Crown of Vengeance

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WIND AND DUST

For the road is long and the world is wide

The wind is cold and the way is dark

When again shall I see her, Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, beloved who has turned her face from me?”

—Perhael Storysinger,

Perhael’s Song

That night Terandamil’s archers celebrated their victory and the rest of the infantry joined them. The komen and their lords withdrew to their own precincts and the mood of the encampment was unsettled. Vieliessar made a brief visit to the victory feast, then spent a long, fruitless evening pouring over maps of the Uradabhur before retiring to her sleeping chamber.

Sleep did not come. Her mind was too full of problems. The arming of the commons to fight beside the komen had always been the point on which her army could fracture. Only the Light could raise one of the commonfolk to the level of the Lords Komen. The lords of the Hundred Houses had been convinced the Light was Pelashia’s Gift: rare, valued, mysterious. They had even been able to blind themselves to the fact that the mercenary companies, whose warriors were the equal in skill of any komen, had held more former farmers than former knights among their ranks.

It was harder to unsee a forester’s skill turned to a tool of war, but everyone knew mastery of the forester’s bow was a task of years; not even Lightborn spellcraft could change that. But the pike can be learned in a few sennights of practice, and the infantry have already proven their worth in battle. They cannot stand against charging warhorses—but even komen do not do that unless they must.

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 them; 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 go 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.

“I see there is not,” Ivrulion said, after a moment of silence. “Lord Bolecthindial, have I your leave to withdraw?”

Bolecthindial waved a hand irritably. “Go, go,” he said. “Both of you,” he added, as Runacarendalur opened his mouth to speak.

He had to run to catch up to Ivrulion, who was stalking up the North Road of the encampment as if he were the Starry Huntsman himself.

“I think that went well—don’t you?” Runacarendalur said. “Are you enjoying being brushed aside while Vieliessar Farcarinon does whatever she pleases? It must be galling to know she has done nothing save by your desire for the last four moonturns—”

“Be silent!” Ivrulion snapped.

Runacarendalur laughed. “Make me, dear brother.”

Ivrulion turned and glared at him. Runacarendalur smiled wolfishly. This was not an isolated camp on the Southern Pass Road. This was the main road through the Alliance encampment. Any spell Ivrulion cast would be sensed and noted by a dozen Lightborn, and if the spell’s target were not a lawful one …

Ivrulion snarled under his breath and turned away. Runacarendalur grabbed his arm. “Oh, but you must come and take a cup of wine to celebrate, for inevitably the War Council will choose your plan in the end. And now I’m imagining what Father will do to you when you finally have to tell him why it means my death as well. I’m sure it will be terribly painful.”

He wondered how long it would take the fire to sweep over Vieliessar’s army. Her Lightborn wouldn’t be able to stop it; the Lightborn who’d tried to halt the burning of Araphant had needed to summon rain to quench the flames, and no one could make it rain in winter. A blizzard intense enough to quench the fire would quench the army as well.

They’d die. She’d die. And he’d die. It would be worth it to know she was dead before him.

“Imagine what he’ll do if I don’t have to,” Ivrulion answered oracularly. “Oh, very well. I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing by playing the gracious host.”

“I’m patronizing you, dear brother. It’s something you should be used to by now,” Runacarendalur answered mockingly.

“Should I? And do your chains gall you, Heir-Prince Runacarendalur?”

“Perhaps,” Runacarendalur answered, still cheerful. “But if they do, I console myself with the knowledge it is not for much longer.”

But on the following dawn, when he dragged himself groggily from his bed, it was to discover that the War Council wasn’t going to burn the southern forest.

They were going to follow Vieliessar’s army into it.

In Snow Moon Vieliessar’s army crossed the southern bounds of Niothramangh and passed into the depths of a forest no alfaljodthi had ever seen. Vieliessar rode out ahead of the army every few miles to blaze their path. Those Lightborn who had Transmutation as their keystone spell followed. At their touch, great trees turned to sand and collapsed, to return to their native substance a few moments later. To destroy so much forest merely to make smooth their passage disturbed Vieliessar, for the farther they’d gone, the wider the path they cut, until by midday it was nearly a mile across. But if the decision had been hard, the choice had been simple: hundreds of miles of forest turned to dust—or the lives of everyone who rode with her.

