Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) (40 page)

When Vieliessar is High King …

The folk of Oronviel believed her—believed
in
her—because what she did as War Prince of Oronviel was exactly what she promised she would do as High King of the land entire. Her Lightborn were her greatest weapon in that secret war, for at least half of them came from Farmhold or Landbond families:

And if her knights and lords were disappointed by the fact that they could no longer hang poachers as they wished—or beat their tenants for their amusement—they were reconciled by the knowledge that Oronviel would soon be going to war.

*   *   *

I
wonder when my good cousins and fellow princes will notice I have stolen half their lands?
Vieliessar mused. It was a whimsical thought, but a serious one as well. She’d cleared her domain and much of the domains it bordered of bandits. Half by patrols, half by recruiting those bandits to serve in her army. She’d sent her Lightborn to tend the people of the border steadings on both sides of her borders. And in truth, even if Harvest were to see the paying out of tithes, many of the folk of the border steadings would not be there to pay: a vast army needed wagons and animals to pull them, servants to cook food and pitch tents and saddle and unsaddle horses. Landbonds had many of the skills her army needed, so she encouraged them to leave their holdings and come to her.

But if her strength and her victory lay in the commons, it did not mean she could neglect either her lords or her knights, for if she won through to peace when she sat upon the Unicorn Throne, she would fulfill the last of Amrethion’s promises to his future:
the end of High House and Low
. Equal justice for all meant not merely that there would no longer be great lords and lesser lords. It meant that none could be set above another: she changed little if she simply set those who were now low above those who were now high.

Vieliessar thought idly of how different Oronviel now was from the other domains of the West. In the springtide the War Princes usually went on a progress, traveling with an escort large enough to protect them from treachery or attack. Bolecthindial Caerthalien had taken no less than five hundred of his Household knights when he rode out, but Vieliessar could ride from corner to corner of her own land alone, certain not she would not be attacked. She thought of the story she had so often been told in her childhood:
And the knights of the High King’s meisne were all great kings, and each was as sweet-tempered as a sleeping babe, as loyal as a hunting hound, as beautiful as the Vilya in fruit and flower, as strong as the storms of winter, and pledged to care for all they met as ardently as the Silver Eagle tends her hatchling.

In Oronviel, that nursery tale had come true.

Today, in the company of a mixed troop of Oronviel and Ivrithir knights—her own guard, plus a meisne of Ivrithir
komen
commanded by Lord Farathon of Ivrithir—she rode toward the place where Araphant’s borders touched hers. Aramenthiali and Caerthalien used it as a way to enter one another’s domains unnoticed. Through the winter, Vieliessar and her knights had used it as a hunting park, clearing it of outlaws.

Oronviel did not share much border with Araphant—a score of leagues, no more—and Vieliessar’s border lords had little to do, for Araphant’s manors and farms lay in that domain’s southern quadrant. Its northern reaches had been left to the stag and the wolf, for Araphant had long been a limp rag chewed by Caerthalien and Aramenthiali, helplessly ceding territory to each. When War Prince Luthilion died, his House might simply vanish, for Luthilion had lived far beyond his allotted years; fate and chance had taken brothers, sisters, children, and greatchildren all before him.

“My lord, someone comes,”
Komen
Bethaerian said.

“They ride one of our horses, whether they are ours or not,” Vieliessar said, peering at the mounted figure in the distance. “Peace, Betharian,” she added, “we are nearly two score.”

“If this is no scout for one of your enemies,” Farathon of Ivrithir said.

“If an enemy comes in force from Araphant, I will hold myself surprised,” Vieliessar said dryly. “But even if Luthilion rides at Bolecthindial’s order, he would head west and come at us over Caerthalien’s border rather than try to bring an army through this forest.” On their own side of the border the trees had been kept thinned by landbond families driven from their homes and forced to labor. On Araphant’s side, they had grown unchecked for centuries.

“That is so, Lord Vieliessar,” Farathon said with a smile, for his meisne had been riding this stretch of border for the past fortnight and had spent much of that time in Araphant’s forest. “Yet no good word ever came swiftly.”

