Blade of Empire

by Mercedes Lackey

  He never had.

  Runacar laughed, a little jaggedly. “You might say so. She’s the High King. That’s who my Bondmate is. And someday we’ll both die, probably without even seeing each other again. Soon, if everyone’s right about the Darkness already being on the other side of the Mystrals.”

  “And Melisha…” Andhel was clearly trying to make all of this make sense. Runacar didn’t think it could.

  “—says I am to be of some use to her,” Runacar said, finishing her sentence. “I don’t know what kind, or even if it’s me she really needs, or my dear Bonded. But … if our situation is as dire as Leutric says it is, I suppose I don’t mind being used.” Again, a traitorous inner voice added.

  Andhel gazed at him, and all her heart was in that gaze. Runacar wondered how he could have been so blind. But he realized that since the candlemark Caerthalien had fallen, he’d thought he was no more than a collection of skills. Not someone anyone could want. Only a tool, and he’d been grateful beyond measure that Leutric had been willing to wield him. He’d believed, so deeply he’d never even questioned it, that if he was not Prince-Heir—War Prince—Runacarendalur Caerthalien of Caerthalien—he was nothing.

  And he’d been wrong. Andhel had hated him as a person, and she loved him as a person. She’d never seen him as anything else.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I’ve been very stupid, and I’ve hurt you. I have actually never wanted to hurt you, but this…” He groped for a word to define it, and gave up. Perhaps there wasn’t one. “This isn’t Melisha’s doing. She hasn’t taken me away from … from anyone. I think, now, that I wish everything was different. There are so many things I never knew I wanted, because what I could actually have was … limited. And then everything changed. But what you want from me, I can’t give you.”

  Suddenly his mind was filled with the memory of a sunturn long ago, a grey and rainy morning in early spring. He remembered walking along the line of mounted komen who were to escort the tithe-wagons and the Candidates to the Sanctuary, his thoughts full of the secret he had been told barely a sennight before. He had helped Varuthir onto her palfrey; she was silent and distant, and he was grateful for that because he thought it meant she did not know the truth. How much worse would it be for her, being imprisoned in the Sanctuary of the Star for the rest of her days, if she had known herself to be War Prince of Farcarinon?

  But she had known, because his mother had told her. Perhaps that was the moment that had laid the foundation for all the rest.

  He shook his head, dismissing the memory. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  “Then what can I ever be to you?” Andhel asked in a low voice.

  “What you have always been,” Runacar said. “A good friend.”

  Her mouth quirked a little, and if her whole being did not blaze with joy, then wry acceptance was still better than angry despair. She closed the distance between them, enfolding him in a fierce—but very brief—hug.

  “Friends, then,” she said roughly. “Now go. Melisha’s waiting for you.”

  * * *

  Runacar walked slowly up the path to the top of the hill. The sun was westering now, and everything around him was long-shadowed and brilliant with the long golden prelude to twilight. But though they were beautiful, Runacar paid very little attention to his surroundings. His thoughts were too full of that long-ago morning. Was that when the doom of the Hundred Houses began? If he could somehow step through a door to that day, could he prevent all that came after? If Vieliessar had never known her true name—if she’d died on the road—if he’d even had the wit to give her some slow-acting poison so that her death did not come until after she’d returned to the place where she was born, thus fulfilling the letter of the terms of Celelioniel’s Peacebond … Perhaps the armies of Darkness would still have come, but if nothing else, the Hundred Houses knew how to fight. What would have happened then? Hard to decide when he knew nothing about the enemy but a name.

  Only … the Hundred Houses would not have fought that new enemy as allies. That much Runacar was sure of. Each would have accused the next of being responsible for the attacks; thought, perhaps, that the Darkness was merely a new Free Company …

  So engrossed was he in trying to decide how What Had Been could have gone differently that he barely noticed Melisha was waiting for him in the pavilion.

