“Why? What’s up there?”
“Ice and snow and pitiless stone, and air too thin to breathe,” he said, “and, they say, a gate of time and the gods. The Great Ones come through it into this world, and the Ladies come and go, or so it’s said. It’s beyond human understanding.”
“You believe that?”
“I can’t disprove it,” he said.
“Someday maybe someone will.”
“Not you,” he said firmly, “and not now.”
She turned in his arms. He looked like an emperor on an old coin, with his clean-carved face and narrow arched nose—not at all surprising, since those bygone emperors had been his ancestors—but lately he had learned to unbend a little. In spite of his stern words, he was almost smiling.
“Not before spring,” she conceded. She kissed him, taking her time about it.
The baby stirred between them, kicking so hard she gasped. He clutched at her. She pushed him away, half laughing and half glaring. “Stop that! I’m not dying. Neither is she.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “You looked so—”
“Shocked? She kicks like a mule.” Valeria rubbed her side where the pain was slowly fading. “Go on, go to sleep. I’ll be there in a while.”
He eyed her narrowly. “You promise? No wandering out to the stable again?”
“Not tonight,” she said. “It’s too cold.”
He snorted softly, sounding exactly like one of the stallions. Then he yawned. It was late and dawn came early, even at the end of winter. He stole one last kiss before he retreated to the warmth of their bed.
After a few moments she heard his breathing slow and deepen. She wrapped the blanket tighter.
Inside her where the stallions always were, standing in a ring of long white faces and quiet eyes, the moon was shining even more brightly than on the Mountain. Power was waking, subtle but clear, welling up like a spring from the deep heart of the earth. The world was changing again—for good or ill. She was not prophet enough to know which.
She turned away quickly from the window and the moon and dived into bed. Kerrec’s warmth was a blessing. His voice murmured sleepily and his arms closed around her, warding her against the cold.
Kerrec was gone when she woke. Breakfast waited on the table by the fire, with a Word on it to keep the porridge hot and the cream cold. Valeria would rather have gone to the dining hall, but she had to smile at the gift.
She was ravenously hungry—no more sickness in the mornings, thank the gods. She scraped the bowl clean and drank all of the tea. Then she dressed, scowling as she struggled to fasten the breeches. She was fast growing out of them.
Her stallions were waiting for her in their stable. She was not to clean stalls now by the Healer’s order—fool of a man, he persisted in thinking she was delicate. But she was still riding, and be damned to anyone who tried to stop her.
Sabata pawed the door of his stall as she walked down the aisle. The noise was deafening. Oda, ancient and wise, nibbled the remains of his breakfast. The third, Marina, whickered beneath Sabata’s thunderous pounding.
She paused to stroke Marina’s soft nose and murmur in his ear. He was older than Sabata though still rather young, taller and lighter-boned, with a quiet disposition and a gentle eye. He had been the last stallion that old Rugier trained, a Third Rider who never rose higher or wanted to—but he had had the best hands in the school.
Rugier had died after Midwinter Dance, peacefully in his sleep. The next morning Marina moved himself into the stall next to Oda’s and made it clear that Valeria was to continue his training.
That was also the morning when Valeria confessed to Master Nikos that she was expecting a child. She had planned it carefully, rehearsing the words over and over until she could recite them in her sleep. But when she went to say them, there was a great to-do over Rugier’s passing, and then there was Marina declaring his choice of a rider-candidate over all the riders in the school.
“I suppose,” Master Nikos said after they had retreated from the stable to his study, “we should be thinking of testing you for Fourth Rider. You’re young for it, but we’ve had others as young. That’s less of a scandal than a rider-candidate with three Great Ones to train and be trained by.”
“Are you sure I’m ready?” Valeria asked. “I don’t want to—”
“The stallions say you are,” Nikos said. “I would prefer to wait until after Midsummer—if you can be so patient.”
“Patience is a rider’s discipline,” Valeria said. “Besides, I suppose it’s better to wait until after the baby is born.”
For a long moment she was sure he had not heard her. His mind was ranging far ahead, planning the testing and no doubt passing on to other matters of more immediate consequence.
Then he said, “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
Valeria had been standing at attention. Her knees almost gave way. “You—how—”
“We’re not always blind,” Nikos said.
She scraped her wits together. “How long have you known?”
“Long enough to see past scandal to the inevitability of it all,” he said. “The stallions are fierce in your defense.”
“They’re stallions,” she said. “That’s what they’re for.”
Master Nikos sighed gustily. “You, madam, are more trouble than this school has seen in all its years. You are also more beloved of the stallions than any rider in memory. Sooner or later, even the most recalcitrant of us has to face the truth. You are not ours to judge. You belong to the gods.”
Valeria’s mouth was hanging open. She shut it carefully. “Do the other riders agree with you?”
“Probably not,” he said, “but sooner or later they’ll have to. We all profess to serve the gods. That service is not always as easy or simple as we might like.”
“I’m going to keep and raise this child,” she said. She made no effort to keep the defiance out of her voice. “I won’t give her up or send her out for fostering.”
