Chapter One: Wings Of Fate

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CHAPTER ONE: Sword Moon to Fire Moon: The Child of the Prophecy

Though there are many songs of the High King's reign, there is none of her journey westward through the lands she had once conquered.

No one who was a part of that journey will ever speak of those days.

--Thurion Pathfinder, Private Journal

From the day her dying mother gave birth, Vieliessar had been known as The Child of the Prophecy, though she herself had heard that title for the first time more than a decade later. At first she did not understand what it meant. Later, she despised it, and later still, tried to reject it. At last she had bent her neck to the yoke of the inevitable and accepted it in all its frightful weight and glory: when Darkness came to sweep Elvenkind from the land, only The Child of the Prophecy could save them.

But the Prophecy did not tell her how.

She began with one truth: the Darkness would come. And when the Darkness came, Elvenkind must fight.

To fight required an army, and so she would make a single unified army from the tailles and meisnes of ninety and nine quarrelling Elven domains. To do this she must leave The Sanctuary of the Star, where she had been prisoner, servant, Candidate, Postulant, and Lightborn Mage, and become someone else: a knight, a War Prince, a general, a leader of armies.

To unify the ninety-and-nine, she must become High King, a thing no War Prince had succeeded in doing in ten generations. Take the Unicorn Throne, unite the Princely Houses in her own person, turn a hundred quarrelling armies into one unified force.

It should have been impossible. It was, in truth, impossible—a thing her own father had died trying to do. But the Prophecy was no mere foretelling. It was a spell that had waited uncountable centuries to find its target. It was an immeasurable burden, bending her into what it required, warping the very fabric of her world to make her High King. Amretheon's magic had given Vieliessar impossible luck, and by the visions it sent her and the demands it made upon her, she'd received all the proof she needed to quiet any last doubts about the Prophecy's truth and the reality of the threat.

And so she did the impossible through Amretheon's Prophecy, whose Child she was. Amassed an army, conquered the War Princes, found her way to High King Amretheon Aradruiniel's lost and forgotten royal city, and seated herself upon the Unicorn Throne.

The peace of her reign had lasted perhaps a tenth-mark, if that long. There had been no moment to rejoice in the attainment of her years-long battle, no time to prepare for the war to come. When the Darkness—the Endarkened—came, her people had been unprepared, thinking that this day—the sunturn of Vieliessar's Enthroning—set the seal upon the beginning of an era of peace. They had lost so much in that single moment.

And it was not any doing of yours that saved even one of them!

Vieliessar turned away from the window of her presence-chamber, shaking her head as if that would dislodge the familiar litany of self-recrimination. She was supposed to be preparing for the latest War Council, not telling over old guilts. But she could not help herself. Child of the Prophecy she had been named, and to her eternal shame, she, too, had believed that the Child of the Prophecy would save Elvenkind from the Darkness—but when the Darkness did come, she had been helpless against it. Only by sheerest chance did her people discover that the Flower Forests would shelter them. The Flower Forests were places filled with the magic the Lightborn drew on to cast their spells. They were places the Endarkened could not enter.

But the enemy was as clever as it was mad. The Endarkened could send others into the Flower Forests in their stead: Lesser Endarkened, goblins, serpentmarae, stonedrakes and icedrakes and firedrakes...

Monsters and predators and creatures of magic.

Her people had learned to kill them all.

Their one advantage was that the Lightborn could sense the Endarkened when they drew near, as if the creatures themselves reeked of blood and the foulest decay. Farspeech had been impossible since the day of Vieliessar's Enthroning: the attempt seemed to bring the mind of any Lightborn who attempted it into direct contact with the Endarkened's foulness, making it as if Ivrulion Banespell still lived. Even Vieliessar, who tried it in secret, was not able to maintain the contact. The few Lightborn who yet lived were far too precious to use even as Healers: they were the advance guard, sentries, and scouts of her small and tattered army.

At least we do not have to deal with the Beastlings in addition to everything else.

For as long as the Hundred Houses had stood, the Flower Forests had been the Beastlings' refuge, for the Flower Forests were sacrosanct by long agreement among the Hundred Houses, and even the Lightborn had rarely ventured into the depths of the larger ones. But none of her people had seen any sign of a single Beastling, since...

Since the day of my Enthroning, when a unicorn saved my life.

There were times Vieliessar was not sure she had seen the creature at all. The unicorn was a creature of myth and legend, not one of the tribes of Beastlings. But if she was not mad, she had seen such a creature twice. She had told no one. Nor could she settle in her own mind what it might mean. There was little time for that in any event: the fight for survival trumped all.

