Crown of Vengeance dpt-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  In armies the size of the two which opposed each other here, even ten thousand Lightborn would not make much difference to the outcome of the battle yet to be fought.

  But ten thousand Lightborn who were free …

  The Alliance horded the Lightborn spellcraft among its lords, using their Magery to protect themselves from servants they had come to distrust. They expended Janglanipaikharain’s power and their Lightborn’s strength on attacks that experience had already shown them were futile. And day by day they closed the distance, as if the sight of Vieliessar’s army goaded her enemy into doing the impossible.

  And still Vieliessar led them south.

  They were but a sennight behind her when Vieliessar’s force at last reached a barrier it could not pass.

  * * *

  She and a few others rode far ahead of the vanguard, across a plain whose spring-lush grass, withering in the cold, was already dusted with fresh snow. Her army stretched out behind her, mile upon mile, marching within a shimmering haze of Shield: all the folk of every domain she had claimed, whether by force of arms or peaceful surrender, all who had fled to her for sanctuary. She knew what she must find to save them, yet in the clear merciless light of day, Ifjalasairaet’s Wall stretched unbroken as far as the eye could see. She reined Snapdragon to a halt and gazed at the cliff face in silence.

  “Are you sure this is…?” Iardalaith said beside her, his voice pitched for her alone.

  “I am,” she answered. “Amrethion’s city lies beyond this cliff.”

  How will we reach it? She could hear Iardalaith’s question as if he had spoken it aloud, but she had no answer for him. Her spell had found the city. She had never wondered if there were an entrance to it. We can hold this ground until Janglanipaikharain is exhausted. Then we must fight. And starve. And die.

  The only road to victory lay through solid rock. An army that could not retreat was helpless.

  She bit her lip until the blood flowed bright and bitter in her mouth. She wanted to weep as if she were still a child, to cry out at the unfairness of it. Amrethion had promised her that she was his true heir—she had seen him, walked the halls of his great palace in visions.

  Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor—White Jewel, Fire Forest … When shall I see you again? Lady Indinathiel thought. Our fellowship is broken, our ancient trust betrayed. All that is left to us is to keep faith. To destroy that which never should have been …

  Half in memory, half in dream, Vieliessar looked out across Ifjalasairaet. But it had not been Ifjalasairaet to Lady Indinathiel. It had been Ch’rahwyr-thrawnzah, Border of the World—and she had wept behind her battle mask when she rode out onto it leading her army, for Kalalielahwyr, Heart of the World, was broken beyond mending, and she’d felt her hradan heavy upon her.…

  Lady Indinathiel’s memories were a hundred times a hundred centuries old, and somewhere in that vast gulf of time the pass had closed.

  “There is a pass,” Vieliessar said, her voice raw with cold and anger. “I shall find it. But for now, let us not make an encampment, but a fortress. Let the camp and the pasturage be set forth at the cliffs themselves—and let it be bounded with walls as high as those of a Great Keep.”

  Iardalaith gazed at her for a long moment in silence, then turned away to give orders. A few moments later, the signal horns began to call to one another along the line of march: Halt. Make camp.

  She had led them for so long, both hands filled with miracles, that few in all her meisne doubted she would bring forth more.

  “If this is where we are to die, it is as good a place as any other,” Gunedwaen said. He had approached her alone, and in such silence that she had not heard him. “Yet if it is, I ask one last boon of you, High King of Jer-a-kalaliel.”

  She knew she should chide him for speaking of defeat so glibly, but she could not. He, alone of her nobles, had not used Janglanipaikharain’s bounty to clothe himself in state. His rags were warm—but still rags. His mount, one of Thoromarth’s cherry-black darlings, was muddy and ungroomed. He masks his true self as a last weapon, Vieliessar realized.

  “Name it,” she answered.

  “Let Janglanipaikharain become an empty cistern before we fall. Let the army that vanquishes us starve and die beside us.”

  Why not? she thought. It seemed to her, in that unguarded moment, that her whole life had been nothing but an endless series of questions, each “why” leading her farther along the path that brought her here, to a cliff that held her victory in an immovable grasp. It will not matter, she told herself. Should I fail here, Darkness will claim all, in the end. For the first time, the thought did not kindle defiance in her heart. What was darkness, but the end of day?

