Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) (69 page)

Another group of knights galloped from the battle, intent on attacking the refugees. The two in the lead galloped into walls of purple light and died, just as the first had, but the ones behind them had enough warning to rein in. Tunonil hoped they would simply return to the battle once they saw their prey was not undefended, but instead they moved forward at a walk. The marchers began to scatter. Tunonil froze where he stood.

Then one attacker began to beat at his arms and chest—Tunonil could see the bright silk of his garments had gone grey with frost—and the silks of another burst into flames, so that his warhorse galloped madly forward to batter itself against another wall of purple.

The remaining knights turned and galloped back toward the battle.

At last—welcome sight!—Tunonil saw the Light’s Chosen of the High King riding down the line on horseback, to see if all was well.

“Are you the last? Are more coming? Oh praise to the Light, Tunonil—I did not think you would survive!” Aradreleg Lightsister said as she reached them.

“Takes more than hard work and light feeding to kill a Landbond,” Tunonil answered gruffly.

“Are you the last?” Aradreleg repeated, and Tunonil nodded.

“No more. Some may have stayed, but—Mistress High House here says some of their folk are with us.”

The woman from Aramenthiali tried to glare at him, but the relief of freedom was too sweet. “My name is Tance,” she said. “Not ‘Mistress High House.’”

“I’ll bring you to the gathering place so you can rest. There’s not much there, but there’s water … and pikes. Lord Rithdeliel said if you managed to escape, you should be ready to fight.”

“Is there a bow?” Tance asked. “I was a forester in Lord Malanant’s household.”

“A forester?” Aradreleg said. “Praise the Light indeed! Your skills are welcome! Come—Tunonil, help her mount; I am needed elsewhere, and she is as well—”

Tance looked stunned at the swift change in her fortunes, but did as Aradreleg said. A moment later, they galloped away.

*   *   *

It was dusk by the time Tunonil heard the hornsong that signaled the High King’s victory and the enemy’s retreat. It was much like the end of every battle Tunonil had ever seen. Wounded knights moaned or shouted, wounded horses screamed, dogs howled and barked as they ran among the fallen. Uncounted hundreds of gleaners walked the battlefield, separating living from dead, friend from foe, and shooing away the ravens that had come in the thousands to gorge. Before morning, all that would lie upon the field would be the naked bodies of the enemy dead: their own dead would be brought back and prepared for the fire. Tunonil had learned that the High King was not here—but safe,
safe
, everyone agreed—so he wondered what would become of the enemy knights abandoned here if they could not pledge fealty to her.

He hoped they, too, would lie naked and abandoned on the field in the dawn light.

The end of the battle was only the beginning of the work for those who had not fought, though few grudged the labor now that they were the High King’s folk once again. There were horses to saddle, mules to catch and rope together, and oxen to collect and match into their familiar teams, for now the wagons they’d left behind must be brought to their encampment.

Tunonil had asked what was to keep the enemy from destroying their undefended wagons, and Harwing Lightbrother had laughed.

“Why,
we
are, of course! They won’t burn them or loot them or even carry them away while Shield is set upon them! We have been watching the wagons all day, as carefully as we watched the battle, and no one has gone near.”

Tunonil led his oxen back to the wagons. Even though the last light of day still brightened the sky, globes of wonder-glow had been set shining here. When he reached the carts, Tunonil saw knights, blood-spattered and weary, sitting their destriers in a line between the workers and the camp of the enemy—and beside them, rank upon rank of Light’s Chosen. He unblocked the wagon’s wheels, set the yoke upon the oxen’s necks, then coaxed them into place along the tree and chained the yoke to the shaft.

Once up on the wagon’s high seat, Tunonil looked back. Half the pavilions he and his fellows had labored to set were down again, and some were being put back up. He didn’t see the enemy army, but he didn’t stay to look.

The High King had won. That was all that mattered.

