Mercedes Lackey - Crown of Vengeance

She walked for candlemarks, moving deeper into the heart of the forest, warming herself with movement. Arevethmonion was hushed and watchful around her—she had gone deeper into the Flower Forest than anyone had in her knowledge or memory. Craftworkers might enter a Flower Forest to bring away felltimber, hunters might pursue game beneath its branches, but only Lightborn had ventured into Arevethmonion since the Sanctuary of the Star had been founded, and they stayed mostly at the forest’s edge.

At last she reached a clearing, a space opened up by the death of trees so ancient that the width of their fallen trunks towered above her head. Here , she thought. She must have shelter, a place to sleep. She would make them here. She could cause the forest earth to flow and re-form as a potter shaped clay. She formed the shape of her intention in her mind and raised a hand to begin.

And stopped.

She could feel Arevethmonion’s heartbeat, the Flower Forest’s soft breath. Unfair— wrong —to impose her will upon Lady Arevethmonion simply because she could. She waited, holding the shape of her intention, her need, bright upon the surface of her mind, reaching out with Lightborn senses for Arevethmonion’s response. Her years of training had taught her that the Light required patience: she was prepared to wait as long as she must before beginning. She closed her eyes.

Her mind wandered from this fancy to that, as it would when she spent too long in meditation. Vieliessar thought of the hare eluding the fox with speed and disguise, the vixen hiding from the hawk and the wolf in deep, warm burrows. She thought of mice and bears sleeping the winter away, of all the inhabitants of any forest who preserved their lives by guile and who survived the winter in safe shelter.

When she opened her eyes again, the clearing looked very different. She stepped away from the place she had meant to put her sleeping place. Not there. Here. She touched the trunk of the fallen tree. Time and animals had stripped away its bark; insects burrowed into its wood, seeking food, shelter, sanctuary. In a century or two it would be gone—rot and weather would have returned it to the forest, to feed its successors. Meanwhile it would give her not only heat and shelter but concealment.

When the earth had transformed beneath her Magecraft, there was a deep burrow beneath the trunk of one of the fallen trees, one that could barely be seen from outside. She had made a chimney within the tree itself—a small matter to visualize a channel through the dead heartwood, with its opening near the tree’s distant crown—and there was felltimber in plenty.

Almost she conjured a spring to appear where none had been, before she remembered to listen for Lady Arevethmonion’s voice. When she had, she walked a short distance to where a tiny stream flowed among the trees, its current brisk with winter snow. She drank her fill and returned to her burrow. She set a spellshield before the door before she kindled her fire, and soon smoke was drawing sweetly through her chimney.

She curled up against the back wall to think. Survival was her first need. The plan she must implement when she returned to the Sanctuary was the second.

The shelter she had built was vital to both, she realized. No matter his fine words, Hamphuliadiel meant her to die here. In a sennight, a fortnight, a moonturn he would send someone to Arevethmonion to find her body. It did not matter whether he sent friend or foe; he would undoubtedly look into the mind of whomever he sent to see what they had seen. Or—if he possessed more resources than she imagined—he would send a warrior who would slay her if she was found alive.

It might be nothing more than her panic and imagination which painted this future, but she must behave as if it were real. She had studied enough history of the Hundred Houses to know their tangled tales of alliance, betrayal, murder, and assassination. Even one of the Lightborn could be slain if someone wished it ardently enough. And anything that had happened once could happen again.

If anyone sought her, she must not be found.

Learning Lady Arevethmonion’s rhythms occupied her through Snow Moon and into Ice. The Flower Forests were timeless places, and it would be a simple matter to tarry here for a year, a decade, a century, without awareness of the passage of time. The eternal springtide of the Flower Forest gave her fruit, mushrooms, tender roots, even honey … a far more lavish table than in the Sanctuary’s Refectory. She wove blankets of grass, shaped sandals of felltimber, dug river clay to line her fire pit and conjured Fire to bake it hard.

She listened—always—to the voice of the Flower Forest.

It was as if she spent her days in a waking dream, her mind growing closer to the vast green mind of the Flower Forest—of all Flower Forests, for whether a league or a thousand leagues apart they were all one. Magery had taught her how fragile the world was, how only her own conscience could protect it—now Arevethmonion showed her she did not have to find that strength alone.

Listen, and I will tell you a story, a true story …

It was the phrase with which the talesingers and songsmiths began their performances, giving the promise of truth. Lady Arevethmonion made the same appeal, the same promise.

Listen.

Ice became Storm. Vieliessar stood in the shadow of one of the great trees, barely a step from the road to the Sanctuary, watching unseen as hounds and hunters sought her. Six were mounted, and of that number, two wore the armor of knights. Their cloaks and surcoats were featureless white—as were the saddlecloths and trappings of their mounts—just as if they were arming pages, unannointed by battle. But they were far too old for that, and her inward sight showed her that their armor, shields, and weapons all glowed with the deep blue fire of spellcraft.

With the knights rode four huntsmen armed with bows and spears, and beside them, afoot among the animals of the pack, walked the Master of Hounds and his apprentice. The hounds were as diverse as the hunters: tall swift hikuliasa , noble sight hounds as swift as an arrow’s flight; merry and tireless teckle hounds, able to track prey over stone and water candlemark after candlemark; fierce thick-muscled boarhounds able to course the most savage prey—even several of the earth-dogs legendary for their willingness to suffer any injury in pursuit of their chosen prey.

Knowing that she had been right in her most mistrustful fantasy did not make Vieliessar happy. It only showed her how much Hamphuliadiel—or someone—feared her.

But if she was feared, she was also loved. The Light ensured there was no scent for the teckles to follow, and the Light gave her the power to render herself unseen, but it was the skill she had learned from Lady Arevethmonion that allowed Vieliessar to follow the hunters on noiseless feet, leaving no track upon the forest floor.

They spent three days searching Arevethmonion for her, and did not even find the places she slept.

Thoughts of war, declared and secret, had occupied Vieliessar’s mind even before the arrival of the hunters. Her thoughts—and her dreams—were troubled, and she apologized often to Lady Arevethmonion, for her tangled emotions were mirrored in the slow mind of the Flower Forest, troubling its serenity. But she could not—dared not—leave the riddle unexamined.

Serenthon Farcarinon had declared war, fought, and died. Celelioniel had proclaimed Vieliessar Child of the Prophecy, and Vieliessar believed Celelioniel had pledged her to war with that naming before she had drawn ten breaths.

But against whom?

She reviewed all she’d ever learned of the Curse. Once—in the reign of Amrethion and Pelashia, millennia ago—the Fortunate Lands had been at peace. All Trueborn had done fealty to High King Amrethion and Great Queen Pelashia, and of that time little record remained, for what tales were there to tell of a happy, peaceful land? Then the queen had died, and the king had gone mad, and no one had been crowned High King after him, for his children and hers were all gone.