In the first moonturns after her abortive Enthroning, with Farspeech lost to them and their lines of communication shattered, Vieliessar had hoped—they had all hoped—that those Houses that had not yet flocked to her banner—or to that of her now-defeated enemy—would come to lend their might to her embattled people. It was not to be. They knew soon enough that the Houses of the Windsward and of the High Plateau had been erased by the new enemy even as Vieliessar had consolidated her power over her new people and kept her promises of one law for highborn and low. Save for the scattered peoples of the Far West—the Lightborn at the Sanctuary of the Star; Amrolion and Daroldan, the Houses of the Western Shore, which held the west safe from the incursion of the Beastlings—her people were all of Elvenkind that was left.

And she did not know for certain if Amrolion, Daroldan, and the Sanctuary still stood. She could only hope. For now, she and her people must fight alone, against the Darkness. Against an enemy whose power, numbers, intentions were largely unknown—and unknowable. Nothing about the Endarkened made any sense: so far as Vieliessar and her generals could determine, the Endarkened treated this war as a game whose outcome was never in doubt.

Time after time Vieliessar had seen the Endarkened forces draw back at the moment of victory, sparing their foes for no other reason than so they could torture them another day.

But that knowledge had come much later.

Elvenkind had not fought back in those first moonturns after that terrible sunturn. All who survived knew that for each who had lived, two had died. Even when they had seen the battle was hopeless, that their enemy would not fall to sword or pike or arrow, Landbond and prince, mercenary and knight, had each stood their ground to give those whom they protected the chance to flee to safety.

And those heroes had died to the last soul.

Once I called the people of the Hundred Houses to me with the promise that the day I gained the Unicorn Throne would be the day my people would no longer be divided. Noble and Landbond would answer to one judgment and to one rule, and there would be no more of Highborn and Low.

And that, of all the promises she had made, had been made true. All her people were warriors now. All were equal.

It had taken her two full turns of the Wheel of the Year to gather up and organize—to find—her scattered people in the aftermath of that terrible Enthroning Day. To gather up the remains of the herdbeasts and the precious irreplaceable warhorses. To fight for leadership of her people once again, this time with words instead of swords. And every step had been paid for in blood and magic. The price her people had demanded of her in exchange for their renewed fealty had been the foundation of the High King's line—children of her body, that the Throne would endure.

She had agreed to that, and she had lied, for she was Bonded, and only her Bondmate could quicken her to provide the promised children. But Runacarendalur Caerthalien had fled the aftermath of the battle of the Shieldwall Plain, and all she knew was that—somewhere—he still lived. So against the price her people demanded, she set one of her own: that she would not wed, nor would the fathers of her children ever be known. Her people had been eager to agree, for to take a Consort would have been to establish one House above the rest.

So the High King drew apart from her people, and in time produced two children: Adeliariel and Calanor. Folk might believe that anyone they chose had fathered the children, for she had put it about that any paramour she chose would remember nothing. Everyone was certain that the children she presented to the Council were her own. But it was Helecanth—not her liege-lord—who had borne two children she could never claim; spells and trickery had done the rest.

Vieliessar loved her son and daughter as much and as little as she would have loved children of her body. She had been the willing consort of Amretheon's Prophecy for far too long to have room in her heart for any other love. And when she finally brought her people to heel, and presented them with the living tokens of her promises to them, her people looked to her for a plan.

She'd known what Gunedwaen Swordsmaster—first teacher and last friend—would have told her. After all, he had said it often enough during the moonturns of her training: "Any plan, no matter how abysmally stupid, is better than no plan. Without one, no one will follow you, and without followers you can do nothing. You can always change your mind after you begin, but to begin at all, you have to have a plan."

And so she had gathered her folk together and said:

"We will go west to the Dragon's Gate, cross the Mystrals, gather up those of our people who remain there, and make our stand against the Endarkened on the Western Shore, with Amrolion and Daroldan at our side."

To make such a plan was easy enough. To gain the agreement of her people barely more difficult. The hard thing was to do it: their only safety from the Endarkened lay in the Flower Forests; set one foot outside their safety, and the Endarkened would descend upon them. Even the Flower Forest was not an absolute guarantee of safety, for if the Endarkened could not enter it, they could send others that could: wolves, ice-tigers, beasts the Elves had no names for. There was no true defense and no protection save the Flower Forest that sheltered them, but vast as it was, its Light was finite, and near to exhaustion. To remain where they were was to die, but the constant attacks of the Endarkened had given the Elvenkind the survival habits of prey, and prey did not leave known shelter unless there was no other choice—and sometimes not even then. The Endarkened hunted by night, so that was when the Elves stood wakened and watchful. Such fires as they needed were kindled only at dawn or dusk, and sheltered in pits dug below ground level for even more safety. The temporary structures they built were such perfect copies of what was already there that they blended in flawlessly: two trees where once there was one, a dwelling disguised as a thickness of leaves and flowers nested in smooth strong branches. They had no Light to ease their way, so they learned to do by hand and wit and skill those things their Lightborn had once done by Magery. All with any Lightless skill to share had taught it to as many as could learn: now her people were truly one, every one of them knight and warrior, Craftworker and Healer, Ranger and Huntsman.

