Crown of Vengeance dpt-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  Runacarendalur had been allowed to escape the interrogation soon afterward. Rather than risk encountering the other War Princes or their Households elsewhere in the castel, he’d gone directly to his rooms, only to find a message summoning him to attend his father later. He’d been even more surprised, when he’d come at the appointed candlemark, to find Lord Bolecthindial alone.

  “How could it have been necessary to expose us in our weakness—and me in my folly?” he said irritably.

  “I require my former allies to believe Oronviel to be a threat to all of us,” Bolecthindial said.

  “How can you believe it is not?” Runacarendalur demanded, stunned. “Vieliessar flouts the Code of Battle—she slaughtered most of the Household guard—she—”

  “By drawing my old allies close and bleating in terror like a tethered kid, I gain concessions from Telthorelandor and Cirandeiron, and lull Aramenthiali,” Bolecthindial answered calmly.

  “Do not tell me you sent your knights to be slaughtered for that?” Runacarendalur said hoarsely. Two-thirds of my army; she slaughtered two-thirds of my army.…

  “No,” Bolecthindial shook his head. “I believed, as you did, that you would gain the victory. But you did not, and so I must choose another weapon.”

  “What weapon?” Runacarendalur asked. “How can you believe anything will succeed when your army has failed?”

  “It is a weapon I have wielded before,” Bolecthindial replied. “Its edge is keen enough to slay any prince.”

  And he would say nothing more.

  * * *

  Barely a sennight after the defeat of Caerthalien’s army, Oronviel marched upon Laeldor. There was little for any of them to do while the army was on the march. Lord Vieliessar had sent Ambrant Lightbrother to War Prince Ablenariel with her challenge the moment she had reached Oronviel Great Keep. He had not rejoined the army along its march, which meant either he was still trying to persuade Lord Ablenariel of the wisdom of surrender or was being detained. Thoromarth had expected Ablenariel to take the field by now, if only in response to the nagging of his Caerthalien-bred wife and the sly proddings of a Chief Lightborn all knew to be inclined toward Aramenthiali. But he had not, and now two more days would see them at Laeldor’s Great Keep.

  Riding the bounds of the camp each night was the only sign of nervousness Lord Vieliessar betrayed. Thoromarth wasn’t sure whether he was glad to see his prince fretting over the future like some ordinary komen or worried that her unease was the harbinger of catastrophe. Tonight she had bidden him to ride with her.

  “Have you thought of what you will do if you win?” Thoromarth asked.

  “When I win,” Vieliessar corrected.

  Thoromarth waved the correction aside irritably. “When you win, if you win.… A good commander prepares for failure.”

  “If I fail, there is nothing to prepare for,” Vieliessar said simply. “But I have planned for success.”

  “I am eager to hear your thoughts,” Thoromarth said dourly.

  “Should Ablenariel surrender himself and his domain and pledge fealty to me, I will spare his life. Then I shall take the whole of Laeldor’s army and add it to Araphant’s, and I shall march upon Mangiralas.”

  “You’d leave Laeldor undefended?” Thoromarth asked.

  “If Caerthalien wishes to invest Laeldor, and in doing so spread what remains of its armies thinner still, I shall be pleased to let them do so,” she answered. “If Caerthalien and Aramenthiali wish to fight over Laeldor and Araphant, let them. They weaken themselves, and both domains will be mine in the end.”

  “If you win,” Thoromarth said.

  “When I win,” she answered with an edged smile. “If I am forced to fight Laeldor, the end is much the same, save that I execute Ablenariel, and any of his family who will not renounce their claim to the Unicorn Throne in favor of mine. Either way…” She hesitated.

  “What?” Thoromarth asked.

  “Thoromarth, I cannot afford a siege here. I do not have time.”

  “Shouldn’t you say this to Ablenariel? Perhaps it would convince him to surrender.”

  “I must ask something of you,” she said, and sounded so troubled that Thoromarth felt a cold pang of unease strike like an enemy’s dagger to his chest.

  She did not speak again until she had led the two of them so far from the edge of the camp that they crossed the path of the sentries on watch. “You know Magery is said to be Pelashia’s Gift to the alfaljodthi,” she began slowly.

