Crown of Vengeance

It was as if she spent her days in a waking dream, her mind growing closer to the vast green mind of the Flower Forest—of all Flower Forests, for whether a league or a thousand leagues apart they were all one. Magery had taught her how fragile the world was, how only her own conscience could protect it —now Arevethmonion showed her she did not have to find that strength alone.

Listen, and I will tell you a story, a true story …

It was the phrase with which the talesingers and songsmiths began their performances, giving the promise of truth. Lady Arevethmonion made the same appeal, the same promise.

Listen.

Ice became Storm. Vieliessar stood in the shadow of one of the great trees, barely a step from the road to the Sanctuary, watching unseen as hounds and hunters sought her. Six were mounted, and of that number, two wore the armor of knights. Their cloaks and surcoats were featureless white—as were the saddlecloths and trappings of their mounts—just as if they were arming pages, unannointed by battle. But they were far too old for that, and her inward sight showed her that their armor, shields, and weapons all glowed with the deep blue fire of spellcraft.

With the knights rode four huntsmen armed with bows and spears, and beside them, afoot among the animals of the pack, walked the Master of Hounds and his apprentice. The hounds were as diverse as the hunters: tall swift hikuliasa, noble sight hounds as swift as an arrow’s flight; merry and tireless teckle hounds, able to track prey over stone and water candlemark after candlemark; fierce thick-muscled boarhounds able to course the most savage prey—even several of the earth-dogs legendary for their willingness to suffer any injury in pursuit of their chosen prey.

Knowing that she had been right in her most mistrustful fantasy did not make Vieliessar happy. It only showed her how much Hamphuliadiel—or someone—feared her.

But if she was feared, she was also loved. The Light ensured there was no scent for the teckles to follow, and the Light gave her the power to render herself unseen, but it was the skill she had learned from Lady Arevethmonion that allowed Vieliessar to follow the hunters on noiseless feet, leaving no track upon the forest floor.

They spent three days searching Arevethmonion for her, and did not even find the places she slept.

Thoughts of war, declared and secret, had occupied Vieliessar’s mind even before the arrival of the hunters. Her thoughts—and her dreams—were troubled, and she apologized often to Lady Arevethmonion, for her tangled emotions were mirrored in the slow mind of the Flower Forest, troubling its serenity. But she could not—dared not —leave the riddle unexamined.

Serenthon Farcarinon had declared war, fought, and died. Celelioniel had proclaimed Vieliessar Child of the Prophecy, and Vieliessar believed Celelioniel had pledged her to war with that naming before she had drawn ten breaths.

But against whom?

She reviewed all she’d ever learned of the Curse. Once—in the reign of Amrethion and Pelashia, millennia ago—the Fortunate Lands had been at peace. All Trueborn had done fealty to High King Amrethion and Great Queen Pelashia, and of that time little record remained, for what tales were there to tell of a happy, peaceful land? Then the queen had died, and the king had gone mad, and no one had been crowned High King after him, for his children and hers were all gone.

There were a thousand tales of how Pelashia had died, of Amrethion’s fate, of their children. It didn’t matter which one was true. From that day to this, the Hundred Houses had been at war with one another, each vying to make its prince High King, while Amrethion’s Song moldered in scholars’ libraries. Somewhere, sometime, the destined Child would be born, and that Child would destroy the Hundred Houses. (“You have come to end us,” whispered the voice of the Starry Huntsman in her memory.) The Child of the Prophecy would claim that which had been lost; innocuous enough, but the Prophecy also spoke of a Darkness which prepared itself for war in unknown lands.

Who?

She considered a hundred enemies and dismissed them all. “Darkness” couldn’t be the Beastlings, since the lands they infested were hardly unknown. “What was lost”—and waiting to be reclaimed—was obviously the Unicorn Throne and the High Kingship. And each of the War Princes had been trying to do exactly that since the fall of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor.

But who would bring the end of the Hundred Houses, and who would sit upon the Unicorn Throne? The same person? And how was the Child of the Prophecy to accomplish this? Even if she broke the Covenant, she could only turn the Fortunate Lands into a lifeless desert. If Vieliessar pledged herself to their destruction, the Hundred would defend themselves in every way they could. Even if she only struck down the Houses of the Great Alliance that had ended Farcarinon—Caerthalien, Aramenthiali, Cirandeiron, Telthorelandor—the Lightborn would band together to destroy her.

Either the Prophecy is true in every detail or it is not true at all, Vieliessar thought in exasperation. Celelioniel had believed in the Prophecy and preserved Vieliessar’s life. Whether Hamphuliadiel believed in the Prophecy or thought it meaningless nonsense, he should not be trying to kill her.

It made no sense.

And Hamphuliadiel had put the explanations far beyond her reach.

INTERLUDE ONE

FEAR AND BETRAYAL

Under King Virulan’s rule, the World Without Sun … flourished.

Time had mantled Obsidian Mountain in a sheath of lifeless ice. In the frozen land over which it brooded, day and night were of equal length, each occupying half a Brightworld year. Here the Endarkened, their bodies obedient to King Virulan’s sorcery, produced offspring, and their numbers grew.

And with it, their curiosity.

That which lived could be shaped. The Endarkened could not truly share their magic—and had no wish to, in any event—but they could share much of their essential nature.

The first creatures of their making were the Lesser Endarkened.

They were less than half the height of the Endarkened, though few of them could stand fully erect. Wingless, tailless—or with short stubby tails—hooved instead of footed, their brows and spines barbed and ridged, their skin as black as the Shadow Throne, rough and scaled.

Nor were they nearly as clever as their tall and beautiful cousins.

The Endarkened delighted in these new creations. They were lazy and sly and treacherous, but they were incapable of posing a threat to their creators. The Lesser Endarkened performed that toil for which the Endarkened had little taste: enlarging the caverns and passages of the World Without Sun; tending the vast farms of strange pale fungus, the soft writhing worms and tunneling insects for whom the kiss of the sun was fatal, the lakes of glowing blind fish. The numbers of the Endarkened had increased to the point where the power of the Deep Earth alone was not enough to sustain them. Eating had become, not an occasional amusement, but a necessity.

As much of a necessity as pain.

The children of He Who Is were bound by the laws of time and matter, and even His vast power could not create—in that realm—a sorcery that did not require payment. Their power came from the pain and fear of their victims and from the anguish and despair of their victims’ deaths. Each spell they cast was paid for in the blood and suffering of others.

The Endarkened wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Endarkened never left witnesses to any of their hunts, nor any sign a hunt had occurred, by King Virulan’s decree. He did not intend his people’s prey to suspect the existence of their hunters until the day his preparations were complete, and his legions rose up out of the earth to begin their slaughter.

But his people must have slaves, and food, and entertainment, and so they ranged across the world.

Hunting.

To the ranks of their shambling, bestial courtiers, they added slaves from every realm in the Bright World: