Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  She could not bring it back. No one could, even the Master Healer. But Valeria could mend it enough to keep Briana alive until her own body and magic roused enough to do the rest.

  Valeria had woven such a working before when Kerrec’s spirit was as badly damaged as Briana’s body. It partook somewhat of the wisewoman’s art and somewhat of the horse magic. Part of it, too, so deep she hoped no one would see, was the stain of Unmaking that lived inside her. That was her greatest weakness and her most terrible secret, but it could also be turned to strength. The Unmaking could unmake evil as well as good.

  Briana had smitten herself with her own power. That was what the mages had failed to see. They had shaped their workings against the enemy who they thought had done it—but that enemy was Briana.

  Buried in her unconscious mind was a memory of the power that had deflected Briana’s mage-bolt with such devastating force. That magic had an all-too-familiar taste, a taste of old stone and even older night.

  Valeria found no surprises there. The priests of the tribes were tireless in their hatred of the empire and its rulers. But the peculiar twist she found in this was likewise familiar, and that, she had not expected.

  Gothard was dead, destroyed beyond redemption. Valeria was sure of that. She had been part of the great working that broke his magic and his body together. Nothing could have survived it.

  He must have had a pupil or an acolyte. The creature that Maurus’ brother had helped to bring into Aurelia had spoken in an imperial accent—provincial but unmistakable. Valeria had taken no particular note of it at the time because her own speech was rather close to it. But in the clarity of the working, she could not stop thinking about it.

  Suppose then that a pupil of Gothard had led the attack. His power had repelled the bolt of magic—deliberately, Valeria was sure.

  Gothard had been Briana’s brother. He had known her well and hated her only a little less than he hated his father or his elder brother. He would have taught that hate to a disciple, along with the means to act on it.

  Through that understanding, Valeria had a way into the heart of both spell and counterspell. Gothard’s magic was stone magic and magic of Unmaking. She could meet it with fire and air and the power of the patterns that flowed through all that was. Then far beneath those, she could confront it with itself. She could unmake it.

  In her heart she rode the Dance. Oda carried her, eldest and most powerful of the three stallions who had chosen her. The figures were prescribed by the nature of the working. While Oda traced them, Valeria focused on making Briana whole.

  It was a long Dance, and hard. The Unmaking in Valeria wanted to bind itself to the ruin in Briana. Valeria had all she could do to keep them separate and ride the Dance and work the healing.

  Long before it could possibly be done, she felt herself flagging. Oda was doing everything he could do. The rest of the stallions were willing, but she had to contain them all. She was losing strength more rapidly than she could replenish it.

  A second dancer entered the Dance. No rider sat on the Lady’s back. None would, unless it was Briana.

  Valeria was ready to defer to that power which was greater than gods, but the Lady had fallen in behind her. She would lead, the Lady would follow.

  The Lady’s power flowed from deep wells in the heart of the world. Not only Aurelia drew strength from it but every tribe and nation.

  That was a revelation so profound that Valeria could not let herself think about what it meant. Briana needed her first and foremost. She Danced healing for her friend who was like a sister to her—who happened to be empress of Aurelia.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kerrec was running away from the truth. He was man and mage enough to recognize it, but he could not stop himself. It was simpler to give orders and set people running about than to face his sister’s death or worse.

  He was being of some use. Gunnar and two of the younger riders had found the source of the attack on Briana. They summoned him through Petra, so sharp and sudden that his head ached for an hour after.

  He answered the call as quickly as he could. The place was not far—in fact it was in the palace, perilously and ironically near the tombs of his ancestors.

  That was a deliberate mockery, but it was also a triumph of magical logic. Not only the bones of old emperors lay in the crypt. Powers were interred there that should never have seen the light of day and were meant never to see it again. Their strength must have fed the workings that were done there.

  The room in which his brother riders waited was all too familiar. The dark draperies, the pale stone floor, the altar, were as Kerrec had seen them in Maurus’ vision.

