Ambrant, if the Lightborn gather to speak of what I have done here this day, be my voice, and say to them all I have said to you. For what I have said must be. I can see no way to avoid it—no komen leaves his sharpest sword in the armory.
But there was nothing Vieliessar could do now to change what would be. And thinking of swords only made her think of Lord Ablenariel’s sword, and of his death. So she drank wine, and did her best to present an untroubled face to her commanders, as if this had truly been a day of triumph and joy.
* * *
Caerthalien ran and left behind / Bread and meat and silk and wine / Horses, hawks, and huntsmen bold / Chains of silver and chains of gold / Swords of price and armor bright / Left behind there in the night / Caerthalien ran and left behind …
It was late, and the wine had gone around many times, but as much of the rowdiness from those present in the hall came as much from relief at finding themselves still alive as from wine. “Not bad,” Gunedwaen said, gesturing toward the Storysinger. “Almost accurate, too. For a change.”
“The comic songs usually have more truth to them than the everlasting praise-singing,” Rithdeliel said judiciously. “They’ll have to work to turn the conquest of Laeldor into something high and heroic, you know.”
As the Storysinger went on, the list of things Caerthalien left behind as it ran from Oronviel’s knights became more and more outrageous and unlikely. A bake-oven. Three hundred live chickens. A bedstead with a feather mattress and blankets. Left behind, left behind, left behind …
“As long as they’re singing this nonsense, at least we don’t have to hear ‘The Conquest of Oronviel’ again,” Princess Nothrediel said. “I like a song where you know what’s going on. You can’t tell who you’re supposed to cheer for in that one.” She wrinkled her nose.
“You’re supposed to appreciate their artistry,” her brother pointed out, throwing a piece of bread at her. “They can’t exactly say Father is the blackest monster ever whelped and that Lord Vieliessar did us all a favor by conquering us. Since she didn’t execute him, it would be rude.”
“I appreciate the depth of feeling possessed by both my children,” Thoromarth said. “It occurs to me that our beloved lord and prince executed the wrong members of my family.”
“I swore fealty,” Prince Monbrauel said loftily. “And so did my annoying sister, here.”
“Oh, who cares who rules Oronviel, since it wouldn’t have been me,” Princess Nothrediel said. “We’re going to conquer Mangiralas next! Think of all the horses we can take as spoils of victory!” She leaned across her father and her brother. “When we take Mangiralas, you’ll let Father and me advise you on the horses, won’t you, Lord Vieliessar? Because I know Aranviorch Mangiralas will try to hide all the best bloodstock, and he knows a thousand ways to make a beast look better than it is—or worse!”
But Vieliessar wasn’t listening. She was staring across the hall, into the dimness, with an intent expression on her face. She saw the reflection of the blue-white nimbus on the wall a moment before the cloud of Silverlight drifted through the doorway. If Laeldor’s proper High Table had been here, she might have been able to see who came, but without it her angle of vision—even if she were to stand—was too low.
She waited.
A pool of silence seemed to grow outward from all those touched by the Silverlight, but even such a pool was not enough to quiet the cacophony of the hall. She knew someone was talking to her, trying to get her attention, but the words were meaningless. She only had eyes for the slow procession of the Lightborn.
At last the procession drew level with the high table. Now that Vieliessar could see who had come, her hands gripped each other beneath the fine white cloth and polished wood of the banquet table. Celeharth. It was Celeharth Lightbrother who came.
He did not have the strength to walk unaided. Ambrant supported him on one side, and on the other, a Lightborn Vieliessar did not recognize.
The hall fell silent by degrees. First Edyenias Storysinger stopped, so the singers stopped, and then those talking among themselves slowly fell silent, as if silence were the ripples from a stone dropped into a pond of still water.
