Crown of Vengeance dpt-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  Nadalforo would tell her she was worrying about things that would not matter if she lost. Rithdeliel would tell her this would only last for a brief while, for Vieliessar knew that in his heart, he could not accept the idea that war would never again be a contest of skills that were both art and homage. Gunedwaen …

  He would tell you victory is as much a battle as war. I only wish Arilcarion had written a scroll about that!

  * * *

  By Snow Moon, storms battered both armies mercilessly, and no matter what the Alliance did, Vieliessar did something unexpected, as if she played gan when they played xaique. And victory slid further from their grasp each day.

  They could have won. While they were still in Jaeglenhend, they could have won—if Vieliessar were dead. Her death would have left her army leaderless. Disheartened. They could have spent the winter picking it to pieces.

  After Jaeglenhend, Runacarendalur would have cut his own throat gladly. He could not. He’d tried many times to end the life that would end hers.

  He’d gone to Lord Bolecthindial and accused Ivrulion of plotting against Caerthalien. Bolecthindial hadn’t taken him seriously enough to even become angry.

  He’d tried risking his life on the field, but all he’d managed to do was get Gwaenor killed.

  He’d begged Ivrulion, humbling himself before his faithless witchborn brother. Ivrulion had laughed.

  He tried to murder Ivrulion in a thousand ways. Poison failed and assassins vanished. Runacarendalur couldn’t even seek his own death in a Challenge Circle: Aramenthiali had gotten the War Council to forbid personal challenges. With nothing to occupy them—no entertainment, no comforts, and only the faintest chance of fighting—the komen were becoming increasingly restive. It was one thing to use a break in the winter weather to go hunting, another to spend sennight after sennight living in a freezing pavilion and slogging through snow all day.

  There wasn’t any game to hunt anyway. Vieliessar’s army devoured everything in its path like a raging fire. Even the border steadings the Alliance reached were nothing more than stones and beaten earth. The night watches had been doubled and doubled again, not because there was any likelihood of an attack, but because the laborers and servants kept slinking away in the dark.

  At least with half the camp on watch, they could be sure the komen weren’t going to run off as well.

  Each morning we arise to see nothing ahead but trackless white; each night there is no fire or Silverlight to be seen but ours. The only way to truly know she still flees us is to send out a sortie party to catch up to her. But no! The War Council is as bored as I am! It wishes an entertaining surprise, whenever the High King chooses to deliver it!

  And soon, whether she could claim victory or not, the Alliance Army would be destroyed. Runacarendalur growled low in his throat at the thought, gaining him a startled look from a Household servant. It was just dawn, and the encampment was readying itself for another useless day of following Vieliessar Farcarinon, who seemed to have the ability to make an army numbering nine thousand tailles vanish like windblown smoke. If not for the impossibility of provisioning such a force, he wouldn’t put it past her to have laid a trail into the teeth of the first heavy snow and then have settled somewhere to spend the winter in comfort. Laughing at them.

  At least today the weather was clear. And while no one in command of this ill-starred expedition would consider permitting another sortie party after Inglethendragir’s disastrous defeat, the War Princes knew entirely forbidding their komen to ride out would cause them to go into open revolt. Runacarendalur pulled the hood of his stormcloak further over his head as he reached the Caerthalien horselines. He meant to spend his day—and his foul temper—schooling his new destrier. Bentrain would never be the match of his beloved Gwaenor, but he’d been lucky to replace Gwaenor at all. There were already komen in the army without warhorses.

  Bentrain stood waiting placidly. Runacarendalur unhooked the destrier’s halter and led him to the saddling paddock. With the ease of long practice, he tossed the heavy war saddle onto the stallion’s back, buckled the twin girths into place, brought the chestpiece around, buckled the upper strap to the saddle, and ducked under Bentrain’s neck to thread the lower strap through the ring on the forward girth.

  When he straightened again, he saw Ivrulion leading his own mount into the saddling paddock. The palfrey mare was a grey as pale as ice, and every line of her spoke of speed and fire. It no longer surprised Runacarendalur that Ivrulion had managed to keep one of the best animals in the entire army for his personal use.