  The shapes huddled or sprawled around the circle reminded him grimly of the priests on the headland. Most of these were dead, too. Three were lost in sleep like death, just as Briana was.

  One crouched in a corner. His face was the color of cheese. His body shook in spasms.

  None of the riders had touched him, though he was manifestly conscious. “He’s not the leader,” Gunnar said. “He seems unusually gifted with wards—which saved him. The rest are done for. The ones who survived won’t last long.”

  Kerrec nodded. The author of the working was gone—dead, he could hope, but none of the fallen wore the face he remembered from Maurus’ vision. These were acolytes, discarded when their usefulness failed.

  He sank to one knee in front of the man in the corner. The hood had fallen back and the dark mantle had knotted and twisted under him as if he had scrambled away from something that struck him with lasting horror. Under it he wore the silk and gold of a courtier, a long tunic slit to the hips and loose trousers cross-gartered with golden ribbons. One leg was long and strong. The other was withered and twisted.

  It was Kerrec’s gift and curse never to forget a name. “Bellinus,” he said.

  He spoke softly, but Maurus’ brother started as if struck. “Please,” he said in a rasping voice—the voice of a man who had screamed his throat raw. “Please, lord. Don’t take my soul from me.”

  “We’re not in the habit of that,” Kerrec said. He held out his hand. “Here, get up.”

  Bellinus eyed the hand warily. After a while he took it. His grip was shaky.

  Kerrec pulled him to his feet. The withered leg buckled. Bellinus’ breath hissed, but he caught himself before Kerrec could do it for him. Once he was upright, he limped toward the door with such speed that he took Kerrec by surprise.

  Two of the riders caught him before he escaped. His resistance was fierce but brief. When it failed, he hung in their hands, breathing hard. “Kill me,” he said. “Get it over with.”

  “Not yet,” said Gunnar with gruesome good cheer. Bellinus looked up the massive golden length of him and shuddered.

  Kerrec would wager that the boy had no inkling as to who his captors were. He must think they were guards of some obscure imperial regiment.

  Let him think what he pleased, as long as he stayed conscious. Second Rider Cato and Third Rider Enric half carried, half marched him through the door.

  Kerrec hesitated. “You go on,” Gunnar said. “I’ll do what needs doing here.”

  Kerrec nodded. As grim as that task was, he almost envied Gunnar. It was a great deal simpler than his interrogation of Bellinus promised to be.

  Still, it had to be done. He straightened his shoulders and followed where the riders and Bellinus had gone.

  Kerrec saw to it that Bellinus was deposited securely in one of the guardrooms near Briana’s chambers. As eager as he was to discover what Bellinus and his allies had done, that would keep for a little while longer. Briana would not.

  He felt the Dance begin as he passed the door of his sister’s anteroom. It made itself known in the pattern of moonlight slanting on the floor. He looked up at the high latticed window through which it shone and saw the old stallion and the bay Lady weaving patterns that had not been woven before.

  Even if he had not recognized Oda, he would have
known whose fault that was. Valeria was not capable of standing by when there was magic afoot.

  She was not capable of tact, either, or of caring for the courtesies of the magical orders. Half a dozen masters and high mages were in a fair taking, but none of them was fool enough to disrupt Valeria’s working.

  To the eyes of the body she knelt beside the bed with her hands on the blasted ruin of Briana’s belly. The wisewoman leaned toward her, fascinated in spite of herself. The Chief Augur watched with the most dispassionate eye of any of them.

  The rest, even the Master Healer, had forgotten discipline in favor of the petty dance of precedence. Kerrec drew them away with soft words and firm will. The sputtering began as soon as they passed the door into the anteroom.

  He let them rant themselves into silence. While they indulged themselves, he found a chair to sit in, arranging it so that when they came out of their fit of pique, they would see him waiting with princely patience.