“A chair,” Vieliessar said, and though she did not raise her voice, Nothrediel and Monbrauel rose to their feet, stepping back to the wall, and Thoromarth moved aside to leave two empty places beside her. Vieliessar stood as well, waiting, as with agonizing slowness the two Lightborn carried Celeharth to her. She had been one of the greatest Healers the Sanctuary had known in a thousand years, yet Vieliessar knew even she could not Heal Celeharth Lightbrother of that which ailed him.
Three things the Light cannot Heal: age, death, and fate.
At last those with him lowered Celeharth carefully into the chair beside her. His head lolled back against the high back of the chair and his legs splayed out as if he was a child’s doll, made of rags.
“You should have summoned me,” Vieliessar said, taking his hand. “I would have come.” His hand was icy in hers.
She did not expect an answer. She was not certain what she expected. But Celeharth drew a deep breath and lifted his head. “There are things … which must be done in the sight of all.” There were pauses between each word, as if they were heavy stones he must roll into hearing, and she could hear the rattle of his breath in his throat between each. “I saw … You broke … the seals and locks.”
“Yes,” Vieliessar said. She dared not look away from his face. She felt as if her gaze was the only thing that gave him the power to go on.
“Celelioniel.” The name seemed to take much of his strength. For a moment Vieliessar thought he would stop breathing. Each breath he took seemed to take all the life he had left. “Did you think … she was … the first? She was … my student.”
Celelioniel had been full of years when she was Astromancer. Celeharth was older still. Old enough to have been Celelioniel’s first teacher. Old enough to have set her feet upon the road that led to the unriddling of Amrethion Aradruiniel’s Curse.
Celeharth’s voice was harsh now, a terrible thing to hear, such a whisper as the dead might make if they were given voice. “Promise … The Covenant…”
“I will always honor and keep the Covenant,” she said. She spoke forcefully, not for the ears of any others here, but because she had the sense that Celeharth was going farther from her with every moment and so she must call out loudly so her voice might reach him.
“The rest does not matter,” he said. For a moment the sudden strength in his voice made her hope he would recover, that exacting her promise could Heal him where the Light could not. But then his eyes closed and his hand did not tighten on hers. Celeharth still breathed, but soon he would walk the Vale of Celenthodiel.
“I told him,” Ambrant said, his voice shaking. “I said to him all as you said it to me, Lord Vieliessar, I swear it! But he said he must come himself—”
“There are things which must be done in the sight of all,” she said, echoing Celeharth’s words. “Come. We will take him to the War Prince’s chambers here.”
“No,” the second Lightbrother said. “He would wish to die in his master’s pavilion. We will carry him there.”
Ambrant gathered the frail body into his arms as easily as he might lift a child. He and the other Lightbrother walked smoothly away, taking Celeharth to Luthilion’s pavilion.
Vieliessar turned back toward the hall. The servants are about to bring out the last courses, she thought despairingly. And what will I say afterward?
Suddenly Gunedwaen slammed his cup down on the table hard enough to make plates and eating-knives jump. “You! Edyenias! Give us The Conquest of Oronviel!” he shouted, in a voice that had been trained to project across the din of a battlefield. “You have not sung that this evening!”
Edyenias Storysinger stared at him for one stunned moment, then began to play.
* * *
After the banquet had drawn to its end, Vieliessar made her way through the c
amp to the Healing Tents. She would not intrude upon any of the Lightborn in their own pavilions, for she was still War Prince of Oronviel and they could not refuse to allow her entrance. But any might come to the Healing Tents to see how the wounded fared.
The place where those tents were set, in the center of the camp, was unnaturally spacious, for when camp had been set a day ago, they had expected the usual number of wounded. The tents that had not been filled by the end of the battle had been taken down again by the efficient camp servants, for anything they could pack before the camp prepared to move meant less work for them later. Each tent was lit from within by Silverlight, for they glowed in the dimness like the paper lanterns of the kite-flying festival. She lifted the flap of the door and stepped inside.