*   *   *

To be a War Prince possessed of a Name and a growing legend had its advantages, Vieliessar discovered. Border Lord Karamedheliel, master of Jaeglenhend’s Oakstone Tower, did not need to be convinced that her word was good and her dealings fair; nor did Vieliessar, for her part, fear secret rebellion. She did not plan to remain here for long, but neither did she mean to ride forth blindly and unprepared. And so, on the second night after she had taken Oakstone Tower, she retired to her bedchamber—once Karamedheliel’s—before the evening meal. It was not the soft bed Vieliessar yearned for as much as for a door that could be spell-locked. She had never dared to do this while on the march. There were too many calls upon her time, too many urgencies. And while a tent flap could have the same spell set upon it, anyone determined to enter need merely cut the fabric of the pavilion. And she dared not be interrupted while she was Farspeaking.

With all that had happened, it was hard to bring herself to the state of calm her spell required. Even the relief she felt at spell-locking the door of the sleeping chamber did not bring relief, so she wove ward after ward about the room until the walls sang with Magery, taking comfort in the familiar discipline. Silence and Protection and Silence again, until the space began to take on the heavy quiet of one of the meditation chambers in the Sanctuary. She had never realized what a luxury it was to live behind Wards and walls until she left them behind forever.

Her spellkit—once Celeharth’s—had been lost with her baggage train. But she had found a way to make do. From a chest in the corner she took a stone teapot and a delicate cup of moon-pale shin’zuruf. She had been surprised but pleased to find these items among Karamedheliel’s possessions. Most welcome of all was a tiny brazier, only large enough to hold one charcoal disk. The brazier was very old, carved of white jade with the design of a herd of running unicorns, a golden bowl for the charcoal set in the top. Gazing at it, Vieliessar thought back suddenly to the day she had gone to Earime’kalareinya to sacrifice for victory in battle. Even now, the memory of the Unicorn’s radiant beauty, glimpsed and lost, made her heart ache when she thought of it.

Recognizing her mind’s attempts to delay her, she opened another box and chose a disk of charcoal, setting it carefully into the brazier’s golden bowl. She placed the brazier on top of the chest, then set the charcoal alight with a thought. Iardalaith had given her a wooden canister of tea, and another of incense. Now she shook loose tea into the teapot, then filled it with hot water from the kettle. As she waited for the tea to steep, she opened the incense box and teased out the tiny bone spoon inside, then scooped a small mound of incense crystals onto the charcoal. At once they began to bubble and melt, and soon the sweet, rich scent of incense filled the chamber. When the tea was ready, she poured her cup full. The cool sweetness of the tea mingled with the warm sweetness of the incense, familiar and soothing.

By the time she’d finished two cups of tea, the calm sense of
weight
she’d always somehow associated with complex and delicate Magery had settled over her. She folded the bed’s coverlet to serve as a cushion and settled herself upon the thickly carpeted floor.

Thurion? Thurion, are you there?

Since the day she had sent him to the Grand Windsward, Vieliessar had tried to Farspeak him as often as she could. But the Windsward was so far to the east that it might be afternoon there even when night had fallen in the West. And Farspeech only worked when both Lightborn had minds that were still and quiet, awaiting the message. They had missed each other as often as not. The last time she had been able to contact him, she had been in Ceoprentrei.

She could no longer easily recall how many sennights had passed since then.

For long moments she called and received no reply. She was about to give up when:

“Vielle? It has been so long! Are you well?”

She opened her inward eyes and saw what she expected to: the image of a chamber in some Grand Windsward castel.

“We reached the Uradabhur safely enough. Things have not gone well since.”

She quickly told him the whole: the battle with Jaeglenhend, the Alliance’s pursuit, her defeat in battle, her flight. “I can only hope my people survive, but I fear for those who lie in the Alliance’s hands. I hold the fealty of twenty-five Houses, Thurion. Take my army and my life, and the High Houses become rich. They intend to execute all who have sworn fealty to me and divide their domains among themselves.”

“And they have every reason to choose that course,” Thurion said slowly. “Why should they fear the vengeance of the Silver Hooves when it did not fall upon them for the destruction of Farcarinon? But this could help us. Once word spreads that the High Houses now follow a strategy of conquest and annexation…” There was a long pause as Thurion sought for words. “Many will see that choosing your side will allow them to retain their lives, if not their sovereignty. Gain enough Houses, and even this Alliance cannot stand against you.”

