Crown of Vengeance

it would be by Postulants and Candidates, would be to expose herself to … what?

She wasn’t sure. She was half a servant and half a Candidate, and the War Prince of no House, and that was a thing that unsettled her thoughts every time she considered it, for in all the Fortunate Lands, to be born was to know one’s entire future. Only the Light could change that, though not entirely. For all their power, the Green Robes still served.

But whatever you are, you are no coward, she told herself fiercely. Ignoring the questioning looks of the Candidates clearing the tables, she shook out her skirts and walked to the Common Room.

Hearing laughter and talk as she approached the doorway, she nearly turned aside to seek the silence and solitude of her rooms. But then she heard Thurion’s voice, and pride and stubbornness drove her across the threshold. She spied Thurion at a table with many whom she recognized: some of them had shared her Service Year, but most had not.

Namritila and Borinuel were of her Service Year; Borinuel had come from Calwas with Anginach and both had become Postulants. Borinuel had once said Anginach’s strategy for success was to make sure everyone else failed; all Vieliessar knew of Anginach was that he’d spent his Service Year seeing how much he could shirk his duties before he drew Maeredhiel’s wrath. Mathingaland had been a Candidate in the year before hers; he liked to talk a great deal, making long speeches as if he instructed children, but his careful marshaling of facts and details others skipped over enabled Vieliessar to follow the conversation, no matter the topic. Arahir came from so far to the east that her House spent its time battling the Beastlings instead of the rest of the Hundred Houses. She wore a gryphon feather around her neck, for she had killed one years before she had come to the Sanctuary, and had been allowed to keep that trophy despite jewels and ornaments being banished. Brithuniel fretted constantly about the coming day when she must cut her long braids to take the Green Robe. Monrhedel was one of the few whose House she knew—he was more interested in history than in magic, but returning to Jirvaleg as one of the Lightborn would allow him to ask War Prince Edheluin to free his parents from their forced oaths of fealty so they could return to House Onegring’s lands and the children they had left behind there.

“Vielle!” Thurion’s face and voice held nothing but honest pleasure in seeing her. “Come! Sit! We are arguing—as usual—but it is no great matter.”

Hesitantly she crossed the room and took the seat she provided for her.

“Oh, who counts deer anyway?” Namritila said crossly, clearly continuing the previous conversation.

“Amrethion Aradruiniel, clearly,” Borinuel answered. “Or he wishes us to.”

“That is a thing not yet established,” Mathingaland said, clearly as unwilling as the others to set aside the argument. “‘When stars and clouds together point the way, And of a hundred deer one doe can no longer counted be’—”

“Clear as a murky river,” Arahir interrupted in disgust. She seemed to notice Vieliessar for the first time. “But this must bore you,” she said.

“Perhaps it would—had I the least notion of what you were discussing,” Vieliessar said dryly.

She would not ask Thurion about the Child of the Prophecy in front of the others, and to take him aside would only draw more attention to her presence. But as it developed, she had no need to.

“You are fortunate not to be a Postulant,” Thurion said, a faint note of self-mockery in his protest. “They keep us reading from morning to night, and we must memorize it all. It is from The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel. You must know it.”

She nodded slowly. Parts of it had been performed at the great feasts held in Caerthalien. “It’s long,” she said.

“Longer than you know,” Thurion said ruefully. “Some say Amrethion Aradruiniel wrote the Song himself, having foreknowledge of his doom, others say it was written by members of his court in the first days of their exile. Still others say it’s not one Song, but many, all stitched together into an uneasy patchwork. Everyone knows The Song of Amrethion’s Rade and The Song of Pelashia’s Gift, but there are scrolls and scrolls of it here, and the last part, after The Song of the Doom of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, is just a long jumble of meaningless poetry. It’s supposed to be a prophecy that someday there will be a new High King upon the Unicorn Throne, and there’s a Child of the Prophecy whose birth will herald the fall of the High Houses.”

So Maeredhiel named me. Vieliessar was torn between relief and disappointment: naming her “Child of the Prophecy” seemed to be nothing more than an obscure joke of Maeredhiel’s, especially if the Child of the Prophecy was supposed to destroy all the High Houses. (Her own ambition was no more grand than the slaughter of all the Caerthalien Line Direct.) But surely Celelioniel Astromancer had believed it. She had set Peacebond upon Vieliessar at the moment of her birth because of that belief. But Vieliessar had been at the Sanctuary long enough to hear somewhat of its previous Astromancer. Celelioniel had drifted into madness in the last decades of her reign.

“It seems unlikely,” she said.

“I know,” Thurion said quietly. “Most of my teachers think the last part of Amrethion’s Song is nonsense, or some code we have lost the key to. But we have to memorize it anyway. I never thought I would be tired of scrolls and of reading—but that was before I spent so many candlemarks in the Library.”

“But come! Share our pain,” Namritila said. “You are High House raised, you will have heard parts of The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel all your life! Yet what are we to make of—oh, go on, Thurion, your voice is better than mine. Give her the verse about the Throne!”

Thurion smiled and nodded. “Here’s one I warrant you haven’t heard, Vielle:

“For twice upon five hundred lives, the Throne of Shame shall sleep unknown

And Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor a haunt of shadows lie

The Happy Lands shall ring to blood and battle through the wheel of years

While all who husband hidden secrets die…”

“But Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor is a nursery song!” Vieliessar said in protest. “You know it, I’m sure: ‘The city of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor was as bright as jewels. White were its walls and sun-gold-gleaming were its roofs, and its ruler was Amrethion Aradruiniel, and his meisne was a hundred knights. The first was Prince Cirandeiron, who rode a white horse and had armor of gleaming silver. His destrier’s armor was silver, too, and there were diamonds set in his shoes. The second was Queen Telthorelandor, who rode a golden horse and had armor of brightest gold. Her destrier’s armor was golden, too, and he was shod in cairngorms and purest gold. The third’—”

“Yes, yes, yes—it goes on forever!” Arahir protested laughingly. “A hundred knights for the Hundred Houses, each more beautiful than the last. I wish we studied that instead of Amrethion’s Song—I’m sure it makes as much sense!”

* * *

But alone in her rooms at the end of the evening, Vieliessar was unable to dismiss the hradan Maeredhiel had laid upon her so easily. There must be more to her words—to Celelioniel’s belief—than an esoteric joke, and Vieliessar became determined to discover what it was. But it was far more difficult than she hoped. To find a copy of the text was easy enough. But The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel filled twenty close-written scrolls, and there were tenfold more written about it. After that night, the nine of them would often gather in the Common Room at the end of the day. Vieliessar had been doubtful of her welcome at first—she was no Postulant, to understand their talk of magic—but Thurion’s friends seemed as interested in her tales of keeping the stillroom ready for use as she was in their tales of using it, and she was never made to feel less than they by the things they found to talk of.

Not all the Postulants were so welcoming. Many, seeing her in the Common Room in the grey tunic and skirts of a servant, spoke ostentatiously of their studies in magic. Vieliessar quickly realized Thurion’s circle was made up of those who did not care.

“‘Stars and clouds point the way…’” Thurion mused one evening, turning his teacup around between his palms and frowning down at it as if the fragrant amber liquid were a scrying pool. “I am not sure what that phrase can mean. That the stars show the time, and the season, and even hold Foretellings for those skilled to read them is something everyone knows. And of course omens may be taken from the sky and the weather—providing the weather has not been caused by a Mage bringing rain or warmth out of season!” he added, smiling.