Crown of Vengeance

“I must!” she said, so urgently that Thoromarth reined his palfrey to a stop. “You may not know of the Covenant the Lightborn swear to abide by, which we will keep—which they will keep—even if their liege-lords order them to do something against it. But you know that the Lightborn do not use their arts in war.”

“Yes,” Thoromarth said, when the silence had stretched long enough he knew she would say nothing more. “This Covenant. They all swear to it.”

“No,” Vieliessar said. “The Covenant is not the same thing as that promise.”

If Thoromarth had felt uneasy before, now he felt dread such has he had only felt the single time he had gone to make sacrifice at the Shrine of the Star. “It must be,” he said.

“No,” Vieliessar said quietly. “The Covenant is our pledge that we will never draw so much power from the land that it sickens and dies, that we will never draw power from the shedding of blood nor from any breathing thing. In battle, Mosirinde Peacemaker thought, there would be too much temptation. For when victory is sweet, and ardently desired, and so many are slain or come near to death, it would seem a small thing to steal the life of an enemy. Or to let the death of one’s own warriors bring one victory. And so we wrap ourselves in custom and let the Lightless think it is a vow.”

His father and his teachers, his mother, wife, brothers, and children, had all thought Thoromarth slow-witted. In this moment he wished it were so, so that he would not understand what argument his lord now wove. “Then this Covenant and that promise are the same,” he said again, more urgently. They must be. They have to be.

“No,” Vieliessar said again. “Mosirinde hoped to put an end to war by removing the sharpest blade from the armory of the War Princes. She wished to end the suffering of the Lightborn, for those who drew power from blood went mad. She wrote that they sickened and died, but that before their deaths, they did great harm. And I will not break her Covenant, for I am sworn to it. But I will be High King, Thoromarth. And to gain the Throne, I will use every weapon I have.”

The silence stretched between them, as Thoromarth tried to unhear his Lord’s words, tried not to understand their meaning. “You have taken my throne from me by trickery and Magecraft,” he said at last.

“I used no Magery to best Rithdeliel,” she answered steadily. “To defeat Eiron Lightbrother’s shield afterward, yes. But I had already won Oronviel by right of the sword. You must believe this, if you believe no other thing I say to you. I used only the swordcraft Rithdeliel and Gunedwaen gave to me.”

“That is not possible,” Thoromarth said slowly. He wished to believe her with all his heart. He’d believed it was so, even when it had seemed impossible, for there had been no alternative. But now she said she had not, would not, set aside her Magery.

“I do not lie,” she answered. She smiled, and Thoromarth did not think he had ever seen such an expression of grief. “The High King chose me. He wrote of me in a Song—a prophecy. If my skill in swordcraft owes anything to Magery, it is Amrethion’s, not mine.”

“Then let the Magery you wield end there!” Thoromarth cried, his voice harsh. “It cannot be— No one can blame—”

“I cannot,” Vieliessar answered sadly. “I have not set aside my Light, though I have let you, everyone, believe I have. I will use it on the battlefield—if I must. And I shall ask my Lightborn to use theirs as well.”

“They will leave you,” Thoromarth said, still grasping for what he knew as truth. “They will not do it.”

“Then they will leave,” Vieliessar said. “Some will not. Oh, Thoromarth, how can you think the Lightborn noble beyond desire, beyond temptation, beyond anger? Hamphuliadiel, who was set highest of all of us, grasps after power behind a curtain of lies. Can you think the rest of us are better than he is?”

“You must be!” Thoromarth answered. He had never expected to say such words. To her. Of her. “You must be! Or is all your talk of justice and truth and peace nothing more than another curtain of lies?”

“What I have promised, I will do,” she answered, and in that moment, Thoromarth had the chill conviction that he spoke not to a living woman of flesh, a woman who could sweat and bleed, but to a power as distant and inhuman as the Voice of the Shrine. “I would never have come here if I did not mean to do all I have promised.”

“Then why— Why—” To his horror, Thoromarth felt tears prickle behind his eyes. “Why must you tell me what you have?” he asked, his voice a whisper more forceful than a shout.

“If you cannot bear this knowledge, no one can, and I have lost,” she said simply. “If I may say to you, my liege-man and companion, my counselor, my friend, that I will use Magery in war, and you will still follow me … then there is a chance.”

He could slay her, Thoromarth thought. Here, his sword against hers, afoot. Or he could take what he knew to her commanders and raise the army up in mutiny against her. He could make such accusations against her as would turn her Lightborn against her. He could say she was mad—that she’d taken his throne by Magery—that she would not be content with gaining the Unicorn Throne, but meant to kill all the War Princes, whether they had sworn to her or not.

He could say everything she’d said since she took Oronviel was a lie.

“Only a chance?” he asked, his voice rough.

“Only that,” she answered.

“They will hate you,” he said. “They will fear you.”

“My enemies, yes,” she said. “My friends will see Thoromarth of Oronviel standing beside me and know there is nothing to fear.”

And I will, he thought. Realizing that gave him no joy. He had surrendered his throne out of despair and superstition—he saw that now—but all that had followed had come from hope. Hope she could do what she said she would. Hope she would do what she said she would.

“Vieliessar,” he said, and her naked name in his mouth seemed as if it were the greatest presumption he had ever committed. “Is it—is all this—just for power?”

“No,” she said, her voice low and quiet. “It is because Amrethion High King said I must.”

“Tell me nothing more,” he said, when she would have continued. “I do not wish to know my fate if you should lose.”

“I shall not lose,” she answered, steadily.

But this night Thoromarth did not join her in her pavilion for talk and merriment.

* * *

“I need you to do something for me,” Vieliessar said.

The candlemark was late; her commanders had departed to their own pavilions. Even her servants, having readied her pavilion for the morning, had gone.

“I know it’s not to send challenge to War Prince Ablenariel,” Thurion said lightly, “for you sent Ambrant Lightbrother with that. He will barely have finished delivering your message before your army is at Laeldor’s walls.”

“And when I take Laeldor, I must show the means by which I will take the Unicorn Throne. And that is not by grasping and holding land. What I shall take—and hold—is fealty. The High Houses may do as they like with the land.”

“It is like a game of xaique,” Thurion said. He did not ask if she could do it: for that was a thing no one could know, unless they petitioned the Star-Crowned to draw aside the veil that covered the future.

“Much like a game of xaique,” she agreed. “If I were playing against a dozen opponents upon a board I could not see. But that is not why I summoned you to this audience.”

“Was I summoned?” Thurion asked, glancing ostentatiously around the empty tent. “I thought I came to pay an evening call upon an old friend.”

“So you did. And it is from my friend I ask this favor, for it is a thing I would hesitate to demand of a vassal.”

“Both friend and vassal, I hope,” Thurion said, smiling. “Tell me. What is it you need?”

“Do you recall Malbeth of Haldil?” she asked, rather than answering him directly.

“Yes. Of course.” It did not require any feat of memory to recall that name, for Caerthalien had been in the Grand Windsward for the whole of War Season only a few decades past because of Malbeth of Haldil. “War Prince