To travel westward would have been a simple thing—if they'd had Lightborn and power for them to draw upon. With the power of the Lightborn, they could have plotted the location of all the Flower Forests in the land and mapped their route—even caused the Flower Forests themselves to grow and expand so they need never leave their shelter to make their way.

But long before her Enthroning Vieliessar had sent most of the Lightborn Westward in response to Amrolion and Daroldan's desperate plea for aid against the Beastlings, and on the day of the Enthroning the Endarkened had sought out the Lightborn above all other targets. The Lightborn in the High King's meisne now numbered less than a grand-taille, and there was no way to train more. Once she had wept for all her people had lost since Amretheon's time. Now she wept for all they had lost in her own.

No! I will not think thus! How are my people to hope if they see me in despair?

Vieliessar looked up from the forest floor to the great trees that ringed her own place. Concealment was a powerful weapon against those enemies who could enter the Flower Forests, and the Elves had learned to master it. In the branches of the ancient trees, the Elves had learned to build homes nearly indistinguishable from the trees themselves. Behold my kingdom in its greatness, she thought bitterly. Is it not lovely?

"Not just to build homes—to make homes." Thurion had said those words to her often enough, trying to remind her of the lesson her Landbond subjects had always known: that even the darkest moments had room in them for joy. But it was a lesson Vieliessar could not learn. Thurion saw all that they had, while Vieliessar could only see what they had lost.

And soon they might lose even more, for they had reached the edge of the Mystrals, and must traverse the distance up to the Dragon's Gate and down the other side—leagues of distance with no concealment, with no sheltering Flower Forest in reach. Her army—her people—were scattered by handfuls across the Tamabeth Hills: the safety to be found in small easily-overlooked groups far outweighed the scant possibility that a large group could overpower an Endarkened attacker. It had taken them ten Wheelturns to reach here, to cross a distance that they had once covered in less than one.

She turned back to the window of the High King's "palace"—a chamber made up of rugs and branches, smaller than the campaign tent that had once been her home. The Presence Chamber was a large room, made entirely of wood, with lattice-shuttered windows on three sides and the sliding door on the fourth. The planks of walls and ceiling and floor were joined smoothly, with neither Magery nor nail, and polished until they were smooth and glowing. Its only furnishings were stools and floor cushions, for even though the High King's Presence Chamber was always the first building to be constructed in each new place, that did not mean that the making of council tables and presence chairs was an appropriate use of time and resources.

I might almost be back in the Sanctuary of the Star, in my Postulant days, wrangling over this point or that with my fellow students after supper.

The area was too small for comfortable pacing, though she still did it. In the twilight, the happy laughter of children playing beneath the trunks of the great trees tugged at her. Their games were of evasion, hiding, flight, games teaching lessons they were too young to be saddened by. Since her Enthroning, a generation had been born that knew nothing but flight and war. They thought the tales their elders told them—of great stone castels, broad open fields, peace—were as fantastical as the tales their elders had been told of the great court of High King Amretheon Aradruiniel. For them, the way it was now was the way it had always been.

And their careless acceptance of this fate was like a dagger plunged into her heart.

#

The sound of the door sliding back made her turn away from the window and compose her features to stillness. The Council had arrived, and it was time once more to begin the delicate dance to bend them to her will.

Once her councilors had gathered in the shining War Pavilion outside ruined Celephrandullias to discuss how they would claim all the world. Both her counselors and their intent were far different now; a mix of desperate pragmatism and ancient royal offices turned to new purposes. Despite herself, Vieliessar could not keep from numbering the dead even as she tallied their successors. Princes Telthorelandor, Cirandeiron, Aramenthiali, Nantirworiel, and Vondaimieriel were gone. After the battles that followed Enthroning Day, even the remains of the nobility had lost all interest in who was Lord and Heir to which lost Domain. Tunonil, though named Royal Huntmaster, was in charge of providing food, not entertainment; Lady Helecanth was Commander of a High King's Guard that did not exist. Master Kemmiaret of the Silver Swords was gone, but Master Dandamir had succeeded him, and the Silver Swords still rode. Thurion, Aradreleg, Iardalaith—Aradreleg was in charge of Healers and Lightless healers, Iardalaith and the Warhunt reported to the Royal Warlord; Thurion was here because Vieliessar sometimes thought she would go mad if he was not. Lawspeaker Commander Gelduin reported for those who were the High King's eyes and ears and voice—and who were the peoples' eyes and ears and voice as well. All came to see that the High King's decisions were made in the light, without threat or favoritism.

And then there was Rithdeliel, the High King's Warlord.

He was one of the last of the Lords Komen to survive, and in his hands and Iardalaith's and First Sword Nadalforo's lay the training of new knights and of their warhorses. And though nearly all of Vieliessar's people now dressed in the leathers and concealing cloaks of Elven Rangers, tattered and painted homespun that would allow them to vanish into the forest unseen, Rithdeliel still wore sword and baldric and surcoat bearing the High King's device: a silver unicorn upon a field of Lightborn green. It did not matter that he must live in a tiny wooden house and brew his own tea. Rithdeliel was Warlord to the High King, and he would live and die as if the walls of a great palace surrounded him and a hundred servants awaited his orders.

