Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy)

by James Mallory Mercedes Lackey

  She was angry.

  * * *

  Hamphuliadiel regarded the child standing before him, her aura flaring and flickering with anger and half-shielded power, and hated Celelioniel for her foolish superstitions even more than he had before. Her mad belief in ancient fables had led her to see prophecies in nonsense-rhymes, and that delusion had kept Farcarinon’s get alive.

  And now it meant Hamphuliadel was faced with a choice no Astromancer before him had ever needed to make.

  Even the lowliest Landbond knew that power must be paid for in power. The small and simple spells that so impressed the common herd could be cast with no more power than that which lived within one’s own skin. The Greater Spells required more. There was power in blood, in pain, in death—but to tap those sources brought madness and an eternal soul-hunger. There was power in soil and water and plant and tree—but to take from these was to render them lifeless and sterile. Only the Flower Forests held power enough to fuel the spells of the Light. And so, a thousand generations past, Mosirinde had founded the Sanctuary of the Star and forged her Covenant: to take only from the Flower Forests.

  But the Lightborn were as corruptible as the great lords themselves, and so one secret was held by each Astromancer and passed only to the next: it was neither power and ability, nor Light Within, that made Candidate into Postulant. It was the choosing of the Astromancer, who gazed upon the spirits and futures of all who entered the Sanctuary and passed a covert judgment which could not be appealed. This was why the Light was so rarely discovered among the great nobles; their arrogance made them difficult to control. It was a simple matter to lay the most gossamer of geasa upon each departing Lightborn, so that they would simply … not see Light where it was … inconvenient.

  And so he had done, as Celelioniel had done before him, as every Astromancer had done for reign upon reign.

  And now the child who was War Prince of Farcarinon by blood and birth stood before him. He had never thought to gaze so upon the future of the last scion of Farcarinon … until today, when news had come of her Healing. And then he had discovered he could not. There was no clear line through the years to come that said: this shall be and that will not.

  He wished to blame mad Celelioniel, or even the vexed mooncalf herself—but he sensed no spellcraft. Whatever clouded the girl’s future owed nothing to Magery.

  Amrethion’s Prophecy exists only in a madwoman’s ravings! he told himself angrily. Who is to say there are not many whose future is cloaked? Perhaps all War Princes are born so.

  And perhaps the stars did not care that Vieliessar was not truly a War Prince.

  None of this would matter if she had lived out her days as a Lightless drudge!

  But she had not.

  Kill her? Train her? There was no third road—he might call Lightborn to Burn the Light from her mind, but that was only a slower death.

  “What have you to say for yourself?” he demanded.

  He saw her chin come up and her eyes flash.

  “I say that I did not ask this. Nor would you now know of it save by mischance.” She spoke with the pride of one who knew herself to be War Prince even now, and her words and her voice were a pledge of defiance.

  I can kill her where she stands! How dare she take such a tone with me? In the years of his reign, Hamphuliadiel had received War Princes and Warlords, bearers of the noblest blood in the Fortunate Lands. They had, they thought, flattered him and bribed him into doing their will, never knowing that none of them had caused him to do anything he had not decided upon in advance.

  For a moment his rage was so great that the opulent chamber seemed small and far away. It would not be an act of war. Farcarinon does not exist. He closed his hands on the arms of his chair so hard that his fingernails turned white from the pressure. He could see Galathornthadan standing behind her, and saw Galathornthadan’s eyes go wide with fear at the sight of his anger.

  “I only wished to save my own life, Astromancer,” Vieliessar added. Her voice was softer now, and her eyes penitently downcast.

  “You do not serve the Light by hiding from it, Vieliessar,” he said, and felt satisfaction. He sounded as a true Astromancer should sound: paternal, just, fair. They would never whisper in dark corners of his madness or mock him in their Great Halls for his faith in moldering prophecies. The Light was Magery, not mystery. His name would be remembered forever as the Astromancer who lifted the shroud of capriciousness and inscrutability from the Sanctuary of the Star.

