Chardararg Lalmilgethior slammed his goblet down on the table. Dregs of wine spattered over the wood. “I can hear this empty barking any night,” he said witheringly into the silence that followed. “My lords, Lord Vieliessar has done what she has done. Now we must decide what to do.”
But his words only brought another round of recriminations and demands. Teramarise favored pursuit. Cirandeiron thought they’d be riding into a trap. Aramenthiali kept bringing up the fact that the untapped Southern Flower Forest existed, but taking no other position. Inglethendragir and Vondaimieriel wanted to pursue and send a sortie party ahead of the army. Sarmiorion wanted to continue east to Utheleres and go south then.
Most of them are reluctant to take the army in a direction where there’s no possibility of remounts—or laborers, Runacarendalur thought. All the High Houses have client domains in the Uradabhur—only Telthorelandor does not. They still believe they can look to them for supplies.
“To follow Lord Vieliessar without knowing her destination would be ill-advised,” Lord Ivaloriel said yet again.
“Then why not make it impossible for her to reach it?” Ivrulion said. “It’s simple enough.” He stepped closer to Ladyholder Glorthiachiel and produced a thin, silvery stick of charcoal. “Here is the Southern Pass. We know she’s still north of … this line”—he drew a raking line across the map directly east from the Southern Pass—“because she can’t have crossed it in a few sennights. She’s still in the forest. Burn it.”
“That seems—” Finfemeras Vondaimieriel began.
“Completely unacceptable!” Lady-Abeyant Dormorothon said. “There is a Flower Forest to the south of the bounds!”
Something you have reminded us of a dozen times in the last candlemark, Runacarendalur thought.
“You do not know it extends so far south,” Ivrulion said. “If she—”
“Nor do I know it does not,” Dormorothon interrupted. “Once we follow Lord Vieliessar across the bounds, our Lightborn may draw upon it as they choose. We cannot surrender such an advantage.”
“My Lady Mother Dormorothon is right—as always,” Sedreret Aramenthiali said grandly. “Aramenthiali does not choose to cast away such an advantage, whatever Caerthalien may wish.” He had become War Prince during the fighting in Jaeglenhend, but everyone knew who ruled Aramenthiali in truth.
“It’s hardly an advantage if Lord Vieliessar has claimed it first,” Lord Bolecthindial growled.
“But Lord Bolecthindial, how can she?” Ladyholder-Abeyant Dormorothon asked in tones of dulcet innocence. “One can only claim a Flower Forest by enclosing it within the bounds of one’s own domain.”
“Then—” Ivrulion began.
“I do not believe there is anything further you can tell us about what Lord Vieliessar has already done, Lightbrother,” Lord Sedreret said.
“I see there is not,” Ivrulion said, after a moment of silence. “Lord Bolecthindial, have I your leave to withdraw?”
Bolecthindial waved a hand irritably. “Go, go,” he said. “Both of you,” he added, as Runacarendalur opened his mouth to speak.
He had to run to catch up to Ivrulion, who was stalking up the North Road of the encampment as if he were the Starry Huntsman himself.
“I think that went well—don’t you?” Runacarendalur said. “Are you enjoying being brushed aside while Vieliessar Farcarinon does whatever she pleases? It must be galling to know she has done nothing save by your desire for the last four moonturns—”
“Be silent!” Ivrulion snapped.
Runacarendalur laughed. “Make me, dear brother.”
Ivrulion turned and glared at him. Runacarendalur smiled wolfishly. This was not an isolated camp on the Southern Pass Road. This was the main road through the Alliance encampment. Any spell Ivrulion cast would be sensed and noted by a dozen Lightborn, and if the spell’s target were not a lawful one …
Ivrulion snarled under his breath and turned away. Runacarendalur grabbed his arm. “Oh, but you must come and take a cup of wine to celebrate, for inevitably the War Council will choose your plan in the end. And now I’m imagining what Father will do to you when you finally have to tell him why it means my death as well. I’m sure it will be terribly painful.”
He wondered how long it would take the fire to sweep over Vieliessar’s army. Her Lightborn wouldn’t be able to stop it; the Lightborn who’d tried to halt the burning of Araphant had needed to summon rain to quench the flames, and no one could make it rain in winter. A blizzard intense enough to quench the fire would quench the army as well.
They’d die. She’d die. And he’d die. It would be worth it to know she was dead before him.
“Imagine what he’ll do if I don’t have to,” Ivrulion answered oracularly. “Oh, very well. I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing by playing the gracious host.”
“I’m patronizing you, dear brother. It’s something you should be used to by now,” Runacarendalur answered mockingly.
“Should I? And do your chains gall you, Heir-Prince Runacarendalur?”
“Perhaps,” Runacarendalur answered, still cheerful. “But if they do, I console myself with the knowledge it is not for much longer.”
But on the following dawn, when he dragged himself groggily from his bed, it was to discover that the War Council wasn’t going to burn the southern forest.
They were going to follow Vieliessar’s army into it.
In Snow Moon Vieliessar’s army crossed the southern bounds of Niothramangh and passed into the depths of a forest no alfaljodthi had ever seen. Vieliessar rode out ahead of the army every few miles to blaze their path. Those Lightborn who had Transmutation as their keystone spell followed. At their touch, great trees turned to sand and collapsed, to return to their native substance a few moments later. To destroy so much forest merely to make smooth their passage disturbed Vieliessar, for the farther they’d gone, the wider the path they cut, until by midday it was nearly a mile across. But if the decision had been hard, the choice had been simple: hundreds of miles of forest turned to dust—or the lives of everyone who rode with her.
Before she had crossed into Niothramangh, she had told Iardalaith to send Warhunt Mages south, for her tactics would depend on her resources. Iardalaith had gone himself, to come reeling into her pavilion giddy to the point of drunkenness with the bounteous Light of the Flower Forest he had discovered. It was to the south and west; Iardalaith could not accurately gauge the distance, he said, as it was stronger than any he had ever sensed. He named it Janglanipaikharain—star-bright forest. Perhaps it was the same one Lady Parmanaya had vanished into thousands of years before.
With this knowledge, Viliessar had made her plan.
They would cross the border a full sennight before the Alliance. When they turned southward, they would vanish to the senses of their Lightborn hunters, and until they saw the trail her army would inevitably leave behind it, the Alliance would think only that her people had drawn upon the Flower Forests of Niothramangh to hide them. Her own commanders had been so stunned at the thought of leaving the bounded Uradabhur that she knew the tactic would not occur to the Alliance. They would look at the forest and see a thing impassable.
But it was not, by the grace of Janglanipaikharain’s seemingly limitless reservoir, a wellspring of power that had not been touched in the whole history of the Hundred Houses.