Perhaps he'd gone mad. She sometimes wondered. But if he had, it was madness of a gentle and forgivable sort.

As the others entered the chamber, seating themselves on the cushions and low stools that were the chamber's only furnishing, Rithdeliel stepped forward and knelt before her.

"My lord King, Rithdeliel Warlord answers your summons," he said, just as if this were some castel's Great Hall and she holding court in the full glory and majesty of her rank.

"Rise, Lord Rithdeliel, for I have need of your wise council," she answered, just as formally.

He rose fluidly to his feet, and followed her back to the center of the room. She seated herself upon a floor cushion and Rithdeliel took the remaining stool.

"What do you have to say to me?" she asked, looking around the circle.

"The spring harvest has been lush, by the grace of Sword and Star," Lawspeaker Gelduin said. "Much of what we have gathered can be preserved. We shall not lack for food, even though there will be no summer harvest if we must move. There has been neither hoarding nor deliberate waste. The Law is satisfied."

Each member of her council spoke of the matters under their care. The reports were a litany of challenges accepted and met, and at any other time they would have been both soothing and reassuring, if all present did not know what they were a prelude to.

"And now to the next matter that concerns us," Vieliessar said. "We must move, and soon. Thurion Lightbrother, how much longer can Saganath Flower Forest shelter us?"

"And provide a defense against the Endarkened?" Thurion answered wryly. "Not long. We drained all of the Uradabhur Flower Forests far too much during the Winter War—and removing the boundary markers between Domains didn't help either, because once we linked all the Flower Forests on this side of the Mystrals, we drew upon every copse and thicket containing even a shard of Light. The smallest may never recover."

"Every Lightborn must make a speech to answer a question," Rithdeliel said. The mockery was not particularly barbed; Rithdeliel Warlord had long since given up complaining about the presence of the Lightborn in council.

Thurion gave him a small ironic bow. "Never would I presume to tax the attention of one of the great Lords Komen. Thus: already Saganath Flower Forest is beginning to sicken. Soon it will begin to die."

"We must go soon regardless," Rithdeliel said, smiling faintly in acknowledgement of the riposte. "And while it is still summer. Even if the Dragon's Gate cannot be closed by weather—at least not any longer—" He paused, and First Sword Nadalforo made a rude noise. It had been the Alliance—when there had been an Alliance—that had ordered its Lightborn to make the Dragon's Gate so wide that it could never be blocked by winter ice again. "—our people will suffer if we must travel through the mountains in the moonturns of cold, nor will Winter magically vanish once we reach the west."

"Vondaimieriel's nothing but hills and trees, and that's hard going, summer or winter," Nadalforo said. The former First Sword of Stonehorse Free Company had fought many battles there before Caerthalien had wiped out all the mercenary companies.

"And none of those trees belongs to a Flower Forest," Thurion said. "The closest one to the Dragon's Gate—on the western side—is Enerwirchereth in Mangiralas, and that's a long distance to cover without somewhere to hide."

"What about Nomiatemil?" Vieliessar said, frowning as she brought the reluctant memory to the forefront of her thoughts. "That's between Saganath and Enerwirchereth."

"In the Mystrals," Master Dandamir said with a grimace. "Somewhere."

"South through the Ceoprentrei," Thurion said instantly. "It isn't used much. Wasn't used much. It isn't really part of anyone's Domain—Jaeglenhend and Vondaimieriel both claim it, but it's set outside both their boundary markers."

"So Vondaimieriel wouldn't have drained it," Aradreleg Lightsister said, "and neither would we. Even while we were taking down the boundary stones here, I don't think anyone thought to shift the ones in the Pass."

"Does Nomiatemil hold a Shrine?" Vieliessar asked Thurion. She knew the answer perfectly well—and knew he knew it—but the purpose of Council was to share information with those who did not have it. Her people already tried to make her into a Greater Power. Better that she refrain from giving long arcane lectures in Council.

"No; the closest one is Shrine Manostar, on Vondaimieriel's western border. It's farther than Enerwirchereth by a sunturn or two. And Enerwirchereth is four sunturns' ride from the Vondaimieriel side of the pass."

"But a Shrine in a Flower Forest offers more protection than a Flower Forest alone," Nadalforo said. "If we can make Enerwirchereth, we can make Manostar."

"Agreed," Thurion said. "They're both small compared to Janglanipaikharain or even Delfierarathadan, but on the other hand, they've had ten Wheelturns to recover."

"We hope," Aradreleg muttered under her breath.

"To spend even four sunturns crossing Vondaimieriel without shelter or defense will be difficult to accomplish," Rithdeliel said with a magnificent neutrality.

