Crown of Vengeance

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 Candidate 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.

“Perhaps it would—had I the least notion of what you were discussing,” Vieliessar said dryly.

She would not ask Thurion about the Child of the Prophecy in front of the others, and to take him aside would only draw more attention to her presence. But as it developed, she had no need to.

“You are fortunate not to be a Postulant,” Thurion said, a faint note of self-mockery in his protest. “They keep us reading from morning to night, and we must memorize it all. It is from The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel. You must know it.”

She nodded slowly. Parts of it had been performed at the great feasts held in Caerthalien. “It’s long,” she said.

“Longer than you know,” Thurion said ruefully. “Some say Amrethion Aradruiniel wrote the Song himself, having foreknowledge of his doom, others say it was written by members of his court in the first days of their exile. Still others say it’s not one Song, but many, all stitched together into an uneasy patchwork. Everyone knows The Song of Amrethion’s Rade and The Song of Pelashia’s Gift, but there are scrolls and scrolls of it here, and the last part, after The Song of the Doom of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor, is just a long jumble of meaningless poetry. It’s supposed to be a prophecy that someday there will be a new High King upon the Unicorn Throne, and there’s a Child of the Prophecy whose birth will herald the fall of the High Houses.”

So Maeredhiel named me. Vieliessar was torn between relief and disappointment: naming her “Child of the Prophecy” seemed to be nothing more than an obscure joke of Maeredhiel’s, especially if the Child of the Prophecy was supposed to destroy all the High Houses. (Her own ambition was no more grand than the slaughter of all the Caerthalien Line Direct.) But surely Celelioniel Astromancer had believed it. She had set Peacebond upon Vieliessar at the moment of her birth because of that belief. But Vieliessar had been at the Sanctuary long enough to hear somewhat of its previous Astromancer. Celelioniel had drifted into madness in the last decades of her reign.

“It seems unlikely,” she said.

“I know,” Thurion said quietly. “Most of my teachers think the last part of Amrethion’s Song is nonsense, or some code we have lost the key to. But we have to memorize it anyway. I never thought I would be tired of scrolls and of reading—but that was before I spent so many candlemarks in the Library.”

“But come! Share our pain,” Namritila said. “You are High House raised, you will have heard parts of The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel all your life! Yet what are we to make of—oh, go on, Thurion, your voice is better than mine. Give her the verse about the Throne!”

Thurion smiled and nodded. “Here’s one I warrant you haven’t heard, Vielle:

“For twice upon five hundred lives, the Throne of Shame shall sleep unknown

And Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor a haunt of shadows lie

The Happy Lands shall ring to blood and battle through the wheel of years

While all who husband hidden secrets die…”

“But Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor is a nursery song!” Vieliessar said in protest. “You know it, I’m sure: ‘The city of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor was as bright as jewels. White were its walls and sun-gold-gleaming were its roofs, and its ruler was Amrethion Aradruiniel, and his meisne was a hundred knights. The first was Prince Cirandeiron, who rode a white horse and had armor of gleaming silver. His destrier’s armor was silver, too, and there were diamonds set in his shoes. The second was Queen Telthorelandor, who rode a golden horse and had armor of brightest gold. Her destrier’s armor was golden, too, and he was shod in cairngorms and purest gold. The third’—”

“Yes, yes, yes—it goes on forever!” Arahir protested laughingly. “A hundred knights for the Hundred Houses, each more beautiful than the last. I wish we studied that instead of Amrethion’s Song—I’m sure it makes as much sense!”

But alone in her rooms at the end of the evening, Vieliessar was unable to dismiss the hradan Maeredhiel had laid upon her so easily. There must be more to her words—to Celelioniel’s belief—than an esoteric joke, and Vieliessar became determined to discover what it was. But it was far more difficult than she hoped. To find a copy of the text was easy enough. But The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel filled twenty close-written scrolls, and there were tenfold more written about it. After that night, the nine of them would often gather in the Common Room at the end of the day. Vieliessar had been doubtful of her welcome at first—she was no Postulant, to understand their talk of magic—but Thurion’s friends seemed as interested in her tales of keeping the stillroom ready for use as she was in their tales of using it, and she was never made to feel less than they by the things they found to talk of.

Not all the Postulants were so welcoming. Many, seeing her in the Common Room in the grey tunic and skirts of a servant, spoke ostentatiously of their studies in magic. Vieliessar quickly realized Thurion’s circle was made up of those who did not care.

“‘Stars and clouds point the way…’” Thurion mused one evening, turning his teacup around between his palms and frowning down at it as if the fragrant amber liquid were a scrying pool. “I am not sure what that phrase can mean. That the stars show the time, and the season, and even hold Foretellings for those skilled to read them is something everyone knows. And of course omens may be taken from the sky and the weather—providing the weather has not been caused by a Mage bringing rain or warmth out of season!” he added, smiling.

“I still say it is a copyist’s error, and that it should read: ‘when stars or clouds point the way,’” Mathingaland said determinedly.

