The Crown of Night

by Daedalus Aegle


Interlude: Homecoming

He had spent his last night in Cambridle with a beautiful mare, and in the throes of their pleasure they had known every inch of each other with their magic.

He thought back to her as the carriage drove him along the country road outside Whinnyenna towards his foalhood home.

He remembered when he left for Cambridle. He had been shocked to find himself in a place where unicorns were in the majority, where nopony batted an eye at sight of a horn, where nopony looked at him curiously for his company with pureblood earth pony nobility. Where he did not have to care what he did or said, where nothing would inevitably travel back to his home.

Whinnyenna had changed, he had thought, during the war. Or possibly the change was in him. He had come from an earth pony community where he was an abnormality. Now he was the image of a rising unicorn sophisticate, educated in the finest magic school in all the lands of ponies, the head of his class, admired and respected by students and teachers alike, sharp and quick and clean.

The world was silent as the carriage drove, pulled by two earth pony stallions, to Whiteblood Manor. The stallions were servants of the house, and clad in the house's livery, and once they came to a stop one of them opened the door of the carriage with his mouth.

Blue Horn emerged naked, and looked on his old home for the first time since he went away.

The outdoors staff were lined up outside the door, on top of the stairs, and there stood the Baroness, his aunt or mother, in front of them. She was draped in black, a lush and billowing gown that covered her from her tail to her withers.

“Presenting,” said the butler Bellows, “His Grace Blue Horn, the fourteenth Baron Whiteblood.”

The servants bowed and curtseyed. But he was only looking at his mother. She glanced at him without emotion, then stepped inside and left his sight.

The butler gave Blue Horn the guided tour of the estate as though he had not lived there for most of his life. All the servants who had cared for him, or yelled at him, or beaten him, now stood at attention with respectful subservience.

“This is the kitchen. Through the back is the servants' quarters. These are the kitchen staff, Mrs. Pepper has prepared the inventory for your inspection...”

Some of the servant girls were his own age: pretty, slightly built, and they fairly trembled with uncertainty and terror as he passed. No other pony seemed to notice, or didn't betray it if they did.

“This is the dining hall. Your predecessor invested heavily in the art collection, which is well curated for your inspection.”

On the wall above the table hung the huge painting of the Battle of Braydon Hill. Every brushstroke remained as he knew it: a study in light and dark, the armies of Llamrei facing off against the shadow creatures conjured up by the sorceress Morgan le Neigh.

They moved on, and upstairs.

“This is the master study,” the butler continued. “The library collection was begun by the second Baron Whiteblood four hundred and sixty years ago...”

Dark brown wood everything. Red glowing candlelight over the huge, thick mahogany desk. A suit of armor belonging to the first Baron stood in a corner, earth pony barding and helmet.

Blue Horn had almost never seen his uncle's study before. Only a few times had he been permitted inside, or brought inside to be punished. He felt his heart beating harder, and nodded at the butler to continue.

“And finally,” they moved on, “the master bedroom.”

A king-sized canopy bed occupied the chamber, thick red curtains veiling the space where, Blue Horn imagined, he had once been conceived. His father's bed.

“The Lady Whiteblood has been moved to another room,” the butler prattled on, oblivious to the turning of Blue Horn's guts, not commenting on the sweat forming on his brow.

“You will wish to familiarize yourself with the local duties, of course.”

The butler led him back to the study.

There was a schedule. There was a genealogy, in which his page was barely dry, his birth written only weeks earlier. There were holdings and property for him to acquaint himself with. There were charitable endeavors. There was patronage to withdraw, or dole out. There were a few vassals he might wish to shuffle, favors to give out, favors to call in. There were balls and military matters he knew nothing about, and where he likely would not be very welcome.

There might be attacks on his position by rivals eager to prey upon the inexperienced newcomer. Especially by his predecessor's ideological comrades, unwilling to see some unknown unicorn hold a barony that had been the heart of earth pony nobility for centuries.

For all Blue Horn knew the butler might be one of them, or might have been approached with offers by them. The butler warned Blue Horn of this himself.

The butler explained all this in the same voice he had used to describe the pedigree of the desk. His description done, he withdrew and left Blue Horn to ponder his position.

Now he was the Baron.

Blue Horn wondered what his father had intended. He had no other foals, at least none more legitimate than himself (and was there an earth pony somewhere, waiting to crawl out of the woodwork and make a claim with the support of other tribal warriors?). He had not taught Blue Horn politics, or strategy, or anything.

Had he not known that he would die someday? Had he intended to continue ruling from beyond the grave? Or had he intended to watch his barony burn around him, that nopony would follow at all?

Ashes to ashes. Earth to earth.

The weight of a dozen barons pressed down on him.

What do I want to do here?

The answer was clear. This is an ancestral estate, and you are only the next link in the chain. Your duty is to preserve it for the next after you.

I am studying at Cambridle. I could be a professor. I could be a professional sorcerer. I could be a writer. I am full of potential. But I never dreamed I would inherit a noble title. This isn't for me.

But could I do it?

Blue Horn was not a stranger to politics. He had watched his uncle since his foalhood, but always from the outside. At Cambridle Blue Horn had studied the Pointed Arts: unicorn magic, rhetoric, philosophy. The politics he knew were academic politics... the most vicious and bitter, as Hayre's Law had it, because the stakes were so low.

He was going to have to learn it from scratch.

– – –

Blue Horn looked down at the dinner before him.

