Blade of Empire

by Mercedes Lackey

The Magestorm clouds were gone. The sky above was clear and star-flecked. The smoke of burning that had hung in a low pall above the battlefield began to skirl and rise. A strengthening breeze began to bring motion to the tattered garments of the fallen. Vieliessar stood motionless, staring upward, until the faintest of the stars faded with the approach of dawn. Then she began to stumble slowly forward.

  It was as if the sun had never risen before, as if this sunrise were something wholly unique in the whole history of the world, never before seen. She did not realize how silent the battlefield had been until a sound ended the silence: a low single note from a war-horn, sustained to the end of the musician’s breath.

  She walked on.

  There was no living thing around her, only the forms of the twice-dead. The bodies, grey with the slowly settling dust, lay pale, bloodless, mutilated, where they had fallen at the moment of Ivrulion’s death, and no raven flew down to begin its feast. Even the pavilions in the distance seemed to have lost their brightness.

  She reached the place where the spell had centered. Here the ground was not churned and frozen, but smooth as a frozen lake. Its color was the soft grey of the dust that covered the bodies. Her feet sank into it as she walked. It eddied up; a powder so fine it was nearly weightless, coiling like cool smoke around her legs. She smelled the stench of rot and burning, honest and almost wholesome in the wake of what had come before.

  At the spell’s center lay Ivrulion and Gunedwaen, embracing in death. Ivrulion’s body had already begun to liquefy; Gunedwaen’s corpse was not yet stiff. Vieliessar knelt beside them and gently pried Gunedwaen free of Ivrulion’s eyeless corpse. There were dark trails of blood upon his skin. Burns upon his hands and face. Lesser wounds, taken earlier in the fighting, covered with hasty, makeshift bandages. She pulled off her helm and drew him into her arms, as if he were some wounded knight she might yet Heal, some sufferer come to the Sanctuary of the Star for aid. But Gunedwaen was beyond aid.

  Her friend, her teacher, her guide. The last noble lord of House Farcarinon. Dead. She wanted to weep for him, but she had no tears. Her grief was too vast, too aching, for such a petty display. Gunedwaen had loved Vieliessar Farcarinon, not Vieliessar High King—loved her deeply and always, without believing in the Prophecy, or her cause, or even the hope of victory. All he’d done in her service, he had done for love of her.

  She bent over him, and her hair, unraveling from the makeshift knot she’d tied it into the morning of the battle, fell down around her face.

  “See?” she whispered. “It is long enough now for a proper komen’s braid. You always said it would give you joy, the day you could braid my hair for battle as you once did my father Serenthon’s…”

  That day would never come now, and she would give no one else that honor as long as she lived. She kissed his forehead. Then she took the dagger from his hand and began to cut her hair.

  * * *

  Vieliessar High King sat on a chair beneath a canopy erected over a carpet laid on frozen blood-soaked earth so that the War Princes of the defeated Grand Alliance might ride across the battlefield to swear fealty.

  “You must do this now,” Rithdeliel said to her unyieldingly. “You must give them a thing they can understand, so that they can honorably give their folk to your care.”

  “Honor,” Vieliessar answered bleakly. “What was there of honor upon this battlefield?”

  “Yours,” he answered simply. “And it comes at a heavy cost.”

  It was a necessary business conducted in a charnel house, for the battlefield would not be cleared in a sennight or even a moonturn. Among some of the High Houses, the Throne had passed through a dozen hands in the course of the battle: War Prince, and Heir, and Line Direct, all slain. Cadet branches—elder sisters, elder brothers—who had never looked to rule had become the heirs of the High Houses. The knight heralds did their best to discover who still lived and who held the fealty of all below them within their gift.

  Even as Vieliessar took pledges from the surviving War Princes—sometimes taking the fealty of the same House a dozen times before all could be certain its rightful War Prince had pledged—she ordered scouts to search Janubaghir for survivors and deserters. The Alliance encampment was slowly dwindling as new-sworn lords ordered pavilions struck, wagons loaded. By late afternoon, only one cluster of pavilions remained.

  Caerthalien’s.