  I am weary, she realized in surprise.

  “Let it be so,” she said softly, bowing her head. “Now leave me, old friend. I wish to be alone.”

  * * *

  The Silver Swords of Penenjil arrived just as the gates were being raised.

  Vieliessar stood at the far end of the encampment’s main road. Her pavilion stood at one end of it and the entrance to the camp stood at the other. The North Road was the broadest way in any camp, for it was good fortune to give the Starry Hunt a fair path to enter by, just as Arilcarion had decreed. After so long spent overturning the wisdom of centuries, it gave her a tiny thrill of shame to heed it now. But soon it would no longer matter.

  It was dusk; it had taken the Lightborn the whole of the day to surround the camp with a rampart of earth and turn that earth to seamless stone. Her craftsmen took care to leave an opening in the wall, which they framed in oak; then they sculpted mud and water into two great doors that the Lightborn turned into solid silver. Upon each panel stood a Unicorn rearing in defiance.

  The gates glittered in the last rays of sun, bright panels of new-forged metal, taller than a tall tree. Their surfaces shimmered with Magery that lightened them so that the craftworkers could handle the huge panels as if they weighed no more than a painted screen. When they were sealed into place, she knew, the people would cheer, and then there would be a feast in the twilight, and through it all she would make a show of approval. As if the path to victory was a thing she held in her heart until the moment to unveil it arrived.

  There were vast scorched circles on the plain beyond, where Thunderbolts had struck the ground and fire had smoldered for a time, and above them the sky boiled like a cooking pot. In the distance, the sight of it now blocked by the wall, the Alliance army marched toward them, its front rank verdant with Lightborn. The roiling mumble of power was so chaotic it masked the spell Thurion cast until the moment Door—profligate, wasteful, unheard-of to cast so far from a sheltering Flower Forest—opened.

  The Silver Swords galloped from nothingness to Ifjalasairaet—a full grand-taille of komen and destriers plus one green-robed Lightborn. As Door opened, the power of the spell broke over the plain like a great wave, sweeping all others before it. For a moment the sky was clear, the glowing violet shield of protection vanished, and Vieliessar could feel the drain upon the great reservoir of Janglanipaikharain.

  Not enough to empty it, not yet.

  Craftworkers scattered as the great silver doors suddenly took on weight and fell with an impact that shook the ground. The Silver Swords galloped through the gap in the wall. Vieliessar snatched at the lines of power, feeling the weavings of others brush her own. Above her, the sky boiled to black again as the Alliance Lightborn recovered from their shock, but the lightnings they cast struck harmlessly against the Warhunt’s Shield.

  Komen and archers ran toward the North Road from everywhere in the encampment. The road was filled with destriers under saddle—dancing, rearing, ears laid back with terror.

  “Where is the High King!” an unfamiliar voice shouted.

  “Here!” Vieliessar cried. Thoromarth and Rithdeliel were running toward her, swords drawn. She stepped forward before they could reach her. “Here,” she repeated. “I am here.”

  One of the komen
urged his fretting mount forward. His surcoat was of grey silk, the emblem on its face a sword in bright silver. He bore not one sword, but two—one such a sword as any komen might wear, belted upon his hip, the other so long it must be sheathed against his back. He reached up with grey armored gauntlets to remove his helm. The face revealed was of an alfaljodthi much past his middle years: the hair in its elaborate knight’s braid had already taken on the silvery sheen of age.

  “The Silver Swords of Penenjil are here, High King,” Master Kemmiaret said. “As we swore to the last High King we would be.”

  As he spoke, Vieliessar felt the chains of prophecy coil around her more tightly than before.

  * * *

  “I could see—feel—what you were doing,” Thurion said.

  “I suppose every Lightborn from Great Sea Ocean to the Grand Windsward could as well,” she answered, and Thurion smiled.

