Blade of Empire

by Mercedes Lackey

  “See these claw marks here? And the bite mark here? They’re from what killed her: it severed her spine. I don’t know how a Gryphon kills, but its strike must be something like a hawk’s.”

  “I’m right here, you know,” Radafa said, and Runacar glanced up in startlement.

  “Yes,” he said, feeling oddly awkward. “So. She was killed the way a cat kills—ice tiger, snow lion, something large—a lynx or even a leopard would be too small to kill a horse in this way.”

  “But don’t you want to blame Radafa anyway?” Keloit asked. “I mean—” he stopped.

  “He means your kind blame us for everything from a bad harvest to plague,” Vorlof said with sour amusement.

  “All I know is what I see here,” Runacar said evenly.

  * * *

  Vorlof and Audalo distributed Nielriel’s packs between them, and the party went on. From the westward side of the Southern Pass, they continued south, and finally turned west. This far south of Mangiralas the landscape was unfamiliar to Runacar—hills and canyons, parched and unforgiving, but wildly lush near streams and rivers. It was in the forest near one such river that they reached their destination—a longhouse that stood alone in a wide clearing. Only Keloit had followed him inside—he wasn’t sure whether it was as guard or companion.

  At first, at least in Runacar’s mind, Keloit had been a sort of talking dog, endlessly curious and even trying to please him. Audalo and Vorlof treated him with suspicion—and in Vorlof’s case, outright hatred—and it was easier for him to go on thinking of them as enemies. Monsters. But not Keloit, and Runacar wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Or when he’d begun treating Keloit as what he seemed so much like: someone’s well-loved child on the verge of adulthood. After his capture, his feelings had veered from dejected indifference to his fate to numb horror at his companions and back again, over and over, until …

  The Beastlings had stopped seeming any stranger to him than Lightborn. Or Landbonds. He wasn’t sure how to live with that.

  At least I shan’t have to live with it for long.

  It was a fortnight since he’d been captured at the Jaeglenhend Tower. When they left him at the longhouse, no one said good-bye.

  * * *

  Runacar glanced around the interior of the longhouse. There were several doors along the long walls, but aside from the gigantic presence chair that occupied the whole of the back wall, there was nothing here that seemed designed for sitting upon, though the tables and cabinets all indicated this was a place where someone lived—and lived well, for the woodwork was beautiful. The ceiling beams, the lintel over the door, the furniture, all was beautifully carved. The hearth at the opposite end of the chamber was faced with glazed ornamental tiles. It might have been the great room of a wealthy manor house.

  Except in all the ways it so clearly was not.

  He wondered what the Beastlings used such a structure for. In his imagination (when he’d thought about them at all), they’d lived like any other beasts: naked in the forest, eating raw meat. It hadn’t been so strong an image as to survive his journey with Beastlings who cooked over a fire and ate with knives from plates and bowls just as Elves did, but this …

  Talking animals did not make things like this. If Vieliessar High King had known the Beastlings were capable of this, I’m sure she would have demanded they swear to her …

  If she could have found them in the first place.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” Keloit said. He was pacing the floor like—Runacar could not stop himself from making the comparison—a bear in a cage. “I’m sure it’s going to be all right. Mama says King Leutric is a good person. He won’t just kill you. Even if you are one of the Children of Stars.”

  “Thank you. I think.” Runacar wasn’t sure whether Keloit believed what he was saying, or was just trying to reassure him, but at least now he knew why he was here: the Beastlings had a King and he was to be given an audience. “You know, you’d be a lot more convincing if you’d stop pacing.”

  “I’m not pacing. Am I pacing? If I’m pacing, it’s not because I’m nervous, you know.” Keloit dropped to all fours and curled around himself. In that position, the Bearward looked very much like a large ball of red-gold fur.

  “Of course not.”

  Keloit got up and began to pace again. “He’s very busy, you know,” he said. “That’s why you have to wait.”

  “Keloit, I was born and raised in a Great House,” Runacar said gently. “I understand how these things are done.”

