Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  Pretorius regarded her in what she could only interpret as pride. “So we shall,” he said, “and if three of our royal envoys walk on four feet instead of two, the high king may even be impressed.”

  Valeria opened her mouth to say that she did not intend to take herself or the stallions any farther than this fort, but the words did not come. We, she had said, and while she said it she meant it. She had been thinking of the empire then and not herself.

  How safe was it for the empire if her magic lost control and loosed the Unmaking?

  It would not. She had three white gods to guard her, and a mage of three magics.

  Three was a number of the tribes. Aurelia ran in fours and eights. She hoped it was not a bad omen.

  They left the last of the caravan at the fort. The guards and the five prisoners rode on with them, a company of two dozen in all, with mules to carry provisions and gifts for the high king and the lesser kings who might come across their path.

  It was not a long journey to Dun Mor—half a month, maybe, at a steady pace, or a month if they stopped along the way. The tribes were quiet, engrossed in the summer hunt. The women and children stayed behind in the duns while their men ranged the hunting runs, sending back whatever they found to be preserved for the winter—meat dried or salted, hides tanned, hooves and bone and sinew turned to every use imaginable, from flutes and harpstrings to drumheads and quivers and the framework of shields.

  Valeria had thought she would be riding into the maw of the Unmaking. To her astonishment, the magic of the land grew calmer the farther she rode from the fort. It was still nothing like imperial magic, but it had found its own order. It ran in the streams and grew in the groves and copses.

  As forest opened into moor, its wildness took on shape and form. It embodied itself in stands of stones, shrines rank with old blood and the dregs of pain. More than once the riders passed pallid hills that as they came closer resolved into heaps of skulls and interwoven bones.

  And yet the duns and camps were warm and pulsing with life. The people might make a cult of anguish and worship oblivion, but in the daylight they had a bright strength that even war and loss and bitterness could not destroy.

  Valeria remembered the names of the tribes and clans that she passed. None of them was the Caletanni. They were not in this part of the world. She would have to go farther south and somewhat west to find their hunting runs.

  She could not say if she was disappointed. One man of the Caletanni might remember her, though it was hardly likely that memory would be fond. She had spared his life twice in the face of death and defeat. She knew better than to expect gratitude for that.

  In any case it did not matter. The people were all strangers here. Aurelia to them was a land of war and conquest. They knew no more of it than Gerontius knew of them.

  It was true that envoys were considered blessed, but travelers of any kind were sacred. Everywhere the embassy stopped, the clans offered them warm and open-handed hospitality.

  When they had been traveling through this stark and often surprising land for close on a month, they stopped in a hunting camp among a clan the name of which in Aurelian was the Dun Cow. Its chieftain’s banner was the hide of just such a beast, and he wore the skull and horns as a crown when he sat down to dinner.

  He was a big man, redheaded as so many of his people were, with thick copper-colored plaits to the waist and exuberant mustaches of which he was clearly proud. He did not look terribly much like another redheaded tribesman Valeria had known—he was heavier, less graceful, less pleasing in the face—but still he struck her with familiarity. She caught herself missing Euan Rohe rather than hating him.

  People in this country could drink and feast all night long, but she was not so hardy. She went to her own camp as soon as she politely could, but once she was there, she found that she could not sleep.

  She tossed on her blanket. These high northern moors had nothing like the heat of lowland Aurelia, but the night was close and still, the sky heavy with cloud. Lightning flashed along the horizon. Occasionally she heard a rumble of thunder.

  As she lay on the ground in the sweet scent of heather and summer grass, the thunder seemed to come from below rather than above. Her skin prickled. The slow heat that rose in her did not feel like anything of hers. It was part of the spell inside her, born of this land and its people.

  Something was trying to pierce the walls that protected her mind. It was strong but blessedly distant. Even through her defenses she could feel the sense it brought of fierce urgency and deep foreboding.

  It could be—must be—a trap. It could not be what it seemed. Kerrec was not calling to her through the massed voices of the stallions, trying to warn her against—what? Doing what she was already doing?

  She owed him nothing. He had done his duty, as he must. So had she. His sudden attack of desperation did not help—it was too little and too late.

  She raised her walls even higher and made them even stronger. The call muted enough to be almost bearable.

  She pushed herself to her feet. The rest of the embassy slept in a circle. Beyond them she heard the sounds of late carousing growing slowly fainter as the night grew later.

  Her stallions had been tethered with the rest of the horses, but as she stood upright, Sabata loomed in front of her. She ran her hands down his face and along his heavy arched neck. His mane was rough under her fingers.

  She grasped it and swung onto his back. That deep sense she always had when she rode him, of coming home, was so sharp she almost let out a cry.

  Without her urging, he moved forward. His long swinging stride calmed her somewhat. She did not know or care where he was carrying her.

  As long as she was on him, the call from Aurelia did not trouble her. It was still there, but far away and all but silent.

  She closed her mind completely to it. Sabata waded through tall grass, ascending the long hill that rose above the camp. For a while she heard the burble of a stream and smelled the coolness of water until he turned away from it toward the summit.