  Vieliessar sent War Prince Annobeunna Keindostibaent to them, for Annobeunna was one of the few War Princes who had not taken the field—leaving that glory to her children, so that there might be someone of sufficient rank to give orders behind the lines—and though recently an enemy, hers was a face Caerthalien might know. Aradreleg Lightsister and a taille of komen who were yet fit to ride—though there were few enough who were still hale and whole in the battle’s aftermath—accompanied her. Within a candlemark, they returned—not with any member of Caerthalien’s Line Direct, but with a knight of Caerthalien. The komen they escorted was neither armed nor armored, and knelt at Vieliessar’s feet the moment she could, bowing her head.

  “There is no one of Caerthalien who can swear, Lord Prince,” Helecanth said simply. “I am come to tell you this, and beg your mercy for her people.”

  “No one?” Vieliessar asked. “Bolecthindial…?” She would not speak of Runacarendalur. But if she lived, so must he.

  “Dead,” Helecanth said. “Three of his sons died in the West. His daughters died today. Lord Mordrogen’s line, Lord Baradhrath, Lady Nimphant—their children—all are dead. Only one of noble Caerthalien lineage remains within our encampment,” Lady Helecanth added, and for a moment Vieliessar’s heart beat fast. “But Lady Glorthiachiel has said to me she will not give you Caerthalien.”

  Vieliessar looked down to meet Helecanth’s eyes. Even weary as she was, True Speech brought her the Lady Helecanth’s thought as clearly as if she had spoken aloud: Nor is it hers to give, while Runacarendalur Caerthalien lives. But for love of him, no other shall have of me the words he spoke: he rides to outlawry rather than bend his knee to his destined Bondmate.

  The knowledge was joy and sorrow, bitter and sharp.

  “If she will not swear to me,” Vieliessar answered evenly, “then she must become my prisoner. And if she is the last of the Line Direct, as you say, I claim Caerthalien and all it holds by right of conquest.”

  “Let it be so, Lord Vieliessar,” Helecanth said, preparing to rise.

  “But I will have your oath of fealty from your own lips,” Vieliessar said, stopping her. “Swear to me you hold me your liege and your King.”

  She’d expected resistance, but Helecanth only smiled. “This I shall swear without reservation,” she answered. “Caerthalien is fallen this day in battle, and she has no prince save yourself.”

  * * *

  The afternoon sunlight flickered through the trees as he rode, but Runacar—Runacarendalur Caerthalien, War Prince of Caerthalien for less than a sunturn—did not see. The land he rode over was as unknown as his future. He had gone forth from the encampment with nothing more than his clothes, and his sword, and his dead brother’s horse. He stopped at midday to drink from an ice-rimed stream, but he had no food, nor any means of getting any.

  He wasn’t hungry anyway.

  He spared only enough attention to keep Nielriel moving westward at a steady walk, giving thanks to Sword and Star that the mare was fresh and rested. His body ached with the strain of a day and a night upon the battlefield. His spirit ached with its ending.

  She’d won. Vieliessar had won.

  He thought of a skinny girl, all dark eyes and elbows, nothing more than another of the countless fosterlings who sheltered beneath Caerthalien’s roof. Varuthir had been her name then, for no one but Lord Bolecthindial and Ladyholder Glorthiachiel had known her true parentage. When she was twelve she’d been returned to the Sanctuary of the Star to live out her days, as Celelioniel Astromancer had decreed when she had set Peacebond upon Farcarinon’s infant War Prince. The
Peacebond had permitted her to grow up. Its end had kept the Hundred Houses from turning on one another, for she had still held Farcarinon, and to claim Varuthir, to claim Vieliessar, would be to claim her lands. The Peace of the Sanctuary had been her defense.

  She’d been supposed to stay there.

  She hadn’t.

  She’d taken Oronviel by challenge and then armed for war—and Caerthalien had answered. He remembered catching sight of her upon the battlefield, of seeing her raise her hands to lock her helm into place with a practiced warrior’s gesture. He’d thought it was all for show, then—a play, and Vieliessar the puppet, her strings pulled by Thoromarth, Rithdeliel, Gunedwaen … all masters of war.