  The Bearward looked toward him, ears swiveling and flattening. By now, Runacar knew Keloit well enough to interpret his expressions. No matter what he said, the young Bearward was very nervous indeed.

  “I am sure this so-called King of yours will do as he thinks best.” King Leutric, who and whatever he is, who holds me prisoner and has no reason to love me.

  The door opened. King Leutric entered at the vanguard of his court. Leutric was a Minotaur, his skin—or hide—as black as Audalo’s. Behind him came three other Minotaurs including Audalo, half a dozen Centaurs armed and armored—Vorlof was among them—a Bearward shamaness, and a few creatures Runacar could not put name to. Runacar flinched a little at the sight of the shamaness; he didn’t like magic just to begin with, and Beastling sorcery was even worse. Not all of them wore clothes—the Bearwards seemed to favor nothing more than belts and vests—but all of them were groomed and ornamented in an intentional and deliberate fashion.

  “Uh-oh,” Keloit said quietly. “Mama’s with him.”

  Runacar had thought Audalo was gigantic. King Leutric towered over him by more than a head. His horns were painted and gilded, and his tunic and trousers were of a rich cut velvet. The tunic left his arms bare, and he wore prize-rings, beautifully carved and chased, on his upper and lower arms. The hair about his eyes and his mouth was grey with age.

  He is an old man, Runacar thought wonderingly.

  Runacar stood quietly as Leutric seated himself upon his massive throne and his courtiers moved to their places around him, resolving to take whatever came with as much dignity as they left him.

  “This is the prisoner,” Vorlof said, stepping forward and putting a hand upon his dagger.

  Runacar bowed ironically. “Runacarendalur Caerthalien, once War Prince of Caerthalien,” he said. He’d never felt less princely. But he would die under his true name.

  “Approach,” Leutric said.

  Runacar started forward. Keloit walked beside him, until the shamaness gestured impatiently. Keloit gave Runacar one of his odd bared-teeth smiles, and hurried to his mother’s side. Runacar walked the rest of the distance alone.

  “They told me your name was Runacar,” Leutric said. His voice was a low rumble, giving the impression of deliberation when he spoke.

  “That is what I told them,” Runacar answered.

  “Which is it? Runacar or Runacarendalur Caerthalien?” Leutric asked. “We know of Caerthalien,” he added.

  “Then perhaps it will please you to know it is gone,” Runacar answered. “If it wasn’t, I would be War Prince Runacarendalur Caerthalien. Now I am merely Runacar.” His truncated name, without rank or House, still felt unfinished in his thoughts; a constant low-level irritation like a hole in one’s boot sole, but one he must live with now.

  “Then, Merely Runacar, tell us what you know of how so many of my people came to die.”

  He means the Ghostwood. And he knows already what the others told him. But Audalo thinks he might want to know more than that. It’s why I’m alive.

  “Forgive me, King Leutric, if I include in my account things you already know,” Runacar began. It was hard to believe, standing here, giving a Beastling the same courtesy he would have given his own father, that any of this was really happening. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was a might-have-been dream. Perhaps he was already dead.

  “Speak,” the Minotaur said.

  “As you know, our Lightborn draw their power from the F
lower Forests. Mosirinde’s Covenant—” something he only knew so much about because of endless lectures from Ivrulion “—requires them to take power only from that source, and not to kill the Flower Forest by taking too much.”

  “Close enough,” the Bearward shamaness said. Runacar noted she’d put herself between him and Keloit. Am I such a threat, even now?

  “The Hundred Houses fight among themselves—fought among themselves—to determine which of them, of us, would become High King and rule over all.” He went on, telling the tale he knew, beginning with Varuthir the Peacebond child, going on to Vieliessar Lightsister, Vieliessar Oronviel, Vieliessar High King, of the battles he’d been there for and the ones whose outcomes he’d only guessed at, through the whole of the West, through the Mystrals, across the Uradabhur, and far beyond. He omitted nothing.

  The court listened in absolute silence. And at last he came to the final battle.

