“Mazhnune,” Vieliessar said. The misplaced dead. It was something from a nursery tale: Heir-Princess Berendriel of House Notariel fell in battle, and when the Starry Hunt came for her, she refused to go with them. And so Berendriel of Notariel became mazhnune, unable to live again or to truly die.
“A counterspell—there must be something—” Vieliessar said.
“It doesn’t matter what we try—Dispell, Rot, Storm, Thunderbolt, Overshadowing, Fire—nothing happens. They walk through Shield as if it is not there. Whatever the spell is that has raised the mazhnune, it devours all magic. Isilla said we were only feeding it on Tildorangelor’s power.…”
And without Magery to stop them, only her army lay between the mazhnune and the pass. If they broke through that cordon, they would carry the spell of their raising with them, and so destroy the protection of the boundary stones. They would consume Tildorangelor as they’d devoured Janglanipaikharain.
“How far can you retreat from the entrance to the pass?” Vieliessar asked.
“We have not yet had time to map the vale,” Aradreleg said. “Many miles.”
“That much is good,” Vieliessar said. She forced herself to stand, to walk to the door of the tent. The sky above was dark, black clouds glowing green with sullen flares of lightning.
“Bring my armor,” she said. “And a horse.”
The destrier they brought for her was a stallion whose coat was the pale silver of a swordblade. The ostler who brought him said his name was Winter. She swung herself into his saddle and looked around.
Her people had set up the encampment about a mile from the entrance to the pass. A cloud of Silverlight hung over it, bringing its tents and people into sharp focus. The once open space at the mouth of the pass was clogged with komen and destriers—even at this distance, she could see that most of them wore the livery of Alliance Houses.
“Dinias, seek your bed; you have done well this night. Lord Atholfol, if you are the most senior of my commanders, I must ask more service of you this night. Aradreleg, find me those whom I may use to carry messages through the camp.”
She set Winter off at a slow walk, wondering if she presided over her own defeat or if victory was still possible. From the moment she’d realized what path was laid out for her by The Song of Amrethion, she’d told herself this war was the only way, even while she’d wondered if there was another. Each death suffered in her name made her more determined to avert the next: having begun by believing the war yet to come must be fought by all the Hundred Houses together, she’d still desperately yearned to fight as a lone champion so no others must die. It was a deadly flaw in a General of Armies, a worse one in a High King. If she did not apportion both responsibility and danger to all her subjects, she would leave them unable to act save at her order. Helpless.
And so, even though every fiber of her being urged her to spur him through the pass, to take the field, she knew she must show her people she yet lived. They gathered around her, making Winter fret and sidle, reaching out to touch her, to reassure themselves.
“Vielle!” Thurion pushed through the mob of people. “You live!”
“As do you,” she said on a wave of relief. “Walk with me.”
With Thurion at her stirrup, it seemed the people did not press as close. She ordered the flocks and herds moved south, away from the encampment, the palfreys and destriers unsaddled and turned loose, the mounts of the enemy komen who had given their parole unsaddled and freed as well. The baggage train she had sent through the pass this morning—still intact—would go south until a messenger reached it to tell it to halt.
None of those she asked after—Gunedwaen, Thoromarth, Rithdeliel—could be found. Save for Atholfol, her War Princes were all on the field—or dead. The encampment was a scattered thing of households and families with no clear master. In desperation, she placed Lord Atholfol in charge of it, and gave him orders to move everything he safely could southward, away from the entrance to the pass.
“And you, my lord? Where will you be?” Atholfol asked.
“Where I must be,” Vieliessar said.
She turned Winter’s head toward Dargariel Dorankalaliel. It was empty now; she did not know whether that was a good sign, or bad.
Thurion caught up with her soon after she had entered it, seated on some destrier he had snatched from its master. They rode in silence. There was nothing to say.
She did not summon Silverlight to guide her through the darkness, for it would mark the entrance for the enemy. Silversight showed her the carven walls as sharp as if by day. But beyond the entrance of the Dargariel Dorankalaliel, everything on the plain was darkness and shadows. She could see her army forming a barrier between the entrance to the pass and what lay beyond it. Those she could see were only the last line of defense; from the sounds, the fighting in the front ranks was heavy.
Vieliessar dismounted, walked forward until she stood just inside the boundary stones. The field was dark, lit only by the eldritch glow of the clouds and the flare of lightning. The clouds above shone with the black-green of a long-dead corpse. They swirled around a disk of unclouded sky, and within it the stars burned blood-red. Jagged violet lightning sketched across the clouds and swirled around the window to the stars. Lightning struck the ground all around the figure who stood in the center of a circle of lifeless dust that swirled as the clouds above swirled, a desert that grew larger with every moment, and though the wind raged across the plain, it did not touch him.
“How in the name of Sword and Star did we come to this day?” she said softly.
“There stands Ivrulion of Caerthalien,” Thurion said, pointing toward the distant column of dust and lightnings. “Ask him.”
Vieliessar drew a shaky breath. She’d feared the Light, hated the Light, and loved the Light, but no matter how she had changed, the Light had been as constant as sunlight and stars. Thurion had once called it the heartbeat of the world, and told her sensing the Light was like hearing the heartbeat of a loved one. She’d accepted his words, but she only understood Thurion’s truth in the moment it became a lie.
This is how it all began, Vieliessar thought, dazed. Mosirinde’s Covenant teaches that blood magic leads to madness and destruction. Celelioniel wanted to know how Mosirinde knew—and unriddled The Song of Amrethion instead. I am the Child of the Prophecy, and because of that we are all gathered on this battlefield to reap the terrible harvest of forbidden magic.
Thurion laughed shakily. “And so we end as we began, on a battlefield from which spellcraft is barred.”
“This is not the end, my friend,” she said. I swear to you it is not. “What I began, I shall end.” She swung down from Winter’s saddle, tossing his rein to Thurion.