Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy)

by James Mallory Mercedes Lackey

Gunedwaen did not speak of treaty or alliance or of the thousand matters War Prince and Warlord and Lightborn emissary might settle among them before a House’s meisne rode out beneath its banners. He spoke of the sights, sounds, and smells of war—of failing to hear an enemy’s approach for the frenzied screaming of disemboweled horses, of fighting for candlemarks when hunger and thirst were two more enemies, of the heavy heat of armor, of battlefields turned to mud by the blood spilled upon them. He spoke of komen crushed beneath the bodies of their mounts or trampled by careless hooves as they lay helpless on the field, of slow death when Healers could not reach them, of drowning in a shallow stream, imprisoned by their armor and exhaustion. He spoke of battles fought beneath the terrible sun of high summer and through the bitter cold of late autumn, of being captured, powerless to ransom one’s freedom—and being offered a choice between lifelong immurement in some dungeon or ending one’s own life with a swift dagger.

  He spoke of the ugliness and futility of war, for by war the Houses of the Hundred might rise or fall in power for a season or a hundred seasons, but in the end, they gained nothing but the chance to go on fighting. He spoke of war as the sport of princes and lords, xaique played with living counters.

  Each night she fell exhausted to her sleeping mat, but Vieliessar’s nights were as full as her days, for Gunedwaen was not her only teacher.

  * * *

  “Lady Indinathiel! Githonel and Kamirbanath have returned from Tildorangelor!”

  She raised a hand to her hair. Her head felt strangely bare without its dressing of veil and jewels, but she had no time for such fripperies these days. “What have they found?” she asked sharply.

  “Nothing.” Zenderian’s face was a study in anger. The emotion sat strangely upon his gilded and begemmed face, the backdrop of elaborate costume and mannered gesture. Zenderian, of all the Court, kept himself as if Amrethion Aradruiniel had not betrayed them all. “Arwath and Calebre still elude us.”

  “Once Pelashia Celenthodiel’s spawn are dead, we will be safe.” She spoke with confidence, but she did not hold such faith and belief within her heart. Once the queen had died, it had been moonturns before Indinathiel had realized the king was no longer fit to rule; moonturns more before she had been able to convince the other courtiers he was not tainted but mad. By then it was too late to call the Council together to choose a legitimate successor and force Amrethion to abdicate, to gain the warrants necessary to purge the kingdom of the defiled.

  Indinathiel did not know whose hand had finally struck Amrethion down in secrecy and darkness, only that it was not hers. It did not matter. The rot ran deep. Pelashia’s children had fled the moment their true heritage was known, but their sons and daughters had formed an alliance and sworn that one of them would be Amrethion’s successor.

  Not while I breathe, Indinathiel thought grimly. She had loved her mad, foolish liege—she would not see the kingdom he had made given over to rabble and monsters.…

  Vieliessar’s dreams were not of the future. Since the day she had walked from the Sanctuary of the Star for the last time, she had dreamed of the death of Amrethion Aradruiniel …

  And of the of war that had followed.

  Amrethion had prophesied her birth and sealed her fate. But any Lightborn knew a prophecy wasn’t a spell. Prophecy did not compel. Prophecy predicted, telling a true tale of things that had not yet happened. But Amrethion’s Prophecy had not contained a place for her, as she had once thought. It had contained a shape into which she must be fitted by a force as monstrous and uncaring as winter’s cold or forge’s heat. From the moment she had claimed the mantle of Child of the Prophecy, she’d felt the terrible appetite of fate devouring all that had been Vieliessar and leaving behind the tool that would serve its need.

  And so the lost and forgotten nobles of Amrethion’s Court quarreled beneath her skin, showing her a thousand ways to fall short of the goal she must reach. Success or failure on the battlefield was the least of them. In her dreams, Vieliessar learned a thousand ways to fail. A thousand things she must not do. The consequence of every action, based on a dozen—a hundred—possible deeds of her allies, her enemies, and those who did not wish to choose a side.

