Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  “All true,” said Murna, “but if she trusted you, she would have told you.”

  “She’ll tell me when she’s ready,” Euan said. “Of course she doesn’t trust me completely yet. We’re born enemies.”

  “Exactly,” Murna said.

  Euan glowered at her. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were jealous. Are you afraid she’ll take your position away from you? That won’t happen. The queen mother outranks the queen.”

  “I’m not afraid of that,” Murna said with a touch of heat. “I am afraid of what she will do when she remembers what she left behind.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” Euan said. “Nor I think will she. She’s wiser than you give her credit for. She knows what she’s doing.”

  “Does she? She came here in a fit of pique because her lover had to take a noble wife. When that pique passes, she’ll go back to him. No matter how much she loves you, you’re as different as doe and bear. The stag will call and she’ll answer. She won’t be able to stop herself.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Euan said.

  “There are ways to bind her,” said Murna, “if we must.”

  “No,” he said. “No, we will not. She’ll stay of her own free will.”

  “But if she changes her mind—”

  “Enough,” he said with hard-fought restraint. “No more. You are my mother and I owe you respect, but keep on with this and I will know that you are my wife’s enemy and therefore mine. At the very least, let her prove herself. If she turns against us, I’ll be as harsh as you could ask.”

  “I’ll hold you to that promise,” his mother said.

  Murna had dampened Euan’s spirits thoroughly. He fought his way out of the black mood by reminding himself that Valeria was not what his mother insisted she was. She was wiser, saner, kinder—and more trustworthy. Once she had given her word, she would not break it.

  There was a way to make sure of that. The priests would object, but in such things they were bound to the Ard Ri. His will would prevail over theirs.

  He pulled on his breeks and scraped his hair into a plait. People were yelling for him in the hall. He waved them off.

  Some of them followed him out of the dun. He let them do it. They would be witnesses.

  After days of heavy heat, a storm had rolled through in the night. The morning was grey and cool, with a mist lying on the heather. Everything past a furlong’s distance was lost in the fog.

  Valeria was not in the pasture where she rode every morning. All three of her stallions were gone.

  Euan shut out the voice in his mind that sounded exactly like this mother’s. What did I tell you? She’s run for it.

  She had not. She rode out in the mornings, explored the country around the dun and came back when the sun was fully up. If he waited, she would come.

  The brown mage was sitting on the wall. Euan had not seen him in the mist until he moved. “My lord,” the mage said.

  Euan nodded curtly. The man made his skin creep.

  If any imperial was not to be trusted, it was this one. The man had made no secret of his intentions. He had brought Valeria to seduce the high king—and she had.

  Euan owed him either thanks or an axe in the skull. He settled for suffering the man’s company.

  For once there was no oily stream of chatter. They sat on the wall at a discreet distance from each other as the mist thickened and the air took on the heavy smell of rain.

  Valeria had had a restless night. Her courses were trying to begin, which did not trouble her, but they brought with them a strange, painful sensation. She felt as if the skin had been stripped from her body.

  Euan’s delight in her helped a little, but he fell asleep all too soon and left her alone to listen to the wind and thunder and the pounding of rain. Although the storm passed soon enough, its tumult lingered in her heart. The sense of foreboding was on her again, the awareness of desperation beating on her shields from without.

  She should have been free of that. The choice she had made brought a glimmer of light for them all. She was glad of that choice. She could live with it and the man she had chosen.

  And yet as the night went on, she grew more agitated instead of less. Finally she gave up trying to sleep, dressed in her riding clothes and scavenged bread and cheese and a bottle of barley beer from the kitchen.

  Not even the cooks were awake. The dogs blinked sleepily at her as she slipped past the men’s hall. She lulled them back to sleep with a touch of magic like the brush of a hand over each shaggy grey head.

  It was dark and thick with fog beyond the gate. She made her way with other senses than eyes. Her saddle and bridles were safe in their box—no one here would steal them, between awe and misunderstanding of what they were. She had heard one burly warrior tell another that without them she could not control the stallions.

  Those wild and incomprehensible creatures were grazing together peacefully in a corner. Whatever was troubling her seemed not to touch them.

