It seemed they had learned from their mistakes. They were listening now instead of deciding what should be said according to custom and tradition. They accepted that the world was not the same as it had been, and that they had to change with it or lose everything.
The more of them there were in the city, the better their chances of defeating this new enemy. He said to them, “You have my thanks, and my sister’s, too.”
“This is our duty,” Gavron said. “We let ourselves forget it, walled up on the Mountain and never leaving it except to Dance in front of emperors. We were never meant to shut ourselves away. Our magic is the empire’s heart. We should be part of the empire, not cut off from it.”
A few eyebrows rose around the circle. Gavron was a quiet man, not much given to speeches. He did most of his talking through the stallions he trained.
It seemed he spoke for all of them. Kerrec came within an instant of telling them what Briana had commanded him to do. But Valeria deserved to hear it first.
He held his tongue and went on answering questions that never touched on the solution Briana had found. They would be expecting her to find a cousin or kinsman and name him her heir.
So would Kerrec if he had been one of them. He gave them a day’s worth of blissful ignorance. They might not be glad of the gift once they knew the truth, but it gave him a few more hours of peace. However cowardly that might be, he was glad to have it.
Noon was well past before Kerrec could escape the gathering of riders. By that time Valeria was long gone. He could not find her anywhere.
The patterns that should have led him to her were blurred and confused. When he followed them, they led not to her but to her stallions.
They were not talking. Sabata snapped long yellow teeth in his face. Kerrec left him to his hay and his secrets.
Valeria was all too well aware that Kerrec was hunting her. Part of her yearned to let him find her, but the stronger part knew it was better this way. She should not tempt him out of it. Aurelia needed him too badly.
It was easy to think such noble thoughts, but if she would admit the truth, she was furious. At Briana for asking this of both of them. At the empire that demanded such a high price from its servants, and at the gods who had allowed it.
She backed the bay Lady into a corner of the mares’ stable—empty now that Corcyra and her foal had gone to join the rest in their pasture outside the city. The Lady was nibbling hay and bits of grain out of a manger. Valeria stalked into the stall and bolted the door behind her.
“Where were you when all of this happened?” she demanded. “Why wasn’t she riding you? If you didn’t want to carry her for that little distance, why didn’t you warn her? You let this happen. Do you hate her? Or are we all so insignificant that you don’t care what becomes of us?”
The Lady went on eating through Valeria’s tirade. Her ears flicked, but not toward Valeria. Her shoulder twitched to shed a fly.
That was what Valeria was to her. Briana, whom she had chosen to be her rider, was hardly more. She wore her blocky horse body and made a sometimes convincing pretense of mortality, but for once Valeria made herself face the truth. There was nothing mortal about her.
“Are you more than a god,” Valeria asked her, “or are you less? At least the stallions show some sign of caring what happens to their riders. You don’t care at all, do you?”
The Lady raised her head. Her dark eyes were mild. She lipped Valeria’s hair and blew sweet breath in her face.
Valeria pulled back sharply. “I wish I could hate you,” she said.
The Lady broke wind. As gestures of derision went, it was eloquent.
Valeria could not decide whether to laugh or cry. She should know better than to argue with the Lady. Sometimes the stallions would listen to reason, or what passed for it in the human mind, but the Lady was beyond any such thing.
Still, Valeria had said what she came to say. She felt a little better for it. “You had better know what you’re doing,” she said. “If you harm any more of the people I love, I don’t care if I am an ant in the sun of your regard. I’ll raise heaven and hell against you.”
Valeria knew what happened to those who defied the gods. Histories and sacred writings were full of such stories.
It did not matter. If she was blasted from the earth, it would be all the easier for Kerrec to go to the wife his empire found for him. Then he could breed children as his duty dictated, and maybe shed a tear for the lost lover, until in time he forgot her.
They would all forget her, the first and only woman ever Called to the Mountain. She was not even a splendid failure. She had simply dribbled away into inconsequence.
The Lady bit her shoulder hard. Nothing broke, but the bruise would be a long time healing. Valeria flung herself at the Lady, pummeling her in a fit of pure blind rage.
The Lady braced herself and endured it. When Valeria could not strike one more blow, but stood breathing hard with tears streaming down her face, the bay mare bumped her gently with her head.
Valeria’s knees gave way. She went down helplessly, not even caring if the Lady trampled the life out of her.
The soft whiskery nose whuffled her cheek. The big black hoof paused by her head but did not rise to crush it. Valeria looked up at a mountain she had lost the will to climb.
“I should have known,” she said. “We were too happy. Fools we were, to think we’d earned our peace. We’d build our school, raise our daughter, live long and useful lives. Our troubles would never be worse than we’d had already. That was unbearable, wasn’t it? Mortals can’t be happy. It’s not allowed.”
The Lady offered no words in answer. She raised her head, ears pricked.
Someone had come into the stable. Valeria dragged herself up, not caring enough to dust off the bits of straw and hay that clung to her hair and clothes. She should pretend to be busy, she supposed. Or hide.
