Книга - Song Of Unmaking

Song Of Unmaking
Caitlin Brennan


Striving to save the Aurelian Empire, Valeria reached for too much power too quickly and a darkness rooted inside her.Unable to confess the truth, Valeria turns to Kerrec, her former mentor, one of the elite Riders from the Mountain, home of the gods. But Kerrec, too, is deeply wounded and his darkness may be even deeper than hers–and he is refusing to face it. Until his weakness nearly destroys the Riders and their immortal white stallions…As Kerrec is sent from the Mountain on a desperate quest for healing, Valeria is forbidden to follow. But compelled by a power she cannot understand and encouraged by her own stallion, she shadows Kerrec on a perilous mission.The patterns of deception and secrets have been woven, the threats of war and unrest spread throughout the land, the barbarian hordes return and once more it is Valeria–and Kerrec–who must gather their strength and wounded magic to protect all that they believe in…. But who will believe in them?









SELECTED PRAISE FOR

THE MOUNTAIN’S CALL


“Definitely a don’t-put-this-down page-turner!”

—New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey

“A riveting plot, complex characters, beautiful descriptions, and heaps of magic.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“Caitlin Brennan has created a masterpiece of legend and lore with her first novel. Hauntingly beautiful and extremely powerful…Take Tolkien and Lackey and mix them together and you get this new magic that is Caitlin’s own. You will stay enthralled with each page turned.”

—The Best Reviews

“Caitlin Brennan is a fantastic world builder who creates a world where magic is an everyday occurrence…. There is plenty of action and romance in this spellbinding romantic fantasy.”

—Paranormal Romance Reviews




CAITLIN BRENNAN

SONG OF UNMAKING








For Shenny

Maybe now your friends will believe

that your aunt writes books!










Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three




One


The sky was raining stars.

Euan Rohe lay in the frozen sedge. The river gleamed below, solid with ice from bank to bank. The brighter stars reflected in it as they fell, streaks of gold and white and pallid green.

He was dizzy with cold and hunger and long running—and there were the damned imperials, yet again, between him and his hope of escape. Though winter had set in early and hard, the border was crawling with them. Every ford, every possible crossing was guarded.

For days Euan had been struggling along the river, while the hunting grew more and more scant, and the cold set in deep and hard. He was ready to swear that the emperor’s patrols were waiting for him, even herding him, driving him farther and farther downriver. His own country seemed to mock him, rising in steep slopes black with pine and white with snow, so near he could almost reach out and touch, but impossibly far.

He could appreciate irony. He had come out of the heart of the empire, a big redheaded man in a world of little dark people, with a price on his head and a cry of treason that echoed still, months after his stroke against the emperor had failed—and none of the emperor’s hounds had been able to find him. But then, why would they trouble themselves? All they had to do was close the border.

He was trapped like a bear in a pit. They would herd him all the way down to the sea, then corner him on the sand—or they would catch him much sooner, when cold and starvation and sheer snarling frustration made him drop his guard.

Maybe he would die and cheat them of their revenge. They could do what they liked with his corpse—he would not be using it any longer. Even soft imperials might turn savage toward the man who had reduced their emperor to impotence, disrupted their holy Dance, and come near to destroying their herd of horse mages.

His lips drew back from his teeth when he thought of those stiff-necked fools with their overweening arrogance and their worship of fat white horses. At least six of them were dead, and good riddance, too.

One of them was still alive, and that might be good, or it might be very, very bad. If he closed his eyes, he could see her face. Its lines were burned in his memory, just as he had seen her in that last, desperate meeting. Black hair in tousled curls, smooth rounded cheeks and firm chin, and eyes neither brown nor green, flecked with gold. She was bruised, filthy, staggering, with one arm hanging limp—but she held his life in her one good hand.

She could have killed him. He would have bared his throat for the knife. He could have killed her—and by the One God, truly he should have, because she had betrayed him and broken her word and brought down his plot against her empire.

She had let him go. And he had let her live. Because of her he had failed, but also because of her, he had escaped.

That might have been no mercy. He had won through to the border, but the border was closed. The emperor’s legionaries would do her killing for her.

Twenty of them camped now between him and the river. He was not getting across tonight.

His belly griped with hunger. He did his best to ignore it. There were no villages or farmsteads within a day’s hard slog—more than that for a man as worn down as he was. The last rabbit he had managed to snare was long since eaten, down to the hide and sinew. He would be starting in on his boots next, unless he went mad and tried to raid the patrol’s stores.

Maybe that was not so mad. Most of the patrol were asleep. Their sentries were vigilant—and well hidden—but he knew where each of them was.

There was a light in the captain’s tent, but no movement. Probably the man had fallen asleep over his dispatches.

Euan gathered what strength he had. He had to do it soon or he would freeze where he lay. Slip in, snatch what he could, slip out and across the river. He could do that.

He could die, too, but he would die if he stayed where he was. Die doing something or die doing nothing—that was not a choice he found difficult.

He flexed his stiffened fingers and rose to a crouch. He had to stop then until the world stopped spinning. He drew deep breaths, though the air burned his lungs with cold.

When he was as steady as he was going to get, he crept forward through the sedge. The moonlight was very bright and its color was strange—as if the moon had turned to fire.

The hairs of his nape stood on end. He flung himself flat, just as the fire came down.

It struck with a roar that consumed everything there was. The earth heaved under him. A blast of heat shocked him, then a squall of scalding rain. He gagged on the reek of hot metal.

He lay blinded, deafened, and soaked through all his layers of rags and leather and furs. His skin stung with burns. For a long while he simply lay, clinging to the earth that had gone mercifully still again.

He suspected that he might be dead. Every account of the One God’s hell told of fire and darkness, heat and cold together, and the screams of the damned rising to such a pitch that the ears were pummeled into silence.

If he was dead, then the dead could feel bodily pain. Shakily he lifted himself to his elbows.

The sky was still raining stars. The river’s gleam was dulled—spattered with earth and mud and fragments that must be ash. The camp was a smoldering ruin.

All the horses were dead or dying, and the men were down in the ashes of their tents, writhing in agony or else terribly still. Even Euan’s dulled ears could hear the screams of the wounded—and from the sound, those wounds were mortal. The tents were shredded or, on the upriver side, completely gone. The earth gaped where they had been.

Euan’s clothes had been a mass of tatters even before the fire came down. What was fabric was scorched and what was fur was singed, but most of it was intact. Snow and sedge between them had protected him.

He bowed to the strength of the One God who had hurled a star out of the sky to defend His worshipper. He only had to hope that there was enough of him left to make it across the river—and enough provisions left in the camp to feed him before he went.

If nothing else, he could feast on horse meat. There would be a certain pleasure in that, considering how the imperials worshipped the beasts. He staggered erect and made his wobbling way down the hill to the remains of the camp.



None of the legionaries had escaped. Those few who had not died outright, Euan put out of their misery.

The stink of roasted meat made his stomach churn. When he sliced off a bit from a horse’s haunch, he found he could not eat it. He put it away thriftily in his traveling bag, then tried to forget he had it.

There was bread in the ashes of one of the fires on the camp’s edge. It was well baked and savory—a miracle of sorts. He disciplined himself to eat it in small bites, well spaced apart to spare his too long deprived stomach, as he prowled the ruins.

The blasted pit was still smoldering. Every grain of sense shouted at him to stay far away, but he could not make himself listen. It was as if a spell drew him to the place where the star had fallen.

Amid the embers and ash in the heart of the pit, something gleamed. It was absolute stupidity, but he found a way down the crumbling sides into the new-made and intoxicatingly warm bowl.

The star lay in the center in a bed of ash. In spite of the light he had seen, it was dark, lumpen and unlovely, an irregular black stone half the size of his clenched fist.

The heat of its fall was still in it. He had a firepot, stolen from a trader outside a town whose name he had never troubled to learn, and it was just large enough to hold the starstone.

The thing was shockingly heavy. He almost dropped the pot, but he caught it just in time. The weight of the heavens was in it.

It was much harder to climb out of the pit than it had been to go down into it. The sides were steep and slippery with mud and melting ice. Euan came dangerously close to surrendering—to sliding back to the bottom and lying there until death or daylight took him.

In the end it was not courage that got him out. It was pride. However he wanted to be remembered, it was not as the prince of the Calletani who gave up and died in a hole.

He lay on the edge, plastered with mud and gasping for breath. He had no memory of the climb, but his arms and legs were aching and his fingers stung.

Gingerly he rolled onto his back. The stars had stopped falling.

The one in his bag weighed him down as he rose. Wisdom might have persuaded him to drop it, but he had paid too dearly for it already. He stood as straight as he could under it.

There was still food to find and a river to cross. He scavenged a bag of flour that had been shielded by a legionary’s body, a wheel of cheese that was only half melted, two more loaves of bread that had been baking under stones and so were preserved from destruction, and a jar of thick, sweet imperial wine. There was more, but all the horses were dead and that was as much as he could carry.

He stopped to eat a little bread and nibble a bit of cheese. Near where he was sitting, the captain’s tent still stood, scorched but upright. The captain had come out when the fire fell—his body lay sprawled in front of the flap, crisped and charred, with the marks of rank still gleaming on his coat.

Inside the tent, something moved.

Euan sat perfectly still. It was only the wind. But if that was so, then the wind blew nowhere else. The night was calm. Even the moon seemed to be holding its breath.

A shape rose up out of the ashes. It was clothed in a glimmering garment, like something spun out of moonlight. When it stood upright, it stretched long arms and groaned, shaking off a scattering of ash and cooling embers.

The shimmer tore and slid away like the caul from a newborn calf. A man stood in the ashes, whole and unharmed, fixing glittering eyes on Euan. “You’re late,” he said.




Two


Euan was not often speechless. He did not often find himself face to face with a man he had never expected to meet in this of all places, either—still less a man who should have been dead a dozen times over.

“Gothard,” he said. His tone was as cold as the air. “There was a meeting? I must have missed the messenger.”

His sometime ally and cordial enemy looked him up and down with that particular flavor of arrogance which marked an imperial noble. By blood and looks he was only half of one, but his spirit did nothing by halves. “One of the patrols should have captured you days ago. How did you manage to escape?”

“Apologies,” said Euan, dry as dust. “Clearly I failed to do my duty—whatever that was.”

Gothard was barely listening, which did not surprise Euan in the least. “Every stone I scried showed the same thing—you in the legions’ hands, ready to be taken back to Aurelia for trial and inevitable execution. And yet you eluded them all. That’s interesting. Very.”

“I’m sure,” said Euan. He rose carefully, and not only because he was still weak. He did not trust this man at all. “I take it you weren’t a captive, either? Don’t tell me you’ve got the legions in your pay. That’s a fair trick, considering what you tried to do to their emperor.”

Who, he did not add, happened to be Gothard’s father. That particular family quarrel served Euan well. He was not about to take issue with it.

Gothard’s lip twisted. “Clearly you don’t understand how easy it is to get possession of legionaries’ gear if you happen to have allies in the ranks. Those were my men. I don’t suppose you’ve found any of them alive?”

“None who would want to stay that way,” Euan said. “Was that your star? Did you call it down?”

“Would I had such power,” Gothard said with an edge of honest envy. “This is a stroke of the gods. It cost me twenty men—but it gained me you. Maybe you’ll prove to be worth the exchange.”

Euan’s lips drew back from his teeth. “What makes you think I want anything to do with you?”

Gothard’s grin was just as feral and just as empty of humor. “Of course you do. I’m your kinsman—and I know the empire well. You can use me, just as I can use you.”

“I’m not taking you across the river,” Euan said. “You’re a traitor to your kin already. I doubt you’ll be any different on the other side of the border.”

“You know what I want,” Gothard said.

“You wanted to be emperor,” said Euan. “Now that’s failed. What’s next? A plot against the high king?”

“I don’t want to be king of the tribes,” Gothard said. “I’ll leave that for you. I want the throne of Aurelia, just as I always have. We haven’t failed, cousin. We’ve merely suffered a setback.”

Euan threw back his head and laughed until he choked. “A setback? All our men dead, the emperor not only alive but well, and the two of us hunted with every resource the empire can command—I call that a crashing defeat.”

“Do you?” said Gothard. “The emperor’s alive but not entirely well, the hunt has not succeeded in finding, let alone capturing either of us, and the empire’s magic is wounded to the heart. Do you know what it means that half a dozen horse mages are dead? They still have their Master, but only one other of the highest rank still lives, and I broke him before the Dance began.”

“Then he took your magic stone and drove you out,” Euan said. “That’s not as broken as I might like.”

Gothard’s face flushed dark in the moonlight, but he did not give way to his fit of temper. “Yes, I underestimated him, and that was a mistake. But that won’t give back what I took away. His powers are in shards. Maybe he’ll be of some use as a riding master, but as a master of the white gods’ art, he’s done for. And so, for all useful purposes, are the horse mages. They’ll be years gaining back even a portion of what they lost.”

“I do hope you’re right,” Euan said, “because there’s a war coming, and now we have an enemy who’s not just defending his lands against invasion. He’s out for vengeance.”

“All the better for us,” said Gothard. “Anger blinds a man—as I know better than any.”

“So you do,” said Euan sweetly. He turned on his heel. It was a somewhat longer way to the river than if he walked by Gothard, but he was not eager to risk a blade in the belly.

Unfortunately for his hopes of escape, he was much weaker than he wanted to be—and Gothard was well fed and armed with magic. His hand gripped Euan’s arm and spun him back. Euan struck it aside with force enough to make Gothard hiss with pain, but the moment for escape had passed. He was not going anywhere until this was over.

“Suppose I take you with me,” he said. “What’s our bargain? You help me become high king and I help you become emperor? What guarantee does either of us have that we’ll get what we wish for?”

“There are few certainties in life,” Gothard said. “Don’t you love a good gamble? There’s a crown for you and a throne for me, and power enough for the two of us. Or we’re both dead and probably damned.”

“I can’t say I dislike those odds,” Euan said. “Come on, then. Take what you need and follow. I want to be well away from the river by sunup.”

“In a moment,” Gothard said. “Wait here.”

Euan considered telling him what he could do with his damned arrogance, or better yet, walking away while Gothard did whatever he had taken it into his head to do. But curiosity held Euan where he was—and weakness, if he was honest with himself. The heat of the star’s fall was nearly gone. The cold was sinking into his bones.

Gothard strode directly toward the pit where the star had fallen. Euan knew what he was looking for. He was a mage of stones, after all, and the star was a stone.

It weighed heavier than ever in Euan’s traveling bag. A hunted renegade, stripped of his warband, needed every scrap of hope or glory that he could get his hands on if he wanted to stand up before all the tribes and declare himself fit to be high king. This was a gift from the One, a piece of heaven. It carried tremendous power.

How much more power might it carry if a stone mage wielded it—and if that stone mage was sworn to Euan?

Gothard was a wrathful man and a born traitor, and he was probably mad. But he had powers that Euan could use—if Euan could keep him firmly in hand.

This was a night for taking risks. Euan stood on the edge of the pit and looked down. Gothard was crawling on hands and knees, muttering what might be spells, or more likely curses.

The firepot was cold. The starstone felt as if it had turned to ice. It was so cold it burned Euan’s hand as he held it up. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Gothard’s back straightened. The pale oval of his face turned toward the moon. His eyes glowed like an animal’s.

His voice echoed faintly against the sides of the pit. “Where did you find that?”

“Not far from where you’re standing,” Euan said. “It was hotter than fire then. Now it’s bloody cold.”

“What were you thinking to do with it?”

“Make myself high king,” Euan said.

“Are you a stone mage, then?”

Euan refrained from bridling at his mockery. “No, but you are. What will you give in return for this?”

“What do you want?” Gothard asked. “We’ve already bargained for the high kingship.”

“Now I’m assured of it,” said Euan. “Wield your powers for me. Help me win the war that’s coming. Then we’ll talk about the empire we’re going to take.”

“All with a single stone,” Gothard said, but Euan could hear the yearning in him.

Euan could feel the power in the stone, too, though thank the One, he had no magic to work with it. His soul was clean of that.

“This is a star,” he said. “There’s nothing stronger for your kind, is there? I see it in your eyes. You’ve never lusted for a woman the way you lust for this. This is every bit of magic you lost when your brother took your master stone—and as much again, and more that I’m no doubt too feebleminded to comprehend. I want my share of it, cousin. Swear by it—swear you’ll wield it in my cause.”

“I swear,” Gothard said. His eyes were on the stone.

