Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) (14 page)

Behind her, Vieliessar heard running footsteps.

“What has happened?” Hervilafimir Lightsister cried.

“She Healed me,” Garwen said, his voice giddy with relief. “The Lightsister Healed me!”

*   *   *

Hamphuliadiel Astromancer possessed an Audience Chamber where he could receive the petitioners and supplicants who came to the Sanctuary. Though it was said to be so opulent as to stun any of the War Princes to wordlessness, no one who had actually seen inside had ever spoken of what they saw, and its vestibule was as stark and unadorned as any other chamber in the Sanctuary, save for the elaborately carved wooden door that led into the chamber itself.

Vieliessar had been waiting here for a long time.

She had fled—from the field, from the garden, to the only place she could think of to go: Mistress Maeredhiel’s workroom. Only then had she realized she was covered in Garwen’s blood. Maeredhiel had taken one look at her stricken expression and sharply ordered her to wash and change. Vieliessar tried to explain what had happened, but Maeredhiel refused to listen.

She had barely finished scrubbing the blood from her hands when a wide-eyed Postulant appeared, sliding back her door without tapping to announce that Hamphuliadiel Astromancer wished Vieliessar to attend him at once. She’d assumed she would be brought before him immediately, but her wait stretched. The delay gave her time to reflect, and her thoughts weren’t happy ones. Just as no Candidate had ever returned to the Sanctuary after the end of their Service Year bearing newly awakened Light, no Postulant had ever refused training—much less hidden what they were. What was the penalty? Would she be sent from the Sanctuary?

He cannot do that. He knows it will mean my death.

A year ago, or two years, or five, she would have bargained with the world, tossing out hopes as one might toss dice from a cup: dreams of allies found, of victory achieved, of safety, fortune, safe concealment as she worked toward her vengeance. She knew now these were no more than the fantasies of a heartsick child.

It was two candlemarks past the time for the end of the evening meal when the door to the Audience Chamber finally opened.

“You may present yourself to the Astromancer now,” Galathornthadan Lightbrother said.

Vieliessar followed Galathornthadan through the door, telling herself she must not gawk lest she rouse Hamphuliadiel’s anger further, but she could not stop herself. The chamber was the size of the Refectory, and more opulent than any she had seen within Caerthalien’s Great Keep. Its floors and walls shimmered with Warding, and her feet passed over carpets that would ransom a Lord
Komen,
laid over flooring that was an intricate pattern of inlaid woods and precious stones. Nor were the walls any plainer: beneath the opal coruscations of the Wards she could see that they were painted, hung with tapestries, and lined with treasures the Hundred Houses had brought to the Sanctuary to curry favor with the Lightborn down through the centuries.

At the far end of the chamber, Hamphuliadiel sat. Vieliessar stopped abruptly, so quickly that Galathornthadan walked six paces on before noticing.

He enthrones himself as if he would be High King!

She stared at the Astromancer, struggling to conceal her shock. Hamphuliadiel’s chair was wide enough for any two men to sit upon, and its back extended several handspans above his head. Perhaps it was wood, or perhaps ivory, but it was hard to say, so thickly was it encrusted with gems and gold. Such a seat might have been cold and unpleasant, but Hamphuliadiel had surrounded himself with green silk cushions filling the empty spaces. The green of his robes merged into the green of the cushions.

Galathornthadan stopped, frowning at her, and Vieliessar started walking again. But she was no longer afraid.

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 …