  “My lord, if you wish to speak of Magery, speak to Rithdeliel, or Gunedwaen, or even to your destrier—not to me, I beg you,” Thoromarth said hastily. “You know that—”

  “I must!” she said, so urgently that Thoromarth reined his palfrey to a stop. “You may not know of the Covenant the Lightborn swear to abide by, which we will keep—which they will keep—even if their liege-lords order them to do something against it. But you know that the Lightborn do not use their arts in war.”

  “Yes,” Thoromarth said, when the silence had stretched long enough he knew she would say nothing more. “This Covenant. They all swear to it.”

  “No,” Vieliessar said. “The Covenant is not the same thing as that promise.”

  If Thoromarth had felt uneasy before, now he felt dread such has he had only felt the single time he had gone to make sacrifice at the Shrine of the Star. “It must be,” he said.

  “No,” Vieliessar said quietly. “The Covenant is our pledge that we will never draw so much power from the land that it sickens and dies, that we will never draw power from the shedding of blood nor from any breathing thing. In battle, Mosirinde Peacemaker thought, there would be too much temptation. For when victory is sweet, and ardently desired, and so many are slain or come near to death, it would seem a small thing to steal the life of an enemy. Or to let the death of one’s own warriors bring one victory. And so we wrap ourselves in custom and let the Lightless think it is a vow.”

  His father and his teachers, his mother, wife, brothers, and children, had all thought Thoromarth slow-witted. In this moment he wished it were so, so that he would not understand what argument his lord now wove. “Then this Covenant and that promise are the same,” he said again, more urgently. They must be. They have to be.

  “No,” Vieliessar said again. “Mosirinde hoped to put an end to war by removing the sharpest blade from the armory of the War Princes. She wished to end the suffering of the Lightborn, for those who drew power from blood went mad. She wrote that they sickened and died, but that before their deaths, they did great harm. And I will not break her Covenant, for I am sworn to it. But I will be High King, Thoromarth. And to gain the Throne, I will use every weapon I have.”

  The silence stretched between them, as Thoromarth tried to unhear his Lord’s words, tried not to understand their meaning. “You have taken my throne from me by trickery and Magecraft,” he said at last.

  “I used no Magery to best Rithdeliel,” she answered steadily. “To defeat Eiron Lightbrother’s shield afterward, yes. But I had already won Oronviel by right of the sword. You must believe this, if you believe no other thing I say to you. I used only the swordcraft Rithdeliel and Gunedwaen gave to me.”

  “That is not possible,” Thoromarth said slowly. He wished to believe her with all his heart. He’d believed it was so, even when it had seemed impossible, for there had been no alternative. But now she said she had not, would not, set aside her Magery.

  “I do not lie,” she answered. She smiled, and Thoromarth did not think he had ever seen such an expression of grief. “The High King chose me. He wrote of me in a Song—a prophecy. If my skill in swordcraft owes anything to Magery, it is Amrethion’s, not mine.”

  “Then let the Magery you wield end there!” Thoromarth cried, his voice harsh. “It cannot be— No one can blame—”

  “I cannot,” Vieliessar answered sadly. “I have not set aside my Light, though I have let you, everyone, believe I have. I will use it on the battlefield—if I must.
And I shall ask my Lightborn to use theirs as well.”

  “They will leave you,” Thoromarth said, still grasping for what he knew as truth. “They will not do it.”

  “Then they will leave,” Vieliessar said. “Some will not. Oh, Thoromarth, how can you think the Lightborn noble beyond desire, beyond temptation, beyond anger? Hamphuliadiel, who was set highest of all of us, grasps after power behind a curtain of lies. Can you think the rest of us are better than he is?”

  “You must be!” Thoromarth answered. He had never expected to say such words. To her. Of her. “You must be! Or is all your talk of justice and truth and peace nothing more than another curtain of lies?”

  “What I have promised, I will do,” she answered, and in that moment, Thoromarth had the chill conviction that he spoke not to a living woman of flesh, a woman who could sweat and bleed, but to a power as distant and inhuman as the Voice of the Shrine. “I would never have come here if I did not mean to do all I have promised.”