It was growing warmer in Euan’s hand, or else his fingers were too numb to tell the difference. It seemed both heavier and lighter.

Its power was changing. Gothard was changing it—without even laying a hand on it.

Euan refused to give way to awe. He would use a mage for his purposes, but this was still a half-blood imperial with the taint of treason on him. Gothard would keep his oath exactly as long as it served his purpose, and not a moment longer.

Euan would have to make sure that that was a very long time. He was aching, frozen, dizzy with hunger and exhaustion, but he laughed. He was on his way home, and he was going to be high king.




Three


Euan Rohe walked into his father’s dun a handful of days before the dark of the year. A bitter rain was falling, but the west was clear, a thin line of pale blue beneath the lowering cloud.

The dun was older than the Calletani, a walled fort of rammed earth and weatherworn stone. The wall enclosed a half-ruined tower and a clutter of round houses built like the traveling tents of the people. The king’s house was built around the tower, with his hall in the center. All of it sat on a low hill that rose abruptly out of a long roll of downs.

In milder seasons it was a vast expanse of grass and heather shot through with the silver lines of rivers. Now it was a wilderness of ice and drifted snow, whipped with wind and sleet.

Gothard could have brought them there on the backs of dragons, or conjured chariots out of the air around the starstone. It was Euan who had insisted on taking the hard way on foot over the mountains and through the forests into the heartlands of the Calletani. It was a long road and grueling, but it was honest.

It had also given Gothard ample time to learn the ways and powers of the stone. Euan had no objection to the provender it brought, either the game that walked into his snares or the wine that appeared in his cup. It kept them both alive and walking. It protected them against either discovery or attack, and smoothed their way as much as Euan’s scruples would allow.

“You’re as stubborn as the damned horse-gods,” Gothard had muttered one evening, while a blizzard howled outside the sphere of light and warmth that he had conjured from the stone. “They won’t fly, either. The harder their worshippers struggle, the happier they are.”

“That’s the way of gods,” Euan said.

Gothard had snarled at that, but Euan refused to change his mind. Magic was a dangerous temptation. He would use it if he had to, but he refused to become dependent on it.

They walked, therefore, and Gothard played with the stone, working petty magics and small evils that made him titter to himself when he thought Euan was asleep. Gothard had never been what Euan would call sane, but since he had gotten hold of the starstone, he had been growing steadily worse. He was not quite howling mad, but he was on his way there.

He had been talking to himself for two days when they passed the gates of the dun—a long ramble that Euan had stopped paying attention to within the first hour. Part of him listened for signs of immediate threat, but it all seemed to be focused on the riders and their fat white horse-gods, Gothard’s dearly loathed brother, his even more dearly loathed father, and occasionally the sister whom he direly underestimated. Gothard, in true imperial style, had convinced himself that the females of his kind had neither strength nor intelligence.

At last, under the low and heavy lintel of Dun Eidyn’s gate, he stopped his babbling. There were no guards at the gate, and only a single sentry snoring on the wall above. The two wanderers went not only unchallenged but unnoticed.

Euan resolved to do something about that at his earliest opportunity. Winter it might be, but armies could still march and raiding parties rampage through unprotected camps and ill-guarded duns.

There was no one abroad within the walls. Smoke curled from the roofs of the round houses, and lights glimmered beneath doors and through cracks in shuttered windows. Even the dogs had taken shelter against the storm, which with the coming of dark had changed to sleet.

The door to the king’s house was unbarred, and also unguarded. The guard who should have been there was inside with the rest, in the warmth and the smoky firelight of the hall, finishing the last of the day’s meal and passing jars of wine and skins of ale and mead. The songs had begun, the vaunting that would bring each warrior to his feet with the tale of his own exploits and those of his ancestors for as far back as the rest would let him go.

Euan stood in the shadow of the doorway, letting it sweep over him. Five years he had been away, fighting his father’s war and living as a hostage among the Aurelians. He needed time to believe that he was back at last—and to see what had become of his people in the time since he was gone.

He recognized many of the faces, though some had gone grey and not a few had gained new scars or lost an eye or a limb. Too many were missing, and a surprising number were new—young, most of those. They had been in the children’s house when Euan left, or had come to the tribe as hostages or in marriage alliances.

There were more than he remembered. They filled the circle of the hall, overflowing to the edges. There were more shields and weapons hung on the walls, and a good number of those were bright and new, not yet darkened with smoke or age.

He had feared to find a weakened clan and a faltering people, but these were strong. They were eating well for the dead of winter—the remains of an ox turned on the spit in the center, and the head of a wild boar stood on a spear beside the high seat. The king was wearing its hide for a mantle over a profusion of plaids and a clashing array of golden ornaments.

The old man was gaunt and the heavy plaits of his hair and mustaches had gone snow-white, but his back was still straight and his hand was steady as he drank from a skull-cup. The pale bone was bound with gold and set with chunks of river amber, and the wine inside was as red as blood. It was imperial wine—drinking defiance, the king liked to call it.

He was arrogant enough to leave his dun unguarded and his doors unbarred. Some downy-cheeked stranger was chanting, badly, the lay of a battle Euan himself had fought in. People were already hooting and pounding the tables to make him stop.

Euan raised his voice above the din, drawling the words as if he had all the time in the world. “Now, now, that’s not such a bad vaunt for a stripling. He’s even got his father killing three generals, and there were only two that I remember—and I killed them both. Look, that’s old Aegidius’s skull my father’s drinking from, and there’s the nick where I split it, too.”

While he spoke, he moved out into the light. He knew what he looked like, wrapped in rags and filthy tatters, with ice melting and dripping from his matted beard. He allowed a grin to split it, flashing it over them all, until it came to rest on his father’s face.

It was expressionless, a schooled and royal mask, but the yellow wolf-eyes were glittering. Euan met them steadily. “Good evening, Father,” he said.

The hall had gone silent except for the crackling of flames on the hearth. No one even breathed. Out of the corner of his eye Euan caught the flick of fingers. Someone was trying to expel him as if he were a ghost or a night spirit.

That made him want to laugh, but he held the laughter inside. He had played his hand. The next move was his father’s.

Niall the king studied him for a long while. Euan knew better than to think that slowness was the wine fuddling the old man’s brain. Niall was clearer-headed with a bellyful of wine than most men were cold sober.

At last he said, “So. You made it back. Took you long enough.” He filled the late General Aegidius’s skull to the brim and held it out. “This will warm your bones.”

That was a great honor. Euan bent his head to acknowledge it, but he did not leave the door quite yet. “I brought you a gift,” he said.

He held his breath. Gothard might choose to be difficult—it would be like him. But he came forward at Euan’s gesture.

He was even more rough and wild a figure than Euan, with his mad eyes and his pale, set face. He stank of magic, so strong it caught at the back of Euan’s throat.

“Uncle,” Gothard said in his mincing imperial accent. “I’m pleased to see you well.”

The king did not look pleased, but neither would Euan have said he was displeased. The bastard son of the Aurelian emperor and a Calletani princess was a potent hostage—even without the starstone.

Niall would have to know about that, but not in front of the whole royal clan.

Maybe he caught a whiff of it. Anyone with a nose could. His eyebrows rose, but he asked no questions.

“Nephew,” he said. He beckoned to the servant who stood closest. “Take him, feed him. Give him what he wants to drink.”

Gothard had been disposed of, and he could not fail to know it. Euan did not find it reassuring that he bowed to the king and let the servant take him to a lower table—not terribly low, but not the king’s table, either. A flare of temper would have been more honest, and a blast of magic would have been almost comforting.

Now Euan would have to watch him as well as the rest of them. But then, that had been true from the moment Gothard shed the skin of his magical protection and stood up in the camp he had failed to save. Gothard was no more or less untrustworthy than he had ever been.

For Euan there was a place beside his father and the best cut of the ox that remained. Tomorrow he would be looking out for daggers in the back, but tonight he was the prince again, the king’s heir. He was home.




Four


Euan woke in bed with no memory of having been brought there. He had lasted through four cups of the strong, sweet wine and uncounted rounds of bragging from the king’s warband. They were courting him—eyeing the king’s age and his youth, and reckoning the odds.

The wine was still in him, making his head pound, but he grinned at the heavy beams of the ceiling. He was in the tower, in one of the rooms above the hall—he recognized the carving. Rough shapes of men and beasts ran in a skein along the beam. Like the tower, they were older than his people. He had known them since he was a child.

His face felt different. His hand found a cleanly shaven chin and tidily trimmed mustaches. The rest of him was clean, too, and the knots and mats were out of his hair.

He sat up. He was still bone-thin—no miracles there—but months of crusted dirt were blessedly gone. He was dressed in finely woven breeks, green checked with blue in a weave and a pattern that he knew. The same pattern in rougher and heavier wool marked the blanket that covered him. There was a heavy torque around his neck, and rings swung in his ears and clasped his arms and wrists. He was right royally attired, and every ornament was soft and heavy gold.

He hardly needed to look toward the door to know who stood there, waiting for him to notice her. She was nearly as old as his father, but where age lay on Niall like hoarfrost, on Murna his first wife and queen, it was hardly more than a kiss of autumn chill. Her hair had darkened a bit with the years, but it was still as much gold as red. Her skin was milk-white, her features carved clean, almost too strong for beauty. They were all the more beautiful for that.

She looked like a certain imperial woman—not the coloring, the One God knew, but the shape and cast of her face and the keenness of her moss-green eyes as they studied him. It startled him to realize how like Valeria she was.

Well, he thought, at least his taste was consistent. He let the smile escape. “Mother! You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I would hope not,” she said. “Whereas you—what have you been living on? Grass and rainwater?”

“Near enough,” he said. “I’m home now. You can feed me up to your heart’s content.”

She frowned slightly. “Are you? Are you really home?”

“For good and all,” he said. “I’ll tell you stories when there’s time. I’ve seen the white gods’ Dance, Mother. I’ve brought an empire to its knees. It got up again, staggering and stumbling, but it was a good beginning.”

“All men love to brag,” she said.

“Ah,” said Euan, “but my brags are all true.”

“I’m sure,” she said as if to dismiss his foolishness, but her eyes were smiling. “There’s breakfast when you’re ready. After that, your father will see you. Something about a gift, he said.”

Euan nodded. “You’ll be there for that?”

“Should I be?”

He shrugged. “If it amuses you.”

“It might.”

She left him with a smile to keep him warm, and a parcel that proved to be a shirt and a plaid and a pair of new boots, soft doeskin cut to fit his feet exactly. Someone must have been stitching all night long.

It was bliss to dress in clean clothes, warm and well made and without a rip or a tear to let the wind in. There were weapons, too, the bone-handled dagger that every man of the Calletani carried, the long bow and the heavy boar-spear and the lighter throwing spear and the double-headed axe, and the great sword that was as long as a well-grown child was tall.

He left all but the dagger in their places. The day was dark as he went out, but the sun was well up—somewhere on the other side of the clouds. Last night’s glimmer of clear sky had been a taunt. Snow was falling thick and hard, and wind howled around the tower.

It could howl all it liked. Euan was safe out of its reach.



There was food in the hall, barley bread and the remains of last night’s roast, with a barrel of ale to wash it down. Euan ate and drank just enough to settle his stomach. If he had been playing the game properly, he would have lingered for an hour, bantering with the clansmen who were up and about, but he was still half in the long dream of flight. His feet carried him to the room where the king slept and rested and held private audiences.

It was the same room he remembered. Just before he went away, the trophies of two legions had been brought there. They were still standing against the wall. The armor of the generals, their shields and the standards with their golden wreaths and remembrances of old battles, gleamed as if they had been taken only yesterday.

They struck Euan strangely. For most of five years he had lived in the empire, surrounded by guards in armor very like that. Seeing them, he understood, at last, that he had escaped. He was free.

Maybe it was only a different kind of bondage. His father was sitting in the general’s chair that he had taken with the rest of the trophies. Away from the clan and its eyes and whispers, Niall allowed himself to feel his age. He slumped as if with exhaustion, and his face was drawn and haggard.

He straightened somewhat as Euan came through the door. The gladness in his eyes was quickly hooded.

That might have been simply because other guests had arrived before Euan. Two priests of the One stood in front of the king. Gothard perched on a stool, more or less between them.

Euan tried to breathe shallowly. No matter their age or rank, priests always stank of clotted blood and old graves. These were an old one and a young one, as far as he could tell. They stripped themselves of every scrap of hair, even to the eyelashes—or their rites did it for them—and they were as gaunt as the king and far less clean. Bathing for them was a sin.

The one who might have been older also might have been of high rank. He wore a necklace of infants’ skulls, and armlets pieced together of tiny finger bones. The other’s face and body were ridged with scars, so many and so close together that there was no telling what he had looked like before. Only his hands and feet were untouched, and those were smooth and seemed young. He was very holy, to have offered himself up for so much pain.

Euan’s mother was not in evidence, but there was a curtain behind his father, with a whisper of movement in it. She was there, watching and listening.

He breathed out slowly. Gothard grinned. He had been washed and shaved and made presentable, just as Euan had. Oddly, in breeks and plaid and with his chin shaven but his mustaches left to grow, he looked more like an imperial rather than less. In that country he was taller and fairer and blunter-featured than the rest of his kin. Here, he was a smallish dark man with a sharp, long-nosed face, playing at being one of the Calletani.

He seemed to be enjoying the game. “Don’t worry, cousin,” he said. “I’ve told them all about it. You don’t have to say a thing.”

“Really?” said Euan. “About what?”

“Why,” said Gothard, opening his hand to reveal the starstone, “this.” He flipped it into the air, then caught it, laughing as the priests flinched. “I know you thought we should bring it on gradually, but I think it’s better to have it out in the open. All the better—and sooner—to get where we want to go.”

“And where is that?” Euan inquired.

Gothard’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re going to play stupid? I told them who found it, too. You’re a great giver of gifts, cousin. The stone to me, and me—with the stone—to your father. Your people will love you for it.”

“They’ll love me more when I help them conquer Aurelia,” Euan said. “You are going to do that, yes? You won’t renege?”

“I’ll keep my word,” said Gothard, “as long as you keep yours.”

“We are all men of our word,” the king said. “Tell us again, nephew, what a starstone can do for us besides be an omen for the war.”

“It’s a very good omen,” Gothard said. “So is the fact that it came into the hands of a stone mage. The One is looking after you, uncle. This is going to win your war for you.”

“I hope we can believe that,” said Niall.

“Look,” said Gothard. He held the stone in his cupped hands. It never seemed heavy when he held it, but it was getting darker—Euan did not think he was imagining it. It looked like a piece of sky behind the stars, or a lump of nothingness.

Things were moving in it. They were not shapes—if anything they were shapeless—but they had volition. There was intelligence in them. They groped toward anything that had light or form, and devoured it.

The priests had gone perfectly still. Euan had seen fear before. He was a fighting man. He had caused it more times than he could count. But to see fear in the eyes of priests, who by their nature feared nothing, even death itself—that gave him pause.

Gothard smiled. The movements of the dark things were reflected in his face. His eyelids were lowered. His eyes were almost sleepy. He had an oddly sated look. “Yes,” he said softly. “Oh, yes.”

The stone stirred in his hands. Euan’s eye was not quite fast enough to follow what it did. It did not move, exactly. It reached.

The younger priest had no time to recoil. Formlessness coiled around him. When he opened his mouth to scream, it poured down his throat.

It ate him from the inside out. There was pain—Euan could have no doubt of that. The eyes were the last to go, and the horror in them would haunt him until he died.

When the last of the priest was gone, the thing that had consumed him flowed back into the stone. Gothard’s hands that held it were unharmed. His smile was as bright as ever. “Well?” he said. “Do you like it? We can do it to a whole army if we like, or the whole world. Or just the generals. You only have to choose.”

“The greatest gift of the One is oblivion,” Niall said. “Would you give such a gift to our enemies?”

“Would you give such a gift to your people?”

“It’s a strong thing,” the king said, “and it’s victory. It’s also magic. We don’t traffic with magic here.”

“Even if it will win the war?”

“Some victories are not worth winning.” Niall bent his head slightly. The remaining priest stiffened, but he laid a hand on Gothard’s shoulder.

Euan watched Gothard consider blasting them both. Then evidently he decided to humor them. He let the priest raise him to his feet and lead him away.

For a long while after he was gone, Euan had nothing to say. Niall seemed even more stooped and haggard than he had when Euan came in.

At last the king said, “That’s a troublesome gift you’ve given me.”