“But then they wouldn’t be pointing together,” Thurion argued. “And without those syllables, the stanza doesn’t scan,” he added.

“It’s madness to look for sense in Amrethion’s Curse,” Namritila said. “I do not think it is a part of the Song in the first place. It must be a satire, like Manurion’s Ride, or, or, or The Wedding of Inglodoth!” she finished triumphantly.

“If it were a satire, ’Tila, we would surely know that much, even if we had lost the meaning. It takes the same form as all the prophecies set into The Book of Celenthodiel. It just doesn’t make any sense! Consider: ‘When scholar turns to sword, and warrior to peace,’” Arahir said. “Everyone knows that komentai become scholars, not the other way around. And does a warrior turning to peace speak of the komentai’a or of something else? Even scholars will fight when they or their House are in danger, anyway, so how can one say they ever turn to peace?”

“Of course, the opening section should be: ‘When scholar turns from sword, and warrior to peace,’” Mathingaland announced firmly. “The rest of the line is a riddle for philosophers, not for Mages. If any of us could answer those questions, then we could solve Aradruiniel’s Prophecy, lift the Curse, and restore the Unicorn Throne.”

Arguing about the meaning of songs or poems was a time-honored way to pass an evening, and the young Postulants were entirely willing to make The Song of Amrethion Aradruiniel their text, even without the excuse of explaining it to Vieliessar. Unfortunately, none of their arguments had yet produced any answers. They had argued the opening lines since Midwinter, and would probably still be arguing them come Midsummer.

But soon it was Storm Moon, and Vieliessar was no longer able to spend pleasant evenings with Thurion’s friends, for this was the servants’ busiest time. The Sanctuary did not run on the same calendar as a Great Keep did: there, the inventories of blankets and linens were taken twice a year, when winter things were changed for summer. Here, the inventory was done once a year, just before the Candidate Caravans arrived. And so she set the matter of Amrethion’s Song aside, for she doubted Thurion and his friends could spin truth from riddles where generations before them had not. To them it was a pleasant pastime, a game of scholarship. And almost—almost!—she agreed, and yet …

Celelioniel had believed—so deeply she had set her will against the War Princes of the Hundred Houses to preserve Vieliessar’s life.

And Vieliessar did not know why.

Yet.

The first Candidates did not arrive until Flower, then made up for their delay with a vengeance. This meant long days for everyone—and overcrowding, chaos, and tents pitched across the fields of Rosemoss Farm as if the Sanctuary were under siege. It would have been child’s play for Vieliessar to vanish into the crowds of people coming and going, and for the first time in many moonturns she revisited her dreams of escape. But she had been fourteen last Rade: old enough to know no Free Company would follow one still a child. In Arevethmonion she had seen texts on battle, on strategy, on arms. She could not train herself in the skills of a knight, but she could learn about them against the day she could order knights against Caerthalien.

I shall go next spring. Next spring.

She did not have many free moments to consider her plight, for in addition to an influx of new Candidates, this was the season when those princes from beyond the Mystrals made their luck-sacrifices to petition for good fortune in the coming War Season. Only the High Houses in the West might dally and make their visitations in Sword itself—and so from Storm to Sword, the stones of the Shrine ran red with blood.

For those sennights, Vieliessar’s dreams were so unsettled that it was as if she did not sleep at all. So whether she tossed and turned, or simply read the candlemarks of night away from her store of Arevethmonion’s scrolls, the result was the same.

And her work suffered for it.

“I said namanar incense, not berroles!” Priagor Lightsister snapped. With a furious gesture, she struck the shin’zuruf box from Vieliessar’s hands. The translucent bone-clay—more delicate and beautiful than the finest glass—shattered into a thousand shards as it struck the floor, and the meditation chamber was filled with the musky scent of powdered berroles resin.

“I am sorry, Lightsister, I thought—”

“Witless drudge!” Priagor snapped. “Do not think! Bring namanar to Kalyes-chamber at once!” With an angry toss of her head, the Lightsister swept from the room.

She asked for berroles, not namanar, Vieliessar thought mutinously. Berroles was the usual incense for meditation: namanar was powerful, its fumes bringing visions of distant times and places. Or did I just assume? she wondered, as she hurried in the direction of Maeredhiel’s workroom, for the namanar was kept under lock and key. It hardly mattered. The truth was what a Lightborn said it was.

Here in the Sanctuary only, she consoled herself. In the Great Hall, truth is beneath the tongues of the princes.

“I must have namanar incense,” Vieliessar said, breathless with haste. “Priagor Lightsister commands.”

The wall behind Maeredhiel’s worktable contained hundreds of keys hanging on hooks: some, long untouched and black with age, hanging near the ceiling; others, bright with frequent handling, within easier reach. Vieliessar had never seen a key before she had come to the Sanctuary—in Caerthalien’s Great Keep, doors were barred, or spell-sealed by Mages—but (as Maeredhiel had noted tartly) one could neither expect the many poisons used in the stillroom to lock themselves in, nor would the Lightborn wish to be dragged from their studies a hundred times a day to lock or unlock a door or cabinet.