Before she had crossed into Niothramangh, she had told Iardalaith to send Warhunt Mages south, for her tactics would depend on her resources. Iardalaith had gone himself, to come reeling into her pavilion giddy to the point of drunkenness with the bounteous Light of the Flower Forest he had discovered. It was to the south and west; Iardalaith could not accurately gauge the distance, he said, as it was stronger than any he had ever sensed. He named it Janglanipaikharain—star-bright forest. Perhaps it was the same one Lady Parmanaya had vanished into thousands of years before.

With this knowledge, Viliessar had made her plan.

They would cross the border a full sennight before the Alliance. When they turned southward, they would vanish to the senses of their Lightborn hunters, and until they saw the trail her army would inevitably leave behind it, the Alliance would think only that her people had drawn upon the Flower Forests of Niothramangh to hide them. Her own commanders had been so stunned at the thought of leaving the bounded Uradabhur that she knew the tactic would not occur to the Alliance. They would look at the forest and see a thing impassable.

But it was not, by the grace of Janglanipaikharain’s seemingly limitless reservoir, a wellspring of power that had not been touched in the whole history of the Hundred Houses.

The first night after they crossed the bounds, Vieliessar wrapped herself in a Cloakspell and walked from the camp.

The air was too cold to hold scent: if it had not been, she would have been able to smell the good fragrance of roast meat, for with the power of Janglanipaikharain to draw upon, the Lightborn had Called herds of deer and flights of birds to their cookfires. Their supplies continued to dwindle, but this night, at least, all had eaten well. What would come tomorrow would depend on what she found before tomorrow’s dawn.

Her steps broke through the surface of the snow; here beneath the leafless trees it was deep, but not as deep as it had been in the open land. She walked for miles, reveling in the silence, the solitude, the sense that for a little while she need answer to no necessities but her own. At last, reluctantly, she came to a stop. If she could not find what she sought here, she would find it nowhere.

She laid her gloved hand upon the trunk of a greenneedle tree and felt its sleeping life, and through it, the life of the whole forest: vine, bush, and grass, lichen and moss. The life of the world, which Mosirinde’s Covenant protected. And beneath it, beyond it, the hot bright life of Janglanipaikharain, its power hers to draw upon.

Thurion said that all the Flower Forests were One in the Light, and so I might walk from Janglanipaikharain to Tildorangelor in a single step—if I were in Janglanipaikharain.

Well and good. But as much as she needed to go there, she needed to lead her army, her people, there even more. And so she wound Janglanipaikharain’s Light about her hands as if it were skeins of silk, and cast her spell.

Find.

In her mind she held her image of Amrethion’s study, the delicate desk of golden wood, the wall of windows. The great green sweep of valley from the window Lady Indinathiel had gazed out of. The star-bright perfection of the Unicorn she had once glimpsed.

Find!

The Light was her guardian, her lover, her companion, her tool. It was all of truth and reality she’d possessed since the spring of her twelfth year. Its wisdom had set her on this path, its strength had preserved her, its need drove her onward.

FIND!

Heartbeat upon heartbeat she drew in power and built the spell. It fluttered against her heart like a falcon on the glove, dreaming of prey. Suddenly, so swiftly she could not anticipate it and prepare herself, the power flew from her like the shaft from a forester’s bow. In the sky above, she heard silver hooves ring against starlight. The Light roared through her, a depthless, sourceless torrent.

Until at last, its work accomplished, it struck, and held, and drew the last of the spell energy to it. Moonlight on snow became the ringing of bells, the tocsin of silver hooves, the wind that felled not trees, but empires.…

There were hands on her shoulders, shaking her to consciousness, raising her from her knees. The snow had melted around her; her boots and trousers were soaked through, her fingers numb within her gloves.

