The maps beneath her hands were covered with marks drawn from the whisperings of ghosts. In the past moonturn she'd combed her borrowed memories for landmarks and events of the distant past, hoping they would form some pattern she could understand. Here Lady Indinathiel lost a third of her army. There Lord Githonel set fire to the enemy's croplands. She'd marked the forest in which Lady Parmanaya was lost, the plain on which Lord Tengolin lost the battle because of his feud with Nelpanar, the encampment where Lord Noremallin's army mutinied. The marks all led across the Feinolons, the Bazrahils, the Mystrals. Her ancestors had ridden west, fleeing the fall of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor. Amrethion High King had died. Pelashia Great Queen had died. And Amrethion's lords had hunted their children, and their children's children, and they had fled west....

"I have had speech of Isilla," Aradreleg said. "Will you hear, my lord?"

"In a moment," Vieliessar said, staring at the map. She finally looked up to see Aradreleg standing before the map-table, looking both worried and impatient. "I plan our victory, and it preoccupies me," Vieliessar said, forcing herself to sound cheerful and conciliating. "If you would rather I did not..."

Aradreleg did not answer her smile. "My lord, there is that which you must know. Isilla Farspoke me to say the scouts Lord Thoromarth sent have returned to him."

Vieliessar glanced toward the doorway of the pavilion. It was dark outside now, and the pavilion was lit by balls of Silverlight she must have conjured up herself. On the edge of the map-table stood a platter of food, untouched. She wondered who had brought it. Rithdeliel, she suspected.

"If it is ill news, it is best given at once," she said gently, though Aradreleg's thoughts already gave her a sense of it. The words that followed were Thoromarth's, and in the sharp brief sentences, Vieliessar heard despair.

Though it was already Harvest Moon, the Alliance was not retreating to winter quarters. They followed hot on the heels of Nadalforo and Thoromarth's force. A sennight behind them at best.

I had thought to have more time! Vieliessar thought in anguish. With the Alliance following her now instead of next spring, the Houses of the Uradabhur might be terrified into adhering to their traditional loyalties. If she must conquer Less House Jaeglenhend by force of arms before she turned to face the Alliance, she would have only scant days to do so-but she must have Jaeglenhend's loyalty before she could turn against the Alliance, for no army had ever gained victory while fighting enemies both before and behind.

And I do not wish to face them in battle at all!

"How long until Lord Thoromarth's force reaches Ceoprentrei?" Vieliessar asked, her voice even.

"Two days, perhaps three," Rithdeliel said. His voice was sharp with worry. "My lord, what orders?"

"Why, what orders do you imagine?" Vieliessar answered, making her voice light. "We prepare the army to march-and fight."

As was customary at the start of a campaign, tonight Vieliessar would hold a feast for her senior commanders that would begin with a sacrifice to the Silver Hooves. She gathered from the herds of Mangiralas a dozen flawless colts and the feasting began with their sacrifice.

She was obscurely glad that Gatriadde Mangiralas was not there to see.

The company was by now too large to gather within any single pavilion, for her army numbered in the tens of thousands. She cleared the meadow her skirmishers had used for drilling and her Lightborn restored the turf. Then over all she caused to be set an enormous canopy, its fabrics joined and doubled by Magery until a veil of green and silver stood between the gathered company and the unwavering stars. From her seat at the High Table Vieliessar looked out over the assembly and knew that if she died tomorrow, she would still have accomplished enough to make her name a legend. War Princes of Houses that had fought one another since the Fall of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor sat in amity-true amity-beside sellswords, beside Landbonds raised up to be Captains of Archers, beside Lightborn who took the field wearing chain shirts beneath their Green Robes. In this moment, the High King's pledge was redeemed in an instant out of time, for here there was neither High House nor Low, Lord nor Landbond. There were only her people.

Tomorrow they would march down through the Dragon's Gate into the Uradabhur, and there they would fight, though she did not yet presume to say whom their enemy might be. And they would fight on until her cause was claimed by victory or by defeat, and upon the anvil of that forging they would craft either the sword with which to face the Darkness when it came ...

