Crown of Vengeance

“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.