This disconcertingly insightful analysis of a situation Thurion hadn’t even known about a tenth-candlemark before only made Vieliessar miss him more keenly.

“If I yet have more army than the handful that accompanied me in my flight. I shall try to reach Aradreleg next, to see what news she can give me. If she lives,” Vieliessar added softly, for Aradreleg had been among those captured, and though no War Prince would execute her, any Lightborn might choose to. “But tell me your news,” she urged. “I need your council. And my own situation I know.”

She felt him laugh just a little. “My news is much as it was the last time we spoke, save for this: the Silver Swords leave within the sennight. Master Kemmiaret swears he will bring the Silver Swords across the Arzhana before the passes to the Uradabhur close.”

“And what does Melchienchiel Penenjil say?” Vieliessar asked.

“She says she will come—this season if she can. But you know she will be more cautious with the rest of her meisne. The southern route isn’t wide or gradual enough for supply wagons, and the northern route is held by Nantirworiel. Methothiel Nantirworiel usually doesn’t care who uses the pass so long as they pay, but—”

“—but it’s different when he’s being asked to let an enemy army through,” she finished for him. “If the Silver Swords would like to conquer Nantirworiel on their way west, that would be very useful to me.”

“I’ll mention that to Master Kemmiaret,” Thurion answered dryly. “The Houses that have declared for you are all mustering their meisnes. Kerethant and Enerchelimier join Penenjil on the march. I think Artholor and Hallorad also plan to come at once, but they lie east of Penenjil and neither will risk a Windsward crossing or an ascent of the Feinolon Range in bad weather. And if the weather turns early, all of them will stay in the Windsward until spring rather than be forced to winter in the Arzhana.”

“And rather than ask their Lightborn to divert the storm—or open the passes,” Vieliessar said.

“Yes,” Thurion said regretfully. “It is much to ask of them.”

Vieliessar sighed in acceptance. “They will come when they will come. At least they are willing to try.” As much as she might rail against the indecisiveness of the Windsward Houses, she would not herself have chosen a course that would force her army to overwinter in a hostile place.
As if I had any choice about it,
she thought wryly.

“I would conjure summer myself, if it would get me to you faster,” Thurion said. “I’ve missed you.”

“And I, you,” she answered, swallowing hard. “I wish you were here now. I could use your wisdom.”

“Any aid I can give you from this distance, I give you gladly. You know that,” he answered.

“I hope I shall always know enough to value my true friends,” she replied impulsively. The grief and longing she heard in her words was so raw it made her wish she hadn’t spoken.

“I promise I will always be that,” Thurion answered quietly. “But come. Tell me what you need.”

She had tried to reach him on impulse, not truly believing she would manage it, and the pleasure in the contact had allowed her to forget the war for a few moments. But now—

“I need to find the Flower Forest of Tildorangelor,” she blurted. “And I have no idea where to look!”

There was a long, meditative pause.

“I don’t know where it is either, Vielle. But I could find it with enough time—and power,” Thurion answered.

“What are you saying?” Vieliessar asked sharply.

“You took the same lessons I did from Rondithiel Lightbrother, and I am sure he has not changed his lectures from one century to another,” Thurion said.

“Probably not,” Vieliessar said. “And since he is here, I can hear them again any time I wish to.”

Thurion laughed. “I would not dare dream of such great fortune! You are truly blessed. But listen. For spells such as Fetch and Send we must know exactly where we are touching with our Magery. But not to use Door,” Thurion continued, in the cheerful tones of a patient instructor. “Door is a spell that requires great power, and that is why we are taught to cast it only between Flower Forests. And why did Rondithiel Lightbrother say that was?”

“He said it is because within the Light there is only one Flower Forest, which makes no sense at all,” Vieliessar said. “But—”

“But it is true, at least in a sense,” Thurion said. “The Flower Forests all touch one another in the Light. Have you never reached through a nearer Flower Forest to a more distant one? Oh, no, of course you have not,” Thurion said hastily, sounding embarrassed and contrite. “You were not taught to Heal on the battlefield. If you had been, you would know. With enough time, power will flow into the Flower Forest you have tapped from those more distant, but often we cannot wait. So we reach for the distant ones directly. We can, because they all touch.”