... or the pyre of their utter destruction.

"What do I need to do to become High King?" Vieliessar asked. The banquet was over and it was yet a few candlemarks until dawn. Over the course of the feast she had turned aside the questions Thoromarth, among others, had asked; they naturally wanted to know her plans, in case those plans were something they might want to argue her out of. But Gunedwaen had asked no questions, and on impulse she had invited him to accompany her on the walk back to her pavilion.

"To win is usually considered a good first step to becoming Commander, War Prince, or High King," Gunedwaen answered as they reached Vieliessar's pavilion. Gunedwaen stepped forward and lifted the tent flap for Vieliessar to enter, bowing as he did so, though not without a generous measure of irony. Vieliessar stepped forward and Gunedwaen followed her inside.

There was no one else of whom Vieliessar would have asked a question such as this, especially on the eve of battle, but Vieliessar trusted Gunedwaen. Not as someone whose fealty she held-for the oath had been in some sense extorted, and oaths had been broken before-and not as a useful ally whose self-interest would keep him from rebellion, for Farcarinon's Swordmaster was uncompromisingly loyal.

No. Though he would reject the very concept, she trusted him as her equal.

Those who held Vieliessar's respect were few. She loved sparingly and despairingly and valued many fearlessly. She could see too clearly why the men and women who fought for her did so. For vengeance. For self-interest, and she did not despise that, for clear-eyed self-interest was precious to her. Uncounted more followed her for the simple fact that their lives with her were better than the lives they'd left, and that saddened her even while she esteemed it as the precious gift it was, for many who had joined her would die before her final victory was achieved.

But Gunedwaen followed her for love. He did not value the future she meant to summon, nor did he believe in the Prophecy she steered by. Yet he would follow her until the day Aradhwain Bride of Battles placed her cold kiss upon his lips and sent him to ride forever with the Starry Hunt.

The pavilion was empty; no doubt her servants had gone to one of the many celebrations being held tonight. But the stove had been kindled and a kettle of water stood steaming gently atop it; spell-lanterns radiated dim light. Vieliessar conjured enough Silverlight to brighten the outer room and saw a tea service arranged on a tray waiting on a table. She shook loose tea into the pot and filled it from the kettle.

Gunedwaen raised her eyebrows. "Despite all our teachings, you still have the habits of a Sanctuary Mage," he said.

"Am I to wait for you to serve me? You have served me well enough in these past moonturns, I think." The tea had finished steeping so she poured for both of them. Steam curled from the delicate cups. "So you say, I must win. And how will I know when I've won?"

Gunedwaen cocked his head, studying her. "People might stop trying to kill you," he offered. "Or not. But the simple answer to your question is one you already know: have all the War Princes proclaim you High King."

"A more difficult task than it sounds. I had hoped," she said, offering up the word with unaccustomed diffidence for she well knew Gunedwaen believed that if one must hope, one had lost, "to gain the Uradabhur before facing the Alliance."

"Whereupon they would concede and anoint you High King," Gunedwaen said. "But that is not your road to victory. It never has been."

Vieliessar gazed at him in puzzlement and after a pause Gunedwaen continued. "I have been a Swordmaster since before your father's birth. Wondertales are my stock-in-trade. Truth matters little. It is what people believe that ends battles or begins them.

"At least half the people out there follow you because you're the Child of the Prophecy, Amrethion Aradruiniel's chosen successor." He waved his hand in the direction of the rest of the camp. "They expect your life and your war to be a wondertale. They want you to be as amazing and unknowable as Great Queen Pelashia Celenthodiel. If you give them what they want of you, they will love you and they will follow you. As will your foes-if you can convince them."

"I am not a-" Vieliessar began hotly.

"Spirit? Great Power? Ancient hero reborn?" Gunedwaen asked. "Do you really think it matters? They want a good story. Give them that, and even the Twelve will bow their necks."