“Vielle! Tell me you live!” The most welcome, most unexpected voice roused her instantly from unconsciousness.

“Thurion!” she cried.

“Did you think you could set such a weaving and I would not hear?” Thurion asked. His smile barely disguised his worry.

She groaned as he raised her to her feet. “Am I a child, to have been so overset by a spell?” she grumbled. She began to shiver, and he laid one hand, palm flat, against her shoulder. She felt his Magery cascade over her, warming her and driving the wetness from her garments.

“What have you done?” he demanded.

“It seems you are always asking me that,” she said with a shaky smile. She looked past his shoulder, toward her encampment. She had ordered them to strict discipline, for sound and light would carry across the bounds even if Magery did not. The Findspell she had cast had roused the Lightborn; she could see faint sparks of Silverlight moving about in the distance like the glowbeetles of summer. Soon enough they would find her missing.

“I have set a spell to show me where we now must go,” she said, and Thurion’s eyes widened with shock—and hope.

“You have found Amrethion’s city,” he said. “With this … it is as great as Tildorangelor herself.”

“I hope it is not, for I mean to claim Tildorangelor for my own, and should the Alliance also be able to claim such power the battle will be dreadful indeed,” she answered.

“And Amrethion’s city. And the Unicorn Throne. You have found them all,” Thurion answered as if he had not heard her.

“I have done as I must,” she said. She pulled her cloak more tightly about her. “Now come—if the spell has called you, I know it has wakened all my folk.”

Gunedwaen and Harwing Lightbrother found them before they had covered even a third of the distance back to the camp.

“It would indeed make good hearing to know for what cause you have stolen into the night to make yourself the target of any sword,” Gunedwaen said with heavy irony. He swung down from his palfrey’s back and gestured for her to mount.

“Thurion?” Harwing said in disbelief.

“I had thought to have quiet and shelter for the casting of my spell,” Vieliessar said to Gunedwaen, “but if Thurion was roused by it—”

Only then did it occur to her to marvel at the power of the spell that had brought him here, for the power needed for Door increased with the distance traveled, and he could not have known to draw upon Janglanipaikharain’s Light to open it. “Where were you when you came to me?” she asked suddenly, turning to Thurion.

“A guesthouse in Utheleres. I was in meditation, hoping to Farspeak you with the news.…”

“Iardalaith ’Spoke with one of our spies among the Alliance Lightborn,” Harwing said. “They have heard nothing.”

Vieliessar nodded. The boundary Wards had protected her from detection, as she had hoped. But the bond she shared with Thurion was deep and reinforced by their continual use of Farspeech. He had sensed her spell because he was trying to reach her.

They were safe.

“Then we still have the advantage, until they strike our path. Come, Gunedwaen. Ride behind me, and I shall speak to you of the weaving I have done this night.”

Vieliessar gazed around at those whose lives stood like marking stones along the path she had taken to this moment and this place. She commanded a force as large as that of the Twelve; her Lightborn wore armor and fought on the battlefield; her commonfolk bore arms and fought beside komen. She had made herself the tool of Amrethion’s Prophecy because if she did not, the Darkness would come and destroy all she knew. And in becoming that tool, she had changed the world.

She did not know if that was better—or worse.

It was still candlemarks before dawn; she had gathered to her not the senior commanders of the High King’s army, but those who had stood as friends and guides upon the long road Vieliessar Farcarinon had walked to get here.

Lord Thoromarth of Oronviel, whose faith and generosity humbled her when she thought of them. Thurion Lightbrother, who had broken with the custom of centuries to follow the dictates of his reason, not his heart. Aradreleg Lightsister, who walked a careful path between the old ways and the new. Rondithiel, her first and best teacher. Lord Gunedwaen, who had taught her the Code of Battle and followed her even when she shattered it. Rithdeliel Warlord, born to Caerthalien, who had broken his heart to give Serenthon victory, and who had risen from the embers of betrayal to do more than that for Serenthon’s daughter.