  Zenderian had lost the whole of his army crossing the Mystrals when the weather had turned and he had not. Githonel had burned the standing crops to force the enemy to capitulate, and when the tide of battle had turned, his own forces had faced starvation. Kamirbanath had believed the enemy general would honor a truce. Melicano had taken useless hostages. Indinathiel lost a third of her forces when an amnesty extended by an alliance of Western lords caused them to desert. Nelpanar had refused to bring her cavalry to Tengolin’s aid because of an ancient feud between them, and so the day was lost.

  The vast and terrible wisdom that spilled through Vieliessar’s dreams and into her waking candlemarks was a yoke for her neck, a weight upon her shoulders. Ignorance of the enemy. Ignorance of events. Failure to make alliances. Failure to keep them. Plague, assassination, blockade, privation—each was a weapon that had broken in those long-dead courtiers’ hands. Knowing so many things she would otherwise have learned at the cost of defeats and deaths should have brought comfort. It only showed her that knowledge could not give security or victory. She could face a score of possibilities, knowing she must choose one, and see nothing but defeat at the end of every road.

  Parmanaya had been tricked into leading her army through forests unclaimed by either side. Parmanaya and her army vanished without a trace.

  Merrindale had two choices once his supply train was burned—stand and fight against a force four times the size of his own, or retreat across the High Hills without food or equipment.

  Noremallin’s army mutinied. He could execute the ringleaders—and never trust their successors. He could meet their demands—and see his army in the hands of the enemy. He could slip away in the night with a handful of trusted advisors—and leave his army leaderless and vulnerable. He could flee to the enemy’s battle lines with information that would destroy his army—and be branded a traitor by all he loved.

  Great Queen Pelashia Celenthodiel had died, slain in the forest of Tildorangelor, and High King Amrethion—her beloved, her Bondmate—had died of heartbreak. This was the history that everyone knew, the history Vieliessar had been taught all her life. But in her dreams there was no Bond, no quick and romantic death: Amrethion had survived, had gone mad and cruel: his own nobles had slain him before turning to fight among themselves.

  The war begun with the death of Amrethion’s queen continued to this day.

  Vieliessar did not want to believe it. She could fight to steel her sleeping mind against them, but the moment she dropped her defenses, the dreams returned. And so her nights were filled with the clash of sword upon sword, of the thunder of cavalry at the charge. With the screams of the dying, the shouts of the victors, and a mystery she could not comprehend. Why had the children of Amrethion and Pelashia been forced to flee? Why did those whose lives she spied upon in her sleep believe Pelashia’s children were tainted, unclean?

  She did not need to ask who they were. That much she knew. The dishonorable, the tainted, the unworthy lords whom Indinathiel and so many others fought through her dreams …

  … were her ancestors.

  * * *

  Her time was running out.

  It was past time for Gunedwaen to begin her knightly training, but that would not be possible without a Healing. She’d long known Farcarinon’s Swordmaster followed her only out of old loyalty, not because he believed she could unite the Hundred Houses. That didn’t trouble her, since she could see no way to do it herself. But Gunedwaen did not even believe she could break Ivrulion Light-Prince’s binding. He would not let her try because he thought she would fail—just as he thought she would fail to bring the Hundred Houses to heel.

  But I will not fail.

  She knew this as she knew her own name, yet the knowledge gave her no comfort. Her spells had never w
orked as she’d been told they should—or worse, worked when they should not have. She had learned to dissemble, to pretend she saw the Light as her teachers did, to pretend she grew slowly into the power to Heal those for whom all hope had been lost. Most of all, she had learned to pretend that Healing was her sole strong Gift, for the Sanctuary prized its Healers and there was always work for them within its walls.

  But since she had fled the Sanctuary, she had become truly aware of the power she wielded. Healing, True Speech, Overshadow … each Gift she tested was as strong as the next, stronger than anything she’d read of in the records.

  They said that Thurion would become one of the great ones. My power is greater still.

  She wanted to believe all this was because the Light had not been Called in her, but instead had come in its own time. Even before the dreams had come to challenge what she knew of history, she had wanted to believe any of the Lightborn could do all that she could, if they only had the years she’d been given in which to listen for the Light Within.

