Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) (23 page)

She closed the door behind her and walked into Arevethmonion.

She did not look back.

*   *   *

He had not expected to end his days in a forest cottage on Caerthalien land. If—by the grace of the Silver Hooves—he had lived into old age, Gunedwaen had expected a place of honor at his lord’s table, quiet days spent imparting the lore of his long life to the children who would grow to become
komen
—the strong defense of his noble house.

Of Farcarinon.

The shutter rattled. It was autumn, and old bones and old injuries ached in the cold. Striker raised her head, gazing about the room for a moment before returning to sleep. The
hikuliasa
was good company, though Gunedwaen had never decided what purpose had lain in Bolecthindial’s mind when he had presented the animal as a gift. Perhaps to mock Gunedwaen’s own state, for the beast had been lamed and half wild.

Each winter Gunedwaen thought of letting his fire die, of walking out into the snow and laying his bones down for the last time. Freezing was said to be a gentle death, far more so than the deaths he had dealt. And each year he told himself:
Next year. Not this year. Next year.
Perhaps it was curiosity that kept him living. Perhaps it was the wish to fight one last battle. The Silver Hooves would not take him if he died peacefully, and he had no taste for wandering as a homeless ghost till the stars grew dark.

The shutter rattled again,

“You should show yourself,” Gunedwaen said calmly. “If you have come to kill me, I must say you are some years too late.”

“You cannot have known I was here,” a voice said.

“Had I not learned the skill to see the unseen, I would have perished long since,” Gunedwaen answered. He had not been truly certain of her presence until she spoke. Striker raised her head from her paws again, gazing curiously in the direction of the voice. She seemed puzzled. “I would have you show yourself, stranger.”

“Are you truly so eager to die?” the voice asked.

“Are you truly so dangerous?” Gunedwaen answered.

There was a moment of silence, then: “Once I would have said I wished no harm to any. I would know who your fealty is pledged to, old man.”

“What Landbond pledges to any lord but the next harvest?” Gunedwaen answered mockingly.

There was a snort of contempt from behind him. Striker made a soft sound in her throat.

“I have known Landbonds in plenty, old man. You are not one.”

“You are well traveled for one of the Night Brotherhood. If not well informed,” Gunedwaen observed.

“Well informed enough to know I have never seen one of the Children of Night, nor have you. I come to ask your House and your fealty. I already know your name.”

“If you know my name, you know all there is to know,” Gunedwaen answered. With laborious care, he shifted in his seat enough so he could turn his head to see the doorway.

He saw no one there.

Suddenly there was a ripple in the air, and where there had been nothingness stood a figure in a grey cloak, its deep hood doing as much to conceal her face as her spell had done. Striker got to her feet, uttering a low bark of warning. The woman pushed back the hood of her cloak and Gunedwaen saw what he’d expected to see: the shorn hair of one of the Lightborn.

“I do not know who you claim as your lord, for all that you live as Caerthalien’s supplicant,” the Lightborn said stubbornly.

“A dead house and a failed cause,” Gunedwaen said, sighing. “Come, Lightsister, tell me your purpose here.” He turned back to gaze into the fire. Her footsteps were soft as she crossed the room to the woodpile, chose a length of wood, and added it to the coals.

“I seek one named Gunedwaen, once Swordmaster to War Prince Serenthon Farcarinon. I have need of him.”

The rekindled fire cast its amber light on her face. He had never seen her before. But he knew her.

“Lady Nataranweiya’s child lived,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” the woman answered. “Nataranweiya fled to the Sanctuary of the Star. There I was born. There I returned.”

“Then return there again and live still,” Gunedwaen said. “Farcarinon is gone, its children scattered to the seven winds. You cannot claim your father’s house from its ashes.”

“It took me long to find you,” she said, deflecting his words. “I have come to learn all you can teach me of knighthood and war.”

Deep in the embers of what he once was, Gunedwaen felt a stirring of old instincts. He remembered the terrible day when Serenthon had received word of Caerthalien’s betrayal. Gunedwaen had begged him to sue for terms, knowing Farcarinon could not stand alone against a High House alliance, and for a moment he had seen Serenthon hesitate, about to agree. Then he had looked upon his lady, already great with child, and his face had grown cold and resolute. He shook his head, and spoke the words that sealed their fates.

“I shall not surrender all that I love to Darkness.”