The wounded lay in cloth slings suspended on poles laid between two trestles, the same mechanism of cloth and poles the workers used to carry the dead from the field. If any in the Healing Tents died, their beds became transport to their funeral pyre. It was not possible, Vieliessar had learned, to immediately and completely Heal all the injured a great battle might produce. The attempt would drain the life from the land—if one were lucky. If one were not, the attempt would drain the life from the living, setting the Lightborn who had done it on an inexorable spiral to madness and death. For that reason, the injured were Healed in degrees—save for those who must be Healed entirely lest they die, or the great lords, who were unwilling to endure pain a moment longer than they must.
She had visited a Healing Tent for the first time in the aftermath of Caerthalien’s raid. Before that day she had seen injury and death, and had even dealt death, but the sheer magnitude of injury that had met her eyes had stunned her. Tens upon hundreds of bodies, all living, cut and crushed and broken in every way a battle could devise. It is no wonder the Lightborn support my cause, if I promise to put an end to this, she had thought then. Now she wasn’t sure if even that promise was enough.
There were six Lightborn in the tent, all persons she knew. They moved among the wounded, pausing to inspect a bandage here, gauge the progress of a Healing there. Servants moved among the beds as well, and offered water or medicine or changed a bandage at the direction of one of the Lightborn. Isilla Lightsister was the first to acknowledge Vieliessar’s presence. She finished her work at one bedside, paused to speak to her assistant, then walked across the tent.
“Lord Vieliessar?” she said, her voice low.
“I would…” Suddenly it was an effort to shape the question. I have grown haughty and over-proud in these last moonturns, if I cannot speak to a sister of the Light as an equal! she told herself contemptuously. “I would not take you from your work. But I would also know if I yet have Lightborn to command.”
“Ah,” Isilla said. “I do not think we should speak here. Leuse will finish my work. We await Dinias Lightbrother, so we may draw on the farther Flower Forests.”
Vieliessar nodded and stepped from the tent. She did not say anything further. She had asked her question. Let Isilla answer it in her own time. When Isilla came to join her, they walked in silence for several minutes before Isilla ventured to speak.
“We had thought, my lord, that you had set aside your Light to rule Oronviel, as did Ternas Lightbrother of Celebros when he became War Prince. Aradreleg had said this was so,” Isilla said.
Vieliessar could feel Isilla’s fear at speaking to a War Prince so boldly, her confusion at not being certain whether she was speaking to one who held the rank and power of a lord of the Hundred Houses, or to a sister of the Light.
“It was what I meant you to believe,” Vieliessar answered. “I had also meant to come to you with my arguments of necessity, to speak to you and hear your thoughts, before doing what I did today.”
“Yet you would still have done it,” Isilla said, a questioning note beneath what seemed to be a flat statement.
“I cannot know now,” Vieliessar answered. “Perhaps. I cannot know what you would have said.”
“Ambrant Lightbrother says you will not void Mosirinde’s Covenant. Celeharth Lightbrother had the same words of you before all in the Great Hall. It may be that you hope you would not, and then a day would come where you saw no path to victory but that.”
“Where is the victory in madness and death?” Vieliessar answered. “Or in ruling over a desert? If the princes swear to hold their domain’s welfare as dear as they hold their lives, shall a High King hold the whole of the land less dear?”
“And see what care our prince has of her people, who give their bodies to be broken in war,” Isilla said bitterly. “You take from the people, and you will take from the land. Kill me if you wish for speaking so. It is nothing to me. I have no family left.”
“I am sorry for that,” Vieliessar said quietly. “I have no family either. And I would do … better … than has been done before.”
“All say the High King will give justice,” Isilla said. “And will end Lord and Landbond, High House and Low, and bring peace. But you are not High King yet.”
“Nor will I be without the Lightborn beside me,” Vieliessar said. “I cannot become High King by saying I am. I cannot cause the Hundred Houses to acknowledge my claim and submit to my rule except by war. I cannot do all I have said I will do as High King until I am High King.”
“Easy enough to say you will do it then, when you have no more need of our aid to help you to your throne,” Isilla said.
