Crown of Vengeance dpt-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I thought I’d be the only one out here on a day like this.”

  She repressed a cry of alarm at the sound of the voice behind her, for she knew it. She turned as Thurion emerged from the stand of namarii. Like her, he wore a borrowed cloak and clogs. His hair—uncut for two turnings of the Wheel—curled against his neck and around his ears. It would not be cut again until he dared the Shrine.

  “Godrahir Lightsister sent me to walk in the garden,” she said briefly.

  “Then I shall be glad of the company,” Thurion said easily, coming toward her. “Rondithiel Lightbrother told me he could as easily teach a pig the mysteries of the Light as me, and sent me to take exercise.

  “You are solemn,” Thurion added, as if he heard what she did not say.

  “For what cause should I be joyful?” Vieliessar snapped, anger suddenly winning out over prudence. “I whose birth holds me prisoner within these walls!”

  Thurion gazed at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, and she wished she could call back her rash words. “Do you find it such a hardship?” he asked softly.

  “You will leave here someday and go back to your home,” she said. “I—”

  To her surprise, Thurion laughed bitterly. “My home! Do you not know what I am?”

  “A Postulant,” she answered, puzzled. “Someday to be Lightborn.”

  “I am Landbond, son of Landbonds,” he said. “When I return to Caerthalien, I will not go home. It is not the will of Bolecthindial Caerthalien that the Light should shine upon the Landbond. I will go wherever he says I must go, to serve who he says I must serve. Rondithiel Lightbrother tells me my person is sovereign and my life is my own. And he lies. The family I dare not claim and may never again see is held hostage for my obedience.”

  “I … I had not thought,” she said slowly. She knew there was always resentment of the Landbonds among the Candidates, for they must be taught to read and write when they came to the Sanctuary, and so their service was less than that of those who already possessed those skills.

  “Prisoner, hostage, I care not if you are Farcarinon, or Caerthalien, or the Child of the Prophecy. My family does not even own the roof above our heads. A third of what we harvest each year goes to pay Menenel Farmholder for our shelter and our seed grain. All we have ever asked is that the great lords do not ride across our fields and spoil our work—and if they do, or even fight across them, there is nothing we can say without punishment. Do you think the quarrels of the Hundred Houses matter to me? How has your life been harder than mine?” Thurion demanded.

  Vieliessar gazed at Thurion as if he was something she had never seen before. Landbonds served the Farmfolk and the Farmfolk served the Lords Komen: all knew that. She’d known Thurion was Landbond, but she had never thought about what that meant.

  “Don’t you wish to be Lightborn?” she asked at last. Thurion smiled.

  “I could never be happy as anything else,” he answered with quiet sincerity. “It is … It is as if I had lived all my life in a small dark room, hearing voices beyond the locked door. And then one day the door was opened, and I walked out into … this,” he said, gesturing at the garden around them. “You must think I am very foolish,” he finished, smiling gently.

  “No,” she answered. “You talk about things I don’t understand, but that’s different. Last year—when the Postulants would talk to us about the Light, do you remember?—none of us could understand what they wished to tell us of. And now you can.”

  Thurion smiled at her again and this time his smile was radiant. She realized, with an unsettled pang of discovery, that Thurion saw … Not Varuthir, whose name and existence had been a lie. Not Farcarinon’s powerless heir, despised for merely existing. But Vieliessar. Just … Vieliessar.

  “I cannot change your birth, or mine,” he said quietly. “Nor can I set aside the fate placed upon you when you first drew breath. But you are wrong if you think this—” He swept a hand outward, indicating the garden, and the wind blew his cloak back off his shoulders with a snap. “—is the only world. Come with me, Vielle, and I’ll show you.”

  It was the first time he’d called her by the eke-name that Melwen and the other Sanctuary servants sometimes used. It was the way a given name might be shortened by a lover, a child, a parent. Would Nataranweiya have used it, if she and Serenthon had lived and Farcarinon yet stood? Even to wonder was a painful thing.