Master Nikos neither laughed nor scowled. He simply said, “I would expect no less.”
He had caught Valeria completely off balance. It was a lesson, like everything else in this place. People could change. Minds could shift if they had to. Even a senior rider could accept the unacceptable, because there was no other choice.
In this early morning at the end of winter, three months after Master Nikos had proved that not everything a rider did was predictable, the stallions were fresh and eager. So were the riders who came to join Valeria in the riding hall. The patterns they transcribed in the raked sand were both deliberate and random—deliberate in that they were training exercises, random in that they were not meant to open the doors of time or fate.
Valeria could see those patterns more clearly the longer she studied in the school. She had to be careful not to lose herself in them. The baby changed her body’s balance, but it was doing something to her mind as well. Some things she could see more clearly. Others barely made sense at all.
Today she rode Sabata, then Marina, then Oda—each set of figures more complex than the last. Her knees were weak when she finished with Oda, but she made sure no one saw. The last thing she needed was a flock of clucking riders. They fussed enough as it was, as if no other woman in the history of the world had ever been in her condition.
It was only a moment’s weakness. By the time she had run up the stirrups and taken the reins, she was steady again. She could even smile at the riders who were coming in, and face the rest of the morning’s duties without thinking longingly of her bed.
This would end soon enough—though she suspected the last of it would seem interminable. She unsaddled Oda and rubbed him down, then turned him out in one of the paddocks. He broke away from her like a young thing, bucking and snorting, dancing his delight in the bright spring sun.
Chapter Three
Morag left the caravan in one of the wide stone courts of the citadel. “Be sure you take your medicine for three mor
e days,” she warned the caravan master by way of farewell, “or the fever will be back, no better than before.”
“Yes, my lady,” the man said. “I won’t miss a dose, my lady.”
“See that you don’t,” she said. She considered reminding him that she was not a noblewoman and had no slightest desire to be one, but that battle was long lost. She fixed him with a last stern glare, at which he duly and properly flinched, then judged it best to let him be.
She found a groom to look after her mule and cart and paid him a silver penny to guard the belongings in the cart. Not that that was strictly necessary—there was a Word of guard and binding on them—but the boy had the lean and hungry look of a young thing growing too fast for himself.
He seemed glad enough to take the penny. He told her in careful detail where to find the one she was looking for, although he said, “You won’t get that far. They keep to themselves, that kind do.”
“I’m sure they do,” Morag said and thanked him. He seemed a little startled by that. Manners here on the Mountain were not what they might be.
Too many nobles, not enough common sense. She shook her head as she made her way through this unexpected place.
She had expected a castle with a village of farmers nearby to keep it fed. This had the fields and farms all around it, but it was much more than a fortress. It was a city of no mean size, built on the knees of the Mountain.
Ordinary people lived in it, servants and artisans and tradesmen. There were markets and shops, taverns and inns, and once she passed a theatre hung with banners proclaiming some grand entertainment direct from the empire’s capital.
The groom had warned her not to wander to the west side—that, he said, was the School of War. The greater school lay to the north and east, toward the towering, snow-crowned bulk of the Mountain. She could see it everywhere she walked, down alleys and over the roofs of houses.
The power of its presence made her head ache. It must be sending out the Call. She was not meant to hear it, but her magic was strong. She could feel it thrumming in her bones.
She refused to let it cow her. Magic was magic, whatever form it took. She advanced with a firm stride toward the gate with its carven arch.
There were no guards standing there. She had seen riders walking in the city, men and boys—never women or girls—dressed like servants in brown or grey. But no servant ever walked as they walked, with a casual arrogance that put princes to shame.
None of them guarded the gate to their school. There was no magic, either, no wards as Morag would have known them. And yet she paused.
The carving of the arch was worn with age and almost indistinguishable, but she could make out the shapes of men on horseback. The men rode light and erect. The horses were blocky, cobby things, thickset and sturdy—there was nothing delicate or ethereal about them. They were born of earth and stone, though their hearts might be celestial fire.
Morag shook her head to clear it. The gate blurred in front of her. It was trying to disappear.
“Clever,” she said. It was a subtle spell, masterfully cast. She might not have detected it at all if she had not been looking for it.
Once she recognized it, she saw the way through it. She only had to walk straight under the arch and refuse to see any illusion that the gate might weave for her.
It did its best. The wall was thick, but it tried to convince her that the passage through the gate was a furlong and more. Then it tried to twist and fling visions at her, armed guards and galloping horsemen.
The visions melted as she walked into them. The turns grew suddenly straight. She stood in the sunlight of a sandy courtyard surrounded by tall grey walls.
Windows were open above, catching the warmth of the day. She heard voices reciting and a lone sweet tenor singing, and at greater distance, the high fierce call of a stallion.
Beneath it all ran a steady pulse. It had the rhythm of a slow heartbeat, but there was a ringing depth to it that marked it as something else.
Hoofbeats. The gods were dancing in their courts and halls.