“You’re refusing it?”

Niall drew a deep breath. It rasped in ways that Euan did not like. “I’d be a fool to do that. But I don’t have to let it turn on me, either.”

“You know we’re going to have to use him,” Euan said. “Every time the Aurelians have raised armies against us, we’ve won a few skirmishes, even taken out a legion or two—then they’ve won the war. We can out-fight and out-maneuver them, but when they bring in their mages, we have no defense.”

“We have the One,” Niall said. “He exacts a price, but he protects us.”

“The price is damnably high,” said Euan.

“He takes blood and pain and leaves our souls to find their own oblivion. This thing will take them all—down to the last glimmer of existence.”

“Isn’t that what we want?” Euan demanded. “Isn’t the Unmaking our dearest prayer?”

“Not if magic brings it,” his father said. “I thank you for the gift of our kinsman. As a hostage he has considerable worth. For the rest…the One will decide. It’s beyond the likes of me.”

“You are the king of the people,” Euan said. “Nothing should be beyond you.”

“You think so?” said Niall. He seemed amused rather than angry. “You’re young. You have strong dreams. When I’m gone, you’ll take the people where they need to go. Until then, this is my place and this is my decision—however cowardly it may seem to you.”

“Never cowardly,” Euan said. “Whatever else you are, you could never be that.”

Niall shrugged. “I’m what I am. Go now, amuse yourself. It’s a long time until spring.”

Not so long, Euan thought, to get ready for a war that had been brewing since long before either them was born—the war that would bring Aurelia down. But he kept his thoughts to himself. The winter was long enough and he had a great deal of strength to recover. He could forget his worries for a while, and simply let himself be.



But first he had a thing he must do. The women’s rooms were away behind the men’s, well apart from the hall. They were much smaller and darker and more crowded, and they opened on either the kitchens or the long room where the looms stood, threaded with the plaids and war cloaks of the clan.

His mother’s room lay on the other side of the weavers’ hall. He had to walk through the rows of weavers at their looms, aware of their stares and whispers. He was a man in women’s country. He had to pay the toll accordingly.

She was not in the room, but he had not expected her to be. The bed was narrow and a little short, but it was warm and soft. He lay on it and drew up his knees. The smell of her wrapped around him, the clean scent of herbs with an undertone of musk and smoke.

He did not exactly fall asleep. He was aware of the room around him and the voices of women outside, rising over the clacking of the looms.

Still, he was not exactly awake, either. The bed had grown much wider. Someone else was lying with her back to him. Her breathing was deep and regular as if she slept, but her shoulders were tight.

Her skin was smooth, like cream, and more golden than white. Her hair was blue-black, cropped into curls. He ran his hand from her nape down the track of her spine to the sweet curve of her buttocks. She never moved, but her breathing caught.

He followed his hand with kisses. She was breathing more rapidly now. He willed her to turn and look into his face. Her name was on his lips, shaped without sound. Valeria.




Five


“You’re not Amma.”

The voice most definitely was not Valeria’s, nor was it Murna’s. It was a child’s, sharp and imperious.

The golden-skinned lover was gone. Euan’s mother’s bed was as narrow as ever. A child was standing over him, glowering.

It was a young child but long-legged, with a mane of coppery hair imperfectly contained in a plait, and fierce yellow eyes. By the single plait and the half-outgrown breeks, it was male—too young yet for the warriors’ house, but old enough to be well weaned.

Euan shook off the fog of the dream. “I’m not your amma,” he agreed. “I’m waiting for my mother.”

“Wait somewhere else,” the child said. “This is Amma’s room.”

“Not unless she shares it with my mother,” Euan said. His eyes narrowed. “My name is Euan. What is yours?”

“No one’s named me yet,” the child said.

Euan’s brows rose. A child without a name was a child without a father—because it was the father who raised the child before the clan, gave him his name and bound him to the people. This one seemed not to find any shame in it.

“Who is your mother?” Euan asked him.

“Mother’s dead,” the child said. “Where’s the other one?”

“What—”

“The lady. Where did she go?”

Euan’s nape prickled. “You saw her?”

“She’s pretty,” the child said.

“Very pretty,” Euan said a little faintly.

He was beginning to think this was a dream, too. A child of the people who saw the unseen was either fed to the wolves or handed over to the priesthood. Somehow he could not see this bright child as a priest.

He seemed very solid, but then, so had Valeria. Maybe this was all a delusion, some sleight of Gothard’s to trap Euan in the starstone.

If he let his mind run that way, he would turn as mad as Gothard. He sat up and breathed deep. The air smelled and tasted real. The child in front of him did not go away.

He was real, then. So was Euan’s mother, coming up behind him. “Ah, wolfling,” she said, “there you are. Brigid’s looking for you.”

The child shrugged that off. “There’s a man in your bed, Amma.”

“So I see,” Murna said. “Go on now. I’ll find you later and we’ll visit the hound puppies.”

This child was not easily bribed. His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. But Murna had raised many a child. Her own eyes narrowed even more formidably than his.

He was headstrong but he was no fool. He sulked and dragged, but he went where he was told.

The fog was leaving Euan’s wits—and none too soon, either. “I don’t suppose that’s mine,” he said.

“So his mother said.” Murna sat on the stool that stood at the end of the bed.

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Deira from Dun Gralloch,” Murna said. “Her father was—”

“I remember,” Euan said.

That had been another winter before another war. There was a gathering of the clans around Dun Eidyn, to celebrate the dark of the year and plan the spring’s battles. It would be far from Euan’s first battle, but it would be his first war against the empire.

He was full of himself that night, and full of honey mead, too. He looked up from his newly emptied cup to meet a pair of eyes the color of dark amber. Gradually he took in the rest of her, smooth oval face, neatly braided hair the precise color of her eyes, and tall body, well rounded, with deep breasts and broad hips.

When he smiled at her, she did not smile back. She lowered her eyes as a modest woman should do, but she watched him sidelong.

He found her in his bed that night, curled up, asleep. When he touched her, she woke completely. She was older than he was but still a maiden—though he did not know that until after it was done. He did not know her name, either, not for the nine nights she spent in his bed.

They spoke of everything but that—the world and the people in it, the One, the empire, the dreams they had and the life they hoped for. She was the first mortal creature he told of his dearest dream, not only to be high king but to sit in the throne of the emperor in Aurelia. She did not laugh at him, either. She said, “I’ll make you a son to give you strength, and to stand beside you when you take that throne.”

“I’m going to do it,” he said.

“I know you are,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight, drinking in his face. There was something odd about her expression—not sad, exactly, but somehow wistful.

Then she kissed him and he forgot everything else. Five years after, he remembered little of that night but warmth and laughter and such pleasure as a man could never forget.

Toward dawn, she kissed him one last time, letting it linger, then drew away as she had done at the end of each night. But she paused, bending down again. Her voice was soft in his ear. “Deira,” she said. “My name is Deira.”

He reached for her to keep her with him. He opened his mouth to ask her the rest of it—her father’s name, her clan, everything—but she slipped away. That day the people of Dun Gralloch left the gathering. That night, his bed was empty. Deira was gone.

He meant to find her. But first there was the war, then they lost it, then he was sent as a hostage into Aurelia. He had not forgotten her, but five years was a long time. He would have expected that she had married and borne another man sons—that was what any sensible woman would do.

Now that he knew what had become of her, he surprised himself with grief. Out of it, he said to his mother, “She really is dead? Was it the child?”

Murna shook her head. “There was plague the year after he was born. He lived. She died. Her father sent him to me as her last gift, with a message. Keep him until his father comes for him.”

“Was she dishonored? Was she mistreated? Did—”

“She was treated as well as she had a right to expect,” his mother said. “The child was allowed to live. He was sent to the king’s house for fostering. That’s more than most fathers would do for a daughter who despoiled herself.”

“I would have asked for her as a wife,” Euan said.

“I’m sure you would,” said Murna without expression. “Will you give the child a name, then?”

“Of course I will,” he said. “I’ll do it today.”

That surprised her. He did not see why, but there was no denying it. “Are you sure?”

He frowned. “Why? Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

“No,” said Murna. “No reason.”

That was not the truth, but something kept him from challenging her. There would be time later, he told himself. He had come here to ask her advice, not to find a son—and those other matters were pressing.

It was odd how, after all that had happened, even to the unmaking of a priest, Euan remembered little of what he said to his mother or she to him. But he remembered every moment of the exchange with his son.

That was his son—the child of his body. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name and ancestry. He would give the boy a name of his own and the life that went with it, firstborn son of a prince of the Calletani.



Murna brought the boy into the hall after the men had gathered there but before the day’s meal had been spread on the tables. That was the time for petitions and disputes, for men to come to the king with things that needed doing or settling.

Euan had been listening carefully to each one. Some needed his father’s decision, others the warleaders’ or the priests’. As he had when he was young, he committed each to memory.

He did not hold his breath waiting for his mother to bring the child. She might make him send for the boy—and he was prepared to do that.

Late in the proceedings, as two men of the warband argued heatedly over the ownership of a crooked-horned cow, Euan saw his mother standing among the rest of the petitioners. There was a plaid over her head as if she had been a common woman. The child was too small to see among so many grown folk, but Murna looked down once and said something.

Euan did not need that kind of proof. The boy was here. He knew it in his gut.

His heart was racing. For a man to claim a son was a great thing. For a man to do it the day after he had come home from a long exile was greater still. It was like an omen, a promise that his dream would come true.

The petitions that had fascinated him now seemed terribly tedious. There were so many and they were so trivial. If they stretched out much longer, there would be no time.

Just as he was about to rise up and roar his mother’s name, the last petitioner finished his rambling tale and received quick justice from the king. Euan paid no attention. His eyes were on the child, whom at last he could see.

His child. His son. No one could mistake it. There was no sign of his mother in him except for a certain air, a deep and inborn calm. He was long-limbed and rangy like a young wolf, and his eyes were wolf eyes, amber-gold and slanting in the long planes of his face.

He was royal-clan Calletani, like his father and grandfather and all their fathers before them. The One himself had marked him for what he was.

He stood straight beside his grandmother. There was no fear in him, only curiosity. His eyes were wide, taking in everything.

When those eyes fell on Euan, they brightened. He pulled free from his grandmother, who was just beginning to bow in front of the king, and sprang into Euan’s arms.

Euan was as startled as everyone else. The child was heavier than he looked, and strong.

“No need to guess whose litter that cub came from,” someone said.

Euan readied a glare to sweep across the hall, but the child laughed. His mirth was rang out in the silence. Euan swung him onto his shoulder and said so they all could hear, “You guessed right. I’m claiming him. He’s my blood and bone, the wolf-cub of the Calletani. I name him Conor, and bid you all name him likewise.”

The name ran around the room in a low roll of sound. Conor…Conor…Conor.

Euan looked up into the boy’s face. His head was tilted. He was listening hard. When the sound of his name had died down, he nodded. “That’s my name,” he said. “My name is Conor.”



“That was well done,” Gothard said.

Conor was back among the women again. The night’s meal had turned into a celebration, welcoming a new man-child to the clan. Euan staggered out of it, aswim with the last of the wine, to find Gothard squatting in front of the jakes.

He or someone had made a cage of gold wire for the starstone and hung it around his neck. It swung as he rocked, drinking darkness out of the air. “Well done,” he repeated. “Oh, so well done. Show the people you’ve got what a king needs—balls and gall and enough sense to get yourself an heir before it’s too late.”

“I’m glad you approve,” Euan said. He made no effort to sound as if he meant it.

“I only wonder,” Gothard said, rocking and smiling, with the starstone swinging and swinging, “seeing how strongly all the people resist the very idea of magic, how you managed to beget a child who fairly crackles with it.”

Euan had no memory of movement. One moment he was standing on one leg, wondering if he should piss in the bastard’s face to relieve himself and shut him up. The next, his hand was locked around Gothard’s throat.

The stone did not blast him. He found that interesting.

He spoke very carefully, enunciating each word. “My son is not a mage.”

“You know he is,” Gothard said.

Euan’s fingers tightened. Gothard turned a gratifying shade of crimson. “Whatever you think he is,” Euan said, “or think you may turn him into, you will keep your claws off him. If I find even the slightest hint that you have touched him or burdened him with so much as a word, I will flay you alive and bathe you in salt.”

He saw how Gothard’s eyes flickered. His own stayed fixed on that purpling face. “Don’t think your stone will save you. It was mine first. It remembers. And so should you. Hands and magic off my son. Do you understand?”

Gothard’s eyes had begun to bulge. It was a pity, Euan thought, that he needed a stone mage to exploit the full power of the stone. This was the only one he was likely to get. Gothard had to go on breathing—as much as Euan might wish otherwise.

He let Gothard go. Gothard fell over, gagging and choking, wheezing for breath. Euan left him to it.

He could feel Gothard’s eyes on his back as he went into the jakes. The hate in them was strong enough to make his skin twitch.

He shrugged it off. As long as they needed each other, there would be no killing on either side, and no Unmaking, either. After that, the One would provide. It would give Euan great pleasure to finish what he had begun.




Six


The Mountain was singing. It was a deep song, far below the edge of hearing, but it thrummed in Valeria’s bones. When she looked up from the shelter of the citadel toward that jagged peak, gleaming white against the piercing blue of the sky, and heard the great sound that came out of it, she knew a profound and almost unbearable joy.

The Mountain was locked in snow. Winter, like the claws of grief and irretrievable loss, gripped the school as if it would never let go. Yet the sun was just a fraction stronger and the air just a whisper warmer. And the Mountain sent out the Call.

It was strange to hear it and know what it was and feel the power of it, but to be no part of it. She had been Called a year before, and now the Mountain had her. This new compulsion, renewed every spring for a thousand years, was meant for someone else. Many someones, she hoped. The school needed as many new riders as the gods would deign to send.



When the first of the Called came in, she was schooling Sabata in the riding court nearest the southward gate. It was the first day in months that anyone had been able to ride under the sky. The grass around the edges of the court was just beginning to show a glimmer of green.

The raked sand of the arena was a little damp from the winter’s rains, but Sabata moved lightly on it. He liked its softness and its slight springiness.

In fact he was moving a little too lightly. He was fresh and not particularly obedient, and there was a twitch in his back that warned her to be alert.

Sabata was a god and a Great One, but he was also a stallion, and spring was in his blood. He could smell the mares on the other side of the school, in the School of War. If he had had his way, he would have gone courting and won himself a band of them.

“You have a high opinion of yourself,” she said as he tried for the dozenth time to veer off toward the gate. He had not succeeded yet, but he was determined to keep trying. Discipline was the last thing he wanted to think about just then.

“Discipline is the first virtue of a rider,” Valeria said.

Sabata shook his head and snorted. There was a distinct hump in his back under the saddle. He was not a rider, and very glad he was of it, too.

Just as he left the ground, a stranger’s startled face blurred past her. It was only an instant’s distraction, but that was enough for Sabata. He exploded in more directions than she could count.

It was a long way to the ground. She had ample time to tuck and roll. She also had time to contemplate the virtue of discipline, and to be struck by the humor of it all.

She tumbled to a halt with a mouthful of sand and a collection of entirely new bruises, and no breath for the laughter that was trying to bubble out of her.

Two faces stared down at her. One was long and silver-white and gratifyingly embarrassed. The other was oval and brown and incontestably human.

“Rider?” the boy said. “Are you dying?”

She did not want to sit up. She wanted to lie in the sand and count her bones and try not to think about how it would feel when she moved. Still, there was Sabata, belatedly appalled at what he had done to his rider, and this child whom she had never seen before, whose eyes looked ready to pop out of his head.

She sat up very carefully. Her head stayed on her shoulders. All the parts of her moved more or less as they should. Nothing was broken, even the arm that still ached when she moved it just so. There was a ringing in her ears, but that was the Mountain.

It was also the boy who had startled her into falling off her stallion. He was so full of the Call that she was amazed he could walk and talk.

He was otherwise perfectly ordinary, with a smooth, olive-skinned face and big dark eyes and curly black hair. His clothes were plain and had seen a great deal of use. He looked as if he had been traveling for days without enough to eat.

“You’re not dying,” he said. He sounded relieved. He held out a grubby hand.

She let him pull her to her feet. He was stronger than he looked. “How did you get here?” she asked him.

“I walked through the gate,” he said.

“Nobody met you?”

He shook his head. “There were people, but nobody said anything. I kept walking until I came here.” His eyes turned to Sabata and melted—there was no other word for it. “Is he—is that—”

“That is Sabata,” Valeria said.

