Crown of Vengeance

For almost a full turn of the Wheel she fought to step back into the skin of one Lightless. It was a battle she was doomed to lose, for the Light Within demanded to be used, just as limbs and senses did.

And yet, if she wished to keep her secret, she could ask for neither help nor training.

But that did not mean she could not practice. Knowing what to do was simple: the Postulants all spoke freely of the training exercises. She must learn to trust the Light above her physical senses. And Calling Fire was simple enough.

But once a Postulant mastered Fire and Inward Sight, Silverlight was the next spell. It was a thing she dared not attempt within her sleeping chamber.

The meditation and practice chambers were heavily Warded against the mishaps of Candidates learning to wield the Light. One of her tasks was to clean and prepare the chambers for use. No one would notice if she spent a few more minutes on the task than it actually took. All she needed to do was wait until that duty fell to her once more in the natural way of things.

And a few days later, it did.

She hurried through her midday meal, for Cindil-chamber would be needed in the first candlemark after midday. Vieliessar had once thought the chambers unpleasantly stark. Now she could see the colors of the Wards which made the stone walls a tapestry of shifting opal and turned the polished wooden floor into a mosaic of amber and gold. Her servant’s tasks occupied only a few minutes—to bring fresh incense of the proper kind, to fill the water jug, to make certain the chamber was clean and orderly—and then she was free to work undisturbed.

“You breathe the power in, then you imagine how you wish it to go. But it isn’t really like that, because in a way you’re actually remembering something you never saw. Oh, I can’t explain it, Vielle—I can just do it!” Thurion’s frustrated words echoed through her memory.

All that was required for Fire was to scoop up a scrap of the power that surrounded everyone and concentrate it for the instant needed to kindle something into flame. It was not so with the thousand other spells the Lightborn could command. Each one had a name, a shape, a presence, as if it were something one might hold in one’s hand, like a xaique piece—and for each Lightborn, there was one spell that was theirs above all others to command: their Keystone Gift. That Gift shaped their training and their studies: a Keystone Gift was the strongest talent a Lightborn possessed, from which they might weave a new spell to add to the Sanctuary’s store of Light. Spells could not be written down, nor could the knowing of them be spoken into the ear. The shapes of the Greater Spells could only be passed mind to mind, so that any Lightborn who wove and crafted a new spell must come to the Sanctuary to pass it to as many other Lightborn as possible. It was against Mosirinde’s Covenant to keep a knowing restricted to the Lightborn of one’s own House. Spellcraft must pass among the Lightborn as freely as wind across the land.

Lesser spells were bound into the stones of the practice chambers, so that the Postulants might See them and take them for their own. Vieliessar knew as well as any Postulant the order in which the spells must be learned, for there was a Teaching Song about it: Fire and Sight and Silverlight, Find and Fetch and Send and Shield, Weather and Ward, Keep and Heal …

She’d seen Silverlight cast all her life. She closed her eyes and held out her hands …

And Silverlight rushed into her mind as if she had opened a floodgate. Suddenly there was brightness behind her closed eyes, as if she held the moon between her open hands. With a startled cry, Vieliessar flung it away, only to see the spell-symbol in her mind become another equally familiar shape as the power did her bidding. She opened her eyes, and saw—in horror—that the bowl of the brazier was now shining with an all-too-familiar light.

No! Don’t!

In vain, she tried to douse the glow. All she managed to do was make the metal glow even more brightly. Sadimerial Lightsister would soon arrive; Vieliessar’s breath came hot and hard with fear. The Lightsister would see Silverlight cast on the brazier.…

Darkness! I want it to be dark! Vieliessar thought in blind panic. Unmade! Untouched! As if I never—

She felt something shift inside her mind, but before she could turn her inward eye to see it, a wave of cold sickness washed over her. She staggered backward, her hands covered with a sticky dust.

The brazier had gone dark.

But it had also turned to grey stone and was crumbling away.

If she had not been so terrified of discovery, horror and disbelief would have held Vieliessar frozen. What had been, moments before, a bright copper bowl on a bronze tripod was now … rock. Ore.

Unmade.

She was on her hands and knees, trying to scoop the pieces into her skirt, when she felt the now-familiar tingle of the presence of one of the Lightborn. She looked behind her apprehensively. For a long moment she held Sadimerial Lightsister’s gaze.

“The work will go faster if you use a broom, girl,” Sadimerial said at last. “And have a new brazier brought from storage. I had not known Filgoroth wished to challenge me again so soon.”

Vieliessar fled, holding a skirt full of dust.

* * *

Who Filgoroth was, and why he would challenge Sadimerial, and how, Vieliessar never found out. All she knew was that no one accused her of being Lightborn. She swore she would never again do anything so unsafe, but a few sennights later she was in Oiloisse-chamber. Oiloisse was utterly empty, for some practice had gone awry and its furniture had not yet been replaced. This time the Silverlight came easily—a moon-pale globe she could hold in her hands. She could feel the spellshape in her mind try to twist from simple conjuration to bespelling an object, but there was nothing within the bounds of the Wards for it to fix on.

She still did not know how to unmake what she had made, but forcing it against the Wards worked well enough.

And time passed.

* * *

Each year, the hot breathless days of Thunder Moon brought a pause in the Sanctuary’s unceasing labor, for the days were hot, and many in the Sanctuary—save those Candidates who had incurred Maeredhiel’s special displeasure—came to the gardens take a candlemark or more of ease when the sun had passed its fiercest. Behind her, Vieliessar could hear the shouts and laughter of a group of Postulants playing a counting game, the soft distant sounds of someone practicing upon the harp. The song of a flute wound through its soft sweet notes—hesitant, unpracticed, but holding the promise of mastery to come.

The chirring of insects, the soft hot breeze, the smooth warmth of the Vilya’s bark beneath her hands, all lulled her. Was I ever so young as these new Postulants? she wondered in bemusement. They had all thought themselves on the verge of adulthood when they came to the Sanctuary, but it had been a very long time since she had been a Postulant. To number those years Vieliessar must think hard, and count Midwinters upon her fingers.

She ducked back against the trunk of the great Vilya that dominated the garden as two of the Postulants ran past her, shrieking excitedly in their play. They reached the low wall and scrambled over it, racing along one of the narrow paths between the fields of standing grain in the field beyond. Landbonds, she thought to herself, seeing cropped hair and faces narrow with a lifetime of starvation. At least they return to a better life than that, Twice-Called or not. One trained at the Sanctuary could be sure of a place in a Great House, for the Lightborn preferred Sanctuary-trained servants. One thought blended inevitably into the next: Soon Thurion will go. It is already past time.

It was not that after a dozen short years of study Thurion could know all the Light held …

… but that the knowing came from the Light itself, not from Lightborn teachings.

I could be happy here blended, in a seamless instant, with: I am happy here. Vieliessar no longer wondered at her good fortune in remaining hidden from discovery. She had wished for nothing else, desperately, for moonturns. A wish, a desire, need, was the beginning of a spell. She could spend the rest of her life learning all the Light had to teach.

She got to her feet, shook her long skirts free of grass, and walked slowly across the garden. The low stone wall at its edge marked the boundary between the Sanctuary gardens and Rosemoss Farm, and its smooth grey