  “My—” Suddenly it was hard to continue, but he forced the words out. “My brother Ivrulion—Ivrulion Lightbrother—was mad. He wanted Caerthalien, you see, and it was supposed to go to him, he had been raised to believe that, and it was true; Lord Bolecthindial had given him a sword that year for his Naming Day, and…” He stopped, realizing his mouth was dry with so much talking and that he was swaying with exhaustion. He forced himself to concentrate. This wasn’t what Leutric wanted to know.

  “The final battle between the Alliance and the High King came. Ivrulion cast a spell to raise the dead from the battlefield to fight on. To do that, he drained Janglanipaikharain—the Ghostwood—to dust.”

  Runacar’s words fell into silence, and in their wake, no one spoke. He had no idea how much of his speech they had understood.

  “Why did he not simply kill you, if he wanted your place?” the Bearward shamaness asked.

  “He was Lightborn,” Runacar said. “Because of that he could not have Caerthalien. But in the heat of the battle … he could force the War Princes to set that aside.” And because he knew, when they were victorious, when they executed Lord Vieliessar, I would be dead. And so he saw a way to gain the prize his festering ambition had coveted since before I was born.

  “Did these princes agree to the death of the forest?” Leutric asked.

  “No.” That much was true enough. “They didn’t know what Ivrulion would do to gain them victory. He didn’t tell them.”

  “But he did not gain them victory,” Leutric said. “And now your Vieliessar has made herself High King over all. Did she agree to the death of the forest?”

  Runacar stared at Leutric in disbelief. “She was on the other side,” he finally said.

  Leutric waited, and finally Runacar realized he was still waiting for an answer.

  “No. No, she did not agree. She was Lightborn before she was High King. She would not do that. She always honored the Covenant.”

  Vorlof stepped closer to Leutric, speaking so quietly Runacar could not hear. Leutric nodded—a magisterial gesture with those enormous horns—and Vorlof walked the length of the room to where Runacar stood. Behind him the rest of the courtiers were now talking to one another, their voices merged and blurred by the sound of Vorlof’s hooves on the wooden floor.

  “Come,” Vorlof said, gesturing toward a nearby door.

  Numbly, Runacar followed Vorlof along a narrow path through the forest. When he reached the other side, he was standing on a hillside overlooking a river. Below, he could see a village, surrounded by plowed fields, at the river’s edge.

  “What…?” Runacar said, stopping. “What is this place?”

  “Home,” Vorlof said. “Mine, not yours, Elf.”

  He’d heard of Centaur villages—everyone had—but he’d thought of them as squalid collections of mud and sticks, such as the Landbonds built for themselves. This … This looked like a place where people lived.

  “Come,” Vorlof said again, and led him down the hill and along the village’s outskirts, to a building that at least looked familiar. A barn. The Centaur unbarred the door and opened it. “Go inside,” he said. “Stay here.”

  Runacar went inside.

  There was a row of stalls, each with its manger, all empty. The floor was scattered with clean straw. The upper storey of the barn was filled with hay, but instead of a ladder, there was a long turning staircase of shallow steps leading up to it. He climbed them. There was a hayloft above, its doors open. Escape would be easy enough.

  And where would I go? he thought to himself.

  He spread his cloak on the nearest pile of hay and lay down.

  * * *

  It was dark when he awoke, and he only roused because Keloit was standing over him. He sat up slowly, and saw that Nielriel’s saddlebags were at Keloit’s feet.

  “I brought your things,” Keloit said. “I thought you’d want them.”

  “For what?” Runacar asked blankly. Keloit wrinkled his muzzle in confusion.

  “For … Because they belong to you?” Keloit said. He didn’t sound certain.

  “When am I being executed?” Runacar asked next.

  “What?” Keloit responded. It took several ridiculous rounds of speaking at cross-purpose for Runacar to grasp what was obvious to Keloit: Leutric was finished with him, and he was free to go anywhere he chose.

  He found it unbelievable. Keloit found his disbelief incomprehensible. Leutric had wanted to know what had happened to Janglanipaikharain Flower Forest. Runacar had told him. And apparently it didn’t occur to anybody—even Vorlof—to hold him responsible for what his brother had done.

  He was free.

  He had no idea what to do with his freedom.