The boy’s hand stretched out as if he could not help himself. Valeria made no effort to stop him. Sabata did not move away, either, which was interesting. No one could lay a hand on Sabata unless he wanted it—and mostly he did not.

He suffered this child to stroke his neck and find the particular spot in the middle and rub it until his lip stretched and began to quiver. The boy was enthralled. “Beautiful,” he said dreamily. “So beautiful.”

“He certainly thinks so,” Valeria said. “We have exercises to finish. If you can wait, I’ll show you where to go.”

“Oh, yes,” the boy said. “I can wait. You’ll let me watch?”

“I won’t be falling off again,” Valeria said firmly. She lowered a glare at Sabata. “Here, sir.”

Sabata had had his fill of defiance for the day. He came to her hand and stood perfectly still for her to mount. That was not as graceful as usual—some of her bruises were in difficult places—but she managed.

All the while she rode, the boy watched, rapt. He was not only full of the Call. He was full of magic. He had control over it—not like one of last year’s Called, whom she still remembered with pain. This one would not give way to temper and lash out with killing force.

It was not the best ride she had ever had. She was stiff and sore, and Sabata was trying a little too hard. She finished on as good a note as she could, then with the boy trailing blissfully behind, took Sabata to his stable.

Some of the stallions were in their stalls, sleeping or chewing drowsily on bits of hay. Most were out with their riders in various of the halls and riding courts, or enjoying an hour’s liberty in one of the paddocks. By that time Valeria had learned that the boy’s name was Lucius, that he came from a town not far from the Mountain, and that he was a journeyman of the order of Oneiromancers.

He was helping Valeria take off Sabata’s saddle and bridle and brush out the stallion’s moon-colored coat. She paused as he told her what he was, staring at him over the broad pale back. “You’re a dream-mage? What are you doing here?”

“I dreamed that I was Called,” he said.

“Obviously,” said Valeria. “Mages have been Called from other orders before. But just Beastmasters, I thought, and the occasional Augur. I didn’t think—”

“I didn’t, either,” he said, “but here I am. Like you. Is a woman supposed to be a rider?”

“No,” said Valeria.

“Well,” said Lucius, “there you are.”

He seemed to think that her existence explained his. She did not see what that had to do with it, but she was disinclined just then to argue. She went on with what she had been doing, frowning slightly.

When Sabata was clean and brushed and content with a manger full of hay, and the saddle and bridle were cleaned and put away, Valeria took the visibly reluctant Lucius to the rider-candidates’ dormitory.

He was not the only one there after all. Two more had come in while he was basking in Sabata’s presence. They both wore the uniform of the legions, and they were older than Valeria would have thought a rider-candidate could be. One must have been well up in his twenties.

First Rider Andres, who had taken charge of the rider-candidates in her year, as well, had them in hand. He raised a brow at Lucius’s escort, but he did not say anything in front of the candidates except, “Three on the first day. That’s a good number.”

“Let’s hope it’s an omen,” Valeria said. The legionaries were staring at her as if they not only knew who and what she was, they were in awe of her.

That was not comfortable. She could call it a strategic retreat, or she could regard it as a rout. Either way, she escaped those wide eyes and worshipful faces.



Valeria came to bed late. There had been lessons in history and politics and various facets of the horse magic, and a session in the library that had run through dinner. Then she had gone with a handful of riders to raid the kitchens. By the time she left the last of them at his door, the hour was well on its way toward midnight.

The lamp by the bed was lit, its flame trimmed low. The fire was banked in the hearth, but it shed just enough heat to take the edge off the chill.

Kerrec was in bed and apparently asleep. All she could see of him was a heap of blankets.

She dropped her clothes, shuddering as cold air touched her skin, and slid in beside him. His back was turned to her, his face to the wall. She pressed herself softly against him and kissed his nape where the black curls were clipped short.

He lay perfectly still. Her hand ran down his side, tracing the familiar gaps and ridges of scars. They were all healed now, the deep pain gone, and some had begun to fade.

She let her touch bring a little more healing, a little more warmth. He should have roused then and turned, but he never moved.

She sighed inaudibly. She had been full of things to tell him, but he was obviously determined not to wake.

Well, she thought, he worked hard these days—harder than she. He was the only First Rider left from the time before—that was what everyone called it now. Before the Great Dance that had ended with six riders dead and the empire’s fate so nearly turned toward destruction. It was only six months ago, just half a year, but it divided the world.

He had been the youngest. Now he was the chief of the First Riders. The others were all new to their office, and none too ready for it, either. They were doing well enough now, all things considered, but it had been a bitter winter. The school still mourned its dead, and would mourn them for a long while yet.

Much more than lives had been lost in that Dance. Strong magic and great art were gone, the province of masters who had devoted decades to the mastery of the stallion magic. Nothing but time could bring that back—if it could be brought back. Some of what was gone might never be recovered.

Valeria laid her cheek on Kerrec’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She wanted to hold him tight, but she knew better than to try that. He had paid a high price to be here, alive and safe. The scars on his body were the least of it. His heart and soul had been taken apart and were still healing slowly. His magic…

It was mending. He was strong. He worked harder than anyone and tested himself more sternly. He was thriving.

She had to believe that. They had done no more than sleep in each other’s arms—or he in hers, if she was going to be exact—for weeks. Months? She did not remember, probably because she did not want to.

She was still here. That was enough. He was first among the First. He could order her out and she would have to go, because she had sworn herself to a rider’s discipline, and obedience was part of it.

He had done no such thing. He wanted her here, even if he did not want her the way he had in the autumn and through the early winter, night after night. The memory of those nights could still warm her.

They would come back. He was tired, that was all.

So was she. She should sleep. She had another long day tomorrow, and long days after that.

A rider’s discipline could accomplish this as well as anything else. She closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep. After a while, she succeeded.




Seven


Kerrec lay motionless. Valeria was at last and mercifully asleep.

Her dream brushed the edges of his awareness. It was a dim thing, tinged with unease, but the white power of the stallions surrounded it. They guarded her even in dreams.

She could never know how much he wanted to turn and take her in his arms and kiss her until she was dizzy. But if he did that, he would have to open himself to her, and she would know.

She could not know. No one could. They had to believe that he was whole. He had to be. He could not afford to be broken.

During the day he could hold himself together. Much of what he did required no magic, or could be done with what little he had. He could still ride—that much had not left him. He could teach others to ride, and through the movements see the patterns that shaped the world.

The nights were another matter. He had to sleep, but in sleep were dreams.

At first he had been able to keep them at bay, even change them. His stallion had helped him. As winter went on, the dreams had grown worse.

Now he did not even need to sleep to hear that voice whispering and whispering, or to see the featureless mask of a Brother of Pain. Sometimes there was a stranger’s face behind it. More often there was one he knew all too well.

He never dreamed, awake or asleep, of the body’s pain. That had been terrible enough when it happened, and the scars would be with him until he died, but it was not his body that the Brother of Pain had set out to break. He had been commanded to break Kerrec’s mind and destroy his soul.

He had had to leave the task unfinished, but by then it was too far along to stop. What had been carried out of that place which Kerrec still could barely remember, had been the shattered remnants of a man.

The shards had begun to mend themselves. Kerrec’s magic had grown again, slowly but surely. He had dared to hope that he would get his old self back.

Then the healing had stopped and the edges of his spirit had begun to unravel. It was as if the Brother of Pain had reached out from the other side of the dream world and set his hooks in Kerrec’s soul again, even deeper than before.

Every night now, the whisper was louder, echoing inside his skull. What use is a dead prince in a living world? What purpose is there in this magic that you pride yourself in? What is order, discipline, art and mastery, but empty show? The world is no better for it. Too often it is worse. Give it up. Let it go. Set yourself free.

Every night he struggled to remember what he had been before. He had been a master of his art, endowed with magic of great power and beauty. His discipline had been impeccable. He had mastered the world’s patterns and could bend them to his will.

That was gone. The whole glorious edifice had fallen into ruin. All that was left was a confusion of shards, grinding on one another like shattered bone.

Very carefully he eased out of Valeria’s arms. It hurt to leave her—but it hurt more to stay. She was everything that he had been and more.

It was not envy that he felt. It was grief. He should have been her match, not a broken thing that she could only pity.

He was unprepared for the wave of sheer, raw rage that surged through him. The rage had a source—a name.

Gothard.

He could name the red blackness that laired in the pit of his stomach, too. It was hate. Gothard had done this to him. Gothard had given the Brother of Pain his orders. Gothard’s malice and spite had broken Kerrec’s mind and shattered his magic.

Gothard his brother, Gothard the half-blood, had nothing but loathing for his brother and sister who were legitimate as he was not, and for his father who had sired him on a hostage. He wanted them all dead—and he had come damnably close to succeeding.

He had escaped defeat and fled from the reckoning. No one, even mages, had been able to find him. But Kerrec knew where he was. He was in Kerrec’s mind, taking it apart fragment by fragment.

Somewhere, in the flesh, he was waiting. Kerrec had no doubt that he was preparing a new assault on everything and every person who had ever dealt him a slight, real or imagined. Gothard would not give up until they were all destroyed.

With shaking hands, Kerrec pulled on breeches and coat and boots. It was halfway between midnight and dawn. The school was asleep. Even the cooks had not yet awakened to begin the day’s baking.

In the stillness of the deep night, the Call grated on his raw edges. He had enough power, just, to shut it out.

He went to the one place where he could find something resembling peace. The stallions slept in their stable, each of them shining faintly, so that the stone-vaulted hall with its rows of stalls glowed as if with moonlight.

Petra’s stall was midway down the eastern aisle, between the young Great One Sabata and the Master’s gentle, ram-nosed Icarra. Kerrec’s friend and teacher cocked an ear as he slipped into the stall, but did not otherwise interrupt his dream.

Kerrec lay on the straw in the shelter of those heavy-boned white legs. Petra lowered his head. His breath ruffled Kerrec’s hair. He sighed and sank deeper into sleep.

Even here, Kerrec could not sleep, but it did not matter. He was safe. He drew into a knot and closed his eyes, letting pain and self-pity drain away. All that was left behind was quiet, and blessed emptiness.



Valeria knew that she was dreaming. Even so, it was strikingly real.

She was sitting at dinner in her mother’s house. They were all there, all her family, her three sisters and her brothers Niall and Garin, and even Rodry and Lucius who had gone off to join the legions. The younger ones looked exactly as they had the last time she saw them, almost a year ago to the day.

She was wearing rider’s clothes. Her sister Caia curled her lip at the grey wool tunic and close-cut leather breeches. Caia was dressed for a wedding in a dress so stiff with embroidery that it could have stood up on its own. There were flowers in her hair, autumn flowers, purple and gold and white.

She glowered at Valeria. “How could you run away like that? Don’t you realize how it looked? You ruined my wedding!”

“There now,” their mother said in her most quelling tone. “That will be enough of that. You had a perfectly acceptable wedding.”

Caia’s sense of injury was too great even to yield to Morag’s displeasure. “It was a solid month late, and half the cousins couldn’t come because they had to get in the harvest. And all anyone could talk about was her.” Her finger stabbed toward Valeria. “It should have been my day. Why did she have to go and spoil it?”

“I didn’t mean—” Valeria began.

“You never do,” said Caia, “but you always do.”

That made sense in Caia’s view of the world. Valeria found that her eyes were stinging with tears.

Rodry cuffed Valeria lightly, but still hard enough to make her ears ring. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “She’s just jealous because her lover is a live smith instead of a dead imperial heir. That’s how girls are, you know. Princes, even dead, are better than anything else.”

“Kerrec is not dead,” Valeria said.

“Prince Ambrosius lies in his tomb,” said Rodry. “It’s empty, of course. But who notices that?”

“That was his father,” Valeria tried to explain, “being furious that his heir was Called to the Mountain instead of the throne. He declared him dead and stopped acknowledging his existence until there was no other choice. Isn’t that what Mother has done to me? I’ll be amazed if she’s done anything else.”

“Mother knows you’re alive,” Rodry said. “She’s not happy about it, but you can hardly expect her to be. She had a life all planned for you, too.”

“So did the gods,” said Valeria. “Even Mother isn’t strong enough to stand in their way.”

“Don’t tell her that,” her brother said, not quite laughing. He bent toward her and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll see you soon.”

She frowned. “What—”

The dream was whirling away. The end of it went briefly strange. It was dark, a swirl of nothingness. She dared not look into it. If she did, she would drown—all of her, heart and soul and living consciousness. Every part of her would be Unmade.

The Unmaking blurred into the bell that summoned the riders to their morning duties. Valeria sat up fuzzily. The dream faded into a faint, dull miasma overlaid with her family’s faces.

Kerrec was gone. He had got up before her, as all too usual lately.

She would be late if she dallied much longer. She stumbled out of bed, wincing at the bruises that had set hard in the night, and washed in the basin. The cold water roused her somewhat, though her mind was still full of fog. She pulled on the first clean clothes that came to hand and set off for the stables.



Half a dozen more of the Called came in that morning, and another handful by evening. There had never been that many so soon after the Mountain began its singing. Some of the younger riders had a wager that the candidates’ dormitory would be full by testing day.

That would be over a hundred—twelve eights. One or two wagered that even more would come, as many as sixteen eights, which had not happened in all the years since the school was founded.

“We’ll be hanging hammocks from the rafters,” Iliya said at breakfast after the stallions had been fed and their stalls thoroughly cleaned. The thought made him laugh. Iliya was a singer and teller of tales when he was not studying to be a rider. He found everything delightful, because sooner or later it would go into a song.

Paulus was as sour as Iliya was sweet. He glared down his long aristocratic nose and said, “You are all fools. There has never been a full complement of candidates, not in a thousand years.”

“There was never a woman before last year,” Batu pointed out from across the table. He was the most exotic of the four, big and broad, with skin so black it gleamed blue. He had never even seen a horse before the Call drew him out of his mother’s house, far away in the uttermost south of the empire.

Valeria, most definitely the oddest since she was the first woman ever to be Called to the Mountain, offered a wan reflection of his wide white smile. “Are you wagering that more will come?”

“That’s with the gods,” he said.

“More females.” Paulus shuddered. “Even one is too many.”

“Everything’s changing,” Batu said. “We’ll have to change with it. That’s what we were Called for.”

“We were Called to ride the white gods in the Dance of Time,” Paulus said stiffly. “That is all we are for. Everything leads to that. Nothing else matters.”

“I’m rather partial to wine and song myself,” Iliya said. He drained his cup of hot herb tea and licked his lips, as satisfied with himself as a cat.

Valeria was long accustomed to his face, but once in a great while she happened to notice that in its way it was as unusual as Batu’s. In shape and coloring it was ordinary enough, with olive-brown skin and sharply carved features, but he was a chieftain’s son from the deserts of Gebu. The marks of his rank were tattooed in vivid swirls on his cheekbones and forehead.

The Call had brought them here from all over the empire. They had passed test after test, and were still passing them—as they would do for as long as they served the gods on the Mountain.

She looked from her friends’ faces to others in the hall. Most of the lesser riders were there this morning. The four First Riders dined in their own, much smaller hall, usually with the Master of the school for company. Today Master Nikos was here, sitting at the head table with a handful of Second Riders.

He caught her glance and nodded slightly. Valeria’s existence was an ongoing difficulty, but after she had brought all the stallions together to mend the broken Dance, he had had to concede that she belonged among the riders. To his credit, he had accepted the inevitable with good grace—which was more than could be said for some of the others.

He was probably praying that all of this year’s Called were male. She could hardly blame him. They had troubles enough as it was.

She pushed away her half-full bowl and rose. The others had had the same thought. There was a classroom waiting and a full morning of lessons, then a full afternoon in the saddle.

Iliya danced ahead of her, singing irrepressibly, though Paulus growled at him to stop his bloody caterwauling. Batu strode easily beside Valeria. He was smiling.

It was a good morning, he was thinking, clear for her to read. Most mornings were, these days, though the school had come through a hell or two to get there.

Maybe there were more hells ahead. Maybe some would be worse, but that did not trouble him, either. Batu, better than any of them, had mastered the art of living as the stallions did, in the perpetual present.




Eight


When winter’s back broke, so did the king’s spirit. He had been fading since the dark of the year, as if he had hung on until his heir came back. Now that Euan Rohe was here, with an acknowledged son of his own, he could let go.

It was soft and slow, as deaths went. He slept more and more and sat in hall less and less. Little by little the king’s various offices fell to Euan.