It will be impossible, Vieliessar thought. And we all know it. But we can't stay here and we can't retreat, and what does that leave?

"What of Vondaimieriel Great Keep?" Vieliessar asked. "We can at least rest there before trying to gain either of the Flower Forests."

It was at moments like this that Vieliessar missed the luxury of scouting most keenly. If the Warhunt had been able to ride ahead as they had during the Winter War, she would have had facts, not guesses, at her disposal. But as she had learned when her people prepared to leave Tildorangelor Flower Forest, the Endarkened were always watching. And Lightborn were their favorite prey.

"The Great Keep should be intact, both stones and wards," Iardalaith Lightbrother said slowly. "As it lies in the foothills of the Mystrals and hard upon the Northern Pass Road, it was the last place to be untenanted during the war. That works in our favor. We expect that the west will be a ghostlands from the Mystrals to the Angarussa, but the worst of the damage should be west of the Sanctuary of the Star. Both we and our former enemy—" here Helecanth bowed her head in acknowledgement and Iardalaith flashed her a brief smile "—were moving too fast after the False Parley—so-called—to properly lay waste to the countryside east of Farcarinon."

For a moment Vieliessar wondered if Iardalaith had guessed her true motive for bringing them west. Her people believed they rode west to save the Western Shore from the Beastlings. It was a laudable goal to ride to the rescue of her sworn liegemen—she had known the Western Shore embattled even before her Enthroning—but it was not the true reason she had risked so much, and lost so many lives, in this attempt to return to the west.

The Shore was not her goal. The Great Library at the Sanctuary of the Star was. If knowledge of the way to destroy the Endarkened existed anywhere within Jer-a-kaliel, it existed there. To destroy the Endarkened, she would willingly leave the Western Shore to burn at the hands of the Beastlings.

"So Vondaimieriel Great Keep should be intact," Nadalforo said. "A skeleton garrison at best. And surely eager to open the castel gates to their overlord and King."

"Unlikely," Rithdeliel said briefly. "We shall have to fight for it, even if there's still someone in the Line Direct in our meisne to order it to surrender."

"But we have taken Keeps before," Iardalaith said. "Nor will we be fighting against Lightborn. Once we have invested Vondaimieriel, we know we can hold it against the Endarkened. At least, providing its wards are intact, and Vondaimieriel's should be. What we cannot do is feed ourselves while we do so."

"And either it has stores—which means we will have to fight to take it from whoever is guarding them—or it does not, in which case it stands empty and so shall we," Nadalforo said.

"That is a matter we can set aside for a while yet," Vieliessar said. "We must reach Vondaimieriel before we can cook supper in its kitchens."

"If we are to cook in their kitchens, at least that means we are not the kitchen rats," Thurion said with feigned lightness.

Aradreleg laughed sharply. "Rather would I be a kitchen rat did it mean I had a kitchen to skulk in."

"And rather would I be sitting in Caerthalien Great Keep, feasting in the cool and the dry, and with my any whim gratified did I but ask," Helecanth responded briskly. "Of course, had not our lord and liege gained the Unicorn Throne, I should certainly be dead long before this summertide."

The Endarkened would have come whether I was enthroned or not, Vieliessar reminded herself, even as Gelduin gently rebuked the others for wandering from the point. And nothing brings Them down upon us as swiftly as the attempt to retreat—or to stay in one place. The Endarkened are herding us westward. But to what destination?

"My lords, nobles, and gentles," Vieliessar said, and the cross-talk in the room was quickly silenced. "We cannot retreat and we cannot stay here. To move forward requires not only destination, but method." She smiled. In some ways, the High King had returned to her earliest training: Kings and War Princes might command, but Lightborn asked and persuaded. "And so I have an idea that I wish to set before you..."

#

The Endarkened did not reckon the passage of time as their prey did. They were immortal and unchanging, and even those who had been born of flesh counted themselves one with the cold darkness within which the stars burned. In the World Without Sun, they counted the passage of time by the Risings of their King. They paid scant attention to the seasons of the Bright World. It would soon be scoured of all life, and with Life's passage, the sun and the rain would beat down only upon lifeless rock and Springtide would never come.

And then would come a war such as the stones and the stars had never witnessed.

Eons ago, He Who Is had created thirteen intermediaries to scour the Bright World of life. Time passed, and these Endarkened began to fear failure, for they were few and Life reproduced quickly—and endlessly. So King Virulan had worked a great magic, meant to change all of his Twelve vassals so that their bodies could bring forth more soldiers for this great war. But Prince Uralesse had foreseen Virulan's intention, and hid himself from the casting of that great spell. Once it had been cast, there was no power left to do it again—no matter how much Virulan wished to do so—and thus Uralesse remained as He Who Is had made him.

The eleven who were now the Created-and-Changed brought forth life from their bodies, and soon, where the Endarkened had been one interchangeable and unchanging people, they were three: the Created, the Created-and-Changed, and the Born.

And with that division came a bloody and clandestine rivalry.