Hiding would have been better. Kerrec paused by the open half-door of the stall.
His eyes were more silver than grey, as they always were when he was disturbed.
“You heard,” Valeria said.
He did not deny it.
“I meant every word,” she said.
“I could tell.” He folded his arms on the door’s rim and leaned on it. He still managed to look as if he stood at attention.
“You have to do this,” she said. “No matter what I think of it, your sister is right. It’s necessary.”
“Is it?” he asked. “She can’t force me, you know. Under law, the riders are answerable to none but the gods. The ruling power may suggest and it may go so far as to recommend, but it can’t command any of us.”
Valeria throttled down the urge to pummel him as she had the Lady. “Stop playing the fool. You know this has to happen.”
“There are alternatives,” he said.
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. I’ve made up my mind.”
“But I haven’t.”
“You will.”
There was no way out of the stall but past him. Valeria would have given much to step between worlds as the Ladies could do, but this particular Lady offered a blandly uncomprehending stare when Valeria shot her a glance.
Past him, then, it had to be. She reached to shoot the bolt.
He caught her hand. The simple familiarity of his touch nearly broke her. When she tried to twist free, she found she could not. He had a horseman’s ability to hold lightly without letting go.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Even if I do this, it’s duty only. It won’t take any more of me than any other obligation. I belong to you. You are my heart. That will never change.”
“You say that now,” she said.
“I say it always.” He let go her hand, slid the bolt and slipped in through the door.
What he was doing was terribly unwise. She was sure he knew it, but it was clear he did not care.
This was exactly what she had been trying to avoid. Her body had no control at all. When
he drew her toward him, she went without a hint of resistance.
They fit together so well. He was only a little taller than she, but that had always been tall enough. He was strong as a steel blade, supple and light on his feet.
She let her head fall back. It was hard to see through the tears, but she never needed eyes to see his face. If she went blind in an instant, it would still be engraved in her heart.
His finger traced the curve of her cheek and lingered across her lips. She kissed it as it passed. She felt the subtle shiver in him, matching her own.
Would that other woman learn how to recognize the signs? He seemed a cold man, with his stern expression and deep reserve, but the truth was completely the opposite. Would a stranger know how to unlock the many doors and open the windows and cast warmth and light into the heart of him?
When he leaned in for the kiss, Valeria was not there. She had slid out past him.
If he called after her, she refused to hear it. She fled the stable as if the armies of the One were driving her.
Chapter Twenty
In the ordinary run of such things, the councils alone would have taken days, then there would have been weeks of negotiations with various purveyors of fine noblewomen. After a few months, Kerrec would have been presented with a selection for his perusal. Within a year, there would be a wedding—suitably lavish, of course—followed within a second year by a healthy and indisputably royal heir, male for preference.
Briana did it in two days. She exploited her indisposition ruthlessly, leaning heavily on the precariousness of her existence. If anyone had ever doubted that she had the strength of mind to rule an empire, she proved it then.
Even Kerrec was amazed to find that his sister’s will was solid steel. He went to her directly from the stable, deeply hurt and knowing it, but also knowing that Valeria was right. He had no choice. “I’ll do it,” he said—and unleashed the whirlwind.
He did not see Valeria at all in those two days. She was in Riders’ Hall and he was in the palace. He thought often of going to find her, then forcing her to stop pushing him away, but there never was time to act on it.
There was one meeting he could not avoid indefinitely, with his Master and his brother riders, but Valeria was still a rider-candidate. She was not privy to the deliberations of her superiors.
On the second day he faced Master Nikos and the rest and told them what he had to do.
They heard him out in silence. He looked for outrage but found none. There was barely any evidence of surprise.
When he had finished, Gunnar spoke for them all. “Well, my friend. For a man whose highest ambition was to ride the Dance with some small show of competence, you certainly seem to attract the gods’ attention.”
“Blood will tell,” Second Rider Cato said, “as much as we wish it wouldn’t.”
“I won’t abdicate my duties,” Kerrec said. “I’m a rider first and always. That will always have the best part of me.”
“Of course it will,” said Master Nikos. “Are you asking our permission?”
“No,” Kerrec said, “sir. I’m asking for your understanding.”
The Master’s brow lifted.
“They’re going to change the law,” Kerrec said. “My sister has already drafted the decree. I won’t stand in the way of her succession, but the line will carry on.”
“We understand that,” Nikos said. “Do you understand what the consequences may be?”
“We’ve ended our isolation already,” said Kerrec. “This simply affirms it.”
“Change,” Nikos said. He sighed. “Gods, we hate change. But there’s no escaping it, is there? The Dance is dancing us.”
“The gods are out of patience.” Gunnar rocked back in his chair. “I’ll stay here, I think, at least through the autumn—with the Master’s consent, of course. My belly tells me this isn’t over yet. There’s more to come, and it’s not going to be pleasant.”
Kerrec’s own belly churned. He had been focused narrowly on getting through each day. Gunnar was seeing broader patterns.
Once he had spoken of them, they were visible for anyone who could see. Kerrec almost—but only almost—wished for the blindness to magic that afflicted him after his brother had him tortured and nearly killed. His sight now was brutally clear.