There were guards on the gates now, inner and outer. The roads were watched and the borders guarded. Nothing could take the clan by surprise.

Spring came with the breaking of ice and the howling of wind, and storms that lashed sleet and rain instead of sleet and snow. The clan began to emerge from its winter’s idleness. The hall became a practice ground. Even when the storms raged, men of the clan went out hunting or raiding.

Scouts were coming in, nearly as ragged as Euan had been. The empire was moving. The emperor and his legions were gathering for war.

Gothard spent most of his time with the priests as either their prisoner or their pupil—or maybe he was their master. Euan was not minded to inquire. Gothard stayed out of Euan’s way, and that suited Euan perfectly.

On the day when the last of the ice broke in the rivers, the latest storm had blown away. Sun shone dazzling bright on the winter-wearied dun. Euan thought he might go hunting boar. He was tired of stringy roast ox and even more tired of being penned up in walls.

On his way to the hall to call up a hunt, he came face-to-face with Gothard. If he wanted to give himself a fit of the shudders, he could reflect that he had been looking straight down the passage and seen Gothard nowhere until he appeared directly in front of Euan.

“It’s happening,” Gothard said.

Mages, Euan thought sourly. “What is happening? War?”

“Among other things.” Gothard smiled. Whatever he was thinking, it gave him great pleasure. “You’d better be ready. As soon as the weather breaks, the high king’s calling the muster.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Euan said—unwisely, maybe.

“I don’t think so,” Gothard said.

“I command you.”

“I’m sure you do.”

The skin tightened between Euan’s shoulder blades. He was not sure what he wanted to say yet. When he was, he would say it, no matter what it cost.

At this particular moment, he pushed past Gothard. He had a boar to hunt, and the men were waiting.



Euan’s uneasiness stayed with him through the hunt and the killing of the boar and the return to the dun. Nothing there had changed. The king was a little weaker, a little greyer, but that had been going on for months.

Every night, no matter the hour, he looked in on Conor first, then his father. Tonight he found himself turning toward his father’s sleeping room. He refused to call it a premonition. Gothard had raised his hackles. He had to be sure there was nothing in it.

Niall was asleep. Lamps burned in a cluster, spoils of the last war with Aurelia. Murna sat beside the bed, stitching at a linen shirt.

Euan wanted to believe in that quiet ordinariness, but he kept seeing Gothard’s face. There was nothing ordinary here. The quiet was a lie.

His mother looked up. Her eyes were somber. “Tomorrow you should send out the summons to clan gathering,” she said.

Euan nodded. That was the king’s duty, but the king was past performing it. The clans should have gathered to plan this year’s war before Euan came back—and here it was nearly spring.

“Better late than never,” he said. Then, “How long do you think he has?”

“The One knows,” she said.

Euan suspected that one other was privy to that knowledge. He bowed to his father, though Niall was too far gone to see. “I’ll be back,” he said to his mother. “Don’t let anyone else near him while I’m gone.”

Her eyes widened slightly, but she asked no questions. She took up her stitching again.

It was only after Euan had passed the door that it dawned on him. That was not a shirt she was making. It was a shroud.



Euan had a fair hunt to find Gothard. He was not in the priests’ house—as far as Euan dared to enter it—nor was he in the guesthouse or the young men’s house or the hall. At last, in the darkness before dawn, Euan clambered up the crumbling stair to the top of the tower.

It was a steep and dangerous way in the dark, but Euan had climbed it often enough when he was younger. His feet still remembered which steps were safe and which were rotten. There were more of the latter now, one or two of which nearly cost him his neck, but he made his way past them.

The tower’s roof had once been higher—by how much, even legend was not sure. It was high enough now that if Euan stood at the parapet he could see clear across the moor to the low squat of hill that was Dun Gralloch.

Gothard was in the middle of the roof, lying on his back with his eyes full of starlight. Euan considered throttling him, but that could grow tedious with repetition. He stood over Gothard instead, blocking the starlight, and said, “Take your spell off my father.”

Gothard blinked as if he had roused from a dream. “What? Spell? There is no—”

“Poison, then. Whatever it is, undo it.”

“I’ve done nothing,” Gothard said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can see why not,” said Gothard, “but it is true. He’s dying all by himself.”

“He was before you came here,” Euan said. “You’ve been kindly helping him on his way. Don’t try to deny it again. I can smell magic. He reeks of it.”

“Therefore it must be my magic?” Gothard inquired.

“Who else would it be? And don’t,” said Euan through clenched teeth, “go blaming my son.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Gothard said. He sat up. “I have something for you. Look.”

He tossed it toward Euan. Euan caught it before it could fall.

It was a stone, round and flat and polished smooth. His hand tingled when he caught it. He almost flung it down, but his fingers closed over it instead. “What’s this? A spell to finish my father off?”

“It’s a seeing-stone,” said Gothard. “Look in it. Think of what you want to see, and there it will be. Wouldn’t you like to know where the emperor’s armies are?”

“You know I would,” Euan said. “What’s the price?”

“It’s part of our bargain,” said Gothard. “If it helps you win the war, so much the better.”

Euan looked down at the stone. It was the size and shape of the mirror that an imperial lady would carry with her to ascertain that her face was properly painted. Not, he thought, that one particular imperial woman would care for such a thing.

The stone shimmered as if reflecting starlight. Before he could turn his eyes away, the shimmer brightened and cleared. She was there, with the glow of lamplight on her face, turning the pages of a book.

Her hair was longer than he remembered but still cut short. She was wearing the grey coat of a rider-candidate. That was what, more than anything else, she had wanted. It seemed that she had won it.

He could have reached out and touched her. It was a great effort to resist.

She seemed unaware of his eyes on her. When he wondered who else was in the room with her, the stone showed him an empty room and, more to the point, an empty bed.

It surprised him how glad he was to see that. Euan was alive and standing on this tower because of her, but he was not the man she had chosen. That one…

The vision in the stone began to shift. Euan wrenched his mind away from Valeria’s lover. He did not want to see the man or know where he was or even if he was alive. He turned his thoughts to the emperor instead.

And there was Artorius to the life, asleep in a lofty bed, not only alive but clearly well—despite what Gothard had said of him.

“You see?” Gothard said in his ear. “Ask it to show you armies and it will—and all their plans and strategies, too. Imagine a king of the people with such a toy. For once in all the years of war between the people and the empire, one of our kings will have the same advantage as the emperor and his generals.”

“‘Our’ kings?” Euan asked. “You’ve taken sides, have you?”

“It’s not obvious?”

“With you, I never know.” Euan covered the stone and slipped it into his belt. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to stop the enemy from seeing what we’re up to.”

“There might be,” said Gothard. “It’s more magic. What will your father say to that?”

“When he wakes, I’ll ask him,” Euan said.

Gothard smiled. The words hung in the air, though he had not said them. Ah, but will he wake?

“If he doesn’t,” Euan said very softly, “I will know whose fault it is.”

“And then what will you do? Hand me over to the priests all over again? They’re afraid of me, cousin. They worship oblivion but none of them is in a great hurry to get there.”

“I am reminded,” said Euan, “of the man who took a snake for a wife. She cooked his dinner, wove his war cloaks, and bore his children for other women to suckle—because after all, snakes have no breasts. She was all the wife a man could ask for, and she served him in every way. Then one night, after she had fed him his dinner and made love to him until he roared like a bull, she sank her fangs in his neck.”

“And so he died,” said Gothard, “but he died happy. He had everything he wanted.”

“Except his life,” Euan said.

Gothard shrugged. “What’s life for a man who has to live weak, sick and old? Maybe she was giving him a gift. You worship the One, whose dearest child is nothingness. You should understand that.”

“Not when it comes to my father.”

“Is that sentiment, cousin?” said Gothard. “I’d never have thought to see it in you. The old man is dying of his own accord and in his own time. When he’s gone, you’ll be king of the Calletani—which is halfway to where you want to be. I should think you’d embrace it.”

Euan’s head was aching. Gothard’s voice buzzed in his ears. It was a webwork of lies and half lies and twisted truth, but he could not muster an answer to it. It wanted him to give up, lie back, and let it happen.

What else could he do? He had taken this snake to wife. He used it, just as it used him. He had to hope that when the fangs flashed toward his neck, he was fast enough to get away.




Nine


When Euan came down from the tower, the king was dead. He had no need to hear the wailing of the women from the hall. He felt it in his gut, a deep emptiness that left him cold and still.

It did not matter then who was to blame. The king was dead, and the clans must gather as soon as they could come to Dun Eidyn—not only to make war but to make a king.



By the evening of the day after the king died, Dun Gralloch’s chieftain and his warband had come in, and Dun Brenin’s warriors were close behind. By the third day, seven of the nine clans of the Calletani had gathered, including the royal clan. The others had sent messengers to promise that they would be there within a day or two.

Euan was still numb. He was doing what needed to be done, but he felt nothing. The women wailing, the men chanting death songs, left him cold.

Tomorrow they would lay the king in his barrow. Tonight the feasting grew raucous, with the clansmen draining barrels of ale as if it had been water. Euan had had a cup or two, but he had barely tasted it.

He left the high table and the emptiness of the royal seat to wander through the hall. Down past the hearth, some of the young men were dancing. It was a war dance, with stamping feet and flashing blades—perfectly suited to his mood.

He seized a blade from a willing hand and leaped into the dance. His blood thundered in his ears. He stamped, slashed, spun.

He came face to face with his image, armed as he was, laughing as he met blade with blade. The others drew back, clapping and beating time with their feet. To that rough and potent music, the two of them fought the battle through to the final crossing of blades.

Euan was breathing hard. Sweat ran down his back and sides. He dropped his sword and roared. “Conory! By the One—you’re alive!”

“Hell wouldn’t have me,” his cousin said in mock regret.

They stood grinning at one another. Conory looked so like Euan that he had, more than once, claimed Euan’s name and place—a useful skill for eluding nursemaids and imperial guards. Euan seized him by the shoulders and shook him. “Damn your eyes, man. Where have you been? Dun Carrig came in yesterday.”

“And so did I,” said Conory. “Damn your eyes. I was right in front of you.”

“Then I’m a blind man,” Euan said, “and you are a reprobate. I mourned you all for dead.”

“Not likely,” said another voice he knew well.

He squinted in the firelight. “Cyllan? You, too?”

“And Donal and Cieran and Strahan,” said Conory.

They were all there, drawing in from the edges of the circle—the friends of his youth, his fellow hostages, his old warband. Only one was missing, and that one Euan himself had cast out while they were still in the empire.

The numbness left him. In its place was a most peculiar mingling of grief and gladness. It felt like ice breaking in the rivers and spring storms roaring down on the frozen moors.

It was dangerous because it was so strong. It was a marvel, a miracle—a sign. It made him laugh from the depths of his belly, down below the sorrow.

With his warband around him, he had his balance. He could look at the world and see it clearly. He felt as if he had lost an arm but then found it again. He was finally whole.

Now he could claim the kingship. He swept them with him, back into another dance, a spring dance, half war and half exuberant mating.

As he danced, he saw in his head the Dance of the white stallions in Aurelia. The patterns they traced were almost the same as those his feet were beating out on the floor of this hall—his father’s hall. His hall.

He could shape time and fate, too. Why not? He was king. Now that he had his warband again, out of all hope and expectation, the rest would follow.



They raised the old king’s barrow down below the dun, in the dark valley where the kings of the Calletani had lain since they first came to this country. Far down the valley, the oldest barrows had grown into the earth, covered over with grass and heather. Here at the valley’s head, almost out into the light, the new barrow rose up, its lines as raw and harsh as grief.

The priests made the sacrifice, the bodies of nine battle captives and nine fair women. The women died quietly, like the good handmaidens they were meant to be. The men screamed and fought and called down curses.

Their death was slow and hard, a death of tiny cuts and minute scraps of skin peeled off slowly, one by one. Multiplied nine times, it opened the way for the king’s spirit, freeing it to seek oblivion in the One.

It was a long ritual, and not easy to watch. Euan, with his warband around him like a well-loved cloak, endured it as they all did, to honor the king.

Niall lay on his bier, covered with a blood-red mantle—the cloak of an imperial general. His shrunken body barely lifted the pall.

His weapons were laid beside him and his shield was at his feet. They would go into the barrow with him, along with a great store of gold and precious things. The standards of the two legions were among them, and enough imperial gold to ransom a king.

There was no ransom that would bring a man back from the dead. Euan felt the grief rising to choke him. For once he let it. Today it could rule him as it would. Tomorrow he had to be king.

When the rite was finished and the bodies of the captives had stopped twitching, the king went at last into his barrow. No living man went with him. The men who carried him down, and after him the bodies of his escort, stayed in the barrow when their task was done. Each had a knife for his own throat, or else he would die when the air ran out, buried under earth and stone.

Euan lent his hand to the sealing of the tomb. The stones were heavy. He was glad of the pain and the grueling effort. They cleansed him in spirit as well as body.

It was dark when they finished. The stars were fiercely bright. The ground crackled with frost. It crunched underfoot as the whole long column of them, clan upon clan, walked away from the valley and the barrow.

No one spoke or sang. That was their last tribute, that gift of silence.



The sun rose with a blaring of trumpets and a thunder of drums. The long dark night was over. Mourning would go on for the women, but for the men it was a new day.

Today they would make a king. In other times or other clans there would be a great contest, a battle among all presumptive heirs. Whoever won the battle could call himself king.

When Euan Rohe came out of his room after a sleepless night, the warbands of all the clans were waiting in the hall, watchful and silent. Here and there, someone twitched, thinking maybe to raise the challenge—but the men around him cuffed him into submission.

Euan’s own warband stood like a guard of honor. Cyllan and Strahan had bruises and satisfied expressions. The others looked merely satisfied.

Euan would beat the story out of them later. His eyes took in the mass of faces.

They were taking him in, too, and rightly. He had been away for years, living among imperials, learning their ways and their language and their arts of war and peace. Maybe his own people could no longer trust him. Maybe he had changed too much to rule them as they needed to be ruled.

He had to answer that—the sooner, the better. He sprang up onto the nearest table and stamped his foot. The sound of boot-heel on hollow planks boomed through the hall. He raised his voice to its strongest pitch. “Calletani!”

That brought them all up short. He raked his eyes across them, noting who flinched and who looked down and who met him eyes-on. When he had them all, he spoke more softly. “Well, tribesmen. You know who I am. If you stay with me, you’ll learn what I am. I’ll fight your champions if I have to, and kill them if that’s what it takes. I’d rather not. If we’re going to take down the empire, we need every man. It’s imperial blood we should be thirsting for—not the blood of our own.”

The sound that rose in response to that made a shiver run down his spine. It began as a growl and rose to a roar. It was pure lust for blood—imperial blood, blood of the enemy who had barred the gates of the south since the people first came out of the dawn lands.

That gate would fall. That was Euan’s oath and his promise.

They raised him up in the hall of his fathers, lifting him high on an imperial shield. The chieftain of Dun Gralloch clasped the heavy gold torque about his neck, and the lord of Dun Carrig weighted his arms with gold.

He stood at that dizzy height, supported on the shoulders of his warband, with his head brushing the beams, and allowed himself to savor the moment. It would not last long. The One knew, there was trouble enough waiting.

But not today. Today, he would let the sun shine. Today, he was king.




Ten


Iliya won his wager—almost. By the first day of the testing, sixteen eights of the Called had come in, less one. They had had to open one of the long-unused dormitories, and all the First and Second Riders were called on to oversee the testing of each eight and the final, anomalous seven.

There had never been anything like it. They were all male—that was a relief to the older riders—but they were not all boys or very young men. Some were older than Kerrec. One was a master of the sea magic. Several were journeymen of various magical orders, and some of those were close to mastery.

“The gods are in an antic humor,” Master Nikos said the night before the testing began.

He had invited the First Riders to dinner in his rooms. That was tradition, but this year the celebration was overlaid with grief. A year ago, three of the four had been Second Riders. Their predecessors had died in the Dance of the emperor’s jubilee.

Tonight they had saluted the dead, then resolutely put the memory aside. This was a time for thinking of the future, not the past.

“It’s good to know we have a future,” Andres said.

He was the oldest of them, and he seemed least comfortable in the uniform of a First Rider. He had been a Second Rider for twenty years and would have been content to stay at that rank for another twenty. His gift was for teaching novice riders and overseeing the Called.

He did not know how valuable he was. That was humility, Kerrec thought. Kerrec was sadly deficient in that virtue. He had not been born to it and he had shown no aptitude for it since.