Gunedwaen had followed his liege-lord to the battlefield, and saw him fall, and was struck down in his turn. He would have—should have—died there beside him, but his apprentices had carried him from the field and into hiding. Gunedwaen remembered standing in Caerthalien’s great hall, weak from fever, his garments torn and stained with the sennights of illness, injuries, hiding. He remembered the moment Ivrulion Light-Prince had bespelled him so he could never be whole again, how the fever for revenge had burned hotter than the wound-sickness that had cost him his arm and the use of his leg, how in that moment all his hopes of vengeance were shattered.

And he laughed. “My lord, are you disordered in your mind? And even if you are mad, what teaching do you think you can gain from a lame, one-armed man? Abandon your thoughts of revenge, I beg you.”

He saw her eyes flash with a prince’s temper, saw her set her jaw. “I have not come for revenge,” she said, and her voice was hard. “I have come to be made Knight by your hand.”

Gunedwaen stared at her in sudden doubt, too taken aback to speak. The
komen
began their training in childhood—Serenthon’s daughter was decades past her childhood. Even if he wished to try, he did not possess the resources of a War Prince’s castel with which to school her. “Go back to the Sanctuary,” he said at last. “Go anywhere. My lord, I cannot aid you.”

“You must!” she answered fiercely. “Do you think I wish for this, Gunedwaen Swordmaster? I wish nothing more than to live out my life as a child of the Light. But I may not. And to say to you more than this will bring about your death as surely as if I stabbed you through the heart myself.”

“My life is not so glorious that I would regret leaving it,” Gunedwaen said. “But I would be nine times a fool to give you that which you ask only because you ask it.”

“Then swear to me you are Farcarinon’s still,” she whispered, and even in the dim firelight he could see tears glitter in her eyes.

“I am Farcarinon’s until the stars grow cold,” he answered steadily. “I beg your forgiveness, my prince. I was borne from the field against my will. I gave no parole to Caerthalien.”

None had been needed, after Ivrulion Light-Prince’s working.

Farcarinon—what name she bore he did not know—took a step toward him, so swift that Striker got to her feet. But she merely knelt beside his chair and took his hand in hers. Her fingers were soft, her hands those of one who had never held a sword. “There is no need to ask, Master Gunedwaen. You preserved your life until I came for you. And I beg your forgiveness in turn, for I must have your knowledge and skill. Teach me as you taught my father.”

“My lady,” he said helplessly, “Farcarinon is
gone
.”

She smiled at him, and her smile was brilliant with grief. “So I believed for long years. But I do not seek to raise Farcarinon from its ashes.”

“Then … what?” he asked. “My lord, if any of Prince Serenthon’s
komentai’a
survived, they have pledged fealty elsewhere. Or they are useless, as I am.”

“Not useless to me, Master Gunedwaen,” she answered. “I call you back to service now.”

“And I come,” Gunedwaen answered steadily. “But you must tell me what brings you here, for I cannot aid you without that knowledge.”

“I will be the death of you,” Farcarinon answered softly. “Nor shall I tell you all, and you must content yourself with that. But I shall tell you this: I was born Vieliessar Farcarinon, War Prince of Farcarinon, in the Sanctuary of the Star. Celelioniel Astromancer named me Child of the Prophecy, but I would not hear. I beg you: hear all I would not, for our time grows short. High King Amrethion Aradruiniel spoke a Foretelling on the day he fell from the Unicorn Throne, giving warning of the day the Hundred would face an enemy who did not wish to take their lands and wealth, but their
lives
—all life, to the least blade of grass in the humblest field. It is foretold that this Darkness will strip the flesh from the bones of the world, and none of the War Princes knows—or cares!”

“How came you to know these things?” Gunedwaen asked.
How came you to know Aramenthiali’s plan? Is this count you bring us of Caerthalien’s knights accurate? You say Oronviel will not fight this day—who has said this where you might hear?
The ghost of what he once was rose up in his question.

The words his liege-lord and prince had spoken already were near to madness, but that madness was compounded by the words she spoke next. She told of Celelioniel Astromancer’s quest, of Celelioniel’s discovery of the truth and meaning of the ancient Prophecy, of her own place within its web.