  But she’d been no one’s puppet. She’d proven it on that Oronviel battlefield. And afterward, in all the battles that followed, she had snatched the meat of victory from the cookfires of defeat time and again, and with each victory Runacar’s dread had grown. The High King’s War had shown all the War Princes how fragile their world was in the moment Vieliessar shattered it. Runacar had consoled himself with the knowledge he would not see the world she had worked to summon—and she wouldn’t, either, for with the end of his life would come hers.

  They were Bondmates.

  He had known it from the moment his hradan had come to him with that battlefield sight of her, and ever since he had longed for the moment when death would claim him and Vieliessar both. No one, even the Lightborn, knew anything of the Soulbond. It could not be predicted. It could not be broken. Bondmate met destined Bondmate and … it was done: a binding so absolute that one heart would not continue to beat when the other was stilled. He had kept that secret too long, thinking first that she would be easily defeated, and next that to reveal it would be thought by the rest of the Alliance to be a trick on Caerthalien’s part to take the Unicorn Throne for itself. Always, he had clung to the knowledge that even if she won, he could snatch that victory from her with the stroke of a blade.

  And then his brother Ivrulion—Ivrulion Oathbreaker, Ivrulion Banebringer, Ivrulion the Mad—had discovered Runacar’s secret, and denied him even that. But now Ivrulion was dead, and the geasa that forced Runacar to live was broken. From that moment he had been free to do as he chose.

  She won. And yet you live. He shook his head wearily.

  Vieliessar had destroyed chivalry and nobility and grace upon the battlefield. She had profaned the Way of the Sword and the very art of war. She had destroyed the Hundred Houses. But Runacar could not bear to be the architect of their ultimate destruction. He had seen her gain the victory, seen Caerthalien humbled in the dust, the power of the Hundred Houses broken forever. In that moment, he could have ended her life—but he’d seen the Uradabhur dissolve into chaos and banditry during the Winter War as their two armies swept through it. Someone must restore order, and she was all that was left.

  But he could not bear to bend his neck and give her Caerthalien.

  Could all this have ended differently if Vieliessar had been raised with the knowledge of who and what she was? If his parents had bound her to Caerthalien with chains of love and service, brought her to agree that her domain should be divided among Farcarinon’s destroyers? She might have become a komen of his own meisne—even his bride. A prince without obligation or treaty, a prince whose lands could have enriched Caerthalien, a prince whose bloodline would have strengthened Caerthalien’s own claims to the Unicorn Throne—both War Prince and Ladyholder would have considered it an excellent match.

  But instead they had done what they had done. And now the world lay shattered at Vieliessar’s feet, and Runacar did not wish to see how its destroyer chose to rebuild it.

  * * *

  That night Runacar slept huddled in his stormcloak in a drift of leaves, too exhausted for the labor of coaxing a fire. He woke in the morning, stiff with cold and light-headed with hunger. He saddled Nielriel and rode on. There was nothing else to do.

  The next day he reached the Ghostwood.

  It had been a Flower Forest whose power the Lightborn had claimed was as infinite as Great Sea Ocean was vast, but it had not been vaster than the hunger of Ivrulion’s last spell. As if some great blade had scribed a boundary between Here and There, the forest Runacar rode through went from the deep sleep of winter to the barrenness of death. The ground was bare even of leaves, for everything living had been turned to dust. Only the trunks of the great trees remained, and among them the uluskukad no longer glowed. Even the air smelled … empty.

  I would have gladly surrendered my birthright to you, my brother, to have never seen this sight.

  Runacar looked back the way he’d come. Nielriel’s tracks were plainly visible in the patches of snow they had crossed, and in the aftermath of any great battle its Generals sent out search parties looking for those who had fled or been borne wounded from the field. He must ride on, or risk capture. If he continued across the Ghostwood, Nielriel would quickly starve. South was unknown territory.

  North it is, then.

  He walked Nielriel to the edge of the Ghostwood, then turned her head northward.

  * * *

  On the second day of his flight, as he rode north along the boundary of the Ghostwood, Runacar saw a cluster of huts about half a league into the leafless lifeless forest. While he knew it was not impossible for him to be gazing upon the remains of some small steading—for Landbonds fled their masters, disgraced or unransomed komen fled the field, servants and Craftworkers fled their villages—there were no Elves here, uncounted leagues south of the edge of the Uradabhur. That meant it was some squalid Beastling camp. Runacar had often led Caerthalien’s komen into Unclaimed Lands in the West to burn them out.