Tonight Andres was more at ease than he had been since Nikos ordered him—on pain of dismissal—to accept his new rank. The Called were his charges, and he had come to know them all well. “They are remarkable,” he said. “There’s more raw power in them than I’ve ever seen.”

“More trained power, too,” said Gunnar. He had been a Beastmaster when he came, one of the few before this year who had had training in another order. He had just made journeyman when he was Called. “The Masters of the orders may take issue with it, if it seems they’re going to make a yearly habit of losing their best to the Mountain.”

“This may be an anomaly,” Curtius said. Next to Kerrec he was the youngest, but as if to compensate for that, he tended to take the reactionary view in any discussion. “After all we lost in the emperor’s Dance, the gods are giving us this great gift. Next year, maybe, we’ll be back to four or five eights each spring, and the usual range of ages and abilities.”

“Or not,” Gunnar said. “The world is changing. It’s not going back to what it was before, no matter how hard any of us tries.”

“You don’t know that,” said Curtius.

Gunnar glared at him under thick fair brows. He was a huge man from the far north. People there had accepted the empire, but they shared blood with the barbarian tribes. Some said they shared more than that—that they were loyal not only to their wild kin but to the One God who stood against the many gods of Aurelia.

Gunnar was a devoted son of the empire in spite of his broad ruddy face and his mane of yellow hair. “Have you been blind when you ride the Dance? Even in schooling, the patterns are clear. They’re not the same as before.”

“They’ll shift back,” Curtius said stubbornly. “They always do. We’ll make sure of it ourselves, come the Midsummer Dance.”

“Will we want to?” Gunnar demanded. “Think for once, if you can. We were locked into patterns that almost cost us the empire. It took a terrible toll on the school. Maybe we need to change.”

“Change for the sake of change can be worse than no change at all,” Curtius said.

Gunnar rose to pummel sense into him, but Nikos’s voice quelled them both. “Gentlemen! Save your blows for our enemies.”

“Gods know we have plenty of those,” Gunnar said, subsiding slowly. He kept a grim eye on Curtius.

Kerrec sat in silence. He had learned long since that wine did not blunt the edges. It made them worse. It helped somewhat to focus on the others’ voices, even when they bickered.

This would end soon enough. Then there would be the night to endure, and after that the days of testing. He did that now. He counted hours and days, and reckoned how he would survive them.



Master Nikos caught Kerrec as they were all leaving, slanting a glance at him and saying, “Stay a moment.”

Kerrec sighed inwardly. The others went out arm in arm, warm in their companionship. Watching them made Kerrec feel small and cold and painfully alone.

He stiffened his back. That was his choice. He had made it because he must.

Master Nikos had stood to see his guests out of the room. Once they were gone, he sat again and fixed Kerrec with a disconcertingly level stare.

Kerrec stayed where he was, on his feet near the door. He was careful to keep his face expressionless. So far he had evaded discovery, but this was the Master of the school. If anyone could see through him, it would be Nikos.

“You’re looking tired,” the Master said. “Will you be up for this? It’s a lot of candidates to test—and as skilled as the others are, they haven’t been First Riders long. It’s all new to them.”

“Not to Andres,” Kerrec said. “Gunnar is the best trainer of both riders and stallions that we have. They’ll do well enough.”

“And Curtius?”

Kerrec lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “He’ll rise to it. If he doesn’t, we’ll find a Second Rider who can take his place.”

The Master sighed. They both knew that was not nearly as easy as it sounded. But when he spoke, he said nothing of it. “There’s something else.”

Kerrec’s back tightened. Valeria, of course. The rider-candidate who could master all the stallions. The only woman who had been Called to the Mountain in a thousand years.

They had been evading the question of her all winter long. In the meantime she had settled remarkably well among the rest of the candidates of her year. Sometimes the elder riders could almost forget that she was there.

Now spring was past and the Called were ready to be tested. For that and for the Midsummer Dance that would follow, they needed their strongest riders. She was the strongest on the Mountain—not the most skilled by far, but her power outshone the greatest of them.

But Nikos said nothing of that. He said, “One of the guests for the testing has asked to see you.”

Kerrec had not been expecting that at all. Of course he knew that the guesthouses were full. So were all the inns and lodging houses. Half the private houses in the citadel had let out rooms to the friends and families of the Called.

They were all there to witness the final day of the testing. Kerrec could not imagine who would be asking for him by name. There were noblemen among the Called, but none related to him.

Maybe it was someone from his travels for the school, back before the broken Dance, when a First Rider could be spared to ride abroad. “So,” he said, “where can I find this person?”

“In the guesthouse,” Nikos answered. “The porter is expecting you.”

Kerrec bent his head in respect. Nikos smiled, a rare enough occasion that Kerrec stopped to stare.

“Go on,” said the Master. “Then mind you get some sleep tonight. You’ll be needing it.”

Sometimes, Kerrec thought, this man could make him feel as young as Valeria. It was not a bad thing, he supposed. It did not keep him humble, but it did remind him that he was mortal.



Once Kerrec had left the Master’s rooms for the solitude of the passage and the stair, he gave way briefly to exhaustion. Just for a moment, he let the wall hold him up.

He should go to bed. The guest, whoever it was, could wait until he had time to waste. He needed sleep, as the Master had said.

He needed it—but it was the last thing he wanted. In sleep was that hated voice whispering spells that took away yet more of his strength. Every night it was stronger. It seemed to be feeding on the Mountain’s power—but surely that was not possible. Apart from the white gods, only riders could do that.

Kerrec shuddered so hard he almost fell. If an enemy could corrupt the Mountain itself, even the gods might not be able to help the school. They would be hard put to help themselves.

Resolutely he put that horror out of his mind. The riders were weakened—perilously so—but the white gods were still strong. None of them had been corrupted or destroyed.

For now, he had a duty to perform. The Master had made it clear that he was to oblige a guest.

He straightened with care. If he breathed deeply enough, he could stand. After a moment he could walk.

Once he was in motion, he could keep moving. The guesthouse was not far at all, just across the courtyard from the Master’s house. A lamp was lit at its gate, and the porter was waiting as Nikos had said.

The old man smiled at Kerrec and bowed as low as if Kerrec had still been the emperor’s heir. “Sir,” he said. “Upstairs. The tower room.”

It was a nobleman, then. Kerrec wondered if he should be disappointed.

He bowed and thanked the porter, though it flustered the man terribly, and gathered himself to climb the winding stair. It was a long way up, and he refused to present himself as a feeble and winded thing. He took his time and rested when he must.

He was almost cool and somewhat steady when he reached the last door. The doors along the way had had people behind them, some asleep and snoring, others talking or singing or making raucous love. There was silence at the top, but a light shone under the door. He knocked softly.

“Enter,” said a voice he knew all too well.



His sister was sitting in a bright blaze of witchlight, with a book in her lap and a robe wrapped around her. She bore a striking resemblance to Valeria—much more so than he remembered. Valeria had grown and matured over the winter. Briana was some years older, but in that light and in those clothes, she could have been the same age as Valeria.

“What in the world,” Kerrec demanded, “are you doing here?”

“Good evening, brother,” Briana said sweetly. “It’s a pleasure to see you, too. Are you well? You look tired. How is Valeria?”

Kerrec let her words run past him. “You should never have left Aurelia. With our father gone to war on the frontier and the court being by nature fractious, for the princess regent to come so far from the center of empire—”

“Kerrec,” Briana said. She did not raise her voice, but he found that he had nothing more to say.

That was a subtle and rather remarkable feat. Kerrec had to bow to it, even while he wanted to slap his sister silly.

She closed her book and laid it on the table beside her chair, then folded her hands in her lap. “Sit down,” she said. “I suppose you’ve had enough wine. I can send for something else if you’d like.”

“No,” Kerrec said, then belatedly, “thank you. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

“First, sit,” she said.

Kerrec sighed vastly but submitted. Briana had changed after all. She was more imperious—more the emperor’s heir.

Once he was sitting, stiffly upright and openly rebellious, she studied him with a far more penetrating eye than Master Nikos had brought to bear. “You look awful,” she said. “Haven’t you been healing? You should be back to yourself by now. Not—”

Kerrec cut her off. “I’m well enough. I am tired—we all are. We lost a great store of power when our riders died. Now with so many of the Called to test, we’re stretched to our capacity.”

Briana’s eyes narrowed. He held his breath. Then she said, “Don’t push yourself too hard. You’ll make everything worse.”

“I’ll do,” Kerrec said with a snap of temper. “Now tell me. What brings the regent of the empire all the way to the Mountain when she should be safe in Aurelia?”

“I’m safe here,” she said. “I rode in with the Augurs’ caravan. There’s a flock of imperial secretaries camped in a house by the south gate. We’re running relays of messengers. And if that fails, there’s a circle of mages in Aurelia, ready to send me word if there’s even a hint of trouble.”

Kerrec had to admit that she had answered most possible objections—except of course the most important one. “The imperial regent is required to perform her office from the imperial palace.”

“The palace is wherever the emperor or his regent is.” Briana leaned toward him. “Come off your high horse and listen to me. I was summoned here. I had a foreseeing.”

That gave Kerrec pause—briefly. “You are not that kind of mage.”

“I am whatever kind of mage the empire needs,” Briana said. She was running short of patience. “I have to be here for the testing. I don’t know why—I didn’t see that far or that clearly. Only that I should come to the Mountain.”

“What, you were Called?”

“You, of all people, should not make light of that,” she said. “And no, I am most definitely not destined to abandon my office and become a rider. There’s something in the testing that I’m supposed to see. That’s all.”

Kerrec wondered about that, foolishly maybe, but maybe not. His power was broken but not gone. Flashes of understanding still came to him.

He let go his attack of temper. Much of it was fear, he had to admit. He was afraid for her safety and terrified that she would see what had become of him.

She saw no more clearly than anyone else—and as she had said, she was safe on the Mountain. He sighed and spread his hands. “Well then. You’re here. There’s no point in sending you away.”

“Even if you could,” she said.

He was sorely tempted, again, to hit her. He settled for a scowl.

She laughed. “You’re glad to see me. Admit it. You’ve missed me.”

He refused to take the bait. She kept on laughing, reminding him all too vividly of the headstrong child she had been before he was Called from the palace to the Mountain.

When finally she sobered, she said, “You should go to bed. You have three long days ahead of you.”

“I do,” he said. But he did not leave at once. It was harder to go than he would have thought. Even as annoyed as he was with his sister, he felt better than he had since he could remember.

“Listen,” she said. “Why don’t you stay here? It’s ungodly late, and there’s a maid’s room with no one in it. I promise I’ll kick you out of bed before the sun comes up.”

The temptation was overwhelming. He could think of any number of reasons to resist it. Still, in the end, weakness won. “An hour before sunup,” he said as the yawn broke through.

“An hour before sunup,” she agreed with a faint sigh. Maybe she was regretting her impulse.

Or maybe not. He never could tell with any woman, even his sister. Women were mostly out of his reckoning.

He knew already that with her there to watch over him, he was going to sleep well, maybe even without dreams. That alone was worth a night away from his too-familiar bed.




Eleven


Valeria had been dreaming of her family again, her mother and father and particularly her brother Rodry. For once, mercifully, she roused before the Unmaking came to mar the dream.

Something else had come instead—something that she was not sure she wanted to examine too deeply. It, or he, had been coming to her more and more often lately. At first the guilt had been so sharp she had fled the dream. Then little by little its edge had blunted.

Last night there had been no guilt. There had been a great deal of laughter and a burst of pleasure that went on and on.

When it was past, her body still thrummed with it. She let herself linger in the dream. She deliberately forgot dark hair and olive skin and keen hawk’s face and reveled in milk-white skin and fire-red mane and eyes as yellow and slanted as a wolf’s.

If that was a betrayal, then so be it. It was not she who had blown cold.

There was certain irony in waking from that dream, in that mood, to find Kerrec’s sister sitting cross-legged at the foot of her bed. Briana had a book in her lap and was reading quietly by witchlight.

She looked as if she had been there for quite some time. Since the sun was not even up yet, she must have come in very early.

Valeria enjoyed the luxury of waking slowly. Briana did not melt into the edges of her dream. She was really here.

“You heard the Call,” Valeria said.

Briana started a little. She had herself under control quickly, enough to say, “No. It was a premonition, that was all.”

Indeed, Valeria thought. But she only said, “It is good to see you.”

Briana smiled. She was much less obsessively dignified than her brother. “And you. I asked Master Nikos if I could accompany you for a day or two. He said that if you agreed, he had no objection.”

Valeria sat up. The rush of delight startled a grin out of her. “Really? He said that?”

“Would I lie?”

“Not you,” said Valeria.

“So? May I impose myself on you?”

“Of course,” Valeria said. “Though following a very junior rider about might not be—”

“It would be a complete pleasure,” Briana said. She paused. “If it would be more trouble for you than it’s worth—”

“Oh, no,” said Valeria, and she meant it. She had not known until she said it, how much she had missed Briana. It might be absurd and presumptuous, since Valeria was a soldier’s daughter and Briana was the emperor’s heir, but this was a friend. Better yet, she was a woman—and Valeria had been living with men for much too long.

She sprang out of bed and dived for her clothes. She was grinning so widely her jaws hurt. “Come on. Let’s appall the riders.”

Briana grinned back. She laid her book aside and went willingly where Valeria led.



At this hour, just before sunup, most of the riders were at breakfast in the dining hall. Valeria had stopped attracting attention some time since, but when she appeared with another woman behind her, the silence was abrupt.

They did not recognize Briana. She was dressed like one of them, and she was making no effort to look familiar.

That was an art. Valeria resolved to study it.

Breakfast was plain but plentiful, as always. Valeria dipped herself a bowl of hot porridge with a handful of berries sprinkled on it and a drizzle of cream. After a moment’s perceptible thought, Briana did the same.

Iliya and Batu were sitting at their usual table. They were halfway through a platter of sausages and bread and cheese, while Paulus watched them with his usual expression of faint disgust. Paulus was much too haughty to eat like a drover as any sensible rider learned to do.

“Riders work hard,” Iliya was reminding him between bites of sausage. “They earn their provender.”

“Not that hard,” Paulus said.

He had his back to the door. Iliya saw Valeria first, and then Briana.

His eyes widened. Unlike the other riders, he recognized the emperor’s heir. He opened his mouth to say so.

Batu elbowed him into silence. When that threatened to fail, he stuffed half a sausage into Iliya’s mouth and smiled at the women. “Good morning,” he said in his deep beautiful voice.

Valeria smiled back. “Good morning,” she answered. “The Master’s given us company today. Will we all be civil? Is it possible?”

Paulus was refusing to turn and see who was with Valeria. His shoulders were stiff with it. Briana, who was his cousin and knew him very well, slid onto the bench beside him and set down her bowl. She began to eat as if she belonged there.

Paulus choked on nothing at all. Briana pounded his back until he stopped, crimson-faced and with his eyes streaming. “What in the gods’ name are you doing here?” he demanded when he could talk.

“My brother asked the same thing,” Briana said. “You two are terribly alike.”

“Your brother is less stuffy,” Iliya opined. He grinned at Briana. He was a prince where he came from, and imperial rank did not impress him in the slightest. “The Master really gave you to us?”

“For a day or two,” said Briana. “I can fork hay with the worst of them. I even know how to groom a horse.”

“That’s more than Paulus did,” Iliya said, then added, “He’s better now.”

“I would hope so,” Briana said.

Valeria had noticed the year before when she was in the imperial city, how Briana seemed to know how to talk to anyone of any rank. She seemed perfectly at ease here, as she was everywhere that Valeria had ever seen her. She had the least pretension of any noble Valeria had yet met—not that Valeria had met many, but between Paulus and Kerrec, she had seen plenty of the less comfortable sort.

There was no point in being envious. Valeria could study and learn, if she could not exactly imitate. She doubted that Briana was even aware of what she did. She simply did it.

Still, Valeria found her mood a little sour as she finished breakfast. She stood up without looking to see if Briana was ready and made for the door, dropping her bowl in the cleaners’ barrel as she went by.

Briana caught up with her just outside the door, somewhat out of breath but not apparently offended. Valeria pushed down the uprising of guilt and sat on it.

All the teaching masters were busy with the Called, but there were still stalls to clean and water buckets to be filled and horses to exercise. The Third and Fourth Riders and the older candidates were detailed to oversee the first- and second-year candidates.