  “You don’t look as if the banquet was very good,” she commented, flicking an ear sideways.

  “Oh.” Recalled to himself, Runacar smiled dutifully. “It was very good. You should have come.”

  Melisha snorted, shaking her head in the way a horse would, neck stretched out and head cocked. The gesture looked odd coming from so one so obviously … not a horse. “Chaste and celibate, remember?” she said. “And trust me, most of your friends don’t qualify.”

  “But I do,” Runacar said. “And for the first time, I’m wondering why.”

  Melisha looked very much as if she was trying not to laugh. “You told me why,” she pointed out. “The rest is between you and your life choices.”

  “I did tell you—what I thought was why,” he agreed. “And I admit it’s a very good reason. But I’m Bonded, and I wonder … if I always have been.”

  “Hard to say,” Melisha answered. “That’s Elven magic. Every race has its own mysteries.”

  “Even yours?” Runacar asked.

  “Ours most of all, child,” Melisha said. “I’d tell you the story, but you might throw yourself off the cliff.”

  “I doubt that,” Runacar answered, with a genuine smile this time. “And you don’t think so, either. Because I think you know who my Bondmate is.”

  Melisha blew out a long gusty sigh. “You’re quick. And not stupid at all. That makes as many problems as it solves, you know. Yes, I know. Your Bondmate is the High King. And I hope you’ve come to terms with that, because you’re going to see her again relatively soon.”

  Runacar had been in the process of sitting down on the bed, as none of the wicker hampers looked quite sturdy enough to serve as a chair, and the stools were too low. He shot to his feet again at her words.

  “The High King is coming here?”

  “Not precisely here,” Melisha temporized blandly.

  “Where is she? Has she crossed the Mystrals? No? How long will it take her to reach the Dragon’s Gate?” He was fairly certain he didn’t have an army left right now—or if he did, it wasn’t one in any condition to fight. And an Otherfolk army was slow—he remembered with a sinking heart the lightning-fast way Vieliessar had moved the elements of her army, both in flight and in pursuit. Even with Gryphons and Wulvers for his vanguard—if he could convince them to fight or even just to show up—he’d never match her speed. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I have to—”

  “—sit down,” Melisha said, finishing his sentence. “That’s what you have to do right now. She’s still on the far side of the Mystrals. And there’s a lot I have to tell you before the two of you see each other again.”

  “So I was right,” Runacar said crossly. “You didn’t want me at all. You want her.”

  “Tsk,” Melisha said. “You’re jumping to conclusions again, my darling. To be perfectly precise, I want both of you. Or neither of you. It depends on how you look at it.”

  “I am not in a mood for riddles,” Runacar said, in a tone he’d been sure he would never use to her.

  But Melisha didn’t seem offended. “I told you: it’s a very long story. And I will tell it to you, I promise, but not right now. What matters is this: we have known the Darkness was going to return for a very long time. To be absolutely accurate, it—they—never left. Your folk just didn’t see them. That was one of the things, I think, they were very careful about. The last time your kind did see them, you were horse-herders of the Goldengrass, followers of Aradhwain the Mare.”

  Runacar shook his head in baffled disbelief. “The … Aradhwain Bride of Battles?” he asked in confusion. The name was barely familiar;
an old Power, almost forgotten.

  “That was later,” Melisha said kindly. “First, She was the Great Mare, and as such She is still honored. How much of your own history do you know?”

  “Probably not much,” Runacar admitted. “It never seemed very important. I know Amretheon was the first High King.” The whole world knew that: after the Windsward Rebellion, every half-literate War Prince spent years haranguing their castel Lightborn to discover every scrap of prophecy that could prove—or disprove—the various claimants’ right to the Unicorn Throne.

  “Amretheon was the last of a long line of them,” Melisha corrected, “but close enough. To give you some idea of the span of time we’re talking about, the last time any of your kind ever saw the Darkness, you had not yet built Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, let alone fled it in fear of your lives. It was built after the Red Winnowing, for obvious reasons.”