“I cannot show you the future until it comes. I must ask you to believe that what I say, I will do. I have begun it in Oronviel. The Lightborn are not kept from their homes. They are free to use their Magery as they choose. My knights respect each steading and Farmhold, taking nothing save what is freely offered. Yet I cannot say to Aramenthiali, to Caerthalien, to Daroldan: do this. I am not High King.”
“You fled the Sanctuary,” Isilla said, after a pause.
“I could not become High King from the Sanctuary,” Vieliessar answered dryly, and Isilla was startled into laughter. She sobered quickly.
“You ask us to ride to war. I have no skill with a sword, nor am I interested in gaining such.” Isilla hesitated, then continued, “the Covenant can be hard to keep.”
“Then help one another to keep it,” Vieliessar answered. “Help me to keep it. I do not think I shall be tempted, but I cannot know. What I will ask of you is more than you have done. But I will not ask you to impoverish the land, to take your power from the living, to do anything which—were I to die in the next moment—would leave the land or the Lightborn less than they were.”
“We are less than we were for knowing you, I think,” Isilla said, sounding disgruntled. “What, then, would you ask?”
“That I cannot say. I can only say the sort of thing I might ask. Spells to give fair weather for battle. Seeking and Finding to locate my enemies. Should my foe attempt to force me to besiege him, as Laeldor did, I require the siege broken. A thousand things I cannot now name, for who can know how a battle will run before it is fought?”
“Were we to Overshadow your enemies, you might be High King tomorrow, for they would all swear fealty at once,” Isilla said.
Vieliessar had wondered what Isilla Lightsister’s Keystone Gift was. Now she knew. “And will you Overshadow every lord and prince of every domain for all the years of their lives? For that is what it would require. I might have Overshadowed any of the princes who now ride in my meisne whenever I chose. I might have Overshadowed Lord Ablenariel. And I did not, for an oath forced by spellcraft does not bind.”
“You would have the War Princes give up their power willingly!” Isilla said scornfully.
“You have seen that some will do so,” Vieliessar answered. “Others I must conquer and slay.” She only heard her own glib words after she had uttered them, and suddenly it was too much. She remembered being a child on her way to the Sanctuary of the Star, promising herself that someday—someday—she would return to Caerthalien and slaughter everyone within the Great Keep. She remembered being
a Lightsister of the Sanctuary, a healer, a scholar, remembered fighting Death as if Lord Death were her dearest enemy. And now Death had become nothing more than a tool. “And so I end as I began, in asking: are my Lightborn yet mine to command?”
“Perhaps,” Isilla said, and in her voice Vieliessar heard wonder that she might speak to a War Prince so. Trust that such boldness would not bring her harm. And—perhaps—the beginnings of hope. “I do not speak for all. It is no easy thing to set aside a lifetime’s teaching.”
“It is not,” Vieliessar agreed. “Yet I must have one answer before this day ends. I must know if I may send a Lightborn as my envoy to Mangiralas, for I wish Aranviorch to surrender to me.”
“I do not speak for all,” Isilla repeated. “But I will ask.” She bowed, hesitated as if she might ask leave to go, then turned away without asking.
And were I not prepared to receive such an answer, better I had not asked such a question, Vieliessar told herself.
* * *
“What?” Vieliessar looked up. The table within her pavilion was covered with maps of Mangiralas, marked over in charcoal with lines of march, the sites of watchtowers and great keeps. Mangiralas was a land of hills and valleys in which it would be easy to hide an army. Mangiralas’s Great Keep stood at the top of a hill, so an army fighting beneath the shadow of its walls would be at a great disadvantage and an army fighting on the flat ground beyond would be in range of archers. If Mangiralas thought to use them.
“My lord,” Virry said, bowing sharply. She had been born a Farmholder and was now a commander of archers. “The commons gather beyond the edge of our encampment. They wish to see you. No more than that, but they wish to be able to say they have seen the High King with their own eyes.”
“I am not yet High King,” Vieliessar answered. “But tell them I shall come as soon as I may.”
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