Harwing. Iardalaith. Nadalforo. Changed by what she had done just as she had been changed by Amrethion’s Prophecy.

Her vassals, all. Just as she was vassal to the land itself.

“I have this night discovered the path to our destination,” she said.

“A destination is always a useful thing,” Rithdeliel said calmly. “I hope there are stores of grain there. And wine.”

“Of these matters I know not,” Vieliessar said, “but I know our victory lies within Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, and there I will lead us.”

“Grand words fit for a wondertale,” Thoromarth grumbled. “But say if you will, Vieliessar High King, where it is you would bid us have your army go?”

“South,” Vieliessar answered. “South, and south again, until we reach the end of the world.”

And its beginning.

Thurion’s presence was a gift. The news he brought was fresh: Penenjil and Enerchelimier had managed to reach Oblivion Gate in time to pass through to the Arzhana; Melchienchiel Penenjil had sent the Silver Swords on ahead, with Thurion to guide them. He had expected trouble in the Nantirworiel Pass, for if Methothiel Nantirworiel had not taken the field, he had certainly chosen his allegiance. But if Methothiel was for the Alliance, his meisne was not—since his father’s time, Foxhaven Free Company had been sword and shield to Nantirworiel. Thurion did not know their fate, or Methothiel’s. All he knew was that the pass had been clear of snow—and utterly deserted.

But welcome as Thurion’s presence was, he remained only three days before bidding her farewell.

“I do not wish to be away from Master Kemmiaret overlong,” he said. “And besides, I am needed to lead the Silver Swords to your side. Utheleres is as yet untroubled by battle, and we can find provision and shelter all the way to Lurathonion Flower Forest. Once we cross the southern border, I shall come to you again, to be certain we do not lose our way.”

“For that I am grateful,” Vieliessar said. “And for Penenjil’s grace in making such a journey in winter.”

“As to that, I think Penenjil has been privy to more of Celelioniel’s learning than any of us know,” Thurion answered. “I could wish … they knew the whole of it.”

“I do not think even Amrethion Aradruiniel knew the whole,” Vieliessar answered. “Go with the Light, my friend.”

“And you, my king,” Thurion answered gravely.

South and south again.

It was odd to look upon a place and have no name to call it by, for every stone and forest and meadow within the Fortunate Lands had a name. For a sennight her people made a game of it, vying with one another to coin the most outlandish and ornate name. Enemy’s Doom. Icetrees Forest. Smoketree Reach. But at last they settled on a simple one: Janubaghir. Southern forest.

Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor was the first thing in Vieliessar’s thoughts each dawn, the last thing she saw behind closed eyelids at night. It drew her like a needle to the lodestone, and her army followed where she led. As Snow Moon drew to a close, she and every Lightborn in her force felt the Alliance cross the Niothramangh bounds to follow them.

The Alliance Lightborn drew instantly upon the bounty of Janglanipaikharain and moved immediately to the attack—and Vieliessar’s Lightborn to the defense—but whatever their calls upon its Light, that Light still seemed inexhaustible. All along the line of march, storms quarreled and fought through the sky as the Alliance sent storms to harry them and the Warhunt sent them away again. Limitless Light had the same effect as none: the two armies fled and followed and little else was changed.

As Cold Moon gave way to Ice Moon, Vieliessar’s force reached the southern border of Janubaghir. The stars and the sun told them they were far to the south of lands any of them knew: Lord Gatriadde thought they might even be south of Mangiralas’s southern border, and Mangiralas extended furthest into the south of any of the domains of the West. In the far distance, the Bazrahil Range was visible, and before it, a plain that stretched on as far as the eye could see.

Someone named the southern plain Ifjalasairaet—wind and dust.

The land was flat as a tabletop. The Alliance army was a bare fortnight behind them when they reached the southern plain, and Magery swirled about both armies, its tides thick enough to choke any who could perceive the Light. The war had become a war of Lightborn, as each side attempted to discover a way to use Janglanipaikharain’s power to gain advantage over the other—and if they could not, to exhaust its Light so that this became a war of komen and destrier once more.