What the day lacked for time in the schoolroom, it easily gained in physical labor. It must have been grueling for an imperial princess.

Briana never so much as whimpered. She even rode with the others.

She was hesitant about that, but when older stallions were brought out for the candidates’ instruction, there was one more of them than usual. Some of the candidates growled. At least one of them yelped: a large hoof had come down on his foot.

The stallion who presented himself for Briana to ride was Kerrec’s own Petra. He slid a bland dark eye at Valeria and studiously ignored the rest of the students.

Briana greeted him with visible gladness. She mounted easily, like the lifelong rider she was.

If she was a little breathless, that was no wonder. No one outside the school ever sat on one of the white gods. It simply was not done.

The gods did as they pleased. Today, that was to teach the emperor’s daughter the beginnings of their art.

It was deceptively simple. They were asked to ride quietly in exact circles without variation of rhythm or figure, over and over until they had perfected the movement. The stallions would give nothing that the riders did not ask. That was the gods’ pleasure and their challenge.

Sabata was unusually tractable today. He walked and trotted and cantered politely, did precisely as Valeria asked, and offered none of his usual opinions on the subject.

Maybe he was ill. He might be a god, and a Great One at that, but his body was mortal.

When the lesson was done, Valeria examined him thoroughly. He seemed well enough. He was pensive, that was all—most unusual for him.

Something was brewing. Valeria paused with her hand on Sabata’s neck, searching the patterns that shaped the world. There was nothing there, nothing clear. The only word she could find for it was imminence.

Sabata shook his mane and snorted. Humans had to attach words to everything. It was a flaw in their creation.

So it was. Valeria dug fingers into his nape until his neck flattened and his lip wobbled in ecstasy. It was revenge of a sort—reminding him that he, too, in this form, had weaknesses.

He was in no way disconcerted by it. That was the trouble with gods. Nothing human could really touch them.

He nipped her, a sharp and startling pain, and departed at the trot for his stable. She stood gaping after him. In all his fits and fusses, he had never bitten her before.

Who could understand a god? She trudged in his wake, slightly humiliated but beginning in spite of herself to be amused.



“Testing isn’t only for the Called, is it?” Briana asked.

She had survived the day in remarkably good condition, considering. At dinner the riders’ stares had changed. Word was out. They knew who she was.

It seemed only reasonable, after dinner, for Valeria to divert Briana from the guesthouse toward the rooms she shared with Kerrec. “He’s gone for the testing,” she said, “and there’s more than enough room. Why be all alone in a cold tower when you can be comfortable?”

Briana needed a little persuasion, but Valeria persisted until she gave in. Now they were sitting by the fire in the study, sipping hot herb tea with honey and talking drowsily. They were both bone-tired, but neither was quite ready to sleep yet.

That was when Briana asked her question. “Even after you pass the testing of the Called,” she said, “the testing goes on. Doesn’t it? It never stops.”

Valeria nodded. “Even the Master is still tested. There’s never any end to it.”

“Magic is like that,” Briana said. “It never lets you rest.”

“Even you?”

“My magic is the empire.”

Briana said it simply, but it meant more than Valeria could easily grasp. Briana tucked up her feet and curled in the big carved chair, watching the dance of the flames. If Valeria opened her eyes just so, she could the patterns there. She wondered if Briana could.

Briana had been Called. That was not the name she gave it, but it was the truth. It was a different Call than Valeria’s or Kerrec’s. The empire was in it somehow.

One of the logs in the fire collapsed on itself, sending up a shower of sparks. The patterns broke and fell into confusion. Valeria’s sigh turned into a yawn.

She did not get up and go to bed just yet. “You’re resting here,” she said.

Briana smiled. “Better than I ever have. I could love this life. This place—these people. The stallions. To ride Petra, it was…” She trailed off.

“But you can’t stay,” Valeria said, “can you?”

Briana shook her head. She did not seem terribly sad, but her smile had died. “The Call takes you away from whatever order of magic you might have been sworn to before. The empire takes me away from everything. I was born for it. I belong to it.”

“Your brother—” Valeria began.

“My brother was born for the Mountain,” Briana said. “Even when he was a child, he’d run away from his duties to be with the horses. I ran away from lessons to hide behind my father’s chair and listen to councils.”

“Even lessons with horses?”

Briana’s lips twitched. “Well. Not those. But everything else. I’d bring one of my books sometimes and do my lessons during the dull parts.”

That made Valeria laugh. “Your father knew, didn’t he?”

“Of course he knew,” said Briana with the flash of a grin. “He never said a word—except years later, when he named me his heir. Then he said, ‘You’ve studied for this all your life. Now be what you knew you would be.’” She went somber suddenly. “I didn’t know. Not that my brother would be Called and the office would come to me. But the gods knew.”

“The gods make me tired,” Valeria said, yawning hugely. “Here, you take the bed. I’ll take the cot in the—”

“Nonsense,” Briana said, and would not hear of taking the larger bed even when Valeria pointed out that she had slept on the servant’s cot for most of last year. “Then I’ll be perfectly comfortable in it. Go on, you’re out on your feet.”

Valeria gave way. She was too tired to fight over it. Briana went off yawning, radiating a quiet happiness that made Valeria smile in spite of herself.



The bed was too large without Kerrec in it. Valeria lay on his side, hugging the pillow to herself and breathing deep.

It smelled of herbs and sunlight. She groaned. The servants had been there while Valeria was out, changing the sheets. There was not even his scent to wrap around her and help her sleep.

She did not want to dream of someone else tonight. She wanted Kerrec.

She had a wild thought of finding him in the First Riders’ hall. But she knew better than to try that. The riders scrupulously ignored certain facts of Valeria’s existence, one of which was that she did not sleep in the servant’s room in Kerrec’s quarters. There were no laws against it, since there had never been a woman rider, but there were proprieties—and those took a dim view of what the two of them were to each other.

Mostly she did not care. Now, in the middle of the candidates’ testing, she found she did. The testing was more important than her comfort.

If she wanted to be honest, tonight was no lonelier than the past few months of nights had been. It was colder without his warmth beside her, but his heart and mind had been elsewhere for longer than she had wanted to accept.




Twelve


The first two days of testing went on apart from the rest of the school. Valeria realized as the first day began that she was knotted tight.

There was no eruption of magic from the quarter of the citadel where the testing was being done. No word came of any candidate hurt or killed. The disaster of her year, when three of her group of eight died—one by magic, two put to death for causing it—had not happened again. As far as she could tell, the testing was going on without trouble.

It was maddening not to know what they were doing behind those walls. No one was supposed to know but the candidates and the riders who tested them. It was a mystery.

It was building up to something. What it was kept eluding Valeria, slipping into the core of her, hiding behind the Unmaking.

Sometimes she almost had it. Then it slithered away. It made her think of blind wriggling worms and flyblown corpses.

She almost would rather have the Unmaking than that. There was no one she could tell, because if she told, then she would have to confess the rest of it. Even Kerrec could not know what was inside her. No one could know.

All she could do was watch and wait and be ready for whatever came.



The last day of the testing, the one day that was open to the world, dawned clear and bright. “It’s never rained on a testing day,” Iliya said at breakfast. “Not in a thousand years.”

“Legend and exaggeration,” Paulus said with his customary sourness.

Iliya mimed outrage. “You doubt the gods?”

Paulus snarled into his porridge. Iliya grinned and declared victory.

Their banter was familiar and somehow poignant. Valeria ate distractedly. She could feel the power rising under her, the Mountain preparing to complete what it had begun. That other thing, the thing she could not speak of, had gone quiet—which did not reassure her at all.



The testing ground was crowded already when Valeria came to it. Long rows of benches were set up along the sides of the arena, adding to the tiers of stone seats that had been built into the walls. The riders’ tiers still had room and there were chairs left in the nobles’ box, but people were standing everywhere else.

Briana could have claimed a cushioned chair in the nobles’ box high above the eastward end, but she settled between Valeria and Batu on the lowest tier of the north side, with her feet brushing the edge of the raked sand.

Valeria took a deep breath. Countless patterns were coming together here. All the candidates, their families, the riders, the people who lived in the citadel and served the Schools of Peace and War, the stallions in whose name it all existed, the Ladies who were greater than gods, were part of this.

Every year for a thousand years, that had been true. It was truer this year, because there were so many Called. Some of the riders looked as if their heads ached. The stronger they were, the more they must be able to see.

Kerrec was not there yet. He was in charge of the candidates, along with the rest of the First and Second Riders. They would watch from the sidelines, making sure those who failed were taken care of and those who succeeded knew what to do.

The testing was devastatingly simple. For this many candidates, three eights of stallions entered in procession, saddled and bridled but unburdened by riders. The candidates came in three eights at a time.

Each candidate chose a stallion, which was a test in itself, then did his best to mount and ride. If he got as far as that, the nature of the ride itself was a test and a reckoning. The worst simply sat there, with the stallion motionless under them. The best were offered a few of the movements that, with training, would evolve into the Dance of Time.

It was a long testing—so long that they paused twice for water and refreshment. The stallions were merciless in their winnowing. By midday, twenty candidates had managed to ride their chosen stallions through some fraction of the movements. Three times that number had failed.

Many of those who passed were older, and nearly all were mages of other orders. The rest failed in various ways—failed to choose, failed to mount, failed to understand that to ride one of the white gods, there had to be complete humility. No man could master a god, but he could become that god’s partner in the Dance.

Some of them left on stretchers. Others limped or walked away, but were not followed or rebuked. The Call itself was a great honor. Failure was no dishonor.

It was painful for Valeria to watch them. She could not look at Kerrec at all or let herself be aware of him. Her skin felt raw and her throat was aching. Her heart kept trying to pound its way out of her chest.

She clung for support to the stallions’ calm. They knew exactly what they were doing.

As noon passed and the sun tilted toward the west, ten more received the gods’ approval. The eleventh made Valeria sit up. It was the boy who had found her the day she went off Sabata. Lucius, that was his name. He looked rather small and very young, but Petra chose him and carried him well, dancing for him as the stallions had danced for few others.

The more elaborate the dance, the stronger the power. Valeria knew that. The stallion who had carried her in her testing had been a Great One like Petra and Sabata. He had danced for her a part of the Great Dance.

Lucius did not get that, but what he got was enough for a murmur of delight and a long ripple of applause. He slid to the ground and staggered, a feeling Valeria remembered well. His grin spread from ear to ear.

He was the last. Valeria remembered, too, when she was last, how the crowd had erupted, and how the riders had overwhelmed everyone who passed the test, laughing and shouting.

Today they seemed stunned by the length of it. All thirty-one new rider-candidates hung about in the arena, blinking and wondering what to do next. The stallions stood in a double line like a guard of honor, but they were not guarding the candidates.

They were waiting for something. Valeria could feel it coming. It was like a storm rising, but the air was clear and the sky cloudless blue. The white cone of the Mountain rose serenely above the eastward wall.

She lowered her eyes from it to the gate through which the stallions had entered, long hours ago. There was a horse standing in it.

It was not one of the stallions. They were all greys—shades of white or silver or dapple or grey. This was a sturdy, cobby creature like them, saddled and bridled as they were, but its color was rich deep red, its mane and tail and legs to the knee glossy black.

A distant part of Valeria named the color. Bay. There was a star on the broad forehead between the dark intelligent eyes.

Valeria rose and bowed low, all the way to the sand.

The bay Lady walked slowly into the arena. The sand was pocked with hoofprints. Her big black hooves dug deeper and yet danced lighter than any of the stallions’. She was lighter in the leg and slimmer in the neck, as a mare should be, but her quarters were deep and broad and she moved with soft power.

There was not a sound in that whole place. All patterns had gathered to her. Every eye was on her.

She knew it, but unlike the stallions, she did not care. Mortal foolishness was not her concern—and to her mind, awe was foolish. So was the thought that rang in the ether, that nothing like this had happened in all the years of the testing. The Ladies never came down from the Mountain. They never troubled themselves with these mortal games.

This Lady had troubled herself with parts of Valeria’s testing. Now it seemed she had another testing to perform. The candidates were all standing, staring, not knowing what to do.

The riders who watched over them were in no better state. Valeria saw Kerrec near the end of the line, doing and saying nothing. His face wore no expression.

She wondered if she should move, once she had straightened from her deep bow. But the Lady’s glance told her to be still.

She bent her head. The gods were incalculable. That was a commonplace of priestly doctrine—and rider doctrine, too.

The Lady came straight toward her, then veered slightly to stand in front of Briana.

Briana had been silent through the whole testing, watching as they all did, the good and the bad. She looked up when the Lady stopped. Her face was blank but her eyes were wide and bright.

She could refuse. She was given that gift.

She stepped onto the sand. The Lady turned as each stallion had done in the choosing, inviting a candidate to mount.

Briana hesitated. For an instant Valeria thought she would refuse after all. But then she took the reins in her hand and caught a hank of black mane just at the withers and set her foot in the stirrup. She mounted gracefully—of course she would. She had been riding since before she could walk.

The stallions had danced. The Lady Danced. It was a dance of cadence and of modulated paces, step by step and movement by movement. It carried Briana through the curves and swooping lines of one of the great patterns, the pattern that foretold a certainty.

What that certainty was, the Lady did not say. There were no Augurs there to interpret it. No one had expected the testing of the Called to turn into a Great Dance.

Valeria felt the pattern in the streams of magic that ran through her body. She knew better than to try to impose understanding on it. That would come when it was ready.

The last movement of the Dance, the exuberant coda after the singing power of the trot in place, was a leap higher than a man’s head, body level with the earth she had scorned, and a sudden, flashing kick that made the air gasp. If any man had stood there, his skull would have burst.

Valeria knew that for a clear and terrible truth. She had seen it happen.

There was nothing but air today. This was pure delight, the joy of a god in the living flesh. Briana laughed, a whoop of joy.

The Lady came back to earth again, dancing into stillness, snorting lightly. That was laughter, too. She had changed the world in ways that no mortal was prepared to understand. Her mirth rippled through Valeria’s blood and bones.

It was like a draft of strong wine. Valeria reeled, but she was grinning.

On the Lady’s back, Briana was grinning, too. No one else was. All the men were blank, stunned. None of them understood. It was beyond them.

Briana dismounted as the candidates had, dizzily, clinging for steadiness to the Lady’s neck. The Lady did not seem to mind. Her nostrils fluttered. She was whickering as a mare does to her foal.

The sound was so tender and yet so imperious that Valeria found her eyes stinging with tears. It was meant for her, too, in its way—and for all of them, whether or not they could understand.




Thirteen


The uproar this year was less pronounced than it had been when Valeria, having become champion of the testing, was unmasked as a woman.

Briana had never pretended to be anything but what she was. What exactly that was at the moment, no one knew, but Master Nikos decreed that the matter would be decided tomorrow. Today the Called would celebrate their elevation to rider-candidates. There would be no further distractions.

Master Nikos had learned a great deal in the past year. They all had.

Valeria had spent her own feast of celebration in Kerrec’s study, cleaning and tidying. She had every intention of doing the same again, but Briana insisted that they both go. “I would really rather be in the stable,” she said as they shared a bath and put on festival clothes, “but this is duty. The stable—and the Lady—will be there in the morning.”

“You believe that?” Valeria asked.

Briana nodded. “She promised.”

“Then it is true,” Valeria said.

“All of it,” said Briana. She was standing perfectly straight, not moving except to speak. Her maids had come down from the tower to dress her properly, which looked like a great ordeal.

No doubt she was used to it. Valeria, quickly and comfortably dressed in the grey coat and doeskin breeches of a rider-candidate, perched on a stool and watched. It was fascinating, the transformation of a stablehand into an imperial princess.

Briana’s gown was very simple compared to some Valeria had seen in the emperor’s court, but it was made of silk that shimmered now gold, now scarlet. She wore a collar of gold set with bloodred stones, and a net of gold and rubies confined the coiled mass of her hair.

Valeria sighed faintly. She never had cared for clothes and pretty things the way her sisters did, but there was something about silk.

Her fingers smoothed the wool of her coat. She had earned it with blood and tears. She would never trade it for anything. But she could be tempted—almost—by that beautiful gown.

Briana was still Briana, even in imperial splendor. She refused to mince down the corridors and across the courtyards like a court lady. She strode out with a swish and swirl of skirts, which would probably have given her maids the vapors.

It made for a grand entrance. The dining hall was full, but the diners’ cheer seemed rather subdued. Briana’s arrival changed that. They all stood up without prompting and applauded as she made her way to the front of the room.