  “I do not understand how I am to serve it,” Vieliessar answered, and now, to Hamphuliadiel’s approval, she sounded like a sulky child, not a War Prince. “I serve no House—and my life is forfeit if I leave the Sanctuary.”

  “Perhaps that will change—should it be your wish and that of the Light,” Hamphuliadiel answered. Yes. That is the answer. I was a fool not to see it at once. Let her become Vieliessar Lightsister. And should she become a danger, I will send her to Caerthalien, or Vondaimieriel, or Sarmiorion, or Aramenthiali. And she will not return. And I shall be blameless.

  “For now, there is much for you to learn.”

  * * *

  Once again Vieliessar’s life changed. No longer were her days spent in the meticulous pursuit of invisible perfection. She exchanged the skirt and tunic of a servant for the grey robe and green tabard of a Postulant, and it quickly became clear that she fit into this new life far worse than she had fit into the old. She had already read, for her own pleasure, most of the scrolls the new Postulants were set to learn, and as for Magery …

  She had long since mastered the score of lesser spells whose practice occupied the days of the youngest Postulants, yet she was lost when she was placed among the eldest ones—those who might dare the Shrine this year or next—for she understood none of the theory upon which the practice of the Light was based.

  “It is hopeless!” she burst out. “What does it matter to me whether Mosirinde or Arilcarion or even Timirmar crafted the Covenant? I shall live out my life bounded by Arevethmonion!”

  “And yet you will still find the Covenant of great value,” Rondithiel Lightbrother said placidly. “For it holds the reason for all we do.”

  Vieliessar shook her head stubbornly. “In the Healing Tents of a battlefield,” she said. “But when shall I ever see such?”

  “You think with the short sight of the Lightless,” Rondithiel admonished her.

  He lifted the teapot from its cradle and poured both their cups full again. Its ingredients were gathered in Arevethmonion and compounded by the Postulants themselves, for the blending of teas was an art closely allied to the blending of potions—and it was best to practice those skills first on compounds that could do no harm. Tea in all its infinite possibility was the only delicacy permitted to those residing at the Sanctuary, but the Candidates and the Postulants were too young to appreciate it, and the servants far too busy to treat tea as an art. The tea which fueled the Sanctuary as much as the Light itself—the tea that Rondithiel poured—was the homely Forest Hearth mixture.

  The two of them were seated in Oiloisse-chamber, and Vieliessar thought longingly of the days when her only interest in it had been to sweep the floor. She had spent from Thunder to Rade—her birth moonturn—being told first that she had too much skill and then too little; that her scholarship outpaced that of her new peers and that she knew nothing of any use. At last, Rondithiel had bidden her attend upon him here, and she could do nothing but obey.

  Rondithiel Lightbrother had trained many generations of Lightborn, for long ago his War Prince had granted him a boon, and he had chosen to spend the rest of his life at the Sanctuary of the Star, for his great love was teaching. But it was not Magery he taught. Rondithiel taught the understanding of Mosirinde’s Covenant.

  It was said that Mosirinde Peacemaker had founded the Sanctuary of the Star and served as its first Astromancer. It was she who decreed that an Astromancer might reign from Vilya fruit to Vilya fruit, no longer. It was she who had set
down the rules that governed the lives of the Lightborn: that the power to wield spells could not be drawn from blood or from earth, but only from the wellsprings of power a Flower Forest commanded.

  “There is more to the Light than you yet know, Vieliessar. The spells that are all the Lightless see are but a fraction of what being Lightborn means. There is the knowing.”

  “I have spent years in meditation, Lightbrother,” Vieliessar said, trying to conceal her exasperation.

  “And yet you have never worked any of the Greater Spells of the Light,” he observed.

  She looked at him with puzzlement now. “Such would be dangerous without a guide,” she said carefully.

  “And I am ready to stand your guide,” he said. He set a sphere of bronze on the table. “Transmutation is one of the Greater Spells, but this chamber is well Warded. At worst we will destroy a few pieces of furniture.”