  The Master Seer noticed first. While he was still staring, the rest exhausted their store of outrage.

  The Master Healer was the last to fall silent. She was young for the office, and it seemed she was too well aware of it.

  Kerrec could understand that. When he was made First Rider, the next youngest had been twenty years older than he. It was a delicate and sometimes precarious position, and it could take a toll on one’s temper.

  “I do not need your understanding,” the Healer said with a fresh flare of indignation.

  “Then I beg your pardon, Mistress,” Kerrec said.

  “That girl,” the Healer said, “that infant, that insolent child, scattered a Great Working and overwhelmed us with her arrogance. Will you discipline her, First Rider? Or shall we?”

  “I will do what needs to be done,” Kerrec said quietly. “You will be needed, sirs and madam, when the working is finished. Will your courtesy extend so far? Or would it be best if I found others to take your place?”

  The Healer stiffened. She did not love him for that, but it had focused her mind. “My duty is here,” she said tightly. “So is theirs.”

  “Good,” he said. “For now you may rest. Ask the servants for whatever you wish. You’ll know when it’s time.”

  They could call Kerrec arrogant—he was. Unlike Valeria, he was born to be. He remained in his seat until they bowed themselves out.

  The Dance was still weaving itself behind his eyes. There were too few dancers, even with the Lady. They were not strong enough to mend what was so badly broken. Briana was fading, for all that Valeria and Sabata and the Lady could do.

  Petra woke in his heart and snorted. The stallion’s derision stung, but it was deserved. He was waiting in the Hall of the Dance within the palace.

  So were the rest of the stallions. The riders were on their way, abandoning whatever they had been doing to answer the call. They had all felt the same urgency.

  They had had no time to prepare, apart from years of training. There would be no long and leisurely gathering of forces. This was a Dance of desperation. Without it, their empress would die.

  The last time Kerrec saw that Hall, the sand of its floor had been stained with blood. It was dim now and quiet, the silver-white sand pristine. The high windows were dark—the moon had set. The only light was the moonlight glow of the stallions.

  There were eight of them, a proper quadrille. Petra pawed ever so gently. It was time.

  Kerrec breathed deep and sought within himself for both calm and discipline. When he gathered the reins and set his foot in the stirrup, grief and anger and fear drained away. There was nothing now but the horse under him and the arena around him.

  This was his art. He lived for it. It was his heart and soul.

  He glanced up toward the Augurs’ gallery. He had expected to find only shadow, but there were figures in white standing there, dimly lit by magelight. The summons had brought them, too. They were waiting to perform their office as the riders performed theirs.

  He relaxed into the saddle. From this moment, nothing would matter but the movements he rode.

  They circled the Hall in a free but cadenced walk, settling into the rhythm as they went. Once they were sure of it, they rose to trot and then to canter. The magic of each man and stallion wove into the pattern. For Kerrec it was as simple and yet as profound as balance in motion.

  The Dance unfolded in long curves and interwoven figures. It traced the patterns of Briana’s body, circling and circling again in the center where the worst of the ruin was. The heart of that circle, where none of the stallions happened to tread, was a point of utter nothingness.

  Valeria was there. With Sabata and the Lady, she danced where nothing should have been able to dance. But they were gods, and she was something less than a god but more than a mage.

  Kerrec was no simple horse mage, either. While he focused on the inner Dance, Petra had taken the lead in the outer one. That other magic which had been Kerrec’s father’s gift was rising like a spring from the barren earth.

  It changed the Dance. What before had been a simple tracing of patterns that were already in the world or were soon to be, now was something more complex. Each footfall shifted the earth ever so slightly. Each figure shaped the course of the empire, turning it toward an end that Kerrec was too blind with mortality to see.

  The stallions showed no sign of alarm. The Lady at the heart of the inner Dance seemed satisfied, as if this was going as she meant it to go.

