Mercedes Lackey - Crown of Vengeance

“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?