“And yet, it is in my mind that such small forces as you propose to dispatch on this ‘progress’ will be easy prey for a larger force. If you must ransom every knight in your domain not once, but a dozen times during War Season, Oronviel will be impoverished by Harvest.”
“But I do not mean them to ride during summer,” Vieliessar said reasonably. “I mean them to begin now.”
“Ride to war in winter?” Rithdeliel said, aghast.
Gunedwaen laughed. “You are not thinking to win a war with the loyalty of Landbond and smallholder, are you?” he scoffed.
Vieliessar did not answer directly. “Aradreleg, where were you born?” she asked.
“On Willowleaf Farm,” she answered, sounding puzzled. “My father is overseer there.”
“Who rides to war without Lightborn, Gunedwaen?” Vieliessar asked next.
“Idiots,” Gunedwaen said. “But—”
“We win wars
“But—” Rithdeliel said, and stopped.
“We do it because it is our right,” Vieliessar finished for him. “And because we can win no battle without Lightborn to Heal our wounds, light our pavilions, gentle our horses, keep our food from spoiling, and a hundred other tasks. You say that Farmholder and Landbond care not who holds the land they work. I say: give them cause to care, and they will. Return their children to them, provide them with the safety and comfort that Magery affords, and they will give us a land at peace.”
“Until someone comes over the border to put an end to it,” Thoromarth said.
“Until then,” Vieliessar agreed, nodding. “But no army fights in winter, as you say. Let us use this winter to secure Oronviel.”
“By raiding beyond our borders,” Rithdeliel said, touching his finger to the chalk marks on the map.
“All borders are disputed,” Vieliessar reminded him. “Come Sword Moon, our neighbors will find their lands less than they once thought.”
“What has this mad plan of yours to do with…?” Gunedwaen asked after Vieliessar had dismissed the others to begin turning her ideas into reality.
“Everything,” she said. “I will build an army. I will push Oronviel’s borders as far as I may before anyone objects or even notices. If I hold the farms and make them safe, I hold the loyalty of the Lightborn who come from them. Next I shall take Ivrithir and Araphant: both are clients of Caerthalien, as Oronviel is. Ivrithir is small, and Araphant has a dotard for a War Prince.”
“Caerthalien and Aramenthiali will ally,” Gunedwaen said, speaking slowly and carefully, as if presenting information she lacked. “Oronviel cannot defeat such an alliance on the field.”
“Are you certain?” Vieliessar asked. “Wait and see.”
When she had been a Candidate, a Servant, a Postulant, and even Lightborn at the Sanctuary of the Star, Vieliessar had read voraciously—for pleasure, for knowledge, for an escape from the grey stone walls which were all she had ever expected to know. Her studies served her in good stead now, for Arevethmonion’s holdings were unmatched—and, for most of her time, uncensored. She had eagerly devoured accounts written by the Lightborn who had stood near for every princely council—tales not edited to flatter or excuse, for no lord would ever read them.
When Vieliessar had come upon mention of Farcarinon in such accounts, she had read them closely, for none of Farcarinon had survived to write their own versions. It did not matter that Farcarinon’s Lightborn had survived her fall: they had taken oaths to other Houses. But from Arevethmonion’s scrolls, she had pieced together the tale no one was alive to tell.
Serenthon Farcarinon’s ambitious weaving had begun even as War Prince Hiathuint, his father, lay upon his deathbed. Nearly a full score of decades had passed before its true shape could be discerned, a gossamer net of alliance, promise, and dream that tangled all the Houses of the West, great and less, in its strands.
Farcarinon’s first and staunchest ally had been Caerthalien. Aramenthiali and Telthorelandor stood apart, Cirandeiron bent this way and that like a young tree in a storm, first yielding to Serenthon’s wooing, next recollecting her ancient dignity.
When Caerthalien betrayed Farcarinon and allied with Aramenthiali and Telthorelandor—and Cirandeiron rushed to join them—many of Farcarinon’s allies fled. Others held fast until battle was inevitable, then sued for terms of surrender. Still others had stood fast until the day of the battle itself. Ivrithir had stood with Farcarinon until the morning of the battle, and no one could now say whether that was because Atholfol Ivrithir had been loyal until the last hope was gone, or merely wished to time his betrayal to the moment it would do Farcarinon the greatest harm. Nor did Vieliessar care. She had learned the lesson her father had not lived to learn. By the time her army took the field, she would have rendered it impossible for them to betray her.
The forest grew, thick and old, all across the border. It would have been impossible to tell where one domain ended and the next began save for the marker stone in the clearing, bespelled with Silverlight so that it glowed softly in the twilight gloom beneath the trees. As Vieliessar approached it, she saw a lone rider moving through the trees to meet her.
Atholfol Ivrithir was more than two-thirds through his allotted span of years, and he had held Ivrithir for most of that time, for a War Prince’s heir often came to rule early in life. His youngest child, Heir-Princess Caragond, could expect to burn her father’s bones and take his sword no more than three centuries hence—and far less, were Atholfol unlucky.
“Well met, Oronviel,” he said, swinging down from the back of his destrier. “I confess, I did not think you would come.”
“Neither did my household,” she answered, vaulting from Sorodiarn’s back. “Or, rather, they wished I would not.”
Atholfol smiled thinly. “Yet here we both are. You wish me to void the treaty I have sworn with Caerthalien in order to ally with Oronviel as I once did with Farcarinon. I ask you this: where is Ivrithir’s advantage in doing so?”
“If you wish an end to pointless war, your advantage is great. I shall be High King whether you aid me or no, yet I ask your help.”
“What help can I give?” Atholfol answered mockingly, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of harmlessness. “Ivrithir is small and poor—the indemnities I have paid to Caerthalien since the day Farcarinon fell have seen to that.”
“I do not have the patience for this,” Vieliessar answered, her voice edged. “You are inclined to this alliance, or you would not be here. What I want from Ivrithir is your army—all of it. Supplies, mounts, your Lightborn, your pledge to support Oronviel in all things, passage across your borders for my people, and all those brigands taken in your lands to be turned over to Oronviel for my justice.”
There was a moment of silence. “Perhaps I should name you my heir and vow my lands to you at once?” Atholfol asked. “I still see no advantage to Ivrithir in any of this.”
“You will no longer have to tithe Caerthalien a tenth-part of your harvests and your cattle,” Vieliessar said in a voice of mock-innocence, and Atholfol laughed.
“Hardly sufficient! When your father came wooing me, he promised me greater lands, a share of the wealth of those Houses we cast down, and a place upon his council.”
“And I will not,” Vieliessar answered. “For it was such bargains that destroyed him. I promise you three things, Atholfol Ivrithir: an end to the ceaseless warfare between House and House, a justice that runs the same for all, whether of High House or Low—and that you will not have to face my army in battle.”
“Every child looks to the future with such jeweled hopes, Lord Vieliessar. My Caragond is just the same. She swears that when she is War Prince, she will not be taken in clientage by Caerthalien, that she will take back the lands we have been forced to cede, that she will not give up her children as hostages. I said much the same, when