  * * *

  On the other side of the Mystrals, on a rare afternoon of mutual idleness, Thurion Lightbrother walked with Komen Helecanth through the Vale of Celenthodiel. The High King was attending the Princes’ Court, where the Guildmasters of the Lords of War could numb her ears with their complaints about the idleness and disrespect of the Landbonds, and Thurion took the opportunity to explore their new land in good company, though he knew Komen Helecanth did not find the Vale as strange as he did.

  In death, the Lords Komen went to ride eternally with the Starry Hunt, but the Hunt only accepted those who died in battle. For generations of Lightborn, it was the Vale of Celenthodiel to which their spirits went after death—the Warm World, they called it. The Land of Light. And now they knew that had only been a myth. A dream. Celenthodiel was as real as bread. As real as the warning that had sent Vieliessar here to find it.

  “I am as happy not to be there,” Helecanth said, breaking into Thurion’s thoughts. “The Great Lords have ever believed that wisdom comes from the application of a whip.”

  “So every Landbond knows,” Thurion answered. “It is a wonder we—they—are not masters of wisdom by now.”

  It was an odd friendship that had grown up between the two of them, but a true one. Helecanth was the commander of Vieliessar’s personal guard. Thurion had neither rank nor title. He was not even Vieliessar’s chief Lightborn. He loved her. That was all.

  Helecanth snorted. “If they were, they would be second in wisdom to the Great Lords’ own children.”

  “That explains so much about the komen,” Thurion said dryly. “Landbonds have never beaten their children.”

  “Perhaps they should start,” Helecanth said, “since by the High King’s own word, no one else is to be allowed to.”

  Thurion did not answer. His own words were echoing through his head.

  They or we? Am I what I was born as, or what I have become? When Vieliessar looses the chains of custom and throws down the old ways, she oversets not merely injustice, but our conception of ourselves …

  He had been born Landbond, and become a Sanctuary Mage. When Vieliessar asked him to join her cause, he came gladly—but all his Landbond family saw was that Thurion lived in unimaginable luxury—luxury they had been let to share in by Bolecthindial’s gift of freedom and land—and that now he meant to take it away.
Foolishly. Selfishly. Until that moment, he had not thought his years at the Sanctuary and in Caerthalien’s Great Keep had changed him. In that moment, he saw they had. He was no longer one of them. No longer Landbond, and the child of Landbonds.

  “It must be strange,” Helecanth said, looking sideways at him, “not to be what your parents and siblings have been.”

  “I think it is,” Thurion said quietly. “I do not think any of us will ever again be what our parents have been,” he said quietly.

  “But perhaps we will be what our great-parents were,” Helecanth said. “Those who fled this place so long ago.” She gestured toward the spire that held Amretheon’s city.

  “Perhaps,” Thurion said. “I don’t know what they were like. I think Vielle does. I think that’s why she’s so sad.”

  “No War Prince was ever happy except when they were riding into battle,” Helecanth said. “And she doesn’t like fighting.” She shrugged. “No wonder she’s sad.”

  “She said she would be High King, and she is,” Thurion said.

  “And that is not enough to bring her joy,” Helecanth said bluntly. “Tell me,” she added. “Do you believe she is Child of the Prophecy?”

  “For any reason beyond her succeeding at what Amretheon foretold only the Child of the Prophecy could?” Thurion asked. “I do. Of course I do. I’ve never made any secret of it.”

  “Then when do we ride to battle again?” Helecanth asked. “And against what enemy?”

  “You know I don’t know that,” Thurion said tartly. “Scholars have been seeking that answer since time immemorial.”

  Helecanth shrugged. “I only repeat what many have said. And to you I will further say what they will not: How long do we await this enemy? To train forever to fight a battle that never comes … that destroys an army as surely as an enemy does. And while she prepares for battle, she does not rule.”

  “You can tell her that, if you’re brave enough,” Thurion said. “She already thinks the Enthroning is a complete waste of time, and I was in favor of that.”

  “She should be grateful to you for the peace you have gained her,” Helecanth answered. “Her lords will not pester her to take a consort until after it is done.”