Vieliessar bit back the angry words she longed to say. From the moment she'd begun to realize the sheer scope of the power surrounding her-and influencing her-she'd been uneasy with it. Even if she wasn't manipulating people's minds deliberately, she knew it was happening. The fact that Gunedwaen dismissed it so lightly made it worse. When did what she did to save her people become more terrible than what she was trying to save them from?

She shook her head stubbornly. There were no clear-cut choices.

"You mean to destroy the life we've all led for thousands of years, cast down the War Princes, change everything anyone has ever known, bring *justice' to the commons, and turn every soul of the Fortunate Lands into a great army to fight an enemy so terrible Amrethion Aradruiniel refused to name it. You cannot do that as a mere War Prince, or even as High King. You must become more than that."

Gunedwaen gazed into the distance. "Serenthon tried. His enemies feared him, and that fear was the greatest weapon in his arsenal. You don't want to be feared, and you're right. Fear is a good weapon on a battlefield, a bad one in a Great Hall. But you must become a legend. A dream all can dream together. A dream they can share and follow. If you do not, your army will lose all hope and be destroyed with its first great defeat. Now it's late, and I've said far too much. With your permission, my lord, I will withdraw."

"Of course," she answered.

Gunedwaen got to his feet and walked to the door of the pavilion. His expression was thoughtful, but she would not gaze into his thoughts. "Rest you well, Vieliessar High King," he said, turning back to regard her.

"And you," Vieliessar said. As if I could, after that.

Amrethion High King, what hradan have you set upon me?

Her untouched tea had gone cold by the time she rose from the table and sought her bed.

Long before dawn, the army began to move. First to depart were the scouts and foragers, not just the commonfolk on shaggy ponies whose sole task was to warn of the presence of enemy forces in the Mystrals, who had been on patrol since the army had arrived in Ceoprentrei, but komen ready to fight.

Once the scouts were away, the army followed. It was odd to see so many in the same colors. The infantry and former mercenaries wore tabards, the komen wore surcoats, and all were green with a rearing silver Unicorn upon them. Her device. Her colors. The mark of the armies of the High King.

Once all had been set in motion, Vieliessar took her personal guard and rode up to the top of the pass. It was chill and dark, still a full candlemark before dawn. The Dragon's Gate had been worked and shaped long ago by Lightborn: the pass was broad and open, and she could see down into the hills on the western side below, where the army of the Alliance gathered.

The earth was a mirror of the sky, dotted with thousands of points of light. The large ones were cookfires and watchfires. The small ones were the torches set at the boundaries of the Alliance's camp and in front of many of the tents. Here and there she could see balls of Silverlight glowing with a moon-blue radiance. She wondered if Prince Runacarendalur was down there somewhere.

Of course he would be. He was Caerthalien's most able General.

Realizing where her mind had strayed, she shoved the thought aside irritably. She wouldn't think about him at all save for the Magery that had made him a knife at her throat. If we were not Soulbonded, I would slay him with a light heart. He is all that is corrupt and shameful in the Hundred Houses.

"There are a lot of them," Komen Mathoriel said quietly.

"Yes," Vieliessar answered. Her personal guard had suffered heavy losses in Mangiralas, and because of that Komen Orannet-a hedge knight of Oronviel-had become its head, but protocol demanded Vieliessar have a komen of higher rank to head her guard, and she valued Komen Mathoriel's steadiness. She'd taken care to fill the rest of the places with komen of other Houses than Oronviel, for she was no longer War Prince of Oronviel, but High King.

"We will prevail," Mathoriel said firmly.

Vieliessar wasn't certain whether it was tact or optimism that prompted Mathoriel's remark, but it made good hearing.

"What do I need to do to become High King?" Her words returned to haunt her through the long days of descent through the Mystrals. She stood upon the threshold of a battle she might well lose. Yet it was a battle that must be fought whether she wished to or not, for she had begun her quest to become High King not for power or ambition, but in fear and dread. The Song of Amrethion prophesied a terrible Darkness that would ride across the land during the years of her life, and if the Hundred Houses were not united against it, the alfaljodthi would be erased from the world. All she had done, all she would do, was meant to prepare her folk and her kin against that day. It was that battle to come she must think of, and not the battles she must fight to reach it. Lose them, and she lost all. But win them ...

