Crown of Vengeance

eyes, its corridors and secret passages, every mystery the stones held.

She ran.

Behind her she heard shouts. The clangor of metal. Screams. Was it like this in Farcarinon the night my father’s castel fell? She ran until she found a door that led to the inner courtyard. Across that peaceful, deserted space was a low wall with a door. When Vieliessar struck the door with the pommel of her sword, the rotted wood splintered. She dashed into the mews, which led up to the outer wall. Ablenariel must come down this staircase or know he would be trapped above the gatehouse until he died.

Behind her she heard a soft scrape of metal against stone. She checked and pivoted, bringing up her blade just in time to face attack from two dismounted knights. A vagrant thought slipped through her mind—I told Thoromarth the truth—as she closed with them, for nothing would serve her now but the battle skill Gunedwaen and Rithdeliel had taught her, candlemark by painful candlemark. There was not enough space to swing a sword, barely enough to move. She drew her dagger with her left hand as she forced them back. The passageway was narrow and neither of her foes was used to fighting afoot. One fell, floundering gracelessly under the weight of his armor, and she leaped over him, slamming her body into the second knight and driving her dagger through the eye-slit of his helm as his body struck the wall of the mews.

She was trying to yank her weapon free when the knight who had fallen dragged her from her feet. She fell backward, hearing a ringing of metal as her helm struck the stones, and the enemy knight knelt on her chest. For a frozen instant it seemed he could not figure out what to do next. Likely he had never faced such a situation in his life, fighting on foot and without his sword—Vieliessar realized she was lying on his blade. Then he grabbed her shoulders and began simply to batter her against the paving stones. Dazed, disoriented, she raised her sword, but it scraped harmlessly across his back; she did not have the angle for a strike.

Madness, to think she might die here, wrestling some unknown knight, but she would not use the Light to kill.

Then suddenly he was gone, lifted away. She scrabbled backward, clutching her sword, and saw Ambrant Lightbrother, his arm about the armored neck of the knight, looking stunned at what he had done.

He must have been on the wall with Ablenariel.…

“Go. Go,” she gasped, clawing her way to her feet, and Ambrant hesitated a moment longer, then shoved the knight forward, turned, and ran. The armored figure staggered, hands flailing. His sword lay on the stones, and the Code of Battle said a swordless knight was no lawful prey.

Vieliessar didn’t care. She had never cared, she had known from the first moments she had studied it that the Code was a toy that turned war into a pointless game. Now she felt sick with fury, filled with a rage so vast she could barely breathe. She had followed the Code when she had come against Laeldor, and Laeldor had slain Lord Luthilion, and though he had died as he would have wished to, that was somehow the blackest joke of all. She raised her sword and beat the nameless, faceless knight of Laeldor back, and back, and back again, as he raised empty hands to defend himself and cried out in surrender. He retreated until he fell backward over the body of the other knight she had slain, and then she stood over him, striking at his neck again and again, until the metal of his helm shifted and sheared, until dark blood spurted up and flowed out upon the stones.

Then she turned and ran.

Her sabatons slipped and clattered as she raced up the stairs, for the steps were steep and narrow and her armored boots were not meant for walking upon stone. She reached the broad outer wall upon which the sentries walked and stood for a moment, gazing around herself. The walkway was empty. Outside the castel, most of her army sat unmoving. There was no one outside the castel for them to fight, and no space for them to enter.

Then she saw movement. Ablenariel and Gemmaire crossed the ramparts above the gatehouse, moving in Vieliessar’s direction. They must have tried to go down the stairs on the far side and found them blocked. Six guardsmen clustered around Laeldor’s lord and lady. A castel’s guards were its watchmen and last defenders, but it so was unimaginably rare for a castel to be taken that it was unlikely they’d ever done battle face-to-face. Vieliessar ran forward, her sword in her hand. Ladyholder Gemmaire saw her first.

It seemed to Vieliessar that the defenders and the lord and lady in their charge moved as slowly as if they were executing the figures of an elaborate dance. Two of the guardsmen came toward her, pikes leveled. She flattened herself against the battlements as they reached her, and as they hesitated, she grabbed the pike of the outermost one and used it to fling him from the ramparts. The other guardsman clung to the battlements as he thrust his pike at her. She trapped the shaft of the heavy, clumsy weapon against the wall and struck low with her sword. The guardsmen wore chain mail and heavy boots, but no armor upon their legs. The guardsman’s face contorted in a soundless scream as he fell.

She felt rather than heard the first click of an arrow against her armor. Four guardsmen remained; the two at the front held bows in their hands. But they carried the horseman’s bow, not the walking bow. It would have taken both skill and luck to put an arrow through one of the eye-slits of her helm, and the shafts did not have power enough to penetrate her armor. They continued to nock and release as she approached, but just as she reached them, they threw down their weapons.

Go. She gestured broadly—speech was impossible in the din of battle. They edged backward, but were trapped between their enemy and their lord. Ladyholder Gemmaire was clutching her husband’s surcoat. He should have faced me, Vieliessar thought. He should have been willing to face me. Everyone held their places for a moment. Then Vieliessar took a step forward.

Ablenariel threw down his sword.

It bounced against the stone and fell with its hilt overhanging the edge of the walk. Ladyholder Gemmaire snatched for it, but too late. The blade overbalanced and fell.

The guardsmen slid past Vieliessar, their bodies pressed tightly against the battlements. Their lord had surrendered. All they wished to do was flee. Vieliessar gestured for Lord Ablenariel to remove his helmet, and when he had, she stepped forward and took it from him. Ladyholder Gemmaire flew at her, fingers curved into claws. Vieliessar struck her, backhanded. The spikes across the knuckles of her gauntlet ripped skin and Gemmaire staggered; Ablenariel grabbed her before she could fall.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WAR MAGIC

The world itself must bow to the will of the Lightborn. If we choose, we can drain the life from every leaf and flower, take the beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, the fishes of Great Sea Ocean itself. For the good of the Land Itself, we pledge we will never draw so much power from the land that it sickens and dies, nor will we draw power from the shedding of blood, nor from death, nor from any breathing thing.

—Mosirinde Astromancer,

The Covenant of the Light

Ablenariel and his Lady walked ahead of Vieliessar across the inner close. Fighting was still going on, but here, its sounds were muted.

“You will die, Ablenariel,” Vieliessar said, “but I wish to show you to Araphant’s meisne before you do. If you had surrendered, you might have saved your life.”

“Laeldor does not surrender!” Ladyholder Gemmaire said. “Laeldor will fight until the last komen is dead!”

“Then Laeldor shall be erased,” Vieliessar answered. As Farcarinon was.

She led them into the keep. Its chambers and corridors were filled with trampled bodies, shattered furniture, and horse dung. Ladyholder Gemmaire wailed at the sight, as if the condition of the keep was still a thing that could matter to her. As Vieliessar led her prisoners through the Great Hall, Thoromarth overtook her, holding a prisoner by the hair.

“Well met!” he said, as cheerfully as if the two of them did not stand in the midst of an abattoir. “Here is Ablenariel’s heir, Prince Avirnesse. We’ll have the rest of them soon enough.”

“Curse you!” Avirnesse howled, seeing his parents. “Why could you not fight! Why could you not fight!”

He was still struggling and shouting as Thoromarth dragged him away.

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