Never had anyone witnessed—or performed—such a profligacy of spellcraft. Vieliessar’s army had come to Ifjalasairaet a thing of rags and patches, privation and rationing. Now each suit of armor, every pavilion and rope, had been Restored until it might have come that instant from the hands of the craftworkers. Every injury, no matter how slight, was made whole. Wells were sunk into the earth each time the army stopped, striking deep until they overflowed with cold pure water, enough for all who thirsted to drink their fill. Transmutation turned water to cider, to beer, to milk, to wine. Spells of multiplication, taught against days of dire famine, turned a handful of grain to a wagonload, an apple to an orchard, a scrap of dried beef to a succulent feast for thousands. Faded colors of surcoat and pavilion grew bright, destriers and their riders grew fat. The night watches blazed, not with Silverlight, but with honest warming flame against a plain turned lush and green out of season.

And here, at last, the plan Vieliessar had set in motion in Oronviel’s Great Hall bore fruit. Her army was her future empire in miniature: Lightborn, Landbond, and Lord united as one in her name. It was an army of refugees, of renegades, runaways, outlaws, exiles, of all who had cast off the old ways to search for something … better. Of War Princes who yearned for peace. Of Lightborn who had embraced the field of battle.

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 shape 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.

They will all believe I planned this.…

Dargariel Dorankalaliel—the Fireheart Gate—was open for the first time since the Fall of Celephrandullias-Tildorangelor.

Its walls were even and straight, just as the cliff itself had been, but not smooth and unmarked. As far along the passage as she could see they were carved with the images of Unicorns, a herd of Unicorns all running toward the plain.

She fell to her knees, laughing in relief, in joy, in homecoming, knowing this was not the end of Amrethion’s Prophecy but finally, at last, its beginning. The night was filled with shouting and the sounds of warhorns as her people armed and rallied against an unknown foe. She could hear hoofbeats as the first komen rode toward the cliff shouting questions, the babble of voices as the Lightborn answered. Silverlight flared, turning the face of the Shield-wall to a bright mirror, hiding what lay behind.

She got to her feet and turned to face the camp. Komen were riding toward her. Behind them, the camp itself was alive with light and movement.

“What have you done?” Thoromarth bellowed as he reached her, his voice a battlefield shout.

I have found the Unicorn Throne.

“I claim this place—it is mine—and yours. All of you—go through it—everyone—” Her tongue tripped and stuttered over a thousand commands. “Clear the rock—set my marker stones—!”

Pelashia’s Children had come home at last.

A sennight ago, the victory song had been in every throat. The Alliance scouts had brought the same word for a fortnight: Vieliessar drove her army directly toward an unbroken cliff wall. She would be trapped against it, unable to retreat, and when they held her at bay, they would drain the Southern Flower Forest—it did not truly matter which army accomplished that—and then the Alliance would drive the rebel’s army of losels and rabble down into dust.

Then, astonishingly, instead of preparing for battle, Vieliessar had set a wall twelve cubits high around the whole of her encampment—and to mock them, set such doors in its gate as might grace any High House Great Hall.

“Siege,” Bolecthindial growled. “She can’t be serious.”

“You keep saying that,” Runacarendalur said. His smile was bitter. “She has always done exactly what she says she will.”

Bolecthindial gazed into the distance. Behind him, the Alliance camp spread over miles of this desolate plain. Shield shimmered above and around them, a constant unwelcome reminder that this was a war of Magery and not of honest skill. In the distance, the last light of day turned the silver gates of Vieliessar’s encampment to fire and blood.

“Once the Light fails, we can starve them out,” Bolecthindial said.

“If we have, oh … ten times their supplies,” Runacarendalur answered lightly. “I trust our Lightborn are moved to prepare such bounty? Or does the War Council mean us to die here in the moment of our victory?”

“That is hardly your concern,” Bolecthindial said repressively.

“No,” Runacarendalur said quietly. “It won’t be.”

