The only road to victory lay through solid rock. An army that could not retreat was helpless.
She bit her lip until the blood flowed bright and bitter in her mouth. She wanted to weep as if she were still a child, to cry out at the unfairness of it. Amrethion had promised her that she was his true heir—she had seen him, walked the halls of his great palace in visions.
Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor—White Jewel, Fire Forest … When shall I see you again? Lady Indinathiel thought. Our fellowship is broken, our ancient trust betrayed. All that is left to us is to keep faith. To destroy that which never should have been …
Half in memory, half in dream, Vieliessar looked out across Ifjalasairaet. But it had not been Ifjalasairaet to Lady Indinathiel. It had been Ch’rahwyr-thrawnzah, Border of the World—and she had wept behind her battle mask when she rode out onto it leading her army, for Kalalielahwyr, Heart of the World, was broken beyond mending, and she’d felt her hradan heavy upon her.…
Lady Indinathiel’s memories were a hundred times a hundred centuries old, and somewhere in that vast gulf of time the pass had closed.
“There is a pass,” Vieliessar said, her voice raw with cold and anger. “I shall find it. But for now, let us not make an encampment, but a fortress. Let the camp and the pasturage be set forth at the cliffs themselves—and let it be bounded with walls as high as those of a Great Keep.”
Iardalaith gazed at her for a long moment in silence, then turned away to give orders. A few moments later, the signal horns began to call to one another along the line of march: Halt. Make camp.
She had led them for so long, both hands filled with miracles, that few in all her meisne doubted she would bring forth more.
“If this is where we are to die, it is as good a place as any other,” Gunedwaen said. He had approached her alone, and in such silence that she had not heard him. “Yet if it is, I ask one last boon of you, High King of Jer-a-kalaliel.”
She knew she should chide him for speaking of defeat so glibly, but she could not. He, alone of her nobles, had not used Janglanipaikharain’s bounty to clothe himself in state. His rags were warm—but still rags. His mount, one of Thoromarth’s cherry-black darlings, was muddy and ungroomed. He masks his true self as a last weapon, Vieliessar realized.
“Name it,” she answered.
“Let Janglanipaikharain become an empty cistern before we fall. Let the army that vanquishes us starve and die beside us.”
Why not? she thought. It seemed to her, in that unguarded moment, that her whole life had been nothing but an endless series of questions, each “why” leading her farther along the path that brought her here, to a cliff that held her victory in an immovable grasp. It will not matter, she told herself. Should I fail here, Darkness will claim all, in the end. For the first time, the thought did not kindle defiance in her heart. What was darkness, but the end of day?
I am weary, she realized in surprise.
“Let it be so,” she said softly, bowing her head. “Now leave me, old friend. I wish to be alone.”
The Silver Swords of Penenjil arrived just as the gates were being raised.
Vieliessar stood at the far end of the encampment’s main road. Her pavilion stood at one end of it and the entrance to the camp stood at the other. The North Road was the broadest way in any camp, for it was good fortune to give the Starry Hunt a fair path to enter by, just as Arilcarion had decreed. After so long spent overturning the wisdom of centuries, it gave her a tiny thrill of shame to heed it now. But soon it would no longer matter.
It was dusk; it had taken the Lightborn the whole of the day to surround the camp with a rampart of earth and turn that earth to seamless stone. Her craftsmen took care to leave an opening in the wall, which they framed in oak; then they sculpted mud and water into two great doors that the Lightborn turned into solid silver. Upon each panel stood a Unicorn rearing in defiance.
The gates glittered in the last rays of sun, bright panels of new-forged metal, taller than a tall tree. Their surfaces shimmered with Magery that lightened them so that the craftworkers could handle the huge panels as if they weighed no more than a painted screen. When they were sealed into place, she knew, the people would cheer, and then there would be a feast in the twilight, and through it all she would make a show of approval. As if the path to victory was a thing she held in her heart until the moment to unveil it arrived.
There were vast scorched circles on the plain beyond, where Thunderbolts had struck the ground and fire had smoldered for a time, and above them the sky boiled like a cooking pot. In the distance, the sight of it now blocked by the wall, the Alliance army marched toward them, its front rank verdant with Lightborn. The roiling mumble of power was so chaotic it masked the spell Thurion cast until the moment Door—profligate, wasteful, unheard-of to cast so far from a sheltering Flower Forest—opened.
The Silver Swords galloped from nothingness to Ifjalasairaet—a full grand-taille of komen and destriers plus one green-robed Lightborn. As Door opened, the power of the spell broke over the plain like a great wave, sweeping all others before it. For a moment the sky was clear, the glowing violet shield of protection vanished, and Vieliessar could feel the drain upon the great reservoir of Janglanipaikharain.
Not enough to empty it, not yet.
Craftworkers scattered as the great silver doors suddenly took on weight and fell with an impact that shook the ground. The Silver Swords galloped through the gap in the wall. Vieliessar snatched at the lines of power, feeling the weavings of others brush her own. Above her, the sky boiled to black again as the Alliance Lightborn recovered from their shock, but the lightnings they cast struck harmlessly against the Warhunt’s Shield.
Komen and archers ran toward the North Road from everywhere in the encampment. The road was filled with destriers under saddle—dancing, rearing, ears laid back with terror.
“Where is the High King!” an unfamiliar voice shouted.
“Here!” Vieliessar cried. Thoromarth and Rithdeliel were running toward her, swords drawn. She stepped forward before they could reach her. “Here,” she repeated. “I am here.”
One of the komen urged his fretting mount forward. His surcoat was of grey silk, the emblem on its face a sword in bright silver. He bore not one sword, but two—one such a sword as any komen might wear, belted upon his hip, the other so long it must be sheathed against his back. He reached up with grey armored gauntlets to remove his helm. The face revealed was of an alfaljodthi much past his middle years: the hair in its elaborate knight’s braid had already taken on the silvery sheen of age.
“The Silver Swords of Penenjil are here, High King,” Master Kemmiaret said. “As we swore to the last High King we would be.”
As he spoke, Vieliessar felt the chains of prophecy coil around her more tightly than before.
“I could see—feel—what you were doing,” Thurion said.
“I suppose every Lightborn from Great Sea Ocean to the Grand Windsward could as well,” she answered, and Thurion smiled.
She’d taken a precious moment before the evening banquet—more of a celebration now than before—to hear Thurion’s report. Master Kemmiaret had been able to give her little more than an account of time and distance and weather: they had crossed the Nantirworiel Pass without challenge; the unrest across the Uradabhur had as yet touched Utheleres but lightly.