  Vieliessar stared at the bronze ball as if it might explode. She thought back to her first experiments, of her panic at being unable to Banish the Silverlight, of how the brazier had crumbled away to rock …

  “I do not know the spell,” she said hopefully.

  “Come, give me your hand. I will show it to you,” Rondithiel Lightbrother said. He held out his own.

  She had the terrifying sense of being trapped and fought down her instinctive panic. She did not know what would happen to someone who refused to learn Magery—but she was certain Hamphuliadiel’s wrath would fall heavily upon that one.

  She had no choice.

  She reached out and set her hand in his.

  It was as if she had touched one of the Teaching Stones in the beginners’ workrooms: suddenly, bright to her inward sight, there appeared a construct of shape and color and sound and texture and taste. It was all of these things, and none of them. It was the spellshape of Transmutation.

  “Now,” he said, releasing her hand and gesturing at the sphere.

  Every instinct screamed to her that this was a trick, a trap, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t figure out what shape it must take. Everyone knew she had the Light. Rondithiel had taught generations of Lightborn. So she called the spellshape to the front of her mind, and reached out to touch the metal, letting the Magery unfold itself in her mind. Metal to wood …

  “What are you doing?”

  Rondithiel’s shout jarred her out of the weaving. She gasped, opening her eyes. He was staring at her with a look of horror on his face. On the table between them, the metal sphere was distorted and discolored—but not transformed.

  “I—” Suddenly a great wave of sick dizziness swept over her. She tried to raise her hand to brush her hair from her face, and discovered she could not. A moment later she was sprawled ungracefully across the floor cushions, struggling to breathe.

  Rondithiel hurried around the table. He lifted her into his lap and held her teacup to her lips. The liquid was nearly cold, but nothing had ever tasted so sweet.

  “Transmutation is a Greater Spell!” he shouted. “You cannot work it without drawing upon Arevethmonion!”

  * * *

  The Light exacted a price for the weaving of spells. Magery must be paid for; power drove spellcraft. For the little spells, power of the body. For the Greater Spells, the power of the Flower Forests. While she had been hiding her Light, practicing only in secret, Vieliessar had never attempted the Greater Spells for just that reason. To draw upon Arevethmonion was a thing that would surely be noticed—but she had thought its power would come to her at need, just as the power for the lesser spells had.

  “After the first time, yes,” Rondithiel said, when he had brought her to health again and discovered her error. “But the first time … one must be shown the way.”

  “I wonder that any spells are ever worked in all the Fortunate Lands,” she had answered irritably. “For to name all the Flower Forests in the land is the work of days.”

  “So the Lightless believe,” Rondithiel said with grave amusement. “The Lightborn know there is only one. Once you are known to Lady Arevethmonion, you are known to all the Flower Forests that may ever be.”

  There was more to the matter than that. The spellstones that marked the boundaries of the domains of the Hundred Houses kept the Lightborn’s spells from ranging across the whole of the land in search of power. Nor did the power of one Flower Forest within a domain spill into the next at need. There was more for her to learn than she had thought. It was two moonturns of careful instruction before she attempted a Greater Spell again.

  But with Rondithiel’s aid, she made a beginning.

  * * *

  I can do this.

  Vieliessar stood before the great bronze doors that separated the Sanctuary from the Shrine. She was naked, her only ornament a long knotted cord looped about her wrist.

  The first act of each Postulant was to accept a handful of flax seeds. It was their task to plant the seeds, and harvest them, spin flax into thread, and weave thread into cord, and at last, when that was done, to bind the knowing of their spells into that cord.

  The last act of each Postulant was to enter the Shrine of the Star, there to keep vigil, and emerge Lightborn. Those who survived departed the Sanctuary at once, speaking to no one.

  Those left behind might know that this one or that one of their fellow Postulants had gone to the Shrine, but nothing more.

  Some entered the Shrine and never emerged again.