Bolecthindial regarded his son narrowly. Since the retreat from Jaeglenhend Keep, the Heir-Prince had been in a strange humor, by turns rebellious and reckless. He sees the disaster this war has brought, and what it has cost us, Bolecthindial thought grimly. Half a year ago the War Princes had made grand promises to one another—of setting aside old grievances, of unifying in the face of a grave threat, of increased wealth and dominion and security for them all. And at first it had seemed an easy thing, a possible thing, to strike down Serenthon’s mad whelp and thus secure their safety and prosperity forever.

But disaster had followed disaster. In Jaeglenhend she gained victories where she should have suffered defeats. The Alliance might have turned back then, awaiting a more fortunate moment to smash Vieliessar’s ambitions., but the secret the High Houses held silent in their throats was that Windsward Rebellion was too recent, too nearly successful, for them to permit Vieliessar even the illusion of victory.

And so the Alliance had followed Vieliessar beyond the edge of the world.

We were fools, Bolecthindial Caerthalien thought bleakly. Better to have let her claim the Uradabhur, the Arzhana, the Grand Windsward. Such a “kingdom” would never endure. We could have crossed the Mystrals in spring, taken the Uradabhur back domain by domain, gaining wealth and provisions and sending a vast sea of commonfolk running to their “High King.” If she rejected them, her claim of being their savior would vanish. If she claimed them, she would be forced to feed them in their thousands and ten thousands, and thus render herself vulnerable.

The thoughts were bitter, for they were not his own words Bolecthindial called to mind, but his son’s. His Runacarendalur, the flower of the Caerthalien Line—the glorious prince who could have made Caerthalien’s long-held dream a reality and claimed the Unicorn Throne for himself. From the time Vieliessar had gained Oronviel, Runacarendalur had warned and pleaded and badgered him, until Bolecthindial had shut his councils from his ears and his son from his sight.

But he’d been right.

“We shall not gain the victory by gazing upon the foe,” Bolecthindial said. “I shall take my leave. You are expected, of course, to dine with us.”

“Of course,” Runacarendalur said. But he did not look away from the distant walls.

That night, the Alliance War Council debated long into the night. The strategy was clear: drain the Southern Flower Forest so it could not be used, then besiege Vieliessar and take her fortress by traditional means. In the end, the Alliance would triumph. The War Council had even agreed that they would question Vieliessar before executing her, to see if Celelioniel had told the truth about being able to interpret the prophecy contained within The Song of Amrethion. Once Vieliessar was dead and her Lightborn reclaimed or executed, the Twelve could set to work discovering the source of this “Darkness” and deciding—if it existed at all—how best to crush it.

Implementation of this simple plan, however, was a matter for endless debate. What spells should they order their Lightborn to cast to achieve this? What stockpiles should they conjure? How would their injured be tended, if only Lightless healing could be offered to them?

The War Pavilion was Shielded by the conjoined spells of a thousand Lightborn. No spell could be worked within it, no listener could eavesdrop upon it, no blade could pierce its fabric, no fire could burn it.

No sound could penetrate its walls.

But even its labyrinth of bespellings was not proof against the shaking of the earth that came in the darkest candlemark of night. Cups fell from tables. Tent pegs worked free of the earth, until the gold fabric hung limply from its wooden framework and the slender shafts creaked alarmingly. It took candlemarks to restore order in the camp, and it was not until dawn that they understood what had happened.

The distant cliff was no longer a seamless unblemished sweep of stone.

There was a pass.

For the next six days, as the army advanced, the Alliance Lightborn attacked the High King’s keep. They scoured the ground with winds that ripped the grass from the soil and the soil from the stone beneath. They struck the cliff face with Thunderbolts until the vitrified stone glittered like ice. Waterspouts ripped from underground rivers spun across the gutted land, turning the churned earth to mud. Hyperborean winds turned mud to ice. Fire seared the very air, turning ice to steam, turning steam to blinding blizzards that left the walls of Vieliessar’s fortress drifted high with snow.

The fortress itself was untouched, and on the evening of the sixth day, there was no more prairie to cross.

