Mercedes Lackey - Crown of Vengeance

She was only recalled to herself when her arms were so filled with leather-cased scrolls that she had to devote most of her attention to keeping them from spilling out of her grasp and onto the floor. When shall I have time to read all these? she thought in bemusement.

That evening Vieliessar went to her chamber immediately after evening meal and read long into the night. She’d chosen the History of the Hundred Houses , and knew already it would be more than the work of a sennight or even a moonturn to understand it all. It was true that each history was simple enough: founding and lands and alliances made, the names of the heads of the Line Direct, summaries of battles fought and children born. But each account contradicted the next, and the one she knew best—the History of Caerthalien—held both more and less than she’d expected it to. It was only the knowledge that morning would come and be filled with tasks that caused her to hood her spell-lantern and prepare herself reluctantly for sleep.

But sleep was long in coming. It is like a child’s wooden puzzle, she thought. Only with tales of past times. Which is true? Any of them? She wondered if there was enough time in all the world to list the contradictions between the stories and to seek a pattern.

In the middle of the night she awoke sharply, as if summoned to battle. Words she had set aside in her shock at Thurion’s anger—then forgot entirely at the wonders he showed her—echoed through her mind.

“Prisoner, hostage, I care not if you are Farcarinon, or Caerthalien, or the Child of the Prophecy.”

Thurion had the answers Maeredhiel had said were here.

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.