  “I thought I might ride out with you this morning, dear brother,” Ivrulion said dulcetly. An ostler hurried forward with the palfrey’s saddle—green leather stamped with the Caerthalien stars in gold—and began saddling the mare.

  “You must be feeling unusually brave this morning, brother,” Runacarendalur replied acidly. He turned his back and worked at making Bentrain accept the double bit.

  “Merely desirous of a morning’s exercise,” Ivrulion replied easily. “It grows tedious to spend my days trudging from nowhere to nowhere.”

  “Then why don’t you tell Lord Bolecthindial so, and we’ll all go home?” Runacarendalur snapped. He set his foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. Bentrain took his usual side step away, but Runacarendalur was already used to the animal’s tricks. He gathered the reins, took the bit away from Bentrain, and trotted him out of the paddock.

  Ivrulion caught up to him even before he passed the wagons. They rode in silence for nearly a candlemark, until the sound of horns and whistles behind them indicated the army was finally ready to move.

  “Are you planning to turn back, or do you mean to ride all the way to Utheleres this morning?” Ivrulion asked.

  “I have work to do with Bentrain,” Runacarendalur said curtly. “I can’t do it if I’m constantly being overtaken by the army.”

  “Small chance of that,” Ivrulion answered lightly. “We seem to be slower to get under way every morning. I believe it may be the cold,” he added guilelessly.

  More likely the laziness and rebellion of servants their masters will not punish! With a growl of exasperation, Runacarendalur set spurs to his stallion’s sides. There was one thing he and Bentrain could agree on: galloping.

  The wind pulled Runacarendalur’s stormcloak from his head and shoulders and the air was freezing, but the sensation of freedom was too sweet to ignore. He let the pounding rhythm of iron-shod hooves against iron-hard ground lull him for what seemed all too brief a time, then—reluctantly—reined Bentrain in.

  Ivrulion cantered up to them before Bentrain had slowed to a trot. “If he fell and broke a leg, you’d have regretted this,” Ivrulion said.

  “You’d Heal him,” Runacarendalur answered. “You must be good for something.”

  The remark earned him one of Ivrulion’s faint, cool smiles. “I’m good for a great many things. I simply won’t do what you want me to.”

  “Why not?” Runacarendalur shouted.

  “You die, she dies, what changes?” Ivrulion answered, apparently moved to candor for once. “We don’t know where she is. Her lords aren’t likely to come begging forgiveness if they lose their precious High King. They’ll simply become utterly unpredictable and far more dangerous.”

  “True now,” Runacarendalur snapped. “A moonturn or two ago we could have had them!” We could have kept the War Princes’ households alive until we were sure we’d won, instead of giving two dozen domains every cause to seek vengeance on us forever.

  “Maybe,” Ivrulion said. “And you would be dead, Caerthalien would be in disarray—and we would all still be here. If you think retracing our path across three domains in utter anarchy is a safe and simple matter, I do not.”

  “It would be easier if we did it now!” Before our mounts are starving, before some gaggle of hedge knights goes into revolt, before this so-called Alliance shatters into a million shards. He ground his teeth to keep the words behind t
hem; if Ivrulion was loyal to anything but himself, it was not to Runacarendalur. I lost all hope of his loyalty when I told him I’d never live to rule. The thought was bitter, but far from new.

  “You won’t argue me to your side now any more than you could before; stop trying,” Ivrulion said patronizingly. “Would you feel better if I told you the idiotic ‘council’ is as little inclined to follow my suggestions as it is to follow yours?”

  “And you our father’s pet!” Runacarendalur jeered. “I’m shocked, Prince Ivrulion, I truly am.”

  The horses had slowed to a walk now. Runacarendalur glanced behind him. The army was tiny with distance. I’ve probably already covered as much ground as it will all day, he thought in frustrated anger.

  “All I say is—” Ivrulion broke off sharply.

  Runacarendalur glanced quickly around, searching for some movement, some enemy. There was nothing. Then—

  “What’s that?” he asked, gesturing toward the trees.

  “A problem,” his brother answered grimly.

  They spurred their horses forward again.

  * * *

  “I don’t believe— How could she—?” Runacarendalur sputtered.

  “If by that you mean to ask ‘Did Lord Vieliessar’s army come this way?’ the answer is yes,” Ivrulion answered. The undisguised irritation in his voice would have cheered Runacarendalur at any other time.