Every war began, so Arilcarion War-Maker had written in Of the Sword Road, with its own hero tale, as if it were a great lord who had lived a long life and now had a storysong crafted to be sung over its funeral pyre. And any prince who clung to that storysong after a campaign began would drink to drowning of the cup of defeat and loss, for no mortal prince could force the world to follow their whim as if they wore the cloak of the Starry Huntsman.

She would not have the Hundred Houses' strength to call on if she obliterated it. To imagine a victory that did not begin with the destruction of all the War Princes and their meisnes was madness, but madness or not, it was the only road to victory-true victory.

Gunedwaen says I must become a legend, a dream. I do not think I can. We are no longer a people of dreams or trust. Bolecthindial, Girelain, Manderecheriel will never accept my bare word. Oh, if only I could show the War Princes of the Alliance what I have seen in my visions! Surely then they would understand....

Could she?

Not her vision of the city, but the city itself?

Find Celephriandullias-Tidorangelor. Take Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor. Fill its lands with the thousands upon thousands who had followed her out of the West ...

And the War Princes would rail in vain against a victory already accomplished, for she would have the Unicorn Throne.

Oh, it would be only the object and not the vast empire it symbolized, but that would not matter. If she held it, the envoys of the War Princes would come to her there, to seek treaties or negotiate wars. Amrethion's city would become her greatest weapon. The commons of every domain would seek out Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor to become her subjects. Without the farmers and farmworkers, the craftworkers, the servants, those who worked, the War Princes' vast armies would collapse. They would be forced to surrender or starve.

There were a thousand reasons not to do it.

To reach Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor-to find Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor-she would have to lead her army through the lands of War Princes who owed fealty to War Princes of the Alliance. The lessons she had learned during War Season were clear: fear would cause them to support their ancient masters. She might hope for more, but the best she could expect was that they would merely ride to join her enemy instead of marshaling their forces immediately against her.

Or she might win.

But first she must find her destination.

When Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor fell, the Uradabhur was a primeval wilderness. The maps she had were the best available, but they were limited. Nothing beyond the borders of the domains was shown. Why should it be? Who could possibly need to know about it? All she had to aid her were the ghost-whispers of ancient memories. Amrethion's lords hunted Pelashia's children, and their children's children, and they had fled west ...

If she chose that course, it meant gambling her army on a chance out of legend and prophecy, instead of waging a conventional war she might actually win. And winning, lose-for all of them.

She had as little choice as she ever had.

Only let the day come when the magic of the Prophecy has done all Amrethion set it to do, when I can say I do nothing but by my own wish-and say, too, on that day: it is well.

"We will be received by a committee of welcome," Rithdeliel said, gesturing toward the valley ahead.

The day was warm and bright, and a candlemark or two would see them out of the pass and within Jaeglenhend's true borders. Nilkaran Jaeglenhend had come with all his army to meet them. His encampment was set upon a hilltop and his pavilion-striped in Jaeglenhend azure and white-was easily visible even from here. Her scouts had been reporting back for days that Nilkaran had gathered what was probably the whole of his army to meet her.

"Welcome does not disturb me," Vieliessar commented dryly.

"They're a few miles off, and Kenyman Scout saw no evidence they mean to attack. Today, at least," Rithdeliel answered.

"Just as well." Her whole force outnumbered Nilkaran's at least ten to one-but her whole force would not be down the mountain for some days yet. "So let us make camp."

"And give him a 'mark or two to brood before you do what you always do," Rithdeliel said.

"*What I always do'?" Vieliessar asked, turning to gaze at him. "And that would be...?"

Rithdeliel smiled. "Why, send an envoy to ask, most politely, that he surrender his armies and his lands and pledge fealty to you, of course."