  She’d taken a precious moment before the evening banquet—more of a celebration now than before—to hear Thurion’s report. Master Kemmiaret had been able to give her little more than an account of time and distance and weather: they had crossed the Nantirworiel Pass without challenge; the unrest across the Uradabhur had as yet touched Utheleres but lightly.

  “If I hadn’t already known about Janglanipaikharain, I would have been horrified,” Thurion said with a smile. “Of course, there’s hardly anyone who doesn’t—the Alliance Lightborn Farspeak everywhere even if ours don’t. And the drain on Janlanipaikharain was constant, if high. Then today … I thought the battle had begun. I had to bring the Silver Swords to you while I still could.”

  To come and die here with us, Vieliessar thought. But what other course did he have? He was Caerthalien-born. No House would give him sanctuary against Bolecthindial’s wish. Nor would any of the Twelve trust a Lightborn who would betray his lord so blatantly.

  For the first time in sennights, she thought of Hamphuliadiel and the Sanctuary of the Star. Did he still reign there as Prince of Nothing? Who would send Candidates to him in Flower Moon?

  Would Flower Moon even come? If it did, would she be here to see it?

  “I am glad you came,” Vieliessar said. “I would have you beside me when I claim the victory.”

  * * *

  The banquet was long over. Around her, the encampment dozed, behind walls that only needed a handful of sentries to defend them. In Ice Moon the days were short and the nights long and cold. The solitude was strange and welcome.

  Vieliessar, dark-cloaked, walked through the camp to the cliffside. Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor—the Ninth Shrine, the lost city of Amrethion Aradruiniel and Pelashia Celenthodiel—lay upon the far side of the cliff. She could feel it. And it might as well lie on the far shore of Graythunder Glairyrill, for the way to it was barred beyond opening. Transmutation could turn earth to water and wood to stone. It could fuse stone to stone and render the walls of a Great Keep unbreakable—but only when the object so bespelled had bounds. To set Transmutation upon Ifjalasairaet’s Wall would be death to all the Lightborn who worked the spell—and if it had taken the power of thousands of Lightborn to forge the path through Janubaghir, how many more would it take to make a path through miles of rock? Even to try would bring death to Janglanipaikharain, death to all who worked the spell—and death to the whole of Vieliessar’s army afterward, for without her Lightborn to Shield them, the Alliance Lightborn would be able to set Thunderbolt to destroy her encampment, Fear upon her army, and Shield to imprison tailles and grand-tailles of her warriors for Alliance komen to slay at their leisure.

  She would find another way. She must. On unsteady legs she walked up to the smooth stone face and pressed her hand, palm-flat, against the stone.

  Recognition.

  As if a faithful hound had waited a lifetime to greet its master once more, Vieliessar felt the shock of force and fire—as if she had come home, as if she laid her hand upon the Tablet of Memory in her own castel and felt there the memories of the generations of her Line. It was soundless sound and lightless light, a great tolling peal of recognition, as if Light called to Light—but strange and ancient, no spell-weaving she knew. For a brief instant the stone seemed as clear as water. Within it she could see the bright silver lines of Magery. Layer upon layer of bespellings, coils and knots and labyrinthine twistings …

  Her hand slipped from the stone as she sank to her knees, weak and groggy. Powder-fine snow covered her to her waist. The cold of it burned her bare hands.

  “What are you— What did you— Are you— Vielle!”

  Thurion hauled her to her feet. “What have you done—what did you do?” he babbled, and she could see shock and fear upon his face.

  “I don’t know!” she blurted.

  Thurion stepped away from her to touch the stone. The cliff was as smooth and featureless as the wall of a Great Keep, as if it were no natural thing, but something crafted by Magery.

  “What did you do?” he demanded again, as if she were some erring Postulant whose spell had gone terribly awry. Behind them, she could sense as much as see globes of Coldfire winking into life across the camp. She must have roused every single Lightborn in it. And probably in the enemy camp as well.

  “The pass is here,” she stammered. “It’s here.”

  “What did you do?” Thurion repeated. “Vielle, what did you do?”

  Beyond that, she could hear the words he did not say.

  Vielle, what are you?