  “Come,” Thurion said again. “I will show you a world wider than all the Fortunate Lands.”

  She followed him back inside the Sanctuary, grateful to pass out of the chill. Thurion led her to a passageway as narrow as any of the hidden ways within the walls, and suddenly Vieliessar could hear Maeredhiel’s voice, clear in the ears of memory: “This side passage leads down to the stairs to the Library. Perhaps someday you will see what lies within it.”

  The staircase was as narrow as the passage, and it went down a long way—two floors, or perhaps three. Niches in the stone walls held lanterns that glowed with Silverlight.

  “Anyone—anyone who is not in their Service Year—may come here,” Thurion said. He paused, as if he were listening to his words. “I mean … anyone of the Sanctuary. Even the servants. Lightborn from Graythunder Glairyrill to Great Ocean return here to study.”

  Vieliessar let his remark pass without comment. She knew Thurion hadn’t meant to remind her that she was nothing more than one of the Sanctuary servants. To be a servant at the Sanctuary of the Star was to be placed above warlords and princes—so Morgaenel Mistress Kitchen-Cook always said.

  At the bottom of the staircase was a latticework door, gleaming golden in the dimness. It was ornate enough, Vieliessar decided, but hardly very grand. In Bolecthindial’s castel the outer doors to the Great Hall were as high as three tall men, their opening wide enough that three komen in full war panoply could ride through them side by side. The images on their Mage-forged door panels told the story of Caerthalien’s great triumphs, and though they were cast of solid bronze, they were so perfectly balanced that the youngest servant could open and close them with a touch. This was merely an ancient door of cracked, painted wood, no larger than the door to her sleeping cell.

  “This is the Library of Arevethmonion,” Thurion said. His voice was hushed, but his tone was as proud as if he were its master and ruler.

  “It is named for the Flower Forest?” Vieliessar asked.

  “Or she is named for this,” Thurion said, and tugged open the door to the Library.

  When Vieliessar followed Thurion through the doorway, her nose was suddenly filled with the sweet scents of vellum and leather. Silverlight filled the chamber with a moon-pale radiance brighter than any full moon. The door was small, but the space beyond was as high as the stair had been long, and larger from back to front and side to side than Bolecthindial’s Great Hall—larger, perhaps, than the Sanctuary itself. Every wall she could see was filled with square storage niches, and each niche was filled with scrolls. A gallery halfway up the wall seemed to go all the way around the room, to give access to the niches higher on the walls.

  Nor was this place unoccupied.

  I had wondered where the Lightborn and the Postulants vanished to all the day, and now I know.…

  The center of the chamber was filled with long tables—and because she had spent candlemark upon candlemark tending to the Sanctuary’s furnishings, she wondered who cared for all of this, for no one in the Servants’ Hall had mentioned the library as part of their duties. Several of the tables were covered with stacked scrolls, opened scrolls, and even maps, over which green-robed Lightborn and grey-robed Postulants bent in study.

  “I … didn’t know…” she whispered.

  “This is only the main room,” Thurion said, turning back and coming to her side. “The others—”

  “So many scrolls,” Vieliessar interrupted. “It would be a life’s work to read them all!”

  “Praise to Sword and to Star we Postulants do not have to,” Thurion a
nswered, his voice low and amused. “It is a great enough task merely to learn the catalogue which tells us where they are.”

  He stepped away from the doorway again, and this time Vieliessar followed him.

  * * *

  “Any text brought to the Sanctuary and deemed by Cirthoriach Lightsister to be of worth or interest is shelved here. There are poems, storysongs, travelers’ accounts … even histories that the Hundred Houses would not wish preserved, for the tales they hold are not, I am told, the tales sung at feast days,” Thurion said dryly, as the two of them walked along the right-hand wall.