The attack on Briana was a nexus, a meeting of paths in the Dance. Those paths opened from it into a maze of possibilities. All led into darkness, blood and fire or oblivion.
Every path. Every one. There was worse than war ahead. Briana was at the center of it. So was Kerrec and a towering presence that at first he took for one of the gods.
Then he realized it was Valeria. When had she grown so strong? She had been able to command all the stallions since the beginning. Her skill had been growing under the elder riders’ instruction. But this was far beyond what he would have expected.
Had something else entered into her—possessed her?
He shook off the thought as soon as it crawled into his mind. There was nothing wrong with Valeria but lack of experience. In the confusion of patterns, something else had, by coincidence, overshadowed her.
If she was in danger, Kerrec would see that she was protected. If danger was moving toward her, he would do what he could to turn it aside. She was the love of his heart, no matter what his duty forced him to do.
He looked from the patterns into Gunnar’s fierce blue stare. Gunnar nodded slightly. Kerrec would not face this alone. His brothers in the art would dance this Dance with him.
When Kerrec returned to the palace, the guard at the gate had a message from his sister. He was to proceed to one of the anterooms.
Kerrec could feel the patterns shifting around him, coiling and uncoiling with every step he took. He was walking into another nexus.
There was still a brief while in which he could turn away. He could refuse his part in this and run back to the Mountain.
From what he had seen, it would change very little. The long night would still fall.
He could change how he fell, whether in guilt and shame or in some sense that he had done what he could. He kept on walking through each pattern that promised escape, straight to the guarded door.
Four lords of the court were waiting with four young women in painfully perfect finery. Briana was not there. Lord Gallio was, standing next to the Chief Augur by the rear wall. Someone else, a man in brown, seemed now to be there and now not.
Evidently they were trying to be unobtrusive. Kerrec stopped just inside the door. He had not felt so excruciatingly on display since the last time he attended a court function as imperial heir, half a lifetime ago.
He had lost the habit of being stared at. Riders in the Dance were barely visible in the light of the stallions. When he was with his sister, everyone stared at her.
Briana should have warned him. He came within a heartbeat of turning on his heel and walking out and never coming back. And that of course was why she had let him walk in without preparation.
Eight pairs of eyes pinned him to the wall. The fathers and one brother he knew. The daughters and sister must belong to names that clanged in his mind.
None of the four ladies either blushed or simpered. Their gazes were direct and keenly intelligent. They weighed him and took his measure, just as he took theirs.
He made himself move forward. He bent over each hand and murmured words that came to him from the depths of memory, courtly phrases so long forgotten they felt alien on his tongue.
He hoped they did not sound as strange as they felt. None of the ladies recoiled, but they would hardly do that. They were too well schooled.
Noblewomen were trained for marriage as riders were for the Dance. These had made the most of their beauty. He could be sure that they were accomplished in numerous arts, including magic. They were all mages of orders no doubt judged to be compatible with his.
None of them was Valeria. He stepped back and bowed to them all. “Gallio,” he said. “My lord Augur.” He l
ooked for the third, to name him, but the man in brown was gone, if in fact he had been there at all.
When Kerrec retreated, the two lords followed. He led them to another anteroom, smaller and less elaborately appointed than the one in which the ladies waited. There he turned. “I can’t,” he said. “There’s no choice to make. They’re all the same. I can’t tell them apart.”
The two high lords exchanged glances. If they had been amused, he would have blasted them with a mage-bolt. But they seemed serious enough.
“You realize,” Gallio said after a moment, “that if we do the choosing, you are bound by it.”
“I trust you’ll choose wisely,” Kerrec said.
“Are you sure?” said Gallio.
“I am sure I have to do this,” Kerrec said. “I’m not taking a lover. She has to understand that. If she wants or needs more, I’m not the man for her.”
“That is understood,” the Augur said.
“Make your decision,” said Kerrec. “Bring her to me when it’s made. If she needs a duenna, send a maid. Not her father.”
The Augur bowed. Gallio looked Kerrec up and down, eyes narrowing. “We can’t give you your lady rider. I am sorry for that. If she were noble born—”
“Even if she were,” Kerrec said, “she would never want this for our children. And I would never want it for her.”
“It’s not so bad,” said Gallio. “You’re allies in a long war. You’ll learn to respect one another. Then maybe something more will come of it.”
“Not for me,” Kerrec said. “Go, please. Do what you will.”
“We won’t keep you waiting long,” said Gallio.
It seemed a long while, though by the temple bells it was hardly more than an hour. Kerrec could have wandered off, but the room was not unpleasant. It had a window, and the divan across from it was surprisingly comfortable. He stretched out on it and let the sunlight soothe him into a doze.
When the door opened, he was too lazy with light to sit up. He turned his head.
It was a woman alone. Her gown was made of deep blue silk, but its cut was simple and her jewels were exquisitely restrained. Her hair was plaited and coiled with equal and subtle art, and her face was painted almost invisibly.
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