crossing from Araphant to Oronviel was so unusual she did not wish to gain information of it second hand, and asking her people to discover whether something unusual was a threat before attacking it was a thing most of them thought was sheer moonstruck madness.
“Now come,” she said to the messenger. “Give me your name and your hand.”
The distance young Randir had covered in less than a candlemark took the troop of heavy warhorses three to retrace, and when they were near to Greenstone Tower, they were met by a troop of its defenders led by Lord Peramarth himself.
“My lord prince,” Peramarth said. When he pushed back the visor of his helm, his entire face was exposed, for the Border Lords might have to fight in any weather. “I did not expect you.”
“I had thought—” Peramarth began, then broke off. “No matter. Greenstone has stood since the days Araphant was a power in the land, and her walls have never been forced. Permit me to offer you my hospitality until we have repulsed our invaders.”
“It seems a strange way to invade anything,” Vieliessar commented a few minutes later, from atop Greenstone Tower. It was no taller than the watchtowers in her own keep, but it seemed as if it were, as there was nothing else for miles around and even the tops of the great trees were below them. Standing in this place, she could imagine she stood among the clouds themselves, and by spreading her arms, could join the hawks in the sky.
“I still cannot make the count,” Angeleb said, sounding unhappy. He was one of Peramarth’s sentries, chosen for his keen vision.
“We saw movement in the forest two days since,” Peramarth said, pointing out and down. The area near the border was thick with greenneedle trees; Vieliessar had been watching since they’d climbed out onto the roof of the watchtower and had yet to see more than an occasional bright flash. “At first I thought Old Luthilion might have come hunting, though he has not been since before the Long Peace. But see—there?” Peramarth pointed to a gap in the forest cover. “Blight and storm has killed the old trees, and the new ones are not yet grown. They rode across that place just this morning. Two tailles of knights, a Green Robe—and someone with the right to ride beneath the princely standard of Araphant.”
Peramarth—she knew—had delayed sending his warning until he was certain the party beneath the trees rode bowshot-straight, and not in the erratic circles of a hunting party. To the Border Lords, giving false warning was as shameful as giving no warning at all.
“Why does he come?” she wondered aloud. “He cannot expect to conquer Oronviel with twenty-four knights and one Lightborn.” Gunedwaen had not wasted his efforts spying on Araphant—he had too few people and too many places they needed to be—so she knew nothing more of it than she had learned at the Sanctuary, and that was little indeed.
“Perhaps he comes to offer you a marriage alliance,” Bethaerian said dryly. “It would be a brief marriage, at least. Old Luthilion has seen a dozen Astromancers tend the Shrine.”
“There is some luck in surviving so long,” Vieliessar said, still thinking aloud. “And perhaps wisdom, too. You say he will cross our border, Peramarth?”
“By midday, if they do not stop.”
“Then we will greet him and see why he has come.”
Peramarth disliked her plan—a mark of his loyalty, inconvenient though it was—and he liked it even less when Vieliessar said she meant to meet Araphant herself. In the end she prevailed, and sat her destrier before a taille of sixty knights: her own meisne and three tailles from Greenstone.
As the approaching party became visible, Vieliessar could see that tied to Araphant’s pennion was a bough of the greenneedle tree, the traditional symbol that the party riding beneath it requested a parley-truce. Beside the knight carrying the princely standard—a leaping green stag upon a sable field—rode another in armor the iridescent green-black of a beetle’s wing, and upon his left rode a Lightborn, his hair silvered with great age. When they reached the border stones, they stopped, and the standard-bearer and the Lightborn rode on alone.
The wind blew through Vieliessar’s hair, blowing its strands ticklingly over her cheek. She did not wear her helmet; the envoy must be able to know he spoke with the War Prince of Oronviel, not some faceless messenger.
Lord Peramarth’s knights were explicitly under her command, and she had given them unambiguous orders. Nonetheless, Vieliessar was proud of their discipline and that of the Ivrithir knights, for she had bidden them all stand still and silent, and not one armored figure moved, even when she rode forward, Bethaerian at her side, to meet the Araphant messengers.
“Oronviel gives you good greeting,” she said when she and the two from Araphant had stopped facing one another. “I would know how it is you come to us beneath the branch of truce, for there is no war between us.”
“Araphant greets Oronviel,” the aged Lightborn answered. His voice was thin, but in it Vieliessar could still hear the echo of the resonance and power it must have held in his youth. “I am Celeharth Lightbrother, Chief Lightborn to War Prince Luthilion Araphant. We ride beneath the branch of truce out of desire to speak with you, Lord Vieliessar Oronviel, honestly and in peace.”
“Your lord might have done so many moonturns since,” Vieliessar said, nodding in the direction of the green- armored figure who still waited on the far side of the border. She could skim the surface of Celeharth’s thoughts easily: he knew Luthilion had come to make an alliance with Oronviel, but what terms he would offer or accept, Celeharth did not know.
He smiled faintly at her mild gibe. “When one reaches my master’s years, one does not hasten. Yet he would speak now.”
“Events do not always wait upon the desire for reflection. Yet I am eager to hear Araphant’s word to me. Say to your lord that I and all with me here accept Araphant’s truce, and I offer my own body as surety for his life.” She unbuckled her swordbelt and held it out to Bethaerian. Slowly, her thoughts a roil of worry for her liege’s safety, Bethaerian took the weapon.
Celeharth inclined his head. “I bring him to your side.” He turned and rode back to the Araphant knights. The lone knight-herald holding the pennion of truce sat as motionless as if he were carved from stone.
Vieliessar could feel the tension of the
Slowly the knights of Araphant rode toward their standard-bearer. When they were still a little distance away, Luthilion raised his hand and the knights behind him stopped. Araphant’s War Prince removed his helm and unbelted his swordbelt, handing both helm and sword to one of his knights before continuing forward, accompanied only by Celeharth.
If Luthilion’s Chief Lightborn was full of years, the War Prince himself was truly ancient. His hair, though still proudly worn in the elaborate braids of a knight, was colorless with age. His face was printed with the lines of all the joys and sorrows he had known in the long centuries of his life, but if his body beneath the bright armor was frail with age, his will was as unyielding as star-forged adamantine.
“I give you good greeting, Oronviel,” he said, when his destrier stopped beside his standard-bearer.
“And I you, Araphant,” Vieliessar answered.
“I would speak with you regarding matters of interest to us both, yet I would do so in more comfort. It is not seemly for two princes to shout at each other from their destriers as if they were maiden knights hot to win their