“T’t,” Maeredhiel said. “That one holds herself as if Ullilion were one of the High Houses, instead of Cirandeiron’s hound. Where is the box—or am I simply to give her the whole jar?”

“I—” Vieliessar said, and stopped, overcome by humiliation. She should have gone first to the store room to get an incense-box before coming to collect the namanar.

“You are not usually so careless,” Maeredhiel observed. “Must I send you to Mistress Healer?”

Vieliessar shook her head, unwilling to admit to sennights of wakefulness and broken sleep.

“T’t,” Maeredhiel said again, and took a small silver incense box from a drawer before reaching unerringly to the wall behind her to pluck down a silver key. Only Maeredhiel knew what key fit which lock—if she went to walk in Celenthodiel tomorrow, someone would need to spend days casting Knowing to recover her lost knowledge. She got to her feet and opened a cabinet that contained rows of featureless stone jars. Grunting a little with the effort, she carried one to her worktable and removed the lid. The acrid scent of powdered namanar-wood filled the room, and despite herself, Vieliessar wrinkled her nose. With a swift efficient gesture, Maeredhiel dipped the silver box into the jar, tapped it once against the lip to shake free the excess, then closed the box and set it on the table.

As she was about to hand it to Vieliessar, she stopped. “You have been asking the Postulants to unriddle the Prophecy for you,” she said. Vieliessar couldn’t tell from her tone whether it was an accusation or not. “Come back when you have finished doing Ullilion’s bidding,” she said, and Vieliessar nodded.

Vieliessar hurried back the way she’d come. There was nothing—not even a painted symbol—to distinguish Kalyes-chamber from Lovine-chamber, but learning the name of every room within the Sanctuary of the Star had been a task of her Service Year. She tapped lightly, then opened the door. Priagor Lightsister was already seated upon one of the floor cushions, and Vieliessar could see the heat-shimmer from the coals in the firebowl upon the low table before her. She regarded Vieliessar with narrow-eyed irritation as she set the silver box on the table.

“And see you clean up the mess you made,” Priagor said.

Vieliessar said nothing. The Sanctuary’s servants were supposed to be invisible, merely an extension of the will of the Lightborn. Priagor Lightsister turned away, and Vieliessar slipped noiselessly from the room. She allowed herself a moment of wry amusement as she sought the service cupboard where the cleaning supplies were kept. At least she had been raised in a Great Keep and seen many Lightborn before her Service Year: the Landbonds knew of the Lightborn mainly from storysongs, and were shocked to find they could be petty, or cruel, or greedy, or unreasonable. But in many ways, the Lightborn were no different than anyone else.

She quickly repaired the damage in Lovine-chamber, sweeping up the broken box and the spilled incense, then carefully wiping the floor with a wet cloth to make sure she’d removed every crumb and shard. She left the door open when she exited, to signify the chamber was not ready for use, and hurried back to Maeredhiel’s workroom.

Maeredhediel was just closing the locked case again when Vieliessar entered the workroom. She opened her mouth to speak but Maeredhiel held up a hand for silence. Vieliessar waited, caught between impatience and apprehension, as Maeredhiel organized the scrolls on her worktable to her satisfaction. Then she looked up and said, “It is not a good thing for you to link yourself in the mind of any with Amrethion’s Prophecy, lest you remind some of that which has never been well hidden.”

“Surely what Celelioniel Astromancer did is no secret?” Vieliessar demanded.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps her madness excuses all, and the Hundred account the Peacebond as an ailing woman’s fancy. Yet I do not think she was mad. And I knew her better than some.”

“But—” Vieliessar stopped, and chose her next words with care. “It is said no one can unriddle Amrethion’s Prophecy. Yet Celelioniel believed it was I whom Amrethion named.”

“You have been somewhat in the company of the Postulants, and seen that learning becomes, for many among the Lightborn, as the Way of the Sword to the komentai’a.”

Vieliessar nodded slowly.

“Celelioniel wished to know of the beginning of things, and sought her answers in the most ancient songs. Though her House is in the Grand Windsward, and the journey to the Shrine of the Star a thing not quickly compassed, she came many times to consult this scroll or that. It was small wonder that when the Vilya fruited at last, and her peers said she should rule the Sanctuary, she was filled with joy, for it meant a century of study, far from the demands of Moruilaith Enerchelimier.”

Maeredhiel paused, looking as if she was not certain she wished to say what she meant to say next.

“In the first year of Celelioniel’s reign, Serenthon Farcarinon came to the Shrine. Woods Moon was late in the year for such a journey, but he was new-Bonded, and any alfaljodthi might seek a Foretelling then. I know not what happened within the Shrine, but after he went away again, Celelioniel’s interest fixed upon The Song of Amrethion, and that interest soon became obsession. I think she may even have petitioned the Silver Hooves for understanding of it, but for many turns of the Wheel only those much in her company knew of her studies, and who is that save the servants of the Sanctuary? But a score of years gone, she began to speak of Amrethion’s Curse as if it were something of which she had full knowing, and of the Child of the Prophecy as a hradan to come in her lifetime.”