  The lightning was moving closer. A small wind had begun to blow. The scent of rain was in it, distinct from the smell of the stream—thicker, darker, wilder.

  Beneath the roll of thunder she heard another sound. Drums were beating in the rhythm of a slow heartbeat. Voices chanted in a language she did not know, the same word or words over and over.

  As with the spell of Unmaking, it did not matter whether she understood. The words themselves were the spell. Once heard, they became a part of her.

  They were words of bleak and empty places, barren earth and cold stone and the breath of graves. Even their paean to pain was dulled and crusted over.

  Valeria buried her face in Sabata’s mane. The familiar pungent smell and the warmth of his body gave her something to cling to. Without them she would have spun down into nothingness, lacking even the strength to care.

  He shook his head and pawed lightly. She made herself look up, though her arms were still wrapped around his neck.

  He had come to the summit of the hill and descended a little distance. Down below was a stony valley such as priests of the One favored. No grass grew there and no water ran. The earth was blasted bare as if with lightning or a mage-bolt.

  A deep shudder ran through Valeria. Neither magic nor lightning had done this. The valley was half Unmade. What substance it had left was as thin as a layer of dust, held together by the magic that bound this country. Even a breath gone astray could destroy it—and once it was gone, the world would follow.

  That valley was like Valeria’s own heart. Its existence was just as precarious. The priests who stood inside it were feeding on the delicate balance of being and unbeing. It made their own powers stronger, even as it threatened to unmake them.

  Sabata stood on the boundary between mortal earth and immortal nothingness. That boundary was shifting—growing. It could unmake a god as easily as any human thing, but he was not afraid of it.

 
; In that much, the white gods were like the horses they resembled. They lived in the present. There was no past or future. There was only the eternal now.

  That now would be unmade—and then there would be nothing at all. All that was would be swallowed in oblivion.

  Valeria had only to let go and she would be gone. No pain and no sorrow and no shame of jealousy, ever again.

  She wrenched herself from the seduction of that thought. The priests’ chant had faded. She looked for the victim who was the crown of such rites, but there was none.

  The Unmaking was the sacrifice. They were both sustaining and restraining it. They moved in slow patterns, subtly bent and twisted, sweeping their long robes along the bare and dusty ground.

  One by one the robes fell. Valeria was prepared for it, but it was still a shock to see those naked bodies like corpses walking. Some bore mutilations of elaborate complexity. Others were clothed in scars. Some were blind, some faceless, others missing limbs.

  None was whole—that was the requirement of their order. Every one was in some way touched by their god.

  The chief of them was the last to discard his mantle. He stood in the center, straight and steady as few others were. There was no mark on his body and no visible scar.

  His scars were of the spirit. That was a gnarled and stunted thing.

  When he raised his face to the starless sky, Valeria hissed between her teeth. She had not wanted to recognize him—she had not believed what her eyes told her.

  It was Gothard. He was alive. There could be no mistake.

  She knew that face as well as she knew Kerrec’s, and hated it as much as she had loved his brother’s. Those blunter, plainer features were close enough to Kerrec’s that one could not mistake their kinship. That heavier body still had a ghost of the elder brother’s grace.

  As if her shock had triggered a spell, he turned until he stared straight at her. His shock was as strong as hers. Then it changed.

  Hate—she had expected that. Outrage and desire for revenge, twisted together and bound with old rancor—that was no surprise. But above and beyond them all was triumph. As he recognized Valeria, his whole soul was a cry of victory.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Valeria woke to the drumming of rain on the roof of her tent. She had no memory of pitching the tent or going to sleep in it.

  Had it been a dream, then? Had she imagined Gothard in the field of Unmaking? It had felt so real. The shock of it was still with her, knotting her belly.

  Her hand felt strange. She was clutching something so hard her muscles were knotted and the edges had dug into her skin. With an effort she unfolded her fingers.

  It was a stone, round and glossy black and sharp enough to cut. One of the cuts had bled.

  The stone was like the pupil of an eye, staring at her. Magic nested in it. Deep inside, she saw Gothard’s face.

  She flung it as far away from her as she could. It was true—it was real, whether she had gone there in the flesh or in dream. Gothard was alive. He was in this country, working his magic against the empire and his own kin.

  And now he knew she was coming. Sabata had betrayed her.

  That could not be true. There must be another meaning in this. The stallions were Aurelia’s heart. They would not hand her over to Aurelia’s enemy.

  And yet…

  The Lady had allowed Briana to be all but destroyed. Now Sabata had brought Valeria to this. The gods had turned against Aurelia.

  Valeria shook her head hard. No matter what she had said to the Lady, she refused to believe that. The empire had shown a distressing tendency to forget that the white gods existed, but that was the riders’ fault. They were making amends. They were doing what the gods wanted them to do.

  Sabata must have brought her to this country to bring Gothard down. With all three stallions here and the rest within her, she could do it.

  Maybe it was not only Gothard who would fall but the One itself. Her heart thudded at the thought. Could she destroy Unmaking with Unmaking? Could she unmake the nothingness inside herself?