  A rider had to trust his horse, just as the horse had to trust his rider. The same was true of mortals and gods—and, Kerrec thought, mages and their magic.

  He let Petra’s calm flow through his body, settling deeper into the familiar movement with its thrust and surge up through the stallion’s back into Kerrec’s spine. Its rhythm and cadence matched the beat of his heart.

  All of their hearts were pulsing together. Eight sets of hooves beat time in the sand. Eight horses and eight riders transcribed the shape of the pattern in the air.

  In the heart of the Dance, Briana stirred. Pain, bloodred and jagged, threatened to disrupt the Dance, but the rhythm was too strong.

  Her heart began to beat with the rest. Her pain throbbed, but with each pulse it grew slightly less. The thing inside it, the seed of Unmaking, began grudgingly to shrink.

  The lesser stallions were beginning to flag. Gods though they were, the flesh they inhabited was mortal and could weaken and die. They clung to the rhythm and the Dance, but their breathing was labored, their flanks dark with sweat.

  Petra was still strong. He could carry the weaker ones for a while—maybe long enough—if Kerrec could carry the riders. So could Master Nikos and his strong young Brescia, who had just come fully into his own.

  Kerrec’s eyes met Nikos’ as they crossed at the canter, weaving a figure that was meticulous but not especially difficult. Each of them nodded and began to gather half of the patterns, spreading tendrils of magic outward through the hall.

  The others clung to them. The stallions followed them, drawing strength as they went.

  There was a limit to it, and that was approaching fast. Briana was healing—but too slowly. The inner Dance was struggling almost as badly as the outer.

  Kerrec reached through the walls of air and darkness and found Valeria reaching for him. It was a great risk and could be deadly, but they were running out of time. As the riders faded, so did Briana. She was weakening, giving way to the pain that would not lessen fast enough.

  Kerrec’s mind and magic met Valeria’s. His discipline and her raw strength had always balanced one another. She was more disciplined now and he was stronger. Together they were an even more potent force than he had remembered.

  It was slow and it took everything they had, but it was enough—just. The Dance ended just before the dancers broke, with a last, suspended, almost defiantly brilliant passage in unison around the whole of the hall and out into the warm summer night.

  They had come out not through the roofed passage tha
t led to Riders’ Hall but through the outer gate. The stars arched over them, soft with haze. The air was almost painfully sweet.

  Kerrec breathed in the scent of flowers and the sea. The reek of horse sweat and human sweat and magical exhaustion nearly overpowered it—but not quite.

  He looked down the line of riders. The stallions held up their heads as best they could, proud to the last. The riders clung to their example.

  His heart swelled with love for them all. They had fought a battle as grueling as any between armies, and they had won it.

  Briana was alive. She would heal. The patterns of the Dance were ingrained in her body.

  It was the Master’s place to send his riders to their rest, but Nikos inclined his head toward Kerrec. “First Rider,” he said. His voice was gravelly with exhaustion.

  “Master,” said Kerrec. He nodded to the rest. “Go, brothers. You’ve done more than well.”

  They hesitated, bless them—offering what little of themselves they had left. Kerrec bowed in deep respect and said, “Go on. Rest. You’ve done a great thing tonight.”

  They bowed in return. More than one looked ready to topple from the saddle. But they were riders. They would hang on until they came to Riders’ Hall—then, after the horses were cared for, they would let themselves fall into bed.

  Kerrec would have sent Petra after them, but the stallion would not hear of it. He was tired and hungry but far from exhausted. The palace stables would provide a full manger and a stall to rest in.

  Kerrec left him there, being fussed over by half a dozen grooms and stablehands. He had to wave off the servants who would have done the same for him. He could not rest until he had seen for himself that Briana was mending.

  She was asleep. The pain was still sharp enough that it caught in Kerrec’s own gut, but the edge was off it. The Master Healer had mastered her temper enough to begin a new working, subtler than the one that had so perturbed Valeria.