Vieliessar stood transfixed, hardly daring to breathe, for Maeredhiel had never spoken so openly.

“From the moment Farcarinon’s allies turned upon Lord Serenthon, Celelioniel was like a soul demented. She swore that Serenthon’s allies meant to make Farcarinon the ‘doe’ of Amrethion’s Prophecy—and when Nataranweiya came to us that night, she would have done anything to avert your birth.”

“And yet I live,” Vieliessar said, when Maeredhiel fell silent.

“I know not why,” Maeredhiel said bluntly. “Perhaps she feared to go against the will of Amrethion Aradruiniel. Perhaps she thought to keep you safe beneath her hand, and avert the evil day.”

“Perhaps she realized she had been wrong all along,” Vieliessar said boldly.

“Perhaps,” Maeredhiel said heavily. “I know not. But I know this: Amrethion named the Child of the Prophecy the Doom of the Hundred Houses. It would be an ill thing for the War Princes to see you as that doom.”

For days Vieliessar brooded over Maeredhiel’s words, and found no sense in them. For a while she avoided the Common Room entirely, until Thurion sought her out and said her friends missed her company. She did not wish to admit she missed them as well, but she allowed Thurion to coax her into returning. But when she did, she took care to feign disinterest in The Song of Amrethion Aradruinel.

She was not sure why.

From Sword to Frost life at the Sanctuary of the Star returned to its accustomed pace. Still caught between, Vieliessar spent her days in service and her nights in study, reading through the holdings of Arevethmonion. This year, word came of battles fought between the War Princes, and injured came to the Sanctuary.

The Long Peace was over at last.

Vieliessar twirled and swayed as she made her way to her sleeping cell, clutching the small silver Unicorn token in her hand—once again, she had taken the luck-token in the Midwinter cake. Around her ankles, her grey skirts furled and unfurled as she moved. She remembered the Midwinter dances at Caerthalien, intricate and elaborate. This year she had stayed at the feast until the very end, drinking all the pledges to health and luck that concluded it. Her head reeled with hot spiced ale, and she thought she would have danced—were there anyone here to dance with.

The doors to the Postulants’ cells were tightly closed—they were either soundly sleeping or still drinking in the year at Rosemoss Farm—and it was with relief that Vieliessar reached her own room without meeting anyone. Now to bed, and pray that she did not wake in the morning with ale-sickness.

When she opened her door, her euphoric mood vanished, and she groaned in dismay. The inner shutters were open—the latch was unreliable, and often slipped—and she hadn’t closed the storm shutters. Her sleeping chamber had been open to the winter air for candlemarks and was ice-cold.

Shivering, she went to the window and closed both inner and outer shutters. The dish of live coals had been blown from the windowsill and lay dead on the stone floor. It hardly mattered; coals took candlemarks to burn down to greatest heat; even if she lit them with her flint and steel, she would spend a long, cold night.

Ah, if only … She reached out toward the copper brazier, shivering, imagining welcome heat against the palm of her hand. In the next moment, the tinder kindled into flame with a bright flare and blue flames danced over the surface of the coals themselves. A wave of heat rose from the bowl, making the air shimmer. Vieliessar sprang backward as if she’d been burned. She stared at the thing which could not be.

The coals still glowed.

Fire is the first spell and the easiest. All the Postulants say so. Anginach Called it while he was still a Candidate.…

Though the room was warming quickly, Vieliessar felt an inward chill. She was Lightborn.

And all she could think of was Maeredhiel’s warning. “Think long and hard, Vieliessar of Farcarinon, before showing the Light even if you possess it, for a Mage may be called from the Sanctuary where a servant cannot be.”

She knew, Vieliessar thought. She knew even then this day would come. Maeredhiel said Celelioniel wished to keep the “Child of the Prophecy” under her hand—the Sanctuary’s hand. Because I am such a danger to the Hundred Houses. If only that were true!

If she became Vieliessar Lightsister, she would have a greater power at her command than the dragons of the earth … and never be able to use it to claim her vengeance. Had Farcarinon yet stood, Vieliessar Lightsister could not have ruled over it. But Farcarinon had been erased, and her life would be forfeit should she leave the Sanctuary. “A Mage may be called from the Sanctuary…”

If Maeredhiel had known this day would come, she had given Vieliessar counsel on how she must meet it as well.

Tell no one.

Snow Moon became Cold Moon, then Ice, and Vieliessar began to dimly comprehend the world through which the Lightborn moved. Suddenly the currents of magic were as visible—or at least as perceptible—as the ripples on the surface of a lake. There were a thousand things she could compare it to, and none of them was the Light’s true likeness. Vieliessar had listened uncomprehendingly to Thurion describe the process of spellsetting many times, but now it made sense: as a fish moved through water, the alfaljodthi moved through power. The Lightborn could see what others could not: the webs and currents of that power. And seeing it, could draw upon it, shape it, transform it.