  She remembered a Rain Moon, years ago, when Thurion had come to her sleeping chamber to whisper last messages to those he loved, before coming to stand where Vieliessar stood now. He had charged her with duty to his family if he did not come forth again, for by his duty to Caerthalien he meant to secure the freedom of his family, and if he failed, he would not have them think he had forgotten them.

  She had not wished to accept that duty, but she had. And when he had gone to the Shrine, she had knelt upon the cold stone beside her bed and pledged her own life to the Silver Hooves, if they must have one that night.

  She had risen before dawn to hide in the shadows of the Antechamber. And had seen Thurion walk free.

  Will I be as fortunate?

  She reached out to touch the bronze of the doors, to trace the shapes of spirit-horses and the powers that rode them among the stars. In my end is my beginning. Generations of Postulants had touched them so, and the doors gleamed bright-burnished where they had.

  Strange to think that here I was born and here my mother died.

  In Rade Moon, Farcarinon had fallen, Nataranweiya had died. If Vieliessar chose, a simple conjuration would show her that night, but such a folding back of years could not show her what she most desired to see: the thoughts that had lain in Celelioniel’s heart when she had shaped Vieliessar’s fate.

  Survive this night, and the Lightborn taught that her person would be inviolable—not even a War Prince dared raise his hand to one of the Lightborn, lest the Sanctuary punish both House and Line. But there was no House waiting to welcome her, and Farcarinon’s enemies might yet look upon Vieliessar Lightsister and see Vieliessar Farcarinon. Should someone let her out of life, without clan and kin and Line she would vanish as if she had never been.

  Go now, before you lose your nerve.

  The doors ghosted open beneath her touch, and Vieliessar stepped over the threshold and into the Shrine of the Star.

  The first things to reach her senses were the touch of cold earth beneath her feet and the iron scent of old blood. The next was the beating of raw power against her senses and Wards, as if she basked in some sunlight that did not warm her. Though the Shrine was open to the sky above, it was as dark as a deep cave this night, but Silversight showed her three tall stones beneath an open sky. A fourth flat stone was set into the ground between them; the Shrine itself was nothing more than stone and earth.

  Nine Shrines are given to the Trueborn, nine places where the breath of first creation still can be felt upon the skin. Nine where the powers hear us when we call.

 
; She knew what she must do now. It was not teaching, but knowing, here in that place where it was eternally the morning of the world. Vieliessar stepped to the center of the triangle of great stones and stretched out her hand. The veils of power resolved themselves to a single star-bright blade, cold as moonlight. She closed her fingers around it, feeling hot blood well up from her palm and dissolving the conjured blade as if it were ice in fire.

  Blood pooled in her palm as her gaze was drawn to the stones of the Shrine. On their surfaces she could see the patterns of uncountable handprints; some the faintest blue shadow against the stones, some shining as brightly as the moon. She stepped into the center of the triad and pressed her hand against the stone. For an instant she felt its cold grittiness against her palm, then the surface she touched seemed to become as hot and supple as flesh.

  Brightness flared up between her fingers.

  She heard the sound of a bridle clink.

  That homely sound in this uncanny place made her startle in shock. She turned, and only her utter disbelief in what she saw kept her from going to her knees.

  “You have come to end us.”

  Power blazed from the armored rider like heat from a hearth. His armor was of no kind she had ever seen, yet as she tried to fix its details within her mind, she found she could not. Nor could she name its color, nor the color of the horse he sat. To see him was as if she heard the words of a storysinger and her own mind made of them an image crafted to her own desire. The longer she stared, the more visible the host behind him became, so many hundreds of riders that she knew the Shrine could never have contained them all, nor would it have been possible to see each one so clearly if they’d been here in truth. Yet their leader’s destrier switched its tail and pawed at the ground as she had seen many horses do. The Starry Hunt stands before me, Vieliessar thought, and felt not joy, not terror, not grief—merely a fathomless wonder that They should be and she should see Them.

  Then the words the Rider had spoken came sharp in her mind. “I could not,” she said, half protest, half judgment.