  * * *

  “Hush, hush, let her tell it,” Isilla Lightsister said. A dozen of the Warhunt had gathered at the Wall, all asking questions. Over Isilla’s shoulder Vieliessar could see more hurrying through the camp to join them.

  “Beyond this cliff lies Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor. And the Unicorn Throne. Take them—reach them—and we have won.” She had answered the same questions a dozen times, but she could not answer the true one: how could she open the pass?

  “With blood,” Rondithiel Lightbrother said, as if she had spoken aloud. He had been studying the cliff face in silence for some time.

  “Blood?” Thurion said, startled. “It is forbidden.”

  “Do you seek to lesson me in the keeping of Mosirinde’s Covenant?” Rondithiel asked mildly. “I should despair of you, young Thurion. What did Mosirinde say of blood?”

  “That blood holds power, and to take power from the blood is to take life,” Thurion said. “To gain power from death brings madness.”

  “This much is true,” Rondithiel said. “And yet—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Vieliessar said quietly. She touched the wall again with her bare fingers, and felt the thrumming of response. Ten thousand years ago, some unknown spellbinder had set this spell here, awaiting her touch. But not Vieliessar Farcarinon’s. The touch of the Child of the Prophecy. Amrethion’s chosen heir.

  When she’d begun her quest, she’d realized she swam amid tides of power linked to Prophecy—power that gained her belief when it should not have come, trust when she had done little to earn it, success beyond luck and skill. It had shaped her to its needs, moonturn upon moonturn. She had been more than mortal flesh. She had been a tool of ancient power, and that power compelled more than her. It had bent the folk of the Fortunate Lands to its need. Princes had set aside their power for her. Commonfolk had risked their lives.

  But not for her. For the Prophecy whose instrument she was. And even as she accepted that, she had fought to remain Vieliessar. No longer. To be less than the Prophecy’s instrument was to doom all who had placed their lives and their trust in her hands.

  She took a deep breath, facing the cliff, and released every shield she had lived behind since long before the Light came to her. Wariness, mistrust, suspicion … she released them all into the winter wind. She let go of the masks she wore, concealing her true self from everyone. She unwove and abandoned the shields all Lightborn wrapped themselves in, guarding themselves from the touch of a mind, from an errant Foretelling, from the history borne within the sh
ape and flesh of every thing, living or unliving.…

  She was the ancient rock and the blood-soaked earth; the wind above, the unmediated hopes and fears of every living creature in her array, the hand that forged the steel, the beasts and trees slain to make saddle and cart and harness. Serenthon’s heir, Nataranweiya’s child, vanished in that moment, swept away before the need, the insistence, the demand …

  The Prophecy.

  It is so simple.

  She did not know who thought the words, or who heard them, or who laughed in joy to see bright metal sparkle as a sword was drawn ringing from its sheath. She did not know who cried out, who grasped the blade with a naked hand, who thrust hand and blade and blood together against the raw unyielding rock.

  And then she was herself again, Vieliessar, staring at the Unicorn Sword where it lay upon the grass, its hilt and pommel shattered, its unhoused blade blood-bright.

  “Run,” Thurion said.

  He grabbed Vieliessar’s arm and yanked her away from the cliff face. Vieliessar stumbled, then ran with him. Around her she could see the other Lightborn running, shouting warnings to the camp beyond. The ground shook as if at the charge of ten thousand komen, a hundred thousand, of all the komen who had ever lived. The shaking became a rolling that made them trip and stagger as they ran; the ice beneath Vieliessar’s feet cracked, shattered, sprayed up before her. As if a door had opened, she could feel the radiant upwelling of power. Not the familiar and finite power of Janglanipaikharain, but power a thousand times greater—fresh, untapped …

  She felt the uprush of spellcraft—someone had managed to cast Shield—and stopped. She yanked her arm from Thurion’s grasp and turned.

  A shimmering wall of Shield stood between them and the cliff face. Mounded against it, halfway up its height, was a hill of sand-fine grey dust. The blood mark she had set upon the stone was gone. And where it had been …

  Vieliessar ran back until the violet wall of Shield was a cool slickness beneath her hands. Unaccustomed tears prickled at her eyes, and despite everything, she wanted to laugh out loud.