For almost a full turn of the Wheel she fought to step back into the skin of one Lightless. It was a battle she was doomed to lose, for the Light Within demanded to be used, just as limbs and senses did.

And yet, if she wished to keep her secret, she could ask for neither help nor training.

But that did not mean she could not practice. Knowing what to do was simple: the Postulants all spoke freely of the training exercises. She must learn to trust the Light above her physical senses. And Calling Fire was simple enough.

But once a Postulant mastered Fire and Inward Sight, Silverlight was the next spell. It was a thing she dared not attempt within her sleeping chamber.

The meditation and practice chambers were heavily Warded against the mishaps of Candidates learning to wield the Light. One of her tasks was to clean and prepare the chambers for use. No one would notice if she spent a few more minutes on the task than it actually took. All she needed to do was wait until that duty fell to her once more in the natural way of things.

And a few days later, it did.

She hurried through her midday meal, for Cindil-chamber would be needed in the first candlemark after midday. Vieliessar had once thought the chambers unpleasantly stark. Now she could see the colors of the Wards which made the stone walls a tapestry of shifting opal and turned the polished wooden floor into a mosaic of amber and gold. Her servant’s tasks occupied only a few minutes—to bring fresh incense of the proper kind, to fill the water jug, to make certain the chamber was clean and orderly—and then she was free to work undisturbed.

“You breathe the power in, then you imagine how you wish it to go. But it isn’t really like that, because in a way you’re actually remembering something you never saw. Oh, I can’t explain it, Vielle—I can just do it!” Thurion’s frustrated words echoed through her memory.

All that was required for Fire was to scoop up a scrap of the power that surrounded everyone and concentrate it for the instant needed to kindle something into flame. It was not so with the thousand other spells the Lightborn could command. Each one had a name, a shape, a presence, as if it were something one might hold in one’s hand, like a xaique piece—and for each Lightborn, there was one spell that was theirs above all others to command: their Keystone Gift. That Gift shaped their training and their studies: a Keystone Gift was the strongest talent a Lightborn possessed, from which they might weave a new spell to add to the Sanctuary’s store of Light. Spells could not be written down, nor could the knowing of them be spoken into the ear. The shapes of the Greater Spells could only be passed mind to mind, so that any Lightborn who wove and crafted a new spell must come to the Sanctuary to pass it to as many other Lightborn as possible. It was against Mosirinde’s Covenant to keep a knowing restricted to the Lightborn of one’s own House. Spellcraft must pass among the Lightborn as freely as wind across the land.

Lesser spells were bound into the stones of the practice chambers, so that the Postulants might See them and take them for their own. Vieliessar knew as well as any Postulant the order in which the spells must be learned, for there was a Teaching Song about it: Fire and Sight and Silverlight, Find and Fetch and Send and Shield, Weather and Ward, Keep and Heal …

She’d seen Silverlight cast all her life. She closed her eyes and held out her hands …

And Silverlight rushed into her mind as if she had opened a floodgate. Suddenly there was brightness behind her closed eyes, as if she held the moon between her open hands. With a startled cry, Vieliessar flung it away, only to see the spell-symbol in her mind become another equally familiar shape as the power did her bidding. She opened her eyes, and saw—in horror—that the bowl of the brazier was now shining with an all-too-familiar light.

No! Don’t!

In vain, she tried to douse the glow. All she managed to do was make the metal glow even more brightly. Sadimerial Lightsister would soon arrive; Vieliessar’s breath came hot and hard with fear. The Lightsister would see Silverlight cast on the brazier.…

Darkness! I want it to be dark! Vieliessar thought in blind panic. Unmade! Untouched! As if I never—

She felt something shift inside her mind, but before she could turn her inward eye to see it, a wave of cold sickness washed over her. She staggered backward, her hands covered with a sticky dust.

The brazier had gone dark.

But it had also turned to grey stone and was crumbling away.

If she had not been so terrified of discovery, horror and disbelief would have held Vieliessar frozen. What had been, moments before, a bright copper bowl on a bronze tripod was now … rock. Ore.

Unmade.

She was on her hands and knees, trying to scoop the pieces into her skirt, when she felt the now-familiar tingle of the presence of one of the Lightborn. She looked behind her apprehensively. For a long moment she held Sadimerial Lightsister’s gaze.

“The work will go faster if you use a broom, girl,” Sadimerial said at last. “And have a new brazier brought from storage. I had not known Filgoroth wished to challenge me again so soon.”

Vieliessar fled, holding a skirt full of dust.

Who Filgoroth was, and why he would challenge Sadimerial, and how, Vieliessar never found out. All she knew was that no one accused her of being Lightborn. She swore she would never again do anything so unsafe, but a few sennights later she was in Oiloisse-chamber. Oiloisse was utterly empty, for some practice had gone awry and its furniture had not yet been replaced. This time the Silverlight came easily—a moon-pale globe she could hold in her hands. She could feel the spellshape in her mind try to twist from simple conjuration to bespelling an object, but there was nothing within the bounds of the Wards for it to fix on.

