Crown of Vengeance (Dragon Prophecy) (10 page)

Soon enough, Vieliessar discovered Melwen had spoken no more than the truth, for she spent an entire morning cleaning up a disaster in one of the stillrooms. She had not been told what had happened, but every jar and beaker had shattered, and the resulting slurry of salts and oils and herbs stank vilely. She brought sand to soak up the mess on the floor, and swept it up. She was careful not to let any of it touch her, but by the time Godrahir Lightsister, Mistress Stillroom, came by to check on her progress, the stench had given Vieliessar such a headache that the Lightsister took one look at her and told her to stop working and go into the garden for air. She went without thinking, even though she had not set foot outside the Sanctuary itself in nearly two full turns of the Wheel.

The gate to the Sanctuary garden was a homely wooden thing. Beside its door, a peg-board held cloaks that any might use—for none of those living here owned such an item. A tray below was piled with wooden clogs, to be placed over the Sanctuary’s usual footgear: heavy wool socks soled with leather. Vieliessar took a cloak, slipped on a pair of clogs, and opened the door. As soon as she stepped away from the shelter of the wall, the wind began pulling at the cloak, forcing her to hold on to it. The air held the raw smells of earth and stone and Vieliessar shivered with the cold, though the sharp clear air eased her sick headache.

It was strange to be in the open air after so long a time indoors. She walked the path into the garden as cautiously as if she crossed a bridge made of swordblades. Maeredhiel had been careful to explain that the gardens were not truly protected by the Peace of the Sanctuary, and so if someone wished to ride all the way to the Sanctuary of the Star to slay the last of Farcarinon, they might do so in the garden without incurring more than the annoyance of the Lightborn. Vieliessar thought it unlikely that the Night Brotherhood—if that secret guild of assassins were anything more than a nursery tale used to frighten willful children—would seek her out, and if trouble came, she was no more than a few hundred steps from one of the many doors leading to refuge.

Once I dreamed of becoming a great warrior and riding all across the land with sword and bow. I promised myself Flower Forests to explore, stags to course, great hawks to fly at my leisure. Now my world is no wider than these garden walls.

The garden itself covered five hectares of land and was surrounded by a low stone wall. Within it stood trees usually found only in a Flower Forest, husbanded here by Magery: the namarii that gave its wood to Sanctuary spells, the uluskukad whose ghostly radiance lit the gardens at night, and in the center of the garden, an ancient Vilya, in full flower despite the season. The Vilya’s fruiting governed the reigns of the Astromancers, for the ever-flowering Vilya fruited only once a century, and across the land, foresters kept watch over the Vilya in their care and vyed to be first to bring word of its fruiting to their lord

At the center of the garden Vieliessar stopped and turned in a slow circle, filling her eyes with all she saw. Beyond the wall lay the fields of Rosemoss Farm. In a fortnight or so, spring plowing would begin there, but for now, all there was to see was the greyed stubble of last year’s harvesting. Beyond the fields stood Arevethmonion Flower Forest. All the way to the edge of the Flower Forest everything was grey and dun-gold. Only the forest itself was green, as Flower Forests always were.

To the left of the Sanctuary’s main gate was the guesthouse and stables. They might as well be in the Vale of Celenthodiel for all that Vieliessar would ever go there. The low stone wall was the boundary of her world. And so it would be until the end of her days, unless she fled into a life where death was her constant companion.

A year ago she’d raged against her confinement. This year she’d thought herself growing content with something that would—somehow, someday—end. Now she knew that contentment for a false calm—for to be locked away galled her spirit as much as if she wore a red-hot crown of barbed iron. The Silver Hooves punished cowardice. Queen Pelashia turned her face from those forsworn. Vieliessar had sworn to avenge Farcarinon, and she could not yet say if she was a coward or an oathbreaker, but she feared she was. How could she do what she had sworn? And how could she face the long centuries ahead of her if she let the name of Farcarinon vanish into the shadows?

“I thought I’d be the only one out here on a day like this.”

She repressed a cry of alarm at the sound of the voice behind her, for she knew it. She turned as Thurion emerged from the stand of namarii. Like her, he wore a borrowed cloak and clogs. His hair—uncut for two turnings of the Wheel—curled against his neck and around his ears. It would not be cut again until he dared the Shrine.