  “How?” he repeated.

  “Magic,” Ivrulion said shortly.

  “Helpful,” Runacarendalur answered. “Look at this forest, ’Rulion,” he said, so shaken he forgot Ivrulion was his enemy. “Even if every single Landbond she has did nothing but chop at tree trunks morning till night, they couldn’t clear the half of this in a moonturn.”

  They’d ridden to the break in the scrub Ivrulion had spotted. Beyond it, a broad, shining path of undisturbed snow led into what should have been dense forest. The corridor stretched straight as a bowshot until distance narrowed it into invisibility. They turned their horses into it. There must be tree stumps beneath the snow—surely there must!—so Runacarendalur sent Bentrain forward at a cautious walk, but the ground beneath the stallion’s hooves seemed smooth.

  “Fortunately for her, she has Lightborn with her as well,” Ivrulion snarled. He reined his palfrey to a halt and swung down to wade through the snow-crust to the edge of the trees, then stopped and began digging. “Here. One of Niothramangh’s boundary stones. No wonder she vanished.”

  “You’ve been tracking her?” Runacarendalur asked.

  Ivrulion gave him a venomous look. “We didn’t have to. We could follow her Wards. A fortnight ago they seemed to disappear. The obvious assumption was that they’d decided to hide themselves. Obvious—and wrong.”

  “Why not do both?” Runacarendalur asked.

  “You can’t be as stupid as that question makes you sound,” Ivrulion said flatly. “Haven’t you been listening to anyone these past sennights? Or did you simply think you weren’t getting hot baths out of some perversity on the part of the Caerthalien Lightborn? There have never before been so many Lightborn gathered together in such a small area. Between her Lightborn and ours, the Light in Niothramangh is nearly gone. It will be moonturns, even years, before there’s enough of it here to draw on again.”

  “But her Lightborn didn’t change their spells,” Runacarendalur said. “They simply crossed the bounds.”

  “I knew you weren’t actually stupid,” Ivrulion said in tacit agreement. “And once they had … You cannot feel it, but I can: there is a Flower Forest here more vast than any in all of Jer-a-kalaliel. Untapped.”

  “And that gave her Lightborn the power to do … what…?”

  Ivrulion sighed heavily and walked back to his palfrey. “Transmutation, I suspect. Probably to sand; that’s what I’d do, if I had the power of a thousand Lightborn to direct as I chose and a wild Flower Forest to draw on. The tree becomes a heap of sand, her army rides over it, the snow covers it, there’s no trace she’s been there. Or reverse the spell afterward, and you have a heap of sawdust. They won’t lack for charcoal.”

  “That’s … disturbing,” Runacarendalur said.

  “Isn’t it?” Ivrulion said, swinging himself into the saddle once more. “Because I have no idea what’s in this direction, and no one else does either. What I do know is they had an easy passage over ground favorable to their wagons, so whatever’s there, she’s much closer to it than we are.”

  “There isn’t anything out there,” Runacarendalur said, shaking his head. “Everyone knows that.”

  “‘Everyone’ isn’t a madwoman being directed by an ancient prophecy,” Ivrulion answered, turning his mount back the way they’d come. “Come along, dear brother. We must tell Father what she has done.”

  * * *

  “We follow her of course,” Gallanillon Teramarise said flatly.

  Runacarendalur moved to stand at Lord Bolecthindial’s shoulder, from which vantage point he could study the map that covered most of the table. It showed only the Uradabhur, from the Mystrals and the Dragon’s Gate in the west to the Bazrahils and the Nantirworiel Pass in the east. A line drawn between the two passes was a line drawn through the center of the valley. South of the Dragon’s Gate, the Southern Pass was also marked. But a line drawn due east from the Southern Pass was a line that passed through … nothingness.

  “Into a trap, as I’m sure you meant to add, my dear Gallanillon,” Girelrian Cirandeiron said. She made an ostentatious show of settling herself more comfortably at the circular table. There were nearly forty people gathered in the gigantic War Pavilion, most standing. “Of course, perhaps you meant to say something else?”

  “We’ve followed her this far—what’s changed?” Lord Gallanillon demanded belligerently.