The horseman had closed the distance to them as they spoke. Neither horse nor rider was encumbered by a single ounce they did not need to bear: the animal’s saddle was a thin pad of leather, the stirrups mere flattened rings. And the rider, who was little more than a child, wore no armor. He barely checked the horse’s mad gallop before he flung himself from its saddle and ran forward. His mount, freed of direction, cantered in a wide circle around Vieliessar and her knights, so filled with the excitement of the run that it hardly noticed its exhaustion.

“The War Prince—
komentai’a,
I must speak with her—my lord of Greenstone Tower said I would find her near—it is urgent—” the boy gasped.

“I am here,” Vieliessar said, nudging Sorodiarn forward. “Let him pass,” she said, for when she spoke, the boy had started toward her and Farathon had moved automatically to block him.

“Lord Vieliessar—” the boy began. He was as winded as his mount, but determined to deliver his message at once. “A meisne—from Araphant—my lord Peramarth did not know their intent until today—through the wood—”

“How many?” Bethaerian demanded, but the boy only shook his head.

“Why did your lord not use the sun-signal to warn us?” Farathon demanded, for each of the border towers were equipped with sheets of silvered glass that could be used to flash simple messages to watchers many miles distant. At least during bright, clear days.

“Said—not to warn them,” the boy gasped.

“You have done well,” Vieliessar said, putting warmth into her voice. “Come. You will ride with me. Sorodiarn is a gentle beast and your own steed deserves a rest. We will go to Greenstone Tower and see what there is to see. But first, someone must catch your horse. We are lucky he is tired.”

“My lord, you cannot mean to ride toward this peril, after Lord Peramarth has sent to warn you against it?” Bethaerian said. “We must retreat to a place of safety.”

“Better to ride to than from,” Vieliessar answered. “If knights come through the woods of Araphant, I do not think their number can be a force much larger than our own. Peramarth will be glad of extra swords if it is an attack.”

And I shall be glad to be there if it is not,
Vieliessar thought. A party of knights crossing from Araphant to Oronviel was so unusual she did not wish to gain information of it second hand, and asking her people to discover whether something unusual was a threat before attacking it was a thing most of them thought was sheer moonstruck madness.
Attack and be safe,
Vieliessar thought.
They do as their greatsires did, and so grudge is heaped upon injury until they breed war.
She knew that asking her people to stop, to talk, to
think
would someday generate a tragedy.
And I can only say that if I meant to rule as all the War Princes have ruled before me, it would be better if I had never ruled at all.

“Now come,” she said to the messenger. “Give me your name and your hand.”

*   *   *

The distance young Randir had covered in less than a candlemark took the troop of heavy warhorses three to retrace, and when they were near to Greenstone Tower, they were met by a troop of its defenders led by Lord Peramarth himself.

“My lord prince,” Peramarth said. When he pushed back the visor of his helm, his entire face was exposed, for the Border Lords might have to fight in any weather. “I did not expect you.”

Here so soon or here at all?
Vieliessar wondered, for Peramarth’s thoughts were a flurry that could not be quickly untangled by True Speech.

“I had thought—” Peramarth began, then broke off. “No matter. Greenstone has stood since the days Araphant was a power in the land, and her walls have never been forced. Permit me to offer you my hospitality until we have repulsed our invaders.”

“It seems a strange way to invade anything,” Vieliessar commented a few minutes later, from atop Greenstone Tower. It was no taller than the watchtowers in her own keep, but it seemed as if it were, as there was nothing else for miles around and even the tops of the great trees were below them. Standing in this place, she could imagine she stood among the clouds themselves, and by spreading her arms, could join the hawks in the sky.

“I still cannot make the count,” Angeleb said, sounding unhappy. He was one of Peramarth’s sentries, chosen for his keen vision.

“We saw movement in the forest two days since,” Peramarth said, pointing out and down. The area near the border was thick with greenneedle trees; Vieliessar had been watching since they’d climbed out onto the roof of the watchtower and had yet to see more than an occasional bright flash. “At first I thought Old Luthilion might have come hunting, though he has not been since before the Long Peace. But see—there?” Peramarth pointed to a gap in the forest cover. “Blight and storm has killed the old trees, and the new ones are not yet grown. They rode across that place just this morning. Two tailles of knights, a Green Robe—and someone with the right to ride beneath the princely standard of Araphant.”