His comment startled her into laughter, for it was true. But she sobered quickly. Though it had worked often enough to gain her an army, there was an army following her that would not be so easily subdued.

There was a valley located only a few miles from the trailhead; Rithdeliel's forces were soon joined there by Thoromarth and his warriors and then by Iardalaith and the Warhunt Mages. Vieliessar's camp expanded slowly and inexorably. Lord Nilkaran's scouts were obviously keeping as close a watch on it as she was on his. But he managed to do one thing to surprise her: he sent an emissary to her before she sent one to him.

Moraigre Lightbrother looked too young to be wearing the Green Robe, but he was obviously used to this work, for he displayed no sign of nervousness at being intercepted by pickets and conducted to Vieliessar's pavilion. It had been the first structure set: orders must be given, decisions must be made, and her scarlet pavilion made a logical focal point for the engineers who must lay out the roads of the camp. Many campaigns ago she had resigned herself to going inside and staying there, no matter her inclinations: it was a waste of everyone's time and energy to constantly have to seek her out. At least my commanders have the luxury of going where they wish and doing what needs doing, she thought rebelliously. Moraigre Lightbrother's arrival was a welcome distraction.

"To Lord Vieliessar, War Prince of Oronviel, Lord Nilkaran, War Prince of Jaeglenhend, sends greetings," Moraigre began, when the first formalities were over and he was ready to deliver his message.

"Lord Vieliessar is not Prince of Oronviel," Aradreleg corrected calmly. "Lord Vieliessar is High King of all the land."

"I, well, I have the message as it was given to me," Moraigre said, smiling engagingly. "If its form does not please, I shall inform my lord."

Vieliessar smiled in return. "Let us proceed to the message itself, if you would. What does Lord Nilkaran want?"

There was a pause as Moraigre skipped mentally over several long speeches of flattery, though Vieliessar's True Speech let her hear them as a low mutter in his mind. She had long since given up feeling shame over her near-constant use of it to eavesdrop on all around her.

"He greets you, and wishes you well, and is prepared to offer your army safe conduct to the eastern border of his domain. Escorted by his army, of course," the young Lightborn finished.

Aradreleg was too well schooled to laugh, and Komen Mathoriel was too well bred to. Vieliessar sat quietly, her face as smooth as new cream, delaying only to give Moraigre the impression she was considering his master's words. The proposal Nilkaran made was both audacious and clever, for it did not force him to declare for her, nor did it shut the door to such a declaration in future. But if she accepted it, she would be left with an enemy at her back, and her enemies would receive haven.

"Your lord's desire to avoid unnecessary battle does him credit," she began simply. "And he knows as well as I that a great army pursues me closely, and when we meet, we must fight."

She felt Moraigre relax, thinking she was going to accept Nilkaran's offer.

"Yet this is an offer I must decline," she continued. "I must and will have Jaeglenhend. I require Lord Nilkaran to swear fealty to me, to place all of Jaeglenhend beneath my rule, to deliver to me for my use all those of his meisne, and to provide me with such provisions and other materials as I may require."

"I..." Moraigre was too experienced to show the full extent of his dismay, but he was obviously at a loss for words. Foremost in his mind was concern-not outright fear, but not far from it-at Nilkaran's reaction when he delivered her message.

"It is only to be understood that Nilkaran Jaeglenhend will find my answer disappointing. And he will have many questions. I shall send a messenger of my own with you upon your return, so that he may have answers to all the questions he may wish to ask," she said. At least those I intend to answer. She turned to the nearest servant. "Go and bring to me Iardalaith Lightbrother, if you please. I must send him to speak with Lord Nilkaran, and I have much to say to him before he goes."

She sent four Lightborn back with Moraigre: Iardalaith, Rondithiel, whose gravitas should be enough to reassure the Lightborn of Jaeglenhend that she kept the Covenant, Harwing, who was an expert spy, and Isilla, whose Keystone Gift was Overshadowing. All were members of the Warhunt, able and willing to fight if they must.