  “Then why— Why—” To his horror, Thoromarth felt tears prickle behind his eyes. “Why must you tell me what you have?” he asked, his voice a whisper more forceful than a shout.

  “If you cannot bear this knowledge, no one can, and I have lost,” she said simply. “If I may say to you, my liege-man and companion, my counselor, my friend, that I will use Magery in war, and you will still follow me … then there is a chance.”

  He could slay her, Thoromarth thought. Here, his sword against hers, afoot. Or he could take what he knew to her commanders and raise the army up in mutiny against her. He could make such accusations against her as would turn her Lightborn against her. He could say she was mad—that she’d taken his throne by Magery—that she would not be content with gaining the Unicorn Throne, but meant to kill all the War Princes, whether they had sworn to her or not.

  He could say everything she’d said since she took Oronviel was a lie.

  “Only a chance?” he asked, his voice rough.

  “Only that,” she answered.

  “They will hate you,” he said. “They will fear you.”

  “My enemies, yes,” she said. “My friends will see Thoromarth of Oronviel standing beside me and know there is nothing to fear.”

  And I will, he thought. Realizing that gave him no joy. He had surrendered his throne out of despair and superstition—he saw that now—but all that had followed had come from hope. Hope she could do what she said she would. Hope she would do what she said she would.

  “Vieliessar,” he said, and her naked name in his mouth seemed as if it were the greatest presumption he had ever committed. “Is it—is all this—just for power?”

  “No,” she said, her voice low and quiet. “It is because Amrethion High King said I must.”

  “Tell me nothing more,” he said, when she would have continued. “I do not wish to know my fate if you should lose.”

  “I shall not lose,” she answered, steadily.

  But this night Thoromarth did not join her in her pavilion for talk and merriment.

  * * *

  “I need you to do something for me,” Vieliessar said.

  The candlemark was late; her commanders had departed to their own pavilions. Even her servants, having readied her pavilion for the morning, had gone.

  “I know it’s not to send challenge to War Prince Ablenariel,” Thurion said lightly, “for you sent Ambrant Lightbrother with that. He will barely have finished delivering your message before your army is at Laeldor’s walls.”

  “And when I take Laeldor, I must show the means by which I will take the Unicorn Throne. And that is not by grasping and holding land. What I shall take—and hold—is fealty. The High Houses may do as they like with the land.”

  “It is like a game of xaique,” Thurion said. He did not ask if she could do it: for that was a thing no one could know, unless they petitioned the Star-Crowned to draw aside the veil that covered the future.

  “Much like a game of xaique,” she agreed. “If I were playing against a dozen opponents upon a board I could not see. But that is not why I summoned you to this audience.”

  “Was I summoned?” Thurion asked, glancing ostentatiously around the empty tent. “I thought I came to pay an evening call upon an old friend.”

  “So you did. And it is from my friend I ask this favor, for it is a thing I would hesitate to demand of a vassal.”

  “Both friend and vassal, I hope,” Thurion said, smiling. “Tell me. What is it you need?”

  “Do you recall Malbeth of Haldil?” she asked, rather than answering him directly.

  “Yes. Of course.” It did not require any feat of memory to recall that name, for Caerthalien had been in the Grand Windsward for the whole of War Season only a few decades past because of Malbeth of Haldil. “War Prince Gonceivis proclaimed Malbeth—his greatson through an elder daughter, if I remember rightly—Child of the Prophecy, and the Less Houses of the Grand Windsward rebelled against the High Houses in the West.”

  “Yes,” Vieliessar said, nodding. “They did not even propose a Candidate for the High Kingship. Rather they claimed that the time High King Amrethion foretold had come, and no longer was there High House and Low. And so I need to send someone to Haldil to say Vieliessar Oronviel shall be High King and fulfill the Prophecy in truth.”

  Thurion frowned, thinking over what she’d said. “Gonceivis knows The Song of Amrethion,” he said slowly. “If for no other cause than that Haldil is Hamphuliadiel’s House … and the Less Houses tried to break with the High by both force of arms and by the sword of custom. Vielle, if you have me say this to him, he will know you claim the Unicorn Throne not merely by conquest, but as High King Amrethion Aradruiniel’s prophesied successor.”

