Crown of Vengeance

spiral to madness and death. For that reason, the injured were Healed in degrees—save for those who must be Healed entirely lest they die, or the great lords, who were unwilling to endure pain a moment longer than they must.

She had visited a Healing Tent for the first time in the aftermath of Caerthalien’s raid. Before that day she had seen injury and death, and had even dealt death, but the sheer magnitude of injury that had met her eyes had stunned her. Tens upon hundreds of bodies, all living, cut and crushed and broken in every way a battle could devise. It is no wonder the Lightborn support my cause, if I promise to put an end to this, she had thought then. Now she wasn’t sure if even that promise was enough.

There were six Lightborn in the tent, all persons she knew. They moved among the wounded, pausing to inspect a bandage here, gauge the progress of a Healing there. Servants moved among the beds as well, and offered water or medicine or changed a bandage at the direction of one of the Lightborn. Isilla Lightsister was the first to acknowledge Vieliessar’s presence. She finished her work at one bedside, paused to speak to her assistant, then walked across the tent.

“Lord Vieliessar?” she said, her voice low.

“I would…” Suddenly it was an effort to shape the question. I have grown haughty and over- proud in these last moonturns, if I cannot speak to a sister of the Light as an equal! she told herself contemptuously. “I would not take you from your work. But I would also know if I yet have Lightborn to command.”

“Ah,” Isilla said. “I do not think we should speak here. Leuse will finish my work. We await Dinias Lightbrother, so we may draw on the farther Flower Forests.”

Vieliessar nodded and stepped from the tent. She did not say anything further. She had asked her question. Let Isilla answer it in her own time. When Isilla came to join her, they walked in silence for several minutes before Isilla ventured to speak.

“We had thought, my lord, that you had set aside your Light to rule Oronviel, as did Ternas Lightbrother of Celebros when he became War Prince. Aradreleg had said this was so,” Isilla said.

Vieliessar could feel Isilla’s fear at speaking to a War Prince so boldly, her confusion at not being certain whether she was speaking to one who held the rank and power of a lord of the Hundred Houses, or to a sister of the Light.

“It was what I meant you to believe,” Vieliessar answered. “I had also meant to come to you with my arguments of necessity, to speak to you and hear your thoughts, before doing what I did today.”

“Yet you would still have done it,” Isilla said, a questioning note beneath what seemed to be a flat statement.

“I cannot know now,” Vieliessar answered. “Perhaps. I cannot know what you would have said.”

“Ambrant Lightbrother says you will not void Mosirinde’s Covenant. Celeharth Lightbrother had the same words of you before all in the Great Hall. It may be that you hope you would not, and then a day would come where you saw no path to victory but that.”

“Where is the victory in madness and death?” Vieliessar answered. “Or in ruling over a desert? If the princes swear to hold their domain’s welfare as dear as they hold their lives, shall a High King hold the whole of the land less dear?”

“And see what care our prince has of her people, who give their bodies to be broken in war,” Isilla said bitterly. “You take from the people, and you will take from the land. Kill me if you wish for speaking so. It is nothing to me. I have no family left.”

“I am sorry for that,” Vieliessar said quietly. “I have no family either. And I would do … better … than has been done before.”

“All say the High King will give justice,” Isilla said. “And will end Lord and Landbond, High House and Low, and bring peace. But you are not High King yet.”

“Nor will I be without the Lightborn beside me,” Vieliessar said. “I cannot become High King by saying I am. I cannot cause the Hundred Houses to acknowledge my claim and submit to my rule except by war. I cannot do all I have said I will do as High King until I am High King.”

“Easy enough to say you will do it then, when you have no more need of our aid to help you to your throne,” Isilla said.

“I cannot show you the future until it comes. I must ask you to believe that what I say, I will do. I have begun it in Oronviel. The Lightborn are not kept from their homes. They are free to use their Magery as they choose. My knights respect each steading and Farmhold, taking nothing save what is freely offered. Yet I cannot say to Aramenthiali, to Caerthalien, to Daroldan: do this. I am not High King.”

“You fled the Sanctuary,” Isilla said, after a pause.

“I could not become High King from the Sanctuary,” Vieliessar answered dryly, and Isilla was startled into laughter. She sobered quickly.

“You ask us to ride to war. I have no skill with a sword, nor am I interested in gaining such.” Isilla hesitated, then continued, “the Covenant can be hard to keep.”

“Then help one another to keep it,” Vieliessar answered. “Help me to keep it. I do not think I shall be tempted, but I cannot know. What I will ask of you is more than you have done. But I will not ask you to impoverish the land, to take your power from the living, to do anything which—were I to die in the next moment—would leave the land or the Lightborn less than they were.”

“We are less than we were for knowing you, I think,” Isilla said, sounding disgruntled. “What, then, would you ask?”

“That I cannot say. I can only say the sort of thing I might ask. Spells to give fair weather for battle. Seeking and Finding to locate my enemies. Should my foe attempt to force me to besiege him, as Laeldor did, I require the siege broken. A thousand things I cannot now name, for who can know how a battle will run before it is fought?”

“Were we to Overshadow your enemies, you might be High King tomorrow, for they would all swear fealty at once,” Isilla said.

Vieliessar had wondered what Isilla Lightsister’s Keystone Gift was. Now she knew. “And will you Overshadow every lord and prince of every domain for all the years of their lives? For that is what it would require. I might have Overshadowed any of the princes who now ride in my meisne whenever I chose. I might have Overshadowed Lord Ablenariel. And I did not, for an oath forced by spellcraft does not bind.”

“You would have the War Princes give up their power willingly!” Isilla said scornfully.

“You have seen that some will do so,” Vieliessar answered. “Others I must conquer and slay.” She only heard her own glib words after she had uttered them, and suddenly it was too much. She remembered being a child on her way to the Sanctuary of the Star, promising herself that someday—someday—she would return to Caerthalien and slaughter everyone within the Great Keep. She remembered being a Lightsister of the Sanctuary, a healer, a scholar, remembered fighting Death as if Lord Death were her dearest enemy. And now Death had become nothing more than a tool. “And so I end as I began, in asking: are my Lightborn yet mine to command?”

“Perhaps,” Isilla said, and in her voice Vieliessar heard wonder that she might speak to a War Prince so. Trust that such boldness would not bring her harm. And—perhaps—the beginnings of hope. “I do not speak for all. It is no easy thing to set aside a lifetime’s teaching.”

“It is not,” Vieliessar agreed. “Yet I must have one answer before this day ends. I must know if I may send a Lightborn as my envoy to Mangiralas, for I wish Aranviorch to surrender to me.”

“I do not speak for all,” Isilla repeated. “But I will ask.” She bowed, hesitated as if she might ask leave to go, then turned away without asking.

And were I not prepared to receive such an answer, better I had not asked such a question, Vieliessar told herself.

* * *

“What?” Vieliessar looked up. The table within her pavilion was covered with maps of Mangiralas, marked over in charcoal with lines of march, the sites of watchtowers and great keeps. Mangiralas was a land of hills and valleys in which it would be easy to hide an army. Mangiralas’s Great Keep stood at the top of a hill, so an army fighting beneath the shadow of its walls would be at a great disadvantage and an army fighting on the flat ground beyond would be in range of archers. If Mangiralas thought to use them.