#

Zicalyx spread her great scarlet wings wide, landing soundlessly beside her brother on the hilltop overlooking the Abode of Light. Narghail turned toward her as she crouched beside him, his white fangs flashing in the brightening half-light of pre-dawn. Before long the loathsome daystar would rise, and they must fly north to Shadow Mountain, or spend an uncomfortable period until it set once more. The Endarkened could endure sunlight without any harm greater than discomfort, but the Endarkened cherished others' pain, not their own.

"How fares your watch, Brother?" Zicalyx asked, and was rewarded with a disgusted grimace. Both knew the prey sheltered unreachably inside the hateful Abode of Light, but to enter it meant far worse than what came from exposure to the day-light. It meant sickness, infirmity, injury—even death.

And at that, death within a Light-Forest was preferable to injury there, for the Endarkened felt no mercy for any weaker than themselves, and would gleefully attack any of their brethren who could not fight back.

"How do you think?" Narghail snarled. "They are safe within, and they have far outstripped the children of the Cold Nursery who follow them. It will be a thousand Risings before they arrive."

"How, when the whole of the land is not a thousand Risings wide?" Xicalyx said, scoffingly. "Surely you exaggerate."

"But they won't come out and play!" Nargail shouted. "I want to play with them!"

Xicalyx struck him so hard he tumbled onto his back, sprawling ungainly. In an instant she sprang upon him, her talons digging bloodily into his shoulders and thighs, her mouth nearly touching his own.

"And so do we all, but more than that, we wish to see our glorious King in action," she hissed. "Ours to find them, his to lead us in battle."

"It isn't fa—" Nargail whined, cutting himself off when he saw the anger blazing in his sister's yellow eyes. "He and the Twelve leave little behind them," he finished simply. "When they strike the Elflings at all."

"And that is their right, for they are the Created of He Who Is. We are merely Born."

Xicalyx could not remember a time when she had not known the ultimate goal of her people—to scour all life from this world and then to return to the blessed Void, the formless uncreated nothingness of their master, He Who Is. She had always thought that ending to be absolute and as [absolute] as pain and darkness themselves.

But lately—she could not say just when—Xicalyx had begun to wonder. Of course He Who Is would take back the Created and Unchanging. He Who Is might even take back the Created and Changed.

But what of the Born? King Virulan said the Born were equal to the others. That they were all one, united in their appetites, their fealty, and their goal. But was it true? Or was it just possible that once the Great Task was done, the Born would be erased just as the Children of the Cold Nursery were to be erased. Death was ugly and terrifying, for it held the hint of an eternal living, an eternal awareness, instead of eternal darkness, eternal joy, eternal—perfect—utter—nothingness.

It was impossible to be too careful. And so Xicalyx made sure that those Endarkened who looked to her—while unshakably loyal to their dark and terrible liege—were careful to give the rest of the Created, the Dark Guard, every opportunity to die.

If Virulan alone out of all the Created remained at the moment of their utter victory, surely he would realize he must speak for the Born—or never speak again. "To think such thoughts is not treason or rebellion. It is only truth."

Xicalyx could not remember where she'd heard that, either.

"The daystar comes," she said to her brother. "Let us go where it is always night. The Elflings will cower among their plants until we drive them forth."

She lifted herself from his body, and Narghail rolled over and got slowly to his feet. He was grumbling beneath his breath, but so softly Xicalyx could pretend not to hear it.

Besides, she was right. The Elflings never wanted to leave the Light-forests. They knew that outside that shelter there was nothing for them. Nothing but death—slow, merciless—at the hands of the Endarkened.

#

"My lord, you should not be here. It is not safe," Helecanth said quietly, coming up behind Vieliessar.

It was still a few candlemarks before sunrise; here at the edge of the Flower Forest it was dark and cool, and Vieliessar could almost believe that the world was a safe and peaceful place. But bitter reality was too sharply present, the events of the sunturn to come so dire that even were she cloaked within its depths Saganath's eternal springtide would not have been able to work its accustomed magic on her spirits. Too many would die before the sun set again.

"You know I will sense should they come in numbers to mount an attack," Vieliessar answered, just as softly. At the far edge of her perception—so distant it was only a faint sickly headache—she could sense Endarkened. Not many: one or two at most. Following them. Watching.

"Even so," Helecanth said implacably. "No risk to you is acceptable. The people fear your loss even more than they fear death." The two crouched in the bushes of the scrubland that edged Saganath Flower Forest. Vieliessar had come here to take a last look at the Dragon's Gate—and to see every obstacle that stood in the way of reaching it.

"Death is something many will find today, whether I am lost or found," Vieliessar murmured, almost to herself. "You guard my heirs against that day," she reminded Helecanth, and Helecanth made a noise that might mean anything at all. The children of her body thought Helecanth no more than their mother's chief koman. One of them would follow Vieliessar as High King. And if that day came too soon, it would be Helecanth who held Vieliessar's great king-domain for that child until they were old enough to hold it for themselves.