“Godrahir Lightsister sent me to walk in the garden,” she said briefly.

“Then I shall be glad of the company,” Thurion said easily, coming toward her. “Rondithiel Lightbrother told me he could as easily teach a pig the mysteries of the Light as me, and sent me to take exercise.

“You are solemn,” Thurion added, as if he heard what she did not say.

“For what cause should I be joyful?” Vieliessar snapped, anger suddenly winning out over prudence. “I whose birth holds me prisoner within these walls!”

Thurion gazed at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, and she wished she could call back her rash words. “Do you find it such a hardship?” he asked softly.

“You will leave here someday and go back to your home,” she said. “I—”

To her surprise, Thurion laughed bitterly. “My home! Do you not know what I am?”

“A Postulant,” she answered, puzzled. “Someday to be Lightborn.”

“I am Landbond, son of Landbonds,” he said. “When I return to Caerthalien, I will not go home. It is not the will of Bolecthindial Caerthalien that the Light should shine upon the Landbond. I will go wherever he says I must go, to serve who he says I must serve. Rondithiel Lightbrother tells me my person is sovereign and my life is my own. And he lies. The family I dare not claim and may never again see is held hostage for my obedience.”

“I … I had not thought,” she said slowly. She knew there was always resentment of the Landbonds among the Candidates, for they must be taught to read and write when they came to the Sanctuary, and so their service was less than that of those who already possessed those skills.

“Prisoner, hostage, I care not if you are Farcarinon, or Caerthalien, or the Child of the Prophecy. My family does not even own the roof above our heads. A third of what we harvest each year goes to pay Menenel Farmholder for our shelter and our seed grain. All we have ever asked is that the great lords do not ride across our fields and spoil our work—and if they do, or even fight across them, there is nothing we can say without punishment. Do you think the quarrels of the Hundred Houses matter to me? How has your life been harder than mine?” Thurion demanded.

Vieliessar gazed at Thurion as if he was something she had never seen before. Landbonds served the Farmfolk and the Farmfolk served the Lords
Komen
: all knew that. She’d known Thurion was Landbond, but she had never thought about what that
meant.

“Don’t you wish to be Lightborn?” she asked at last. Thurion smiled.

“I could never be happy as anything else,” he answered with quiet sincerity. “It is … It is as if I had lived all my life in a small dark room, hearing voices beyond the locked door. And then one day the door was opened, and I walked out into … this,” he said, gesturing at the garden around them. “You must think I am very foolish,” he finished, smiling gently.

“No,” she answered. “You talk about things I don’t understand, but that’s different. Last year—when the Postulants would talk to us about the Light, do you remember?—none of us could understand what they wished to tell us of. And now you can.”

Thurion smiled at her again and this time his smile was radiant. She realized, with an unsettled pang of discovery, that Thurion saw … Not Varuthir, whose name and existence had been a lie. Not Farcarinon’s powerless heir, despised for merely existing. But Vieliessar. Just … Vieliessar.

“I cannot change your birth, or mine,” he said quietly. “Nor can I set aside the fate placed upon you when you first drew breath. But you are wrong if you think this—” He swept a hand outward, indicating the garden, and the wind blew his cloak back off his shoulders with a snap. “—is the only world. Come with me, Vielle, and I’ll show you.”

It was the first time he’d called her by the eke-name that Melwen and the other Sanctuary servants sometimes used. It was the way a given name might be shortened by a lover, a child, a parent. Would Nataranweiya have used it, if she and Serenthon had lived and Farcarinon yet stood? Even to wonder was a painful thing.

“Come,” Thurion said again. “I will show you a world wider than all the Fortunate Lands.”

She followed him back inside the Sanctuary, grateful to pass out of the chill. Thurion led her to a passageway as narrow as any of the hidden ways within the walls, and suddenly Vieliessar could hear Maeredhiel’s voice, clear in the ears of memory:
“This side passage leads down to the stairs to the Library. Perhaps someday you will see what lies within it.”

The staircase was as narrow as the passage, and it went down a long way—two floors, or perhaps three. Niches in the stone walls held lanterns that glowed with Silverlight.