She followed the beats that seemed most in tune with her own heart. They led her down passages and along the edges of courtyards. Some had riders in them, mounted on white stallions, or men on foot plying long lines while the stallions danced in circles or twining patterns around and across the sandy spaces.
None of the riders took any notice of her. They were in a trance of sorts, intensely focused on their work. The horses flicked an ear now and then, and once or twice a big dark eye rolled in her direction, but they made no move to stop her.
They knew her. She could not say they offered her welcome, but the air seemed a little less thin and the place a little less strange.
She granted them a flicker of respect. Their awareness guided her to the northern wall of the citadel, a long expanse of grassy paddocks in clear view of the Mountain. Blocky white shapes grazed and gamboled there, and at the western end was another court where yet more riders danced.
She turned away from the court toward the colonnade that ran along its edge, ascending a stone stair into a tower that, as she went up, overlooked the citadel and the fields and forest that surrounded it and the Mountain that reared above them all.
Just short of the top was a room surrounded by windows, a place of light. It was empty but for a man who sat on one of the window ledges. He was an old man, his faced lined and his hair gone grey, but he was still supple enough to fold himself into the embrasure with a book on his knees.
Morag waited for him to finish reading his page. She made no effort to intrude on his awareness, but he was a mage. He could sense the shift of patterns in the room. After a while the awareness grew strong enough that he looked up.
His expression was bland and his tone was mild, but annoyance was sharp beneath. “Madam. All the servants should know I’m not to be disturbed.”
Morag folded her arms and tilted her head. “That’s refreshing. Everyone else persists in taking me for a noblewoman.”
His brow arched. “Should I recognize you?”
“Not at all,” she said. “My daughter takes after her father’s side of the family. How is she? Still here, I hope. I’d be a bit put out if she turned out to be in Aurelia after all.”
He blinked, clearly considered several responses, then stopped as the patterns fell into place around her. It was fascinating to watch. Morag had a bit of that kind of magic—it was useful for a wisewoman to be able to see where everything fit together, the better to repair what was broken—but this was a master of the art. The Master, to be exact.
At length he said, “Ah. Madam. My apologies.” He unfolded himself from the window ledge and bowed with courtly grace. “Not a noblewoman, no, but a great lady. I see it’s no accident your daughter is what she is.”
Morag studied both the face he showed her and the one, much younger and brighter, that she could see behind it. “You respect her,” she said. “Good. Even after…?”
“The white gods and the Ladies have made it clear,” the Master of the riders said, “that she is their beloved. Whatever she does, whatever becomes of her, she has their blessing. Riders are stubborn and mired in tradition, but even we can learn to accept what we can’t change.”
“I’m not sure I believe you,” said Morag.
His smile was wry. “Do you know, she said the same. It’s no less true for that.”
“I hope so,” Morag said, “for your sake. So she’s well? Not locked in a dungeon?”
“Well, loved, pampered—the child when it comes will have a hundred uncles.”
Morag allowed herself to soften just a fraction. “Good, then. I’m spared the trouble of setting this place to rights. Now if you’ll excuse me, you have an hour left of your escape from duty and tedium, and I have a daughter to find.”
“She’s down below,” the Master said.
“I know,” said Morag, gently enough when all was considered. She nodded briskly. He nodded back with more than the
hint of a bow.
Good man, she thought, and no more of a fool than any man was inclined to be. He had reassured her more than he knew. Her opinion of the riders and their school had risen somewhat, though she was still reserving judgment.
Chapter Four
“Straighten your shoulders,” Valeria said. “Good. Now lift him with your tailbone—yes, so.”
The stallion who circled Valeria sat for an instant, then floated from a cadenced trot into a slow and rhythmic canter. The young rider on his back flashed a grin before he remembered to be properly serious.
She bit her lip to keep from grinning back. She had to be proper, too, if she was going to pass muster to become a Fourth Rider. Riders might have changed enough to accept a woman among them, but they still had certain expectations as to manners and deportment.
She shifted on the stool the Healers had insisted she resort to when she instructed her handful of rider-candidates, and rubbed her back where the baby’s weight was taking its toll. She had had to stop riding a few days ago, out of pity for her poor stallions who had to carry her burgeoning bulk. She missed it less than she had expected. Now all she wanted was to be done with this labor of growing a child.
Rider-candidate Lucius was losing that lovely canter. “Hold and release,” she said quickly. “Shoulders straight, remember. Now, sit back and hold.”
Lucius held just a fraction too long. Sabata’s ear flicked. With no more warning than that, he stopped short. Lucius lurched onto his neck.
Valeria held her breath. But Sabata had decided to be merciful. He let Lucius recover his balance and his breath, and did not tip him unceremoniously into the sand.
For that the stallion had earned an extra lump of sugar and a pat on the neck. Even a season ago, he would have yielded to temptation. He was growing up.
The baby woke abruptly and kicked so hard Valeria wheezed. Fortunately Lucius was too busy dismounting to notice. She eased from the stool and eyed the distance from it to the colonnade, then from there to the schoolroom where she was to assist First Rider Gunnar with a particularly obstreperous roomful of second-year rider-candidates.
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