"Come away," Helecanth repeated, and Vieliessar gestured her irritably to silence. How many will die today? she wondered despairingly. The gambit to cross the Mystrals to reach the Shrine of the Star was the most desperate of desperate gambles. And the purely physical obstacles standing between Vieliessar and her goal were as deadly as an band of Endarkened.

Saganath Flower Forest was nestled in a sheltering hollow between two hills in the Tamabeth Hills, and what had once been the Western Sanctuary Road (before ten years of disuse had turned it into no more than an overgrown track) began a little distance away from the Flower Forest, led for a dozen leagues through the rising foothills, and then joined the road to the mountain pass and the Ceoprentrei beyond. White peaks towered above the ridgeline, still black against the brightening sky. When she had first gathered up her army in Ceopriente's alpine valleys to bring it east, she had been preparing them to ride through a mountain pass and along a trail that were then much narrower.

But her once-enemies had not scrupled to reshape the very mountains with the power of their Lightborn—what had once been a narrow twisting trail through the mountains to reach a path narrower still had become a broad system of switchbacks and terraces, so wide and level that two tailles could pass along it riding abreast, each rider holding a cup of wine, and have the wine never spill.

And what that meant, in the world as it now was, was that there would be no place for her people to hide when the Endarkened inevitably attacked. Gain the top of the pass, gain the first of the Ceopretrei Valleys, and the distance was just as far to the nearest Flower Forest—Alpine Nomiatemil—as it was from the bottom of the pass to Ceopretrei: a lush, flat, open meadow where concealment would be impossible. Even if her folk reached Nomiatemiel's safety, they could not remain there for long. The Flower Forest might—praise to Sword and Star—have escaped the wars unbroached, but her Lightborn would drain it quickly with their calls upon its Light. And to reach the True West, she and all her folk would then have the whole thing to do over again, this time descending the Dragon's Gate Pass and seeking somewhere to hide and regroup—and a Flower Forest to shelter them—before they could even begin to consider marching westward.

They had done all they could to prepare the path and themselves. Volunteers had gone forth sunturns before to cast down the boundary stones at the western edge of Jaeglenhend. Alpine Nomaitemil's Light was now available to the Lightborn—though to draw too heavily upon it before they even reached it, would weaken the very refuge her people must seek.

"Come away," Helecanth urged for the third time. Vieliessar turned toward her, baring her teeth in a grimace of anger, but Helecanth was undaunted by the High King's temper. "Everyone knows the plan, down to the children too young to fight," Helecanth said. "All have given their consent that your plan shall be their action."

Vieliessar turned away again. "Then it is as good as done." She took a deep breath, mastering her temper with an effort. "Know that my love and gratitude goes forth to all who will die this sunturn, and to all who have died to bring us this far. May they rejoice forever in the Vale of Celenthodiel."

Helecanth inclined her head silently. After a moment she put her hand on Vieliessar's arm, and this time, bowing to necessity, Vieliessar allowed herself to be led back into the sheltering depths of Saganath.

#

The High King comes West. The High King comes at the head of all her army.

It was Thunder Moon when Melisha told Runacar that the battle he had long-dreaded was come at last. Still hoping for some breathing space—for the Battle of The Western Shore was barely a handful of sennights past—Runacar brought the warning to Leutric, King-Emperor of the Folk, hoping he would counsel delay. Runacar knew—in the vaguest possible way, for he had vowed that he would never again involve himself in politics—that Leutric and Melisha had been feuding for quite some time, but though Runacar was forthright with Leutric over the source of the information, he heard not a whisper of disbelief from the Minotaur or his courtiers. Leutric sent messengers to the enclaves of all the Folk, telling of the coming invasion and begging them to send whatever aid they could, for this was their only chance to stop whatever remained of the Hundred Houses from returning to the West.

In fact, Leutric threw himself into preparations for the seemingly-inevitable battle with a desperate fervor, for all the Folk believed that if the High King should cross the Mystrals into the West, she would bring some unspecified disaster in her wake. The next campaign Runacar had meant to mount—after a suitable period of rest and recruitment—had been the capture of the Sanctuary of the Star and the destruction of its war-city. Now it would have to wait, for if Vieliessar managed to pass through the Dragon's Gate, no matter what happened—or didn't happen—Runacar knew they could never force her East again. The cost of defeat would be far higher than it had ever been before. Far higher than he had once been able to envision. He didn't know what unsubstantiated tales his adopted people believed, but he had spent a decade of Wheelturns fighting to give them the West and their freedom, and he was not about to let what he had won with cunning and sword fall once more to the land-hunger of the alfaljodthi. He was no longer War Prince Runacarendalur Caerthalien, first among the Hundred Houses. He was merely Runacar, the King-Emperor's Warlord and General.

A very good General.

