Mercedes Lackey - Crown of Vengeance

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.