  He hoped the creatures had fled in fear when the Flower Forest had died, for he did not have the stamina for an extended fight, nor was Nielriel a destrier. But if he did not mean to lie down here and die, he must take what they had. Beastlings or no, a settlement meant shelter. Tools. Food. He turned Nielriel’s head toward the Ghostwood and urged her to cross its border.

  * * *

  The leaf litter crunched brittlely and white puffs of dust rose up from beneath the mare’s hooves as she walked, and after a moment, Runacar dismounted to investigate, since he did not wish Nielriel to take injury from this unnatural footing.

  At first, the ground seemed as if it was covered with ash, or sand. Then he looked closer and saw it was covered with tiny skeletons. But these were not the skeletons of mice, of rabbits, and birds. They crumbled in his fingers as he sifted them from the leaves. The fragile bones fell apart in his hands. Only the skulls remained intact. Hundreds of skulls, some as small as his thumbnail. Tiny skulls that looked Elvenborn.

  Ivrulion drew all the life from this forest …

  He recoiled in a shudder of distaste and as he got to his feet, he looked, for the first time, at the trees through which he’d been riding. Each trunk was distorted and split, and in each fissure was a skeleton made of wood, its jaws open in a soundless scream, posed as if it were attempting to drag itself free of the tree. For a moment Runacar thought he stood amidst grotesque carvings, then he realized what he was seeing.

  Dryads.

  He looked around. Tree after tree was the same. Skulls. Clawing fingers.

  He’d had thought Ivrulion’s raising of the mazhnune to be atrocity enough to bring shame to his House and his Line until the stars grew cold. But if he’d thought of what Ivrulion had done to gain the power for that raising, he’d only thought of it as the death of a forest. The birds and beasts would have fled, just as they would from fire, and some would starve, but they would not have been harmed. Only now he knew differently. Nothing had fled. Ivrulion had killed Janglanipaikharain and everything within its bounds.

  Nothing he might find here was worth remaining in this charnel house another instant. Runacar mounted Nielriel and turned her head back toward the living forest.

  * * *

  On the third day after the Battle of the Shieldwall Plain, a Cha
llenge Circle was drawn in the earth of Ifjalasairaet. On one side of it stood the High King’s pavilion, its scarlet walls a bright mockery of the winter-grey plain. On the other side stood Caerthalien’s viridian pavilion, still flying the banner of its War Prince. Within its walls were all that remained of Caerthalien: Lady-Abeyant Glorthiachiel of Caerthalien, Demi-Princess Rondaniel, who was Ivrulion’s daughter and hence barred from the succession, and a handful of servants.

  No one doubted the outcome of today’s circle.

  “I still say you do her too much honor,” Rithdeliel said. “The Hundred Houses acknowledge you as High King over them all—or they will by Midsummer.”

  “It is Ice Moon,” Vieliessar answered absently. “Thunder Moon is five moonturns away.” Bragail laced Vieliessar’s aketon snugly into place. The elaborate green-lacquered armor that would be donned over it stood waiting on its arming form. Her surcoat, with its gleaming silver unicorn—the High King’s device—was neatly folded upon the table that held her sword, her dagger, and her spurs.

  “Yes, yes, I know the calendar as well as you do,” Rithdeliel said. “And as soon as the Lightborn stop cowering in the forest and are willing to make themselves useful, you will send to the Uradabhur and the Arzhana and their War Princes will come to pledge to you.”

  “Perhaps,” Vieliessar said, standing carefully still as her arming page lowered the heavy chain shirt over her head and began to lace her armor into place over it. “The Uradabhur was unsettled by our passage. It may take some time to restore order.”

  “Which is why,” Rithdeliel said in nicely-judged exasperation, “you should be planning how you will do that. And leave this execution to me.”

  “She has asked to die at my hand,” Vieliessar pointed out mildly.

  “And is she the Queen of the Starry Hunt?” Rithdeliel demanded. “War Princes have Champions for a reason. Old Thoromarth, may he ride forever, was perfectly willing for me to handle little things like this.”

  “I was once one of those ‘little things,’” Vieliessar pointed out with a small grave smile.