  Vieliessar’s eyes were stretched wide at all she saw—and even more at what she imagined. A hundred of these scroll niches would have held every scroll in Caerthalien’s library. And there were hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds more. All filled.

  “There is a workroom beyond this to repair damaged scrolls,” Thurion said. “The spell of Keeping ensures nothing decays or fades, but it won’t prevent damage, or staining—or keep the Lightborn from making notes on the edges of the text,” Thurion said, the laughter in his eyes inviting Vieliessar to share the joke. “There is a chamber beyond the workroom which holds texts on spellcraft, locked away lest we be tempted to take a short road to our understanding of the Light. It would not work, in any case—and would certainly do great harm.”

  “I don’t understand,” Vieliessar said. “If they are but scrolls … How can one be hurt reading a scroll?”

  Thurion came to a stop, frowning with the effort of trying to explain. “It is … as if you or I were given all the articles of knighthood—sword and spear, armor and shield, spurs and destrier—and sent into battle against one who had earned them all through years of honest training. We would die.”

  “I would not go into battle unless I were sure I could win,” Vieliessar said firmly.

  “But you would think you could,” Thurion said. “Because of the—”

  “I would not,” she retorted. “You make it sound as if the Postulants are fools. If a thing is a task beyond one’s strength, one should not attempt it.”

  Thurion made a helpless gesture. “To…” He shook his head. “It is a temptation.”

  “Those who are so easily tempted are better off without Magery,” Vieliessar said decisively. “But—are you not here to learn spells?” she added.

  “There are no spells when one becomes one with the Light,” Thurion said.

  Vieliessar nearly stamped her foot in exasperation. Not a handful of moments before, Thurion had spoke of a spell set to preserve the scrolls. “There are either spells or there are not,” she said tartly. “You said—”

  “There are. There aren’t. It’s … one must learn to listen first.”

  “To what?” Vieliessar demanded, and Thurion simply looked frustrated.

  “To the world,” he said.

  His words made no sense, though she’d become used to the idea that nothing the Postulants said when they talked about the Light ever did. “How long does it take to learn this … listening?” she asked instead.

  “All your life,” Thurion answered. His face softened, and it was as if he gazed upon something beautiful she knew she would never see.

  She did not know how long they spent wandering through this other Arevethmonion, as Thurion showed her its treasures with the joy and pride of a War Prince showing his Great Keep to his bride. He plucked scrolls from their niches, saying she must read this one or that. For the first time since she had come to the Sanctuary, her duties and obligations—even the injuries done to her Line—were forgotten. There was a set of scrolls containing a history of the Hundred Houses, one which was a copy of only the major songs of The Song of Amrethion, a scroll on games (xaique and gan and narshir), and the three scrolls of Halbaureth’s Journey, which Thurion said was about Halbaureth of Alilianne—as House Ullilion was once called—who had traveled farther east from the shores of Great Ocean than anyone had ventured since, crossing Graythunder Glairyrill itself. “If you never leave these walls, still, you will travel farther in Halbaureth’s company than anyone of the Hundred Houses can ever boast of,” Thurion said.

  She was only recalled to herself when her arms were so filled with leather-cased scrolls that she had to devote most of her attention to keeping them from spilling out of her grasp and onto the floor. When shall I have time to read all these? she thought in bemusement.

  * * *

  That evening Vieliessar went to her chamber immediately after evening meal and read long into the night. She’d chosen the History of the Hundred Houses, and knew already it would be more than the work of a sennight or even a moonturn to understand it all. It was true that each history was simple enough: founding and lands and alliances made, the names of the heads of the Line Direct, summaries of battles fought and children born. But each account contradicted the next, and the one she knew best—the History of Caerthalien—held both more and less than she’d expected it to. It was only the knowledge that morning would come and be filled with tasks that caused her to hood her spell-lantern and prepare herself reluctantly for sleep.