She still did not know how to unmake what she had made, but forcing it against the Wards worked well enough.

And time passed.

Each year, the hot breathless days of Thunder Moon brought a pause in the Sanctuary’s unceasing labor, for the days were hot, and many in the Sanctuary—save those Candidates who had incurred Maeredhiel’s special displeasure—came to the gardens take a candlemark or more of ease when the sun had passed its fiercest. Behind her, Vieliessar could hear the shouts and laughter of a group of Postulants playing a counting game, the soft distant sounds of someone practicing upon the harp. The song of a flute wound through its soft sweet notes—hesitant, unpracticed, but holding the promise of mastery to come.

The chirring of insects, the soft hot breeze, the smooth warmth of the Vilya’s bark beneath her hands, all lulled her. Was I ever so young as these new Postulants? she wondered in bemusement. They had all thought themselves on the verge of adulthood when they came to the Sanctuary, but it had been a very long time since she had been a Postulant. To number those years Vieliessar must think hard, and count Midwinters upon her fingers.

She ducked back against the trunk of the great Vilya that dominated the garden as two of the Postulants ran past her, shrieking excitedly in their play. They reached the low wall and scrambled over it, racing along one of the narrow paths between the fields of standing grain in the field beyond. Landbonds, she thought to herself, seeing cropped hair and faces narrow with a lifetime of starvation. At least they return to a better life than that, Twice-Called or not. One trained at the Sanctuary could be sure of a place in a Great House, for the Lightborn preferred Sanctuary-trained servants. One thought blended inevitably into the next: Soon Thurion will go. It is already past time.

It was not that after a dozen short years of study Thurion could know all the Light held …

… but that the knowing came from the Light itself, not from Lightborn teachings.

I could be happy here blended, in a seamless instant, with: I am happy here. Vieliessar no longer wondered at her good fortune in remaining hidden from discovery. She had wished for nothing else, desperately, for moonturns. A wish, a desire, need, was the beginning of a spell. She could spend the rest of her life learning all the Light had to teach.

She got to her feet, shook her long skirts free of grass, and walked slowly across the garden. The low stone wall at its edge marked the boundary between the Sanctuary gardens and Rosemoss Farm, and its smooth grey stone was hot against her hands. Beyond the farm and its fields lay Arevethmonion. She could feel the radiant beat of its life against her skin like a second kind of sunlight. She would never walk beneath the Flower Forest’s canopy save as a fugitive or a prisoner. The thought had brought her reflexive rage and sorrow since the first day she had come here, but she could not remember the last time she had looked upon Arevethmonion and thought of herself as a captive: the wall beneath her hands marked the outermost possible bounds of her world, but at last the thought gave her no pain. Nothing endured forever, and what must be, must be.

Suddenly she heard a thin wail of distress from the direction of the young Postulants. One was standing. The other was huddled at his feet. As she watched, he tried to pull himself upright.

The front of his grey tunic was dark with blood.

She did not stop to think. She vaulted the wall and went running toward them. When she reached the pair, she knelt down beside the wounded Postulant.

“Go—Rian?—and fetch Mistress Healer Hervilafimir from the healing chambers—or any you find there! Go!”

Rian fled toward the Sanctuary as if the Starry Hunt Itself pursued him.

“Here, let me see,” Vieliessar said, trying to pull the child’s hands away from the wound. To truly Heal required Light, but for small wounds and sickness there were many things one could do to ease suffering, even without the Light, and Nithrithuin Lightsister had begun to teach Vieliessar these minor mysteries.

Bright blood welled from between the Postulant’s fingers and he whimpered in fear.

“What is your name, child?” Vieliessar asked.

“Garwen,” he said. “Of—” He gasped, and the blood ran more strongly. “It hurts!”

As if that cry were a summons, Vieliessar felt the power rise up in her, forming its spellshape in her mind. She could see the dark flaw in the brightness Garwen showed to her inward eyes. A sharp stone. A careless fall. Before she could stop herself—before she could think—the Healing broke free. Blue fire leaped from her hands, and she could See it pour into the dark wrongness. Garwen’s breathing eased.

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 …

“What are you doing?”

Rondithiel’s shout jarred her out of the weaving. She gasped, opening her eyes. He was staring at her with a look of horror on his face. On the table between them, the metal sphere was distorted and discolored—but not transformed.

“I—” Suddenly a great wave of sick dizziness swept over her. She tried to raise her hand to brush her hair from her face, and discovered she could not. A moment later she was sprawled ungracefully across the floor cushions, struggling to breathe.

Rondithiel hurried around the table. He lifted her into his lap and held her teacup to her lips. The liquid was nearly cold, but nothing had ever tasted so sweet.

“Transmutation is a Greater Spell!” he shouted. “You cannot work it without drawing upon Arevethmonion!”

The Light exacted a price for the weaving of spells. Magery must be paid for; power drove spellcraft. For the little spells, power of the body. For the Greater Spells, the power of the Flower Forests. While she had been hiding her Light, practicing only in secret, Vieliessar had never attempted the Greater Spells for just that reason. To draw upon Arevethmonion was a thing that would surely be noticed—but she had thought its power would come to her at need, just as the power for the lesser spells had.