Peramarth—she knew—had delayed sending his warning until he was certain the party beneath the trees rode bowshot-straight, and not in the erratic circles of a hunting party. To the Border Lords, giving false warning was as shameful as giving no warning at all.

“Why does he come?” she wondered aloud. “He cannot expect to conquer Oronviel with twenty-four knights and one Lightborn.” Gunedwaen had not wasted his efforts spying on Araphant—he had too few people and too many places they needed to be—so she knew nothing more of it than she had learned at the Sanctuary, and that was little indeed.

“Perhaps he comes to offer you a marriage alliance,” Bethaerian said dryly. “It would be a brief marriage, at least. Old Luthilion has seen a dozen Astromancers tend the Shrine.”

“There is some luck in surviving so long,” Vieliessar said, still thinking aloud. “And perhaps wisdom, too. You say he will cross our border, Peramarth?”

“By midday, if they do not stop.”

“Then we will greet him and see why he has come.”

*   *   *

Peramarth disliked her plan—a mark of his loyalty, inconvenient though it was—and he liked it even less when Vieliessar said she meant to meet Araphant herself. In the end she prevailed, and sat her destrier before a taille of sixty knights: her own meisne and three tailles from Greenstone.

As the approaching party became visible, Vieliessar could see that tied to Araphant’s pennion was a bough of the greenneedle tree, the traditional symbol that the party riding beneath it requested a parley-truce. Beside the knight carrying the princely standard—a leaping green stag upon a sable field—rode another in armor the iridescent green-black of a beetle’s wing, and upon his left rode a Lightborn, his hair silvered with great age. When they reached the border stones, they stopped, and the standard-bearer and the Lightborn rode on alone.

The wind blew through Vieliessar’s hair, blowing its strands ticklingly over her cheek. She did not wear her helmet; the envoy must be able to know he spoke with the War Prince of Oronviel, not some faceless messenger.

Lord Peramarth’s knights were explicitly under her command, and she had given them unambiguous orders. Nonetheless, Vieliessar was proud of their discipline and that of the Ivrithir knights, for she had bidden them all stand still and silent, and not one armored figure moved, even when she rode forward, Bethaerian at her side, to meet the Araphant messengers.

“Oronviel gives you good greeting,” she said when she and the two from Araphant had stopped facing one another. “I would know how it is you come to us beneath the branch of truce, for there is no war between us.”

“Araphant greets Oronviel,” the aged Lightborn answered. His voice was thin, but in it Vieliessar could still hear the echo of the resonance and power it must have held in his youth. “I am Celeharth Lightbrother, Chief Lightborn to War Prince Luthilion Araphant. We ride beneath the branch of truce out of desire to speak with you, Lord Vieliessar Oronviel, honestly and in peace.”

“Your lord might have done so many moonturns since,” Vieliessar said, nodding in the direction of the green-armored figure who still waited on the far side of the border. She could skim the surface of Celeharth’s thoughts easily: he knew Luthilion had come to make an alliance with Oronviel, but what terms he would offer or accept, Celeharth did not know.

He smiled faintly at her mild gibe. “When one reaches my master’s years, one does not hasten. Yet he would speak now.”

“Events do not always wait upon the desire for reflection. Yet I am eager to hear Araphant’s word to me. Say to your lord that I and all with me here accept Araphant’s truce, and I offer my own body as surety for his life.” She unbuckled her swordbelt and held it out to Bethaerian. Slowly, her thoughts a roil of worry for her liege’s safety, Bethaerian took the weapon.

Celeharth inclined his head. “I bring him to your side.” He turned and rode back to the Araphant knights. The lone knight-herald holding the pennion of truce sat as motionless as if he were carved from stone.

Vieliessar could feel the tension of the
komen
behind her as if it were a wind she must set herself against. It seemed an eternity before Celeharth Lightborn reached his master’s side. His voice did not carry, but his thoughts did.

It is as we hoped, old friend. Oronviel’s new War Prince, Vieliessar once-Lightborn, offers us the truce of the body.