  “Not obvious to me,” Runacar muttered. But Melisha did not seem moved to explain the connection between this “Red Winnowing” and the building of a city he still half-believed was myth. “So the Darkness has left us—the alfaljodthi at least—alone for a long time. And now it’s back,” Runacar said, grasping for something he understood.

  “Now it is back in force,” Melisha corrected, still gently. “The Darkness worships He Who Is, the Formless Uncreated. To them, our existence—yours, mine, the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, random dandelions—is an abomination. They mean to correct it—once and for all, this time. This is the time of the Red Harvest. They mean it to be the last Winnowing there will ever be.”

  “You’ve known this all along?” Runacar demanded. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “We tried,” Melisha said simply. And Runacar, understanding all she didn’t say, hung his head in shame.

  “Will Leutric’s plan work?” he asked at last.

  Melisha sighed. “No,” she said. “The Darkness is delighted to begin with your people, but they won’t stop with them. There’s a slim chance for us—all of us—to survive, but … Well, there’s a certain amount of opposition to it.”

  “From Leutric,” Runacar guessed.

  Melisha sighed in agreement. “From Leutric. Admittedly, he has the weight of history on his side.”

  “So what is this chance?” Runacar asked. “And why does Leutric refuse to take it?” He had a vague feeling this was still a fever dream, that none of this was real.

  “There exists a way for us to have a chance of defeating the Darkness,” Melisha said, choosing her words with care. “A.… Well, you might as well call it a weapon, though that isn’t precisely what it is. It’s very powerful, though. And only the Children of Stars can wield it.” She stopped, and gazed pointedly at him, clearly expecting him to work out the details.

  “And if you put a powerful weapon in Elven hands, the first thing we’d do with it is attack you,” Runacar said.

  “Possibly not the first thing,” Melisha said. “But yes: things wouldn’t go very well for the Otherfolk if the Elves gained that kind of power just now.”

  “But the Woodwose are Elves,” Runacar said. “Give it to them. They’d fight for the Otherfolk.” And use this weapon to wipe out the Houseborn, of course, but I can’t imagine any of the Otherfolk weeping over our destruction. “They’re Elves. It doesn’t matter that they say they aren’t—they are. Can’t one of them…?”

  “Once the trout is in the pan, there’s no point in putting it back in the river,” Melisha said. “And once the Bones of the Earth are awakened, anyone might use them—and that’s precisely what Leutric fears. Did I mention that Leutric is the only one who can provide this weapon?”

  Oh, of course he is. Why did I even have to wonder about that? “So he won’t,” Runacar said. “Not even to the Woodwose.” I don’t suppose I blame him. I suppose we’re lucky the Otherfolk didn’t just ally themselves to the Darkness in the first place …

  “He won’t. And I can’t convince him to,” Melisha agreed. “I’ve tried—since before this last great war of yours, in fact—but for some reason, Leutric doesn’t see much to choose between the Children of Stars in possession of the ultimate weapon and an attack by the legions of Darkness. He feels that even if he gave it to one of the Woodwose—even if a Woodwose were capable of using it, which is something no one knows—the Children of Stars would stop at nothing to gain it once they knew of it. He hopes, as you know, that this is another Winnowing, and not the Red Harvest, but the truth of the matter is that he would rather see all of us erased than see the Bones of the Earth used against us. Which is where you come in. And the Woodwose, of course, but mostly you.”

  “Me,” Runacar said, now deeply suspicious.

  “You,” Melisha said. “All you have to do is convince the High King and her people to ally themselves with the Otherfolk and hold us as their equals until the stars grow cold and the last leaf falls, and Leutric will have no further objections to surrendering the Bones of the Earth to you.”

  Her deliberately casual words seemed to echo through the sound of the wind as the two of them sat there, looking at one another. He knew which side he’d fight on, but where did he belong? Which was he? Not Woodwose. Not War Prince. What was left?