“After the first time, yes,” Rondithiel said, when he had brought her to health again and discovered her error. “But the first time … one must be shown the way.”

“I wonder that any spells are ever worked in all the Fortunate Lands,” she had answered irritably. “For to name all the Flower Forests in the land is the work of days.”

“So the Lightless believe,” Rondithiel said with grave amusement. “The Lightborn know there is only one. Once you are known to Lady Arevethmonion, you are known to all the Flower Forests that may ever be.”

There was more to the matter than that. The spellstones that marked the boundaries of the domains of the Hundred Houses kept the Lightborn’s spells from ranging across the whole of the land in search of power. Nor did the power of one Flower Forest within a domain spill into the next at need. There was more for her to learn than she had thought. It was two moonturns of careful instruction before she attempted a Greater Spell again.

But with Rondithiel’s aid, she made a beginning.

I can do this.

Vieliessar stood before the great bronze doors that separated the Sanctuary from the Shrine. She was naked, her only ornament a long knotted cord looped about her wrist.

The first act of each Postulant was to accept a handful of flax seeds. It was their task to plant the seeds, and harvest them, spin flax into thread, and weave thread into cord, and at last, when that was done, to bind the knowing of their spells into that cord.

The last act of each Postulant was to enter the Shrine of the Star, there to keep vigil, and emerge Lightborn. Those who survived departed the Sanctuary at once, speaking to no one.

Those left behind might know that this one or that one of their fellow Postulants had gone to the Shrine, but nothing more.

Some entered the Shrine and never emerged again.

She remembered a Rain Moon, years ago, when Thurion had come to her sleeping chamber to whisper last messages to those he loved, before coming to stand where Vieliessar stood now. He had charged her with duty to his family if he did not come forth again, for by his duty to Caerthalien he meant to secure the freedom of his family, and if he failed, he would not have them think he had forgotten them.

She had not wished to accept that duty, but she had. And when he had gone to the Shrine, she had knelt upon the cold stone beside her bed and pledged her own life to the Silver Hooves, if they must have one that night.

She had risen before dawn to hide in the shadows of the Antechamber. And had seen Thurion walk free.

Will I be as fortunate?

She reached out to touch the bronze of the doors, to trace the shapes of spirit-horses and the powers that rode them among the stars. In my end is my beginning. Generations of Postulants had touched them so, and the doors gleamed bright-burnished where they had.

Strange to think that here I was born and here my mother died.

In Rade Moon, Farcarinon had fallen, Nataranweiya had died. If Vieliessar chose, a simple conjuration would show her that night, but such a folding back of years could not show her what she most desired to see: the thoughts that had lain in Celelioniel’s heart when she had shaped Vieliessar’s fate.

Survive this night, and the Lightborn taught that her person would be inviolable—not even a War Prince dared raise his hand to one of the Lightborn, lest the Sanctuary punish both House and Line. But there was no House waiting to welcome her, and Farcarinon’s enemies might yet look upon Vieliessar Lightsister and see Vieliessar Farcarinon. Should someone let her out of life, without clan and kin and Line she would vanish as if she had never been.

Go now, before you lose your nerve.

The doors ghosted open beneath her touch, and Vieliessar stepped over the threshold and into the Shrine of the Star.

The first things to reach her senses were the touch of cold earth beneath her feet and the iron scent of old blood. The next was the beating of raw power against her senses and Wards, as if she basked in some sunlight that did not warm her. Though the Shrine was open to the sky above, it was as dark as a deep cave this night, but Silversight showed her three tall stones beneath an open sky. A fourth flat stone was set into the ground between them; the Shrine itself was nothing more than stone and earth.

Nine Shrines are given to the Trueborn, nine places where the breath of first creation still can be felt upon the skin. Nine where the powers hear us when we call.

She knew what she must do now. It was not teaching, but knowing, here in that place where it was eternally the morning of the world. Vieliessar stepped to the center of the triangle of great stones and stretched out her hand. The veils of power resolved themselves to a single star-bright blade, cold as moonlight. She closed her fingers around it, feeling hot blood well up from her palm and dissolving the conjured blade as if it were ice in fire.

Blood pooled in her palm as her gaze was drawn to the stones of the Shrine. On their surfaces she could see the patterns of uncountable handprints; some the faintest blue shadow against the stones, some shining as brightly as the moon. She stepped into the center of the triad and pressed her hand against the stone. For an instant she felt its cold grittiness against her palm, then the surface she touched seemed to become as hot and supple as flesh.

Brightness flared up between her fingers.

She heard the sound of a bridle clink.

That homely sound in this uncanny place made her startle in shock. She turned, and only her utter disbelief in what she saw kept her from going to her knees.

“You have come to end us.”

