within Arevethmonion’s sacred precincts, nor bury Anginach as if he were Landbond.
In the end, she left him in Arevethmonion’s keeping and simply walked away. She did not look back. She never returned to the place where she had left him to his journey.
She took the parchment with her.
She stopped beside the stream near her sleeping place to wash the blood from her hands and clothing. The parchment she had taken from Anginach’s body was a length such as might have been used for a scroll. It was torn at one end and glued closed with drying blood. Carefully, she immersed it in the stream, rinsing it clean, then unfolded it gently. The interior surface was covered in tiny, precise writing. Vieliessar’s eyes widened. She recognized the hand.
Celelioniel of Enerchelimier.
Celelioniel Astromancer.
* * * “I never meant to turn my hand to The Song of Amrethion. My interest was in Mosirinde’s Covenant. Many have said that it was her enchantments which caused the Flower Forests to be. Today we draw upon them to work our Magery, as the Covenant commands us. But Mosirinde taught more of what we must not do than what we must: of the dangers of necromancy and blood magic, of taking so much energy from Life that we leave Death in our wake. How came she, I wondered, to know so intimately the perils that might befall us?”
As Vieliessar read, it was as if she heard Celelioniel’s living voice. Not the ravings of the mad Astromancer whom all now mocked, but the careful researches of the scholar, for like so many of the Lightborn, Celelioniel was first a researcher and historian. Vieliessar decided that she held the preface Celelioniel had written for her annotated copy of The Song of Amrethion and assumed that the rest of the scroll was now the spoil of those who had harried Anginach and his escort to their deaths.
Celelioniel must have taken it away with her when she returned to Enerchelimier, Vieliessar realized. Did she realize Hamphuliadiel meant to betray her when it was too late for her to stop him? Or could she not bear to give it up?
There was no way to know.
Celelioniel’s preface broke off in the middle of a sentence—Anginach must have torn it loose and hidden it when he’d realized they were pursued—but Vieliessar had enough to draw conclusions about the whole. Celelioniel had begun by attempting to fix one moment in time: the birth of the Flower Forests and the inception of the Covenant the Lightborn swore to husband the land. Celelioniel wanted to know how this knowledge had been gained, for no child fears the fire who hasn’t been burned. And so she had learned of a Darkness—hungry, implacable, biding its time and gathering its armies until it rode forth from its obsidian halls to slake its unslakable hunger on all that was. An enemy as real and malign as any Beastling army—but an army whose first attack upon the Hundred Houses lay not in the primordial past, but in the future.
Vieliessar would never know what steps had led Celelioniel to The Song of Amrethion, and what hints gleaned from ancient histories had made her realize Amrethion’s Curse was not gibberish. But by the time Celelioniel Astromancer traced the ancient history of the Darkness back to the beginning of Lightborn Magery, Serenthon’s feet were already set upon the road of the High Kingship.
How came this to Anginach’s hand? How came he to seek me?
She realized then that it had not been Vieliessar Lightsister whom Anginach sought, nor even Vieliessar Farcarinon.
Anginach had sought the Child of the Prophecy.
Her.
To warn her.
Darkness comes! Vieliessar thought in horror, as Celioniel’s words fell into place in her mind. As Amrethion foretold!
Farcarinon’s fall was the last of Amrethion’s forewarnings.
It comes in my lifetime. This is why Celelioniel placed Peacebond upon me so long ago. She feared to hasten its coming by so much as a sennight.
The Hundred Houses must be warned.
But even as that thought came to her, despair thrust it aside. What could she say? Who could she tell? Proofs might be found in the Library of Arevethmonion—if Hamphuliadiel had not locked them all away, perhaps even destroyed the priceless scrolls.
Hamphuliadiel had sought to kill her. He would not do that if he thought the Prophecy was false. He believed, just as Celelioniel had.
He believes, and conceals the books of prophecy so no one can duplicate Celelioniel’s work. He seeks to keep the events Amrethion foretold from coming true by killing me. He cannot seek my life openly, lest in doing so he gives others proof that I am indeed what Celelioniel named me: Child of the Prophecy, the Curse and Doom of the Hundred Houses.
She did not wish to claim that destiny. She didn’t even know what it was.
What am I to do? What?
She could find no answer.
* * * “I have no right to ask your forgiveness.”
In the heart of Arevethmonion, Vieliessar dreamed.
The chamber was filled with light. It was airy and inviting, the white stone of its walls little more than punctuation for the enormous panes of leaded glass that took the summer sunlight and turned it into a thousand many-hued sparks of fire. The one who sat at the delicate table in the center of the pool of sunlight was both familiar and unknown. His long black hair was caught back by a thin band of moonsilver about his brow. Its intricate braids were similar to those worn by the komen, but instead of being woven into a knot at the base of his neck, the long braids hung free.
He was writing. The rhythmic measured movement of the pen across the surface of the vellum made the rings he wore cast a changing pattern of bright sparks on the vellum and the surface of the table.
“And it would be unseemly of me to do so. I suppose it would. But I can hope for your understanding. Hatred and fear are heavy chains. I know this. Or I will know it.”
The place was one Vieliessar had never seen, yet somehow she knew it. Celephriandullias- Tildorangelor, the Lost City. The royal city, from which Amrethion Aradruiniel had reigned.
He stopped writing and looked up, meeting her gaze. She was startled to see that his eyes were not the black of the eyes of every person she’d ever seen. This one’s eyes were the darkest shade of gold.
“Believe this: I would not have set so heavy a task upon you if there had been any other way. I can only hope … But that is foolishness. I may tell myself you will prevail. I will never know.”
“What…?” Her voice emerged in a rusty croak, as if long unused, and the fact that she had spoken at all held her suddenly paralyzed. She had studied the ways of prophecy and Foretelling for many years. No one who had left any record had ever been anything more than an invisible watcher, swept along by the logic of the vision.
“I … I do not yet know if I shall,” she said. She could speak, she could move, and to do those things filled her with an awe not far removed from dread.
“Nor do I,” he answered, meeting her gaze as if she stood before him in flesh. “I do not know, spirit of future days, if you are male or female, great prince or humble servant. I know only that the land needs your strength.”
“Can you— Will you— What enemy? What—”
He raised a slender hand, and Vieliessar fell silent.
“I cannot answer you, spirit. I do not have the answers you seek. Today my beloved, my queen, my Pelashia, presented me with our firstborn. A son. To secure his safety and that of my kingdom, she has set upon me a great spell, that I may prophesy of things yet to come.”
His queen. Pelashia Celenthodiel, who had given Light to the Lightborn.