  For one moment, sharp and painful, Vieliessar wished she was back in the Sanctuary, sitting in the Common Room surrounded by her friends and fellow scholars. She could have taken her questions to them. Only she’d never told any of them the truth when she had the chance. And if she had a second chance, she still would not. Maeredhiel had laid upon her the weight of a destiny she could neither embrace nor escape, making her a creature from a storysong: Child of the Prophecy, a hero for whom her House had died, and who must somehow save the whole world. She’d hidden from it for as long as she could, hoping to find allies, hoping to be proven wrong, hoping the weight of war and death she carried by simply being Serenthon’s heir could be set aside …

  Her thoughts so occupied her that her attention was only summoned back to the here-and-now as her boots crunched through a crust of half-rotted snow. She blinked, looking around herself. She had reached the edge of Eldanwarasse without noticing. The young trees of its outermost edge lay several yards behind her, and even so, the air around her was soft with promise, warm enough to melt the drifts of winter.

  It was spring outside Eldanwarasse as well as in.

  There was no more time.

  * * *

  “You’ve become amazingly fleet of foot if you are back so soon,” Gunedwaen said without turning away from the hearth.

  “You have always told me a warrior must have two strong arms and two sound legs to wield a blade—or teach the wielding of it,” Vieliessar answered.

  “So I have,” Gunedwaen answered evenly. He spoke to the flames, not to her.

  “And so it is time for you to become my teacher in all things,” she said.

  “My lord prince—”

  The words were humble. The tone was not. Gunedwaen reached out toward the stick that helped him walk and Vieliessar knocked it away. She was done with arguing.

  She closed her eyes. To her inward sight, Gunedwaen’s body was caged within a web of Magery: kin to the spells that preserved fruit and grain and meat in timeless suspension until they were needed. If she had not spent so many years as a Sanctuary Healer, she would not have known where to begin, but every spell, every enchantment, had a beginning, no matter how well hidden.

  “Stop! Damn you, foolish child, I said—” Gunedwaen roared in pain as she began to attack the Binding; Vieliessar had always known that to lift it would cause as much pain as setting it had.

  Striker lifted her head at Gunedwaen’s shout, then pushed herself to her feet, growling in fear before starting to bark. Gunedwaen struggled to his feet, only to fall in the next moment, cursing Vieliessar between ragged breaths. Striker backed away until the corner of the hut stopped her, whining as Gunedwaen scrabbled upon the floor, flailing helplessly. His hand found the walking-stick and he tried to use it to stand. When he could not, he struck at her with it. The blow was weak, with no strength behind it. His speech became a breathless gabble of argument and entreaty: what she meant to do could not be done; he would be useless to her even if she could break the Binding; his life was hers to take but he begged she would be swift and merciful.

  And then there were no words, only screams.

  Once, long ago, she would have ceased working out of belief that such a spell could not be broken. Out of pity. Out of mercy. She had wrapped herself in the lie that she could feel these things from the moment Glorthiachiel had spoken her true name, had clutched it to her through all her years at the Sanctuary. She’d wished to be like the others—like Celelioniel, like Maeredhiel, like Thurion—for to admit the truth would be to accept a freedom that was terrifying.

  This was the truth she had spent so long running from: there was no pity in her, no mercy.

  And no fear.

  Distantly she was aware that the screaming had stopped, but it was of little importance. She had worked her way into the heart of the spell. She could trace each elaborate web of power, its interlacing, its intention, until it was as if she had set the spell herself. Thus far she had done no more than a Healing Mage of skill and power could do, though in all the Fortunate Lands there were less than a hundred who could do as she had done, and none of them would have been willing to try. What she did next was a thing none of those others could have done: she Unbound the weaving, thread by thread, line by line, layer by layer, until it was gone.

  And then she did a thing no Lightborn had ever thought of doing.

  She reached into Gunedwaen’s body with her magic. Once it had been whole, and deep within it, the body remembered its true shape, as a seed knew the shape of the plant it would someday become. From that seedling-self she drew the pattern she must follow; from Eldanwarasse she drew the power to knit up withered muscle, to summon bone and skin and flesh from nothingness, as if she forced a tree from seed to wide-branched tree in candlemarks instead of years. The power she Called to her need roared through her limbs and her senses like the storm whose winds the Starry Hunt rode, until its intoxication filled her body and mind. She knew she could not merely Heal Gunedwaen, but roll back the centuries he carried, until all the skill of his long life was held within the body of a warrior in his prime. She could build herself an army of such knights, bind their wills to her as if they were extensions of her own limbs. With such an army at her command, she could be unstoppable.

  But at what cost?

  Gasping with the effort, she released Eldanwarasse’s power. The loss of it made her cry out in protest, and almost—almost—she reached for it again, to hold it close, to grant herself such ascendancy that she would need to do nothing more than stretch out her hand and say: my will be done, and all the Hundred Houses would bow, would kneel.…

  No! I will not!

  But without it, she felt small and cold.

  Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. The fire on the hearth had burned down to ash and ember, and the only illumination was the glow of Silverlight from the spell-lanterns, for morning had become evening as she had worked. Her body was stiff with long stillness and her muscles protested as she moved.

  She walked to the woodpile, laid sticks and logs on the hearth-grid, then kindled them with a thought. Gunedwaen was unconscious, gripped by the exhaustion that followed any Healing. There was blood on his face, though she had Healed the injuries he’d done to himself in his agony.

  When Vieliessar had first left the Sanctuary of the Star she would not have been able to lift him to his feet, but the moonturns of training had served her well. On their journey to Eldanwarasse she had aided him to mount his horse many times, but now his body felt oddly unbalanced, the new presence of the once-missing limb making him seem like a stranger. When she laid him on his bed, she undressed him, as much from a need to see her handiwork as for his comfort.

  His arm had been cut away a handspan below the shoulder by the farmers who had sheltered him after the downfall of Farcarinon. The stump had been seared—such Lightless mock-Healings were commonplace among those who only saw one of the Green Robes at their lord’s whim—but there was
no mark anywhere now to show that had ever happened. Joint and tendon, muscle and sinew, all reborn. She traced her fingers lightly over the skin. The ugly knotted scar in his thigh was gone as well. The limb, withered from years of disuse, was whole again.

  She felt nothing. Not triumph, not fear. It was merely a thing which must be done so that she could become what she must be.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LEAF AND SWORD, FLOWER AND SHIELD

  In Bethros, they sing songs of Princess Ringwil’s stainless honor, who said: “Where you exile Einartha, so send me, for my love is as great as my loyalty.”

  But the song they sing in Haldil is The Song of Ringwil, for it was Ringwil who betrayed Bethros, and by this pretense sought sanctuary in Haldil thereafter. There is no Song of Einartha, who called Ringwil to the Challenge Circle when she discovered the truth, and whom Ringwil spared to toil as a kitchen-servant until the end of her days.

  —A History of the Hundred Houses

  “Again.”

  Gunedwaen waited implacably, the elaborate braid only the Lords Komen had the right to wear a cool weight against his neck. He watched Vieliessar wipe the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and attempt to stifle a sigh as she turned to retrieve her mock weapon from the grass—some distance away—where it had landed.

  He held his wooden practice sword as if it were the deadly weapon he had once proudly borne. The strangeness of having two good hands to grasp its hilt, two good legs to carry him forward in this deadly dance, was nearly forgotten. He was once more who he had once been: Swordmaster to House Farcarinon.

  “A duel can be decided in moments. A battle lasts from dawn to dusk. If you tire after a candlemark, or two, or four, you will die.”

  “I am not tired.” She lifted the wooden weapon and turned to face him, though still standing outside the practice circle he’d marked in the soft earth.

  “Losing your weapon is another way to die,” he said, raising his own. He saw her mouth thin—not anger, but determination—and she paced quickly toward him, weapon at the ready as she stepped across the boundary of the circle. When the two blades clashed, it was a almost a surprise not to hear the ring of steel on steel.