The high platform had a long table set up on it, with all the new riders sitting there. The nobles were seated just below and to the right of the head table—across from the riders, whose table ran along the wall to the left. Briana would have gone to the nobles’ table, but the rider-candidates came down in a mob and carried her up to join them.

They carried Valeria, too, over her vigorous protests. She could not stop them. There were too many and too determined.

When they set her on the platform, she finally got the words out. “I don’t belong here! This isn’t my year.”

“You were cheated of it last year,” Lucius said. He was the ringleader and proud of it. “We’re giving it to you now.”

One of the others pressed a cup into her hands. It looked and felt very old, a broad shallow chalice of silver engraved with intertwining figures of men on horses. The same image was carved on the arch of the great gate of the citadel. She wondered, rather distantly, which of them had come first.

There was wine in the cup. “Drink!” the rider-candidates said in chorus. “Drink! Drink! Drink!”

She looked down from the high table at the riders below. None of them had moved to stop this. Kerrec was not even looking at her. His head was bent and his hands wrapped around a cup, as if something fascinating swam inside it.

Her jaw hurt. She was clenching it. She relaxed as much as she could, and made herself stop caring what Kerrec did or thought.

She focused on Master Nikos instead. He had an expression almost of curiosity, as if he was waiting patiently to see how this game played out.

He was not angry. She saluted him with the champion’s cup and drank as deep as she could stand.

The wine went straight to her head. Instead of making her dizzy, it made her wonderfully, marvelously happy. Nothing mattered then—not Kerrec, not the riders, not anything.

She passed the cup to Briana. That met with a roar of approval.

These rider-candidates had none of the rigidity of their elders. They loved a spectacle. If that spectacle shattered the traditions of a thousand years, then so it did. This was a new world. They would make new traditions for it.



Valeria woke with the mother of headaches. She vaguely remembered leaving the hall, late and so full she could barely move, but between the hall and her bed, she had no memory at all.

Slowly she realized that not all the pounding she heard was inside her skull. Someone was beating the door down.

Briana in the servant’s room was much closer to the door—and should have been rocked out of bed by the noise. But the hammering went on and Briana made no move to stop it. Valeria staggered out of bed, cursing the arrogance of imperial princesses, and stumped scowling toward the door.

Paulus stepped back quickly at sight of her face. He had a healthy respect for her powers. She lightened her scowl somewhat, but there was no getting rid of all of it. That part was pain.

Paulus scowled back. “Master Nikos is asking for you,” he said.

She had been expecting that. Yesterday’s adventures had had nothing to do with her, but the riders would be needing someone to blame. She left Paulus standing in the doorway while she went to wash and dress.

On the way, she peered into the servant’s room. The bed had been slept in, but there was no one in it. Briana was gone.

That took a little of the edge off her temper, but not much. She had to reach inside herself for calm, and then for focus.

She needed both. Paulus did not move out of her way when she reached the door. He had a look that made her eyes narrow. “What is it?” she asked.

His face was stiff. Not that that was anything unusual—but this was a different kind of stiffness. Valeria pulled him back into the room and thrust him into the nearest chair. “Talk,” she said.

He scowled even more blackly than before. “It may be nothing,” he said. “I could be imagining it. I’m not an Augur. I was supposed to be one, but I was Called instead.”

Valeria clenched her fists to keep from shaking him. “You saw something,” she said. “When the Lady Danced.”

He nodded tightly. “Did it occur to you to wonder why, of all the hundreds of people at the testing, there was not one Augur? You’d think one would come just to watch. It’s not as if there were a tradition against it.”

“Are you saying there’s some sort of conspiracy?” Valeria demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Paulus. He said it without exasperation or excessive temper, which for him was unusual. “I saw things in the patterns of the Dance. It was like writing on a page.”

“What did it say?” Valeria was working hard to cultivate patience. Paulus was not going to come to the point until he was ready. Considering how reluctant he obviously was, she wondered if she wanted to hear it.

“I’m not sure what it said,” Paulus said. “I can tell you what I think it said. It was like a poem in a language I never properly learned. There was a stanza about the school and about change, and about how the old had to die to make room for the new. Then there was a sequence about the war. How the only way to win it was by doing nothing. Or by embracing nothingness.”

Valeria’s stomach clenched. “Embracing nothingness? Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not!” he snapped. “I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. I should be telling the Master. Except when I try, it all seems too foolish to bother him with.”

“Believe me,” said Valeria, “there’s nothing foolish about this. What else did you see?”

“What else should I have seen?”

She took a deep breath, praying for patience. “That’s what I’m asking. You haven’t said anything we haven’t all seen, one way or another. What’s the rest of it?”

“I don’t know,” said Paulus. If he had not been so consciously dignified, he would have been squirming in his chair. “I can only tell you what I think it was. There was more about the war. Kings dying and kings being made. And the Mountain. That was the leap at the end. It said, ‘The Mountain is not what you think it is.’”

“That is cryptic,” Valeria said.

“I told you,” he said.

“What do you think it means?”

He flung up his hands. “The gods must know, because I don’t. It’s bad news for us, whatever it is. It says we think we’re safe, but we dance over the abyss. We trust ourselves and our powers, but they’re a delusion. We bury ourselves in tradition, and tradition buries us. This war isn’t on the frontier at all, though there will be battles enough there. It’s here, in our citadel. It will be our undoing, unless we wake up and give it its name.”

Valeria had gone cold inside. Augur or not, Paulus had seen the truth. He had seen the Unmaking.

“You have to tell the Master,” she said, though her throat tried to close and stop her.

“What can he do that he’s not already doing?”

“He needs to know,” Valeria said. “The threat’s not just to the emperor or his army. It’s to us. To the Mountain.”

“We don’t know that,” Paulus said. “I could be all wrong.”

“You’re afraid,” she said.

For once he did not give way to her baiting. She devoutly wished he would. She was afraid, too—deathly afraid. All he had to protect him was the fear that he was wrong. She knew he was right.

“Look,” she said, “Midsummer Dance is in three days. There will be Augurs there. If the Lady Danced the truth, the stallions will, too. The Augurs will see it and everyone will be sure.”

“And if they don’t?”

“If it’s there, they’ll see it.”

Paulus nodded. This gave him a graceful way out of his dilemma. It gave Valeria one, too—though she had far more to be afraid of than he did.

He pulled himself to his feet and smoothed his expression back into place. When it was as haughty as it usually was, he said, “We’d better go. We’re keeping the Master waiting.”

Valeria nodded. Neither of them would talk about this again—until they had to. That was understood.



She expected Paulus to bring her to the Master’s study, but he went on past it. By that time she was almost fit for human company. The worst of her fears were buried and the rest were tightly reined in. She could face the Master with, she hoped, a suitable degree of calm.

Master Nikos was waiting for her in the riding court nearest the Master’s rooms. He had been training one of the young stallions in his care and was just finishing, with a lump of sugar and a pat on the neck, when Valeria came through the arch onto the sand.

Another stallion was waiting, equipped for instruction with the heavy training headstall. His groom stood by him, holding the loops of the long soft line.

The groom took the young stallion’s bridle and led him out. Master Nikos took charge of the older stallion. He was very old, this one, so old he looked like a glass full of light.

Valeria bowed low. This one she did not know, and she had thought she knew every stallion in the citadel.

“This is Oda,” the Master said. “Mount.”

Valeria knew better than to argue. She was too curious in any case—and wary enough to pause before she mounted, to stroke the long arched nose and meet the wise dark eye. There was no threat of humiliation there. This was a test, but it was honest.

She mounted and settled lightly in the saddle. The back under her was broad and, for all its age, still strong.

Oda’s stride when he moved out on the circle at the Master’s request had a swoop and swing that made her laugh. Sabata moved like that, but he was young and still a bit uncertain. This stallion had been instructing riders for longer than Valeria or even Kerrec had been alive.

The Master stood silent in the middle of the circle. This was not his lesson, then. The stallion was teaching it.

Valeria breathed in time with those sweeping strides. She let her body flow into them, riding without rein or stirrup, legs draped softly, hands on thighs. Anger, frustration, even fear and dread of what Paulus had told her, drained away. There was only the thrust and sway of the movement, the sensation of power surging up through those broad quarters. Follow, was the lesson. Simply follow.

She had been taught this way when she first arrived in the citadel, at night and in secret, because she was not allowed the other riders’ instruction. It was familiar, so much so that she forgot the man who was standing in the circle, watching. She was alone with the stallion, who was unquestionably a Great One. He felt almost as vast in the spirit as one of the Ladies.

As if the thought had brought her, Valeria opened her eyes to find the bay Lady there with Briana on her back. They were watching as the Master was, without moving or saying a word.

The Great One’s back coiled. Every instinct screamed at Valeria to snap into a ball or at the very least to clamp on with her legs and cling frantically to the mane on the heavy arched neck. She breathed deep once and then again, for focus and calm. When Oda went up, she rode with him.

He was transcribing patterns in the air as the Lady, the day before, had transcribed them in the sand of the testing ground. These were a part of the whole, but what the whole was or what it meant, Valeria was too close to see.

She did her best to remember the nature and placement of each leap—not easy when she was caught up in them. It was easier if she let her memory of the Lady’s Dance run in the back of her mind. They fit together.

The last leap ended in the center of the circle, directly in front of the Master. He kept rider’s discipline, with his back straight and his face still, but he looked tired and old.

She had never thought of him as old before, even with his grey hair and his lined face. “Is it going to be as bad as that?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “The emperor’s Dance isn’t over. You salvaged a future, but there’s no telling whether that future will be worse than the one you turned us away from. And now…”

“And now it gets stranger,” Briana said when he did not finish. She ran her hand down the Lady’s neck. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“None of us was,” the Master said. “Even the Augurs are at a loss. We’ve always had at least some glimmer of what is to come—but now we’re stepping blindly into the dark.”

Valeria bit her tongue before she said, “Not the dark. The Unmaking.” That was what the Unmaking did. It swept away all that was or had been or ever would be.

“It’s the end of something,” Briana said to the Master through the fog of Valeria’s maundering. “So many changes. Do you feel them bubbling up under your feet?”

“I feel them,” Master Nikos said. “I wish to the gods I did not.”

Valeria swung down from Oda’s back. She wanted, suddenly, to be done with this. “What is it, then? What did you call me here to do?”

“To prove something,” the Master said. “I still am not sure…” He caught Oda’s eye and stopped. The stallion’s ears had flattened briefly. It was a warning, and one he was well trained to listen to.

He let his breath out sharply. “As you will,” he said to the stallion. Then to Valeria he said, “You will ride the Dance. Oda will carry you. He insists on it.”

Valeria felt her heart stop, then start again, hammering hard. “The Dance? The Midsummer Dance? But—”

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was testy. “In the ordinary way of things, you would be years from earning any such honor. But the stallions have made their will known. You must ride, and Oda must carry you. No matter how dangerous that may be, they are adamant.”

“‘Even the Master is their servant,’” Valeria recited.

He leveled a glare at her. “This is not a game, child.”

“No?” said Valeria with a flash of sudden temper. “Aren’t we playthings for the gods?”

“I would hope we may be more than that,” Briana said.

The air that had been crackling between Valeria and the Master went somewhat more safely quiet. Briana nodded to herself. “Good. We can’t have you fighting. We need you—all of you—more than ever.”

Master Nikos cleared his throat. “This is a difficult thing. What we’re seeing here, and foreseeing, and dreading, is that our life, our art and magic, will never be the same again.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Briana asked. “For years, you’ve cut yourself off from everything but your own art and knowledge and concerns. Time was when the names of the Master and the First Riders were as well known as the emperor’s own. Now hardly anyone could name you, let alone the others—and few of those who know can be said to care. You are the empire’s heart, and yet not only has the empire all but forgotten you, you yourselves have forgotten what you are supposed to be.” She met his shock with a hard, clear stare. “In the old days, riders from the Mountain would follow the emperor to war. They fought beside him and Danced the outcome of his battles, and often won them for him—or died in the trying. The emperor has sworn that this year, this war, will break the back of the barbarian horde. Where were you when he called for his mages? What were you doing when his armies marched to the border?”

“Lady,” Master Nikos said in a soft, still voice, “we have fought our own kind of battle on your father’s behalf, and taken losses that will be years in the mending. If you command us to send riders to the war, we will obey. But we have precious little strength to spare.”

Briana offered no apology, but her gaze softened somewhat. “If I had such authority, I would bid you continue to heal, but be prepared to open your gates and bring down your walls.”

“All signs do seem to point in that direction,” Master Nikos said. He sounded as exhausted as he looked. “We’ll do what we can, lady.”

“That’s all anyone can ask of you,” Briana said.

Master Nikos was clearly not happy to have been read so harsh a lesson by a woman a third his age, but it had made him stop and think. After a while he said, “We’ll perform the Dance as the gods will it. Then may they help us all.”




Fourteen


There was no inquisition of riders, either to settle the question of the Lady’s testing and choosing or to protest the word that came down from the Master’s study. Valeria was to ride the Midsummer Dance on a stallion who had withdrawn to the high pastures before Kerrec came to the Mountain. That gave the Dance the Master, the four First Riders, two Second Riders, and one rider-candidate.

The news reached Kerrec after he left the schoolroom, late in the morning after the testing. He had thirty-one new pupils, some older than he, and they were not the easiest he had ever had. He was mildly surprised not to see a thirty-second, but his sister had been keeping out of sight since the testing.

That was a small mercy. Thirty-one men and boys had discovered that there was no reprieve from either testing or studies. Those who had come from the legions were even less inclined to suffer in silence than spoiled lords’ sons or haughty journeyman mages. “It’s just like the bloody army,” one of them had grumbled when they straggled into the schoolroom.

“At least in the bloody army they let you sleep it off after you’ve won a battle,” someone else said, yawning till his jaw cracked. “Up at bloody dawn to clean bloody stalls. I thought we signed on to be riders, not stablehands.”

Kerrec had a lecture for that, which he decided not to deliver. They were in awe of his rank, at least, and he was kind to their aching heads and churning stomachs, though he doubted any of them was aware of it. He set them simple exercises that would engage their stumbling brains and teach them—or in many cases remind them of—the beginnings of focus.

He could use a course of that himself, he reflected grimly as the rider-candidates dispersed to their afternoon lessons. He would follow them later, to judge each one and mount him accordingly on the stallion who would be his schoolmaster.

He was on his way to Petra’s stable and a lesson of his own when he crossed paths with Gunnar, who was on the same errand. Gunnar was frowning. “Bad news?” Kerrec asked him as they went on together.

“That depends,” Gunnar said. “Did you know our most troublesome pupil is riding the Dance at Midsummer?”

“Valeria?” Kerrec could not find it in him to be surprised. “How?”

“Another whim of the gods,” Gunnar said. “Oda is carrying her—the old one.”

“I thought he had died in that body,” Kerrec said.

“Apparently not.” Gunnar’s frown deepened to a scowl. “A Lady comes to the testing and makes an impossible choice. A Great One returns from the dead to dance the Dance with a novice barely past the Call. And we were thanking the gods that there were no women Called. We were too complacent.”

So they were, Kerrec thought. Gunnar went his way, to find his lofty Alta and school the lesser figures of the Dance. Petra was waiting for Kerrec to do the same. His groom was not Valeria as it should have been—it was one of the others of that year, Kerrec’s cousin Paulus.

From his expression, which was even more sour than usual, Paulus had heard the news. Valeria’s way had never been easy, but this would make it even more difficult.

Kerrec wrenched himself into focus. The truth, his heart insisted on reminding him, was that of the eight who would ride the Dance, the greatest danger to it was not Valeria. It was Kerrec.

Valeria lacked training. Kerrec lacked worse. He lacked strength, focus, and full control over his magic. The voice inside him was whispering its poison even in daylight. Sometimes he could not see the sun for the cloud of hatefulness around him.

Petra would protect him, just as Oda was clearly meant to protect Valeria. This was not supposed to be a Great Dance, in which the fabric of time itself could be unraveled and then rewoven. It was a Dance of foreseeing. It opened the future, but not to alter it. It was meant to read the patterns only, then chart a course through them.

The emperor’s Augurs would be there, looking for signs of hope or warning for the war. That was all they would expect and all they would see.

Kerrec turned his back on the voices inside—both the one that laughed and mocked and egged him on to death and worse, and the one that told him he was wrong to do this. He was not strong enough.

With Petra he would be. He had to be. He mounted, took up the reins and began the day’s exercises.





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