Power blazed from the armored rider like heat from a hearth. His armor was of no kind she had ever seen, yet as she tried to fix its details within her mind, she found she could not. Nor could she name its color, nor the color of the horse he sat. To see him was as if she heard the words of a storysinger and her own mind made of them an image crafted to her own desire. The longer she stared, the more visible the host behind him became, so many hundreds of riders that she knew the Shrine could never have contained them all, nor would it have been possible to see each one so clearly if they’d been here in truth. Yet their leader’s destrier switched its tail and pawed at the ground as she had seen many horses do. The Starry Hunt stands before me, Vieliessar thought, and felt not joy, not terror, not grief—merely a fathomless wonder that They should be and she should see Them.

Then the words the Rider had spoken came sharp in her mind. “I could not,” she said, half protest, half judgment.

“Yet you shall. For you are Farcarinon.”

Each syllable the Rider spoke resounded through her as if it were the beat of a great war drum. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as hard as if she’d been running, as slow as if she were in deep meditation. It was three heartbeats before she answered, and she only understood the sense of her words as she heard them, for it seemed as if she merely recited a speech someone else had crafted.

“Farcarinon is gone. There is only I.” Farcarinon will endure until the end of my life—but I am only one—but how shall I end You—but why would I wish to?

The Rider inclined His head as if He had heard both the words she spoke and the words she had not. It was the grave salute that prince might give to prince, and for the first time, Vieliessar felt fear. No, not fear—terror. The weight of the Rider’s pronouncement, the Rider’s grief, was a palpable thing, making her body tremble with a burden too great for mortal flesh to bear. Who am I that the power which shapes our lives and our destiny should regard me thus?

“You are Farcarinon,” the Rider said. “Death in life. Life in death.” In the Rider’s words Vieliessar heard more than simple recognition. There was judgment—and sorrow. “You will be known when We are forgotten,” He added, and raised His hand. Salute, benediction, warning … she did not know.

In the next moment her sight became uncertain, as if she gazed not into shadow, but into the brightness of the sun itself. Her eyes were filled with light and her ears with a sound as if a whole army roared out its battle cry, and she could not say in that moment if she stood upon the ground or rode through the heavens on a destrier made of moonlight and shod with stars. Someone shouted in a language she did not know and for an instant it seemed she gazed down from a great height at a landscape of darkness, of ice and shadow. Before her hung a balefire, burning star-pale with magic. A komen knelt beside it, and with him stood a creature neither Trueborn nor Beastling, with blood welling in the palm of her hand.

“The Land calls you. The People call you. I call you. He Who Is would return to the world, and so we summon you.”

“And will you spill your own blood to save the land?”

The creature—woman, but nub-eared and red-skinned as no Trueborn could ever be—held out her wounded palm to the Rider, as if her blood held a compulsion even He must obey. Even her blood was strange, for it was red as flowers.…

Vieliessar came to herself with the stiff and aching limbs of one who has spent too long motionless in too cold a place. As she raised her head, she could see the sky above was grey with dawn. She clambered to her feet, clutching at one of the standing stones to steady herself before she remembered what she touched.

Dream? Vision? In this moment she could not say whether what she had seen was truth or the expression of her own buried desires. Does the Hunt always come? Do the Silver Hooves bow down to each of the Lightborn? Is this how all who come to this place are tested and tried? Had she given the proper answers? Or was she dead even now, a homeless ghost, doomed to vanish like morning frost the moment she stepped from the Shrine?

Vieliessar looked toward the doors of the Shrine and spied a bundle of green cloth, placed there by some Lightborn candlemarks before the beginning of her vigil. She turned back to the Shrine and saw the print of a hand deep-sunk into the ancient altar stone. Slowly she reached out and set her hand into its shape. It fit as if the eternal stone had been as malleable as bread dough and shifted at her touch. She felt the weight of an unimaginable fate bearing her down. For an instant a thousand evasions crowded her mind: to leave the Sanctuary of the Star this very candlemark, to keep moving until she left the bounds of the Fortunate Lands completely; to offer up her name, her House, her life, as a sacrifice to unmake this destiny.

She could. But …

Serenthon knew his fate. Celelioniel foretold it when he came here.

In that moment of realization it seemed to her she could see him: Serenthon Farcarinon, War Prince, First among the Hundred Houses, bold and beautiful and arrogant. He had known before he began he would fail. He had known his Bondmate would die, that Farcarinon would be unmade, that all who had trusted him would die …

That someday his daughter would stand here, to be Sealed to the Light.

If Serenthon-my-father could embrace such a fate for himself and all he loved, then I shall not disgrace him.

She lifted her hand from the imprint in the stone and walked steadily to the doors of the Shrine, tying the knotted flaxen cord about her waist as she went. Custom said she must now return to the domain of her birth and there present herself to the Chief Lightborn of the War Prince’s court. But she was Farcarinon, and the officers of her father’s court were slain or fled. So she picked up the green robes that lay upon the stone and carried them, still naked, back to her sleeping cell. She took up a knife and cropped her long black hair close to her head, then donned the Green Robe, tightening the silver cord about her waist. Then she sat upon her bed and waited for someone to come and tell her who she must become now.