  But sleep was long in coming. It is like a child’s wooden puzzle, she thought. Only with tales of past times. Which is true? Any of them? She wondered if there was enough time in all the world to list the contradictions between the stories and to seek a pattern.

  In the middle of the night she awoke sharply, as if summoned to battle. Words she had set aside in her shock at Thurion’s anger—then forgot entirely at the wonders he showed her—echoed through her mind.

  “Prisoner, hostage, I care not if you are Farcarinon, or Caerthalien, or the Child of the Prophecy.”

  Thurion had the answers Maeredhiel had said were here.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SONG OF AMRETHION

  When stars and clouds together point the way

  And of a hundred deer one doe can no longer counted be

  When peace is bought with maiden mother’s blood

  And those so long denied assert their ancient claim

  When scholar turns to sword, and warrior to peace

  And two ford rivers swelled with mortal gore

  When two are one, then one may speak for all

  And in that candlemark claim what never has been lost.

  —The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel

  Vieliessar had avoided the Common Room in her Service Year out of anger and false pride, and in the year that followed both out of uncertainty as to her place and by Maeredhiel’s design. Tonight she dared it, for there was no other way to find Thurion to question him.

  She hesitated long in the refectory after the evening meal was done, for to enter the Common Room, filled as it would be by Postulants and Candidates, would be to expose herself to … what?

  She wasn’t sure. She was half a servant and half a Candidate, and the War Prince of no House, and that was a thing that unsettled her thoughts every time she considered it, for in all the Fortunate Lands, to be born was to know one’s entire future. Only the Light could change that, though not entirely. For all their power, the Green Robes still served.

  But whatever you are, you are no coward, she told herself fiercely. Ignoring the questioning looks of the Candidates clearing the tables, she shook out her skirts and walked to the Common Room.

  Hearing laughter and talk as she approached the doorway, she nearly turned aside to seek the silence and solitude of her rooms. But then she heard Thurion’s voice, and pride and stubbornness drove her across the threshold. She spied Thurion at a table with many whom she recognized: some of them had shared her Service Year, but most had not.

  Namritila and Borinuel were of her Service Year; Borinuel had come from Calwas with Anginach and both had become Postulants. Borinuel had once said Anginach’s strategy for success was to make sure everyone else failed; all Vieliessar knew of Anginach was that he’d spent his Service Year seeing how much he could shirk his duties before he drew Maeredhiel’s wrath. Mathingaland had been a Can
didate in the year before hers; he liked to talk a great deal, making long speeches as if he instructed children, but his careful marshaling of facts and details others skipped over enabled Vieliessar to follow the conversation, no matter the topic. Arahir came from so far to the east that her House spent its time battling the Beastlings instead of the rest of the Hundred Houses. She wore a gryphon feather around her neck, for she had killed one years before she had come to the Sanctuary, and had been allowed to keep that trophy despite jewels and ornaments being banished. Brithuniel fretted constantly about the coming day when she must cut her long braids to take the Green Robe. Monrhedel was one of the few whose House she knew—he was more interested in history than in magic, but returning to Jirvaleg as one of the Lightborn would allow him to ask War Prince Edheluin to free his parents from their forced oaths of fealty so they could return to House Onegring’s lands and the children they had left behind there.

  “Vielle!” Thurion’s face and voice held nothing but honest pleasure in seeing her. “Come! Sit! We are arguing—as usual—but it is no great matter.”

  Hesitantly she crossed the room and took the seat she provided for her.

  “Oh, who counts deer anyway?” Namritila said crossly, clearly continuing the previous conversation.

  “Amrethion Aradruiniel, clearly,” Borinuel answered. “Or he wishes us to.”

  “That is a thing not yet established,” Mathingaland said, clearly as unwilling as the others to set aside the argument. “‘When stars and clouds together point the way, And of a hundred deer one doe can no longer counted be’—”

  “Clear as a murky river,” Arahir interrupted in disgust. She seemed to notice Vieliessar for the first time. “But this must bore you,” she said.