  If she had been alone, that would have been grand hubris. With three white gods and a master of three magics, it might be possible.

  The patterns were no clearer after she swore to herself that she would do this. They were still like a tangle of leaves and vines growing toward the edge of a cliff. One moment they were dense with life, the next there was nothing. They were all gone.

  She scraped herself together as best she could. The rain had stopped. She peered out of the tent into a suddenly bright morning.

  Everything was washed clean. Tribesmen who had fallen asleep under the sky were rising, blinking, sopping wet but grinning broadly.

  When they caught Valeria’s eye, some stiffened, but many kept on grinning. They did not know what she was—either female or a rider. To them she was simply one of several small dark imperials trespassing on their lands. Their grins dared her to make something of it.

  She declined to be provoked. It was a wonder that any of the embassy was still alive, considering how the tribes hated them. But there was courtesy here, and inviolable custom. They were safe unless they said or did something that could not be forgiven.

  The guards were up and saddling horses. The prisoners, who had spoken hardly a word since they passed the river, huddled together as far from the clansmen as their bonds would let them go. It seemed their worship of the One did not extend to the One’s chosen people.

  As Valeria broke her fast with a loaf of last night’s bread and a cup of heavily watered wine, Master Pretorius emerged from his tent and calmly dismantled it with a gesture. It collapsed its poles, folded its canvas, and put itself away in a mule’s pack.

  Valeria gaped as foolishly as any tribesman. She had heard of such magic but never seen it. It was not an art any of Pretorius’ three orders was known for.

  She shut her mouth with care. Pretorius went on his way so casually that she knew he was feigning it.

  In Valeria’s mind he had done a deeply stupid thing, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She found her stallions on the lines, wet and gloriously muddy, and applied herself to making them fit to be seen.

  Gothard looked like a cat who had got into the cream. His usually sullen face was almost cheerful as he hung about the camp.

  Euan Rohe did not try overly hard to find out what had brought an almost-smile to replace the perpetual frown. If he was honest with himself, he was afraid to ask. It could be nothing good.

  The hunting from this camp had been waning for a few days, enough that he had begun to think of moving on. Then suddenly the woods were full of game and the moors alive with birds and coneys and herds of deer.

  “Fire in the east,” his kinsman Conory said as they got ready for the morning’s hunt. Conory had been out on his own and had come back just this morning. “Lightning’s been walking all along the moors. The grass is burning from Caermor to Dun Gralloch.”

  That was not good news for the duns and camps in the path of the flames. Euan sent messengers to prepare the duns near them for the fire, but also to order that they take in any clansman who happened to be fleeing from it.

  He should go there himself, and he would—but this morning he had promised his people a hunt. Some of them were mounted but most were on foot. A horse was waiting for Euan, but he chose to run like a proper tribesman, leading the pack of them out to the braying of horns and the baying of hounds and the laughter and song of men hungry for a good run and a clean kill.

  The cares of a king fell away. Euan whooped with the best of them, sounded his horn and set the game to running. Birds flew up in a thunder of wings. Coneys darted out from underfoot. Off to his right, someone started a wild pig—a young one, squealing in terror.

  Darts and arrows were flying, but Euan had different prey in mind today. He craved a fine haunch of venison, rubbed with herbs and roasted on a spit.

  Deer liked the river that ran into the camp. He followed it upstream with
a handful of his warband and a few odd clansmen at his back. The rest of the hunt veered off southward after the pig’s kin. From the racket the hounds were making, there was at least one big boar in the lot.

  He paused a moment, torn. He did love a good boar hunt. But he would look weak-minded if he turned back now.

  While he paused, his eye caught fresh deer sign. A herd had made its way up the track not long before, does and fawns and one large, heavy track that would be the stag.

  He was a big one, with hooves as wide as Euan’s palm. Euan forgot the boar in contemplation of a stag as tall as a horse. Now there was quarry worth hunting.

  He grinned at Conory who was directly behind him, tireless in spite of having been on the road all night. Grins flashed beyond. No one appeared to regret their choice of prey.

  The track led them through a thicket—the trees much torn with the stag’s antlers—and back out onto the heath. It was steep in places and sometimes seemed to disappear altogether as the herd leaped falls of brush or sudden outcroppings of stone.

  The hunters meandered along the side of a long ridge. The sign was fresher now. Euan reckoned the deer must have rounded the ridge and settled to graze in the valley on the other side. The grass there was greener than elsewhere, watered by a bubbling cauldron of springs.

  The footing was treacherous, but it was rich pasture and a good hunting ground. Euan thanked the One for sending the herd there.

  He glanced from side to side. His companions had slowed as he had, sensing that their prey was close. They paused to string bows and ready throwing spears, then rounded the ridge with care, crouching low against the background of rock and brush.

  The valley stretched below, a long oval between two arms of the ridge. On the far side it opened onto the moor.

  The deer were moving slowly along the far end of the valley. There were half a dozen does, stepping delicately. All but one had twin fawns.