“This is madness!” Sedreret Aramenthiali said, when the War Council had gathered once more. “We have achieved nothing!”

“Oh, I hardly think it is nothing,” Consort-Prince Irindandirion of Cirandeiron said, fanning himself languidly. “It is entertaining, after all.”

“And useless!” Sedreret snapped. Bolecthindial found himself wishing for his old enemy’s return. Manderechiel had been a bloody-minded brigand, but he’d never belabored the obvious.

Dead. Like Jaeglenhend, Mangiralas, Araphant, Ingelthendragir, and half the Houses of the Uradabhur.

“What do you suggest, Lord Sedreret?” Edheleorn Telthorelandor asked. “With a pass through the Southern Wall available to her, we must assume Vieliessar retreats through it. Once she has accomplished that, she has won. Or do you mean you will send Aramenthiali into such a killing box—in the event her walls fall?”

“I am saddened to hear such … prudence … from your lips, Lord Edelhorn,” Dormorothon said, the twist of her lips indicating she meant another word entirely. “My son is correct: we have thrown the whole power of our Lightborn against her fortress and done nothing but make a waste of the land. And what shall we do tomorrow? We are within the shadow of her walls. Do we ask her politely to ride forth and give battle?”

“I’m surprised you dare rebuke us, Lightsister, when the failure is yours,” Girelain Cirandeiron said silkily. “The walls were raised by Magery. The pass created by Magery. Yet your own spells have been … surprisingly ineffective.”

“How dare you so insult my lady mother?” Sedreret demanded, rising to his feet. “I demand—”

“Aramenthiali demands?” Girelain asked in feigned disbelief, her lips curved in a chill smile. “I did not know you had such a sense of humor, Lord Sedreret.”

Bolecthindial rose to his feet. Around him, conversation died.

“Call me,” he said heavily, “when you have discovered something that will work.”

He turned and strode from the tent.

Runacarendalur was waiting for Bolecthindial when he reached his pavilion. He was sprawled in Bolecthindial’s favorite chair, a cup of wine in his hand. He did not rise to his feet when his father entered.

“I am in no mood for your whining tonight,” Bolecthindial snapped. No servant came forward to take his cloak. The servants had been running off or dying for moonturns now—to the point where the komen diced for pavilion servants instead of gold—and even Bolecthindial’s household was a shadow of what it had been half a year before.

He dropped the garment on the floor and glared, but Runacarendalur did not move. If it were anyone else, Bolecthindial would have punished such insolence with his sword, but it seemed to him almost as if Runacarendalur had courted death for sennights. He would not oblige him.

“No?” Runacarendalur asked. “Then what of my counsel?”

“What counsel can you offer?”

“Better than your War Council,” Runacarendalur said, and despite himself, Bolecthindial laughed sharply.

“I shall have you flogged.”

“Do,” Runacarendalur invited. “But Heal me afterward, for you will need me to lead your meisne into battle. She will fight—and soon.”

“You’re insane,” Bolecthindial said. “Why should she fight when she has somewhere to run to?”

“Because she means to be High King,” Runacarendalur said evenly.

Bolecthindial looked around. He frowned anew at the absence of servants, then walked to the sideboard and selected a cup and a bottle before settling into a chair. “That is hardly fresh news,” he said as he filled his cup.

“Perhaps not,” Runacarendalur said. “But it is information you have all chosen to disregard. She flees, you follow, nothing changes. She must offer battle and force your surrender. Until the Houses gathered here have pledged fealty to her, she has not won.”

“So she will fight,” Bolecthindial said in disbelief. “When?”

“As soon as she can,” Runacarendalur said, as if it was obvious.

“She’s done nothing but run since Jaeglenhend.”

“And a costly flight—to us—that proved to be. It is not running, Father, when you are traveling to your chosen battlefield.”

Bolecthindial regarded him measuringly. He had seen such despair before, but only in the face of a vanquished enemy. “Go to bed, my son,” he said with surprising gentleness. “Tomorrow, we begin our siege.”

He was wrong.