  Sabata’s awareness brushed past her first with a flash of sudden gladness. His hooves were almost soundless on the grass, except when now and then they struck a stone. She traced his advance in that intermittent clatter, then in the soft moonlight glow that brightened the fog.

  The shimmering shape loomed in front of her. She ran her hands over his damp body. He was clean, for a miracle—horses and especially white horses had a heartfelt attraction to the vilest and blackest mud they could find.

  She brushed him quickly, picked out his hooves and did the same for the others as they came crowding near. As she slipped the brushes and pick back into her saddlebags, Sabata pawed impatiently.

  He never did like to stand about when he could be dancing. As she spread the saddlecloth over his back, she realized that the glimmer on it was more than the stallion’s own light. Dawn was coming.

  It was a grey, dank morning, with a new storm closing in. This one was as soft as the one before it had been violent. Slow rain would dampen the earth, quenching its thirst far more thoroughly than torrents that ran headlong into the streams and rivers.

  She would be done and gone before the rain began in earnest. She strapped the saddlebags in place and mounted.

  When she opened the gate, Oda and Marina were waiting to follow. Usually they stayed with the grass, but this morning they were in the mood for a run on the moor. Oda was unusually lively, rearing up on his hind legs and regaling them all with a triple leap.

  Valeria laughed. The darkness was still in her heart, but he had lightened her spirits.

  Sabata coiled under her and sprang into a gallop. The others fell in just behind. They ran surefooted on the narrow stony track, rounding the steep hillside on which the dun was built, then winding away across the moor.

  They were long out of sight of the dun before they consented to walk. Sabata was dancing and blowing still. The older stallions strode out strongly, aiming for the stream that was the usual limit of their morning run.

  The stream flowed around the feet of a ruined tower. It must once have been part of a stronghold, but not even the outline of it was left in the heather, only the broken stump of the round tower.

  It was light enough now to see the wall looming in the fog. Valeria was minded to pull off the saddle and let the stallions graze while she ate her breakfast under the last remaining bit of roof.

  There was someone sitting where she had meant to sit. A handsome bay horse plucked grass within the circle of the wall, ignoring the stallions outside.

  It was a gelding from one of the legions, she could not mistake that, but she kept imagining that he shimmered and changed, shrinking somewhat in height and broadening considerably in girth. Then he was a mare, a bay Lady with eyes that dared her to say a word.

  That was impossible. Valeria was conjuring images out of fog. Never in this world would a Lady ally herself with the man who sat on the broken bit of wall.

  Gothard’s wards were up, strengthened by the stone that surround
ed him. He was armed, too, with a short sword. Clearly he was taking no chances.

  It was like him to waylay Valeria far away from any other human creature. But the stallions were with her, unmoved by his attempts at defenses. If he was hoping to trap her within his wards, he would fail.

  Valeria refused to speak first. If he wanted an opening, he could make one for himself.

  He never had had much patience. The silence had hardly grown unbearable before he said, “Good morning, lady.”

  Her lips tightened. “What do you want?”

  “Ever the soul of courtesy,” Kerrec’s brother said. He did not look much like Kerrec—he was taller, broader, and fairer of skin and hair. His mother had been Caletanni, and stark mad.

  He had not inherited her beauty, but he did share her tenuous grip on sanity. His eyes were a little too wide and a little too intent. Wherever he had been and whatever he had done there, he had not come back whole.

  He had been dangerous before, with his desperate hunger to be emperor and his visceral hatred of his full-blood kin. Now Valeria could not tell what he would do, except that it boded ill for Aurelia.

  She had seen the Unmaking in him when he raised it to destroy his father. It was stronger now. The strength of stones held him together, but his heart was absolute emptiness.

  The Unmaking stirred in her, like calling to like. She caught herself before she backed away. She had to stand fast. He must not know how weak she was.

  Sabata clambered up from the stream and dropped his head over her shoulder, holding her to his chest. She wrapped her arms around his nose to keep from falling over.

  He could not have sent a clearer message. Gothard acknowledged it with a stiff bow.

  Sabata let