  “What’s changed is that there’s a Flower Forest beyond that border—as Ivrulion Lightbrother finally deigned to tell us,” Lady-Abeyant Dormorothon of Aramenthiali said.

  “Do you imply I knew of it earlier?” Ivrulion asked.

  “I? I imply nothing,” Dormorothon replied artlessly. “I only remark it is a great pity you could not be bothered to send anyone across the bounds before now. But I have long said the training under Helegondolrindir Astromancer was not all it should be. Celelioniel was her chosen successor, after all.”

  “Then perhaps I am mistaken in believing Aramenthiali also saw no reason to do so. Or perhaps you did, and did not think it worth mentioning,” Ivrulion answered quickly. “Certainly that is to be expected from Aramenthiali—since the training under Famindesta Astromancer was not all it should have been.”

  “Insolent Caerthalien whelp!” Dormorothon spat. “I should—”

  “This gains us nothing!” Lord Bolecthindial shouted.

  “Except to remind us Caerthalien breeds spineless cowards and fools,” Consort-Prince Irindandirion of Cirandeiron purred.

  “Brave words, when you know you cannot be called to account for them,” Runacarendalur snapped.

  The whispers and murmurs that had been private asides rose in volume as the War Princes and their consorts began to hurl accusations and demands at one another. Ivaloriel Telthorelandor and Ladyholder Edheleorn sat quietly, waiting. Runacarendalur could never look at them without remembering that Ivaloriel and Edheleorn were Bondmates. It always irritated him.

  Chardararg Lalmilgethior slammed his goblet down on the table. Dregs of wine spattered over the wood. “I can hear this empty barking any night,” he said witheringly into the silence that followed. “My lords, Lord Vieliessar has done what she has done. Now we must decide what to do.”

  But his words only brought another round of recriminations and demands. Teramarise favored pursuit. Cirandeiron thought they’d be riding into a trap. Aramenthiali kept bringing up the fact that the untapped Southern Flower Forest existed, but taking no other position. Inglethendragir and Vondaimieriel wanted to pursue and send a sortie party ahead of the army. Sarmiorion wanted to continue east to Utheleres and g
o south then.

  Most of them are reluctant to take the army in a direction where there’s no possibility of remounts—or laborers, Runacarendalur thought. All the High Houses have client domains in the Uradabhur—only Telthorelandor does not. They still believe they can look to them for supplies.

  “To follow Lord Vieliessar without knowing her destination would be ill-advised,” Lord Ivaloriel said yet again.

  “Then why not make it impossible for her to reach it?” Ivrulion said. “It’s simple enough.” He stepped closer to Ladyholder Glorthiachiel and produced a thin, silvery stick of charcoal. “Here is the Southern Pass. We know she’s still north of … this line”—he drew a raking line across the map directly east from the Southern Pass—“because she can’t have crossed it in a few sennights. She’s still in the forest. Burn it.”

  “That seems—” Finfemeras Vondaimieriel began.

  “Completely unacceptable!” Lady-Abeyant Dormorothon said. “There is a Flower Forest to the south of the bounds!”

  Something you have reminded us of a dozen times in the last candlemark, Runacarendalur thought.

  “You do not know it extends so far south,” Ivrulion said. “If she—”

  “Nor do I know it does not,” Dormorothon interrupted. “Once we follow Lord Vieliessar across the bounds, our Lightborn may draw upon it as they choose. We cannot surrender such an advantage.”

  “My Lady Mother Dormorothon is right—as always,” Sedreret Aramenthiali said grandly. “Aramenthiali does not choose to cast away such an advantage, whatever Caerthalien may wish.” He had become War Prince during the fighting in Jaeglenhend, but everyone knew who ruled Aramenthiali in truth.

  “It’s hardly an advantage if Lord Vieliessar has claimed it first,” Lord Bolecthindial growled.

  “But Lord Bolecthindial, how can she?” Ladyholder-Abeyant Dormorothon asked in tones of dulcet innocence. “One can only claim a Flower Forest by enclosing it within the bounds of one’s own domain.”

  “Then—” Ivrulion began.

  “I do not believe there is anything further you can tell us about what Lord Vieliessar has already done, Lightbrother,” Lord Sedreret said.