  “Yes. And so it is you who must go, Thurion, for you already know I am Child of the Prophecy. It is the strongest argument I can offer to the Houses of the Grand Windsward, for freedom from the demands of the High Houses is what they desire most of all. And I must make this claim sooner or later,” she said, half laughing, half mournful. “And then every fool who once read The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel will comb through it for proof I am mad.”

  “I could almost wish you were, for the end of High House and Low is not all Amrethion prophesies.” Thurion shook his head. “And when Lord Gonceivis asks me of the rest of the Prophecy? Darkness—death—disaster—terrible armies out of the shadows?”

  “I leave that in your hands,” Vieliessar answered. “Tell him all, or nothing—or lie. If Celelioniel had known what is so terrible Amrethion must send his prophecy down a score of generations to find me—she might simply have told the War Princes what was to come and let that be an end to it. I dare not. I dare not,” she repeated, low.

  “And if Haldil will not listen?” Thurion asked.

  “Then Bethros, or Hallorad, or even Penenjil, for if their Silver Swords do not ride to war outside Penenjil’s borders, perhaps they will fight for the Fortunate Lands themselves.” She frowned, as a memory struck her. “But that cannot be true. Once, at the edge of Arevethmonion, I saw some of the Silver Swords. They rode with knights of Calwas and Enerchelimier—and Anginach Lightbrother rode with them, in the armor of a knight. He called me Farcarinon and asked my forgiveness. I never knew why, but he carried with him part of a scroll that held Celelioniel’s last proofs. He died—they were all cut down by others who followed, and his body was too shattered by battle cordial for me to Heal him.…”

  “A mystery,” Thurion said, as puzzled as she was. “For how should Calwas come to aid Enerchelimier, or cause Penenjil to break ancient custom? But it is settled: if Haldil will not hear me, I will go to Penenjil, and remind the Master of the Silver Swords of that day, for he will know of it. Of that, I am certain.”

  “You will go?” she said, her voice as light with relief as if she were not a War Prince and he not her sworn vassal.

  “At once.”

  “I will send—” she began, but Thurion shook his head.

  “Be
tter if I go alone. You could not send enough knights with me to keep me safe on the Grand Windsward—and I could not keep them safe, either. If I go alone, my spells will guard me and I can use Door to speed me on my journey. I swear to you: I shall go to every court, to every prince of the Grand Windsward, and I shall bring you an army so great that the High Houses will throw down their swords and weep in despair.”

  “I have known you so many years, and never knew you for a Storysinger,” she replied, smiling faintly.

  Thurion smiled at the gentle teasing, but only for a moment. “Care for my Denerarth while I am gone. He thinks I can do nothing for myself, and he will worry.”

  “I shall care for him as if he were my own flesh. And if— And if the day should go against me, I swear to you I will see him safe. And your family as well.”

  “Then there is nothing for me to fear. I shall bring you your army before the first snows.” They were brave words, such as any knight might speak to his heart’s lady—if the world were a storysinger’s tale. Both of them knew it was not, for Vieliessar’s family had been destroyed by fear and ambition and the Light had lifted Thurion from a life of toil and privation to a life of ease and luxury … and of knowing his family were held hostage against his lord’s displeasure.

  But the purpose of stories was to take the ugly, terrifying truths with which one must live and turn them into brave and beautiful ideas one might love. And so Thurion spoke light words of farewell as if his life had become a storysong for a Festival day, and held his fears and worries close until he would be the only one who could see them. And he went to tell Denerarth that he rode alone on a journey but that all would end well.

  * * *

  Siege was rarely a tactic used by any of the War Princes, for it was costly and difficult and offered little chance for battle. Vieliessar had not intended to besiege Laeldor, for as she had said to Thoromarth three days before: she dared not spend a year, or even a moonturn, in siege. For that reason, she had sent Ambrant Lightbrother to War Prince Ablenariel with a challenge, just as the Code of Battle required. Upon receiving it, Ablenariel Laeldor should have summoned his knights to meet her in battle. Or if he did not want to, he should have sent Ambrant Lightbrother to her with a request for parley.