“Anyone—anyone who is not in their Service Year—may come here,” Thurion said. He paused, as if he were listening to his words. “I mean … anyone of the Sanctuary. Even the servants. Lightborn from Graythunder Glairyrill to Great Ocean return here to study.”

Vieliessar let his remark pass without comment. She knew Thurion hadn’t meant to remind her that she was nothing more than one of the Sanctuary servants. To be a servant at the Sanctuary of the Star was to be placed above warlords and princes—so Morgaenel Mistress Kitchen-Cook always said.

At the bottom of the staircase was a latticework door, gleaming golden in the dimness. It was ornate enough, Vieliessar decided, but hardly very grand. In Bolecthindial’s castel the outer doors to the Great Hall were as high as three tall men, their opening wide enough that three
komen
in full war panoply could ride through them side by side. The images on their Mage-forged door panels told the story of Caerthalien’s great triumphs, and though they were cast of solid bronze, they were so perfectly balanced that the youngest servant could open and close them with a touch. This was merely an ancient door of cracked, painted wood, no larger than the door to her sleeping cell.

“This is the Library of Arevethmonion,” Thurion said. His voice was hushed, but his tone was as proud as if he were its master and ruler.

“It is named for the Flower Forest?” Vieliessar asked.

“Or she is named for this,” Thurion said, and tugged open the door to the Library.

When Vieliessar followed Thurion through the doorway, her nose was suddenly filled with the sweet scents of vellum and leather. Silverlight filled the chamber with a moon-pale radiance brighter than any full moon. The door was small, but the space beyond was as high as the stair had been long, and larger from back to front and side to side than Bolecthindial’s Great Hall—larger, perhaps, than the Sanctuary itself. Every wall she could see was filled with square storage niches, and each niche was filled with scrolls. A gallery halfway up the wall seemed to go all the way around the room, to give access to the niches higher on the walls.

Nor was this place unoccupied.

I had wondered where the Lightborn and the Postulants vanished to all the day, and now I know.…

The center of the chamber was filled with long tables—and because she had spent candlemark upon candlemark tending to the Sanctuary’s furnishings, she wondered who cared for all of this, for no one in the Servants’ Hall had mentioned the library as part of their duties. Several of the tables were covered with stacked scrolls, opened scrolls, and even maps, over which green-robed Lightborn and grey-robed Postulants bent in study.

“I … didn’t know…” she whispered.

“This is only the main room,” Thurion said, turning back and coming to her side. “The others—”

“So many scrolls,” Vieliessar interrupted. “It would be a life’s work to read them all!”

“Praise to Sword and to Star we Postulants do not have to,” Thurion answered, his voice low and amused. “It is a great enough task merely to learn the catalogue which tells us where they are.”

He stepped away from the doorway again, and this time Vieliessar followed him.

*   *   *

“Any text brought to the Sanctuary and deemed by Cirthoriach Lightsister to be of worth or interest is shelved here. There are poems, storysongs, travelers’ accounts … even histories that the Hundred Houses would not wish preserved, for the tales they hold are not, I am told, the tales sung at feast days,” Thurion said dryly, as the two of them walked along the right-hand wall.

Vieliessar’s eyes were stretched wide at all she saw—and even more at what she imagined. A hundred of these scroll niches would have held every scroll in Caerthalien’s library. And there were hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds more. All filled.

“There is a workroom beyond this to repair damaged scrolls,” Thurion said. “The spell of Keeping ensures nothing decays or fades, but it won’t prevent damage, or staining—or keep the Lightborn from making notes on the edges of the text,” Thurion said, the laughter in his eyes inviting Vieliessar to share the joke. “There is a chamber beyond the workroom which holds texts on spellcraft, locked away lest we be tempted to take a short road to our understanding of the Light. It would not work, in any case—and would certainly do great harm.”

“I don’t understand,” Vieliessar said. “If they are but scrolls … How can one be hurt reading a scroll?”

Thurion came to a stop, frowning with the effort of trying to explain. “It is … as if you or I were given all the articles of knighthood—sword and spear, armor and shield, spurs and destrier—and sent into battle against one who had earned them all through years of honest training. We would die.”