  “‘All,’” Runacar said at last.

  “You’ll get to see Vieliessar again.”

  “I have no interest in ever seeing her again. And besides, she’ll kill me on sight.”

  “And that’s why it is so very convenient that the two of you share the Soulbond,” Melisha said. “She probably won’t.”

  “‘Probably,’” Runacar echoed. But I have one choice you have not yet named. Slaughter every last one of my own people—draw the dagger across my own throat—and Leutric will give up his weapon to the Woodwose. The Otherfolk will live.

  The silence stretched.

  “So … what do we do?” he asked Melisha.

  “We hope,” she said simply.

  Books by MERCEDES LACKEY and JAMES MALLORY

  The House of Four Winds

  THE OBSIDIAN TRILOGY

  The Outstretched Shadow

  To Light a Candle

  When Darkness Falls

  THE ENDURING FLAME

  The Phoenix Unchained

  The Phoenix Endangered

  The Phoenix Transformed

  THE DRAGON PROPHECY

  Crown of Vengeance

  Blade of Empire

  ALSO BY JAMES MALLORY

  Merlin: The Old Magic

  Merlin: The King’s Wizard

  Merlin: The End of Magic

  TOR BOOKS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

  Firebird

  Sacred Ground

  Trio of Sorcery

  DIANA TREGARDE NOVELS

  Burning Water

  Children of the Night

  Jinx High

  THE HALFBLOOD CHRONICLES

  (written with Andre Norton)

  The Elvenbane

  Elvenblood

  Elvenborn

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  MERCEDES LACKEY is a multiple New York Times bestselling author for her Valdemar novels. The author of the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, she lives in Claremore, Oklahoma. Her other books for Tor include Sacred Ground and the Diana Tregarde novels. You can sign up for email updates here.

  JAMES MALLORY is the author of the Merlin novels. He lives in Oregon. You can sign up for email updates here.

  MALLORY and LACKEY have written The House of the Four Winds, a pirate fantasy. Their Tor Books also include many epic fantasies: The Obsidian Trilogy: The Outstretched Shadow, To Light a Candle (a USA Today bestseller), and When Darkness Falls (a New York Times bestseller); The Enduring Flame Trilogy: The Phoenix Unchained, The Phoenix Endangered, and The Phoenix Transformed (a New York Times bestseller); and The Dragon Prophecy: so far, Crown of Vengeance and Blade of Empire.

  Visit Mercedes Lackey at:

  mercedeslackey.com

  facebook.com/MercedesLackey

  Twitter @ mercede
slackey

  goodreads.com/author/show/8685.Mercedes_Lackey

  Visit James Mallory at:

  merlinscribe.dreamwidth.org

  goodreads.com/author/show/8686.James_Mallory

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE: Darkness Visible

  CHAPTER ONE: Snow Moon to Ice Moon: The End of All Things

  CHAPTER TWO: Ice Moon: The End of the Hundred Houses

  CHAPTER THREE: Ice Moon to Storm Moon: The Kingdom of the West

  CHAPTER FOUR: Storm Moon: The Good of the Land

  CHAPTER FIVE: Rain Moon: The Road Paved with Swords

  CHAPTER SIX: Rain Moon: The Mystery of Chains

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Rain Moon to Flower Moon: The Eyes of the Forest

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Rain Moon to Sword Moon: To Gain Sanctuary

  CHAPTER NINE: Thunder Moon and Beyond: The Art of War

  CHAPTER TEN: Harvest Moon: The Red Harvest

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Harvest Moon: The Beginning of the Great Silence

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Rain Moon: A Month for War

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Sword Moon: The Rebounding Stroke

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Thunder Moon: Fire and the Folk of the Air

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Thunder Moon: A War Like No Other

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Thunder Moon: Rich, Beautiful, and Cursed