It was as if there was a knot inside his stomach, pulled taut. He saw himself watching it intently, waiting to see if it would loosen under the strain, or snap.

He sat at the head of the table, his mother opposite him. She watched him unblinking, running her eyes up and down his form.

He had not touched the meal. He was pondering the silver cutlery, made for hoof: different from what he was used to in Cambridle.

He thought back to his foalhood. He would eat here in the dining hall, at the far end of the table, in the earth pony style as the servants had taught him, while his uncle spoke of his affairs.

Sometimes his uncle would ask him about his tutoring. Usually he did not.

When there were guests, Blue Horn would eat alone in his room, as he pleased, and speak to no-one. That was better.

He raised the knife and fork in his magic and began to eat. He heard his aunt's sharp intake of breath, and a flood of memories came back to him. His spine told him to flinch. His mind told him to stand. His heart told him to savor the moment.

The feelings clashed inside him, and left behind a hole.

In the absence of emotion he merely watched her, and she shrugged. “You are the Baron,” she said.

Blue Horn chewed, and swallowed. “Baron,” he said. “What does that make you?”

“Nothing, anymore,” she replied, not looking at him. “The title and the lands both belong to my husband's line, not mine. With his death it passed to his heir.”

“That's not me, Aunt,” Blue Horn replied grimly. “Not your nephew, left in your care by an embarrassing sister, who fell into the embrace of some traveling conjurer and snake-oil salespony. Wasn't that the story you told me every year since I was old enough to ask, and notice that every other foal had parents, and I had an aunt and uncle?” The knot creaked and turned under the tension. “An aunt and uncle who had shunted me to a distant corner of their home, and cared not what I did? Who hardly said a word to me while I was growing up, who never looked at me without me seeing disappointment and revulsion in their eyes?”

“You ungrateful little beast!” she said, her glass crashing as it fell on her plate. “If you're looking for sympathy you can ask somepony else. Your father and I fed you. We clothed you. We sheltered you. We sent you to the finest school of your kind in all the land! And all we did, we expected nothing from you! Do you know what they used to do with disappointments? They brought them into the wilds and left them for the timberwolves!” Her voice was cracking, and cut his ears. “You lived in a mansion! Yet you complain because you were too weak to live without the tender touches of a sire? You are lucky that I didn't let you starve to death when you were born!”

“You want me to be grateful?” Blue Horn raised the crystal chalice in his magical grip, and without breaking eye contact, smashed it against the wall, red wine splattering everywhere. “Because you tolerated me, in spite of how useless you think I was? You want me to feel for you? Since your precious family line wasn't quite so pure as you wanted, and because of me you couldn't hold your birth above everypony else?”

“You think this is about you?” She asked. “You know nothing! Your father had a duty to protect the land. To protect the Barony! And yes, to protect the bloodline.”

She slammed a hoof down on the table. “Any sign of weakness invites destruction! Had the world known about you then our rivals would have tried to overthrow us, and the world would be the same… only a little more bloody.” She shook her head. “Your father knew his role, and he did not wilt like a fragile flower when duty called. He was a great pony, even if you can't see it.”

Blue Horn rose from his seat and stepped around the table, not taking his eyes off her. “What happened to my uncle?”

“He was your father,” she answered.

His jaw clenched tightly. “I asked what – happened – to him.”

His aunt slowly turned her head away and stared at the wall, her eyes vacant. When she answered her voice was dead and hollow. “He was killed by the enemies of ponydom. He was led down a road to his death with a promise of everything he wanted, and heaven and earth help me, I followed him.”

“Who was that pony? The stallion in the white armor. Who was he? What did he want?”

“He wanted a war,” she said. “He wanted to purify the world in flames, and he gave your father everything he needed to immolate himself.”

“To make the world pure,” Blue Horn spat the words. “Where did he go? What did he do?” But his aunt only shook her head.

“I don't know,” she whispered. “He got what he wanted and he left… He burned, Blue Horn. He burned like the sun. Your father leapt into that sun, and achieved everything he ever wanted. His dreams will live on forever.”

And then the wall shook, and he held her pressed up against the wall, the knife in his grip, hate and fire in his eyes. The Battle of Braydon Hill creaked and swayed above their heads.

“You are your father's son,” she said, and for once in her life her smile had no trace of wickedness in it. “Only now do I know how much I loved him.”

“You are sick,” he spat. “You're a complete monster.”

“And you are my foal,” she replied.

“I'm nothing like you!” He screamed at her. “Do you know what I am? I'm a scholar! I'm a sage! I'm a unicorn Magister, first in my class at the best center of learning in Ponydom! I am everything you are not and you are not my mother!

She only shook her head, laughing softly under her breath as he raged.

“It doesn't matter how you dress, or speak, or act,” his mother told him. “It doesn't matter where you go or what you do. Nothing will change what's in your blood. Nothing will change where you came from.”

He froze there with the knife in his grip, held firmly against her throat, and she closed her eyes as she waited.

– – –

Blue Horn emerged from the estate and stepped down the front stairs without looking back. A crisp wind blew, carrying the scent of flowers, and he drew a deep breath.

There comes a time in every pony's life, he reflected, where he must look inside himself and face what lies within.

Now he knew what he would do. He knew who he was, and he knew where he was going.

The carriage was waiting for him, two ponies in harness waiting to drive him along, clad in the livery of House Whiteblood.

“To Whinnyenna,” he said to the servants as he climbed in. “And from there, to Everhold.”