Vieliessar stroked Striker’s head absently as she knelt beside Gunedwaen’s chair. “I might say to you Serenthon-my-father received a Foretelling of Celelioniel of the failure of his ambition, of his death, my mother’s death, my birth—but who can know what happened that day save those who were there, and they are all gone to the night winds,” she said, her voice quiet. “I could say to you all my words are proven in scrolls hidden away by Hamphuliadiel, in Foretellings given by generations of Astromancers, in histories too dry for any but scholars—but such words will not sway princes and knights.” She laughed bitterly. “They don’t even persuade scholars, for Hamphuliadiel thinks the evil day can be averted by destroying the warning of it. I know one thing only: the Darkness comes, and it comes soon, and if the Hundred Houses are not united against it, then we shall all perish as if we never were. I must do what my father could not do—and if you will not help me, I shall fail.”

Years of patient alliances, gifts and promises, and secret treaties had brought Serenthon close to making himself High King—so close the Hundred Houses had not been content with merely humbling Farcarinon, but had destroyed its castels and keeps, slaughtered its
komen,
and carried its vassals off to live out their lives on alien ground. And now Serenthon’s daughter sought him out, saying she must succeed at the task that had broken Farcarinon.

“You might fail even with my aid,” Gunedwaen said gently. “I cannot give you all the skills you seek. I cannot give you victory.”

“The Hundred will not follow a Green Robe,” Vieliessar said flatly. “Give me your swordcraft, Master Gunedwaen, and I will put off that robe for a knight’s armor. I can see no other way. But if you will not aid me,” Vieliessar said quietly, “I will go.”

“‘Haste gives a thousand knights to the enemy,’” Gunedwaen answered absently. Whether it was madness or a sanity that transcended sense, he would follow Farcarinon’s last prince. “Come, my lord. Build up the fire. It is late and the room grows cold. And we have much to speak of before we begin.”

*   *   *

The message had been sent from the Sanctuary of the Star in Flower Moon, but hadn’t reached Thurion until the end of Harvest, for he had been in the field with the army. The seneschal at Caerthalien Keep had sent the scroll onward, of course, but scrollcase had been left behind to save weight and space in the dispatch rider’s bags.

Thurion had thought nothing of it at the time—messages came from the Sanctuary to its former students now and then. In the scroll Momioniarch Lightsister had asked if Caerthalien would permit him to return to the Sanctuary to teach for a year. Thurion had not needed to consult Lord Bolecthindial to know the answer to that: he had sent his regrets by spellbird and forgotten the matter completely until the day he returned, at long last, to his rooms in Caerthalien Keep to find the Sanctuary’s green-and-silver scrollcase sitting atop a chest.

He’d picked it up absently, thinking that he could not return it to the Sanctuary until the Candidates went in the spring. When he touched the scrollcase, the Sanctuary’s true message was revealed, unrolling in his mind in Hamphuliadiel’s voice.

“To Thurion Lightbrother, greetings. I send you this message in secret not to set you at odds with Caerthalien, but in warning—”
Thurion dropped the scrollcase in surprise. He could not imagine why the Astromancer would send him a message at all, much less by secret means. The case hit the floor and rolled under his bed, and it took him several minutes to retrieve it. Then he knelt on the floor, clutching the silver-stamped leather case tightly as the voice echoed through his mind.

Vieliessar had left—
fled
—the Sanctuary of the Star sometime in the spring.
“I believe she means to break the Covenant in order to take revenge in Farcarinon’s name against Caerthalien and the other houses of the Grand Alliance…”
Warning was being sent to the senior Lightborn of those Houses—Caerthalien, Aramenthiali, Cirandeiron, and Telthorelandor—which had been crucial to Farcarinon’s fall.
“I do not charge any of you with silence. You may tell whom you choose what I have conveyed to you, yet know that I believe it would not be well to make the matter of a disobedient Lightborn too public a matter, lest it seem to involve the Sanctuary of the Star in matters from which it has always stood apart. That Vieliessar is Farcarinon is unfortunate, for reasons you well understand…”

The information was stunning, but not so stunning that Thurion’s mind did not race on ahead of it.
“Senior” Lightborn. That can mean oldest, or of highest rank. Perhaps Carangil Lightbrother, as Ladyholder Glorthiachiel uses him to spy on everyone here. Ivrulion Light-Prince must have received this news, whether from Carangil or from the Sanctuary—and some time ago, for I know he has returned here several times since Flower.
Thurion did his best to still his questions, for the message was still unspooling in his mind, and once it had run its course, he suspected the spell would unravel and vanish.