s breathing eased.

  Behind her, Vieliessar heard running footsteps.

  “What has happened?” Hervilafimir Lightsister cried.

  “She Healed me,” Garwen said, his voice giddy with relief. “The Lightsister Healed me!”

  * * *

  Hamphuliadiel Astromancer possessed an Audience Chamber where he could receive the petitioners and supplicants who came to the Sanctuary. Though it was said to be so opulent as to stun any of the War Princes to wordlessness, no one who had actually seen inside had ever spoken of what they saw, and its vestibule was as stark and unadorned as any other chamber in the Sanctuary, save for the elaborately carved wooden door that led into the chamber itself.

  Vieliessar had been waiting here for a long time.

  She had fled—from the field, from the garden, to the only place she could think of to go: Mistress Maeredhiel’s workroom. Only then had she realized she was covered in Garwen’s blood. Maeredhiel had taken one look at her stricken expression and sharply ordered her to wash and change. Vieliessar tried to explain what had happened, but Maeredhiel refused to listen.

  She had barely finished scrubbing the blood from her hands when a wide-eyed Postulant appeared, sliding back her door without tapping to announce that Hamphuliadiel Astromancer wished Vieliessar to attend him at once. She’d assumed she would be brought before him immediately, but her wait stretched. The delay gave her time to reflect, and her thoughts weren’t happy ones. Just as no Candidate had ever returned to the Sanctuary after the end of their Service Year bearing newly awakened Light, no Postulant had ever refused training—much less hidden what they were. What was the penalty?
Would she be sent from the Sanctuary?

  He cannot do that. He knows it will mean my death.

  A year ago, or two years, or five, she would have bargained with the world, tossing out hopes as one might toss dice from a cup: dreams of allies found, of victory achieved, of safety, fortune, safe concealment as she worked toward her vengeance. She knew now these were no more than the fantasies of a heartsick child.

  It was two candlemarks past the time for the end of the evening meal when the door to the Audience Chamber finally opened.

  “You may present yourself to the Astromancer now,” Galathornthadan Lightbrother said.

  Vieliessar followed Galathornthadan through the door, telling herself she must not gawk lest she rouse Hamphuliadiel’s anger further, but she could not stop herself. The chamber was the size of the Refectory, and more opulent than any she had seen within Caerthalien’s Great Keep. Its floors and walls shimmered with Warding, and her feet passed over carpets that would ransom a Lord Komen, laid over flooring that was an intricate pattern of inlaid woods and precious stones. Nor were the walls any plainer: beneath the opal coruscations of the Wards she could see that they were painted, hung with tapestries, and lined with treasures the Hundred Houses had brought to the Sanctuary to curry favor with the Lightborn down through the centuries.

  At the far end of the chamber, Hamphuliadiel sat. Vieliessar stopped abruptly, so quickly that Galathornthadan walked six paces on before noticing.

  He enthrones himself as if he would be High King!

  She stared at the Astromancer, struggling to conceal her shock. Hamphuliadiel’s chair was wide enough for any two men to sit upon, and its back extended several handspans above his head. Perhaps it was wood, or perhaps ivory, but it was hard to say, so thickly was it encrusted with gems and gold. Such a seat might have been cold and unpleasant, but Hamphuliadiel had surrounded himself with green silk cushions filling the empty spaces. The green of his robes merged into the green of the cushions.

  Galathornthadan stopped, frowning at her, and Vieliessar started walking again. But she was no longer afraid.