between them, and so the day was lost.
The vast and terrible wisdom that spilled through Vieliessar’s dreams and into her waking candlemarks was a yoke for her neck, a weight upon her shoulders. Ignorance of the enemy. Ignorance of events. Failure to make alliances. Failure to keep them. Plague, assassination, blockade, privation—each was a weapon that had broken in those long-dead courtiers’ hands. Knowing so many things she would otherwise have learned at the cost of defeats and deaths should have brought comfort. It only showed her that knowledge could not give security or victory. She could face a score of possibilities, knowing she must choose one, and see nothing but defeat at the end of every road.
Parmanaya had been tricked into leading her army through forests unclaimed by either side. Parmanaya and her army vanished without a trace.
Merrindale had two choices once his supply train was burned—stand and fight against a force four times the size of his own, or retreat across the High Hills without food or equipment.
Noremallin’s army mutinied. He could execute the ringleaders—and never trust their successors. He could meet their demands—and see his army in the hands of the enemy. He could slip away in the night with a handful of trusted advisors—and leave his army leaderless and vulnerable. He could flee to the enemy’s battle lines with information that would destroy his army—and be branded a traitor by all he loved.
Great Queen Pelashia Celenthodiel had died, slain in the forest of Tildorangelor, and High King Amrethion— her beloved, her Bondmate—had died of heartbreak. This was the history that everyone knew, the history Vieliessar had been taught all her life. But in her dreams there was no Bond, no quick and romantic death: Amrethion had survived, had gone mad and cruel: his own nobles had slain him before turning to fight among themselves.
The war begun with the death of Amrethion’s queen continued to this day.
Vieliessar did not want to believe it. She could fight to steel her sleeping mind against them, but the moment she dropped her defenses, the dreams returned. And so her nights were filled with the clash of sword upon sword, of the thunder of cavalry at the charge. With the screams of the dying, the shouts of the victors, and a mystery she could not comprehend. Why had the children of Amrethion and Pelashia been forced to flee? Why did those whose lives she spied upon in her sleep believe Pelashia’s children were tainted, unclean?
She did not need to ask who they were. That much she knew. The dishonorable, the tainted, the unworthy lords whom Indinathiel and so many others fought through her dreams …
… were her ancestors.
Her time was running out.
It was past time for Gunedwaen to begin her knightly training, but that would not be possible without a Healing. She’d long known Farcarinon’s Swordmaster followed her only out of old loyalty, not because he believed she could unite the Hundred Houses. That didn’t trouble her, since she could see no way to do it herself. But Gunedwaen did not even believe she could break Ivrulion Light-Prince’s binding. He would not let her try because he thought she would fail—just as he thought she would fail to bring the Hundred Houses to heel.
She knew this as she knew her own name, yet the knowledge gave her no comfort. Her spells had never worked as she’d been told they should—or worse, worked when they should not have. She had learned to dissemble, to pretend she saw the Light as her teachers did, to pretend she grew slowly into the power to Heal those for whom all hope had been lost. Most of all, she had learned to pretend that Healing was her sole strong Gift, for the Sanctuary prized its Healers and there was always work for them within its walls.
But since she had fled the Sanctuary, she had become truly aware of the power she wielded. Healing, True Speech, Overshadow … each Gift she tested was as strong as the next, stronger than anything she’d read of in the records.
She wanted to believe all this was because the Light had not been Called in her, but instead had come in its own time. Even before the dreams had come to challenge what she knew of history, she had wanted to believe any of the Lightborn could do all that she could, if they only had the years she’d been given in which to listen for the Light Within.
For one moment, sharp and painful, Vieliessar wished she was back in the Sanctuary, sitting in the Common Room surrounded by her friends and fellow scholars. She could have taken her questions to them. Only she’d never told any of them the truth when she had the chance. And if she had a second chance, she still would not. Maeredhiel had laid upon her the weight of a destiny she could neither embrace nor escape, making her a creature from a storysong: Child of the Prophecy, a hero for whom her House had died, and who must somehow save the whole world. She’d hidden from it for as long as she could, hoping to find allies, hoping to be proven wrong, hoping the weight of war and death she carried by simply being Serenthon’s heir could be set aside …
Her thoughts so occupied her that her attention was only summoned back to the here-and-now as her boots crunched through a crust of half-rotted snow. She blinked, looking around herself. She had reached the edge of Eldanwarasse without noticing. The young trees of its outermost edge lay several yards behind her, and even so, the air around her was soft with promise, warm enough to melt the drifts of winter.
It was spring outside Eldanwarasse as well as in.
There was no more time.
“You’ve become amazingly fleet of foot if you are back so soon,” Gunedwaen said without turning away from the hearth.
“You have always told me a warrior must have two strong arms and two sound legs to wield a blade—or teach the wielding of it,” Vieliessar answered.
“So I have,” Gunedwaen answered evenly. He spoke to the flames, not to her.
“And so it is time for you to become my teacher in all things,” she said.
“My lord prince—”
The words were humble. The tone was not. Gunedwaen reached out toward the stick that helped him walk and Vieliessar knocked it away. She was done with arguing.
She closed her eyes. To her inward sight, Gunedwaen’s body was caged within a web of Magery: kin to the spells that preserved fruit and grain and meat in timeless suspension until they were needed. If she had not spent so many years as a Sanctuary Healer, she would not have known where to begin, but every spell, every enchantment, had a beginning, no matter how well hidden.
“Stop! Damn you, foolish child, I said—” Gunedwaen roared in pain as she began to attack the Binding; Vieliessar had always known that to lift it would cause as much pain as setting it had.
Striker lifted her head at Gunedwaen’s shout, then pushed herself to her feet, growling in fear before starting to bark. Gunedwaen struggled to his feet, only to fall in the next moment, cursing Vieliessar between ragged breaths. Striker backed away until the corner of the hut stopped her, whining as Gunedwaen scrabbled upon the floor, flailing helplessly. His hand found the walking-stick and he tried to use it to stand. When he could not, he struck at her with it. The blow was weak, with no strength behind it. His speech became a breathless gabble of argument and entreaty: what she meant to do could not be done; he would be useless to her even if she could break the Binding; his life was hers to take but he begged she would be swift and merciful.
And then there were no words, only screams.
Once, long ago, she would have ceased working out of belief that such a spell could not be broken. Out of pity. Out of mercy. She had wrapped herself in the lie that she could feel these things from the moment Glorthiachiel had spoken her true name, had clutched it to her through all her years at the Sanctuary. She’d wished to be like the others—like Celelioniel, like Maeredhiel, like Thurion—for to admit the truth would be to accept a freedom that was terrifying.
And no fear.
Distantly she was aware that the screaming had stopped, but it was of little importance. She had worked her way into the heart of the spell. She could trace each elaborate web of power, its interlacing, its intention, until it was as if she had set the spell herself. Thus far she had done no more than a Healing Mage of skill and power could