But he had no information about the High King's forces, and no way of getting any. For that matter, he had no idea of the state of his own forces, for after the apocalyptic end of the Battle for the Western Shore, his army had scattered to the six winds. And so Runacar's entire battle strategy came down to one thing: get there first. He left the King-Emperor's court at the same time as its first messengers. Those among the ragged remains of the Army of the Western Shore who were still willing to fight gathered to march eastward with Runacar at their head. He did not wait to make a plan, or even for supplies to be gathered. What he needed must join him along the way, or he must do without: reaching the Pass before Vieliessar was vital. He refused even to imagine defeat, though the last time he had been able to make a true estimate of Vieliessar's forces, it had been the morning of the Battle of the Shieldwall Plain, and since then, her meisne could only have grown. All the survivors of the Alliance army she had so comprehensively defeated would have pledged to her in the battle's aftermath—or died—and those of the Hundred Houses too undecided or too far from the battleground to have allied themselves with either side before that battle would also be hers by ten Wheelturns later. Such an army would make what Amrolion and Daroldan had sent against the Otherfolk look like the sortie of a minor war-band. To win, the Folk would need not just a General, not just fighters, but a miracle.

Runacar intended to give it to them. And as the sunturns passed, determination became leavened by hope.

The Otherfolk had to build a new road across what had once been Delfierarathadan Flower Forest in order to cross it. They did. They had to build a bridge across the dry riverbed where the Angarussa had once run. They did.

And then they marched east.

Along the way, Runacar did all that he could to prepare himself and his army for the coming battle. Riann and Radafa supplied him with styli and vellum, and he drew maps of the terrain they would fight across. They had not only to reach the Western Pass of the Dragon's Gate and hold it, but—if they could—take the central Ceoprentrei Valley as well, and meet the enemy there. He thought of how the Dragon's Gate had looked once the Lightborn had finished with it at the beginning of the Winter War, and groaned inwardly. He could have held either side of the old Dragon's Gate forever with only a few hundred swords: now he would need thousands—thousands of trained, seasoned, cavalry he didn't have.

But even before Runacar had left the Shore, the Sea-Folk had begun plotting their labyrinthine passage east through the streams and rivers and lakes. Whether they could arrive in time was anyone's guess, but they were the most powerful magicians among the Otherfolk, and might be able to help even from a distance. Gunyel went as emissary to the Hippogriffs, and Riann to the Gryphons: this time the gentle peace-loving Gryphons did not have the option of staying out of the battle, for the stakes were too high: if they would not fight, they must at least be present, for their appearance alone might daunt the High King's Army. Drotha promised to take care of the Aesalions: Runacar wasn't sure whether that meant Drotha intended to kill them all or recruit them, but it was a nice gesture on the Manticore's part.

He swung his forces wide around the lands claimed by Hamphuliadiel Astromancer for the Sanctuary of the Star. He had no interest in annoying the Mad Astromancer just now. As they marched—a fine and misleading word for what his force actually did—they'd crossed the track—so Stormchaser said, and Runacar had no reason to doubt the keenness of the Wulver's senses—of the Elves who had survived the fall of Daroldan, but that group was nowhere his flying scouts could see them, and so Runacar assumed they had probably reached the Sanctuary by now. For a few days after that Runacar worried about attack, but either the Sanctuary hadn't noticed his army (difficult to imagine) or did not have the resources to mount an attack (a more cheering thought, as they were Runacar's next target).

By Fire Moon his army had passed through the lands of House Araphant, which were far to the northeast of Arevethmonion and the Sanctuary. And each day those forces grew larger. Ascensions of Gryphons, Romps of Wulvers, Dances of Minotaurs and Droves of Centaurs, Flights of Hippogriffs, Tumbles of Fauns, Vanishments of Palughs, even the entire Mystery of Aesalions...all of them came.

To fight for their freedom. To fight for their lives. To fight for him. For Runacar. For the High House Prince who fought for them.

By the time they reached the far northern edge of what had once been Domain Aramenthiali it was near the end of Fire Moon, and the army of the Otherfolk had acquired not only supplies—clothing, shelters, weapons, armor, food—but a baggage train to carry them. (The carts were pulled by horses, not mules or oxen, and could haul correspondingly less, but it was more in the way of supplies than they'd had the last time they'd gone into battle.)

The carts and horses came from the Centaurs, who had come out in force. More of them were able to leave their villages than before because planting was done and harvest had not yet come. But the supplies those carts carried came not from the Centaurs alone, but from a race of Otherfolk called Brownies: tiny plump dark-skinned Elvish-appearing folk no taller than Runacar's forearm was long. Like many of the Otherfolk, the Brownies possessed magic, and were mysteriously able to clean and mend, gather and supply, and even cook appetizing meals despite their diminutive size. (And Runacar privately suspected that no enemy wounded would long survive once the Brownies took the field with their long sharp knives.)

Each day the spark of hope kindled more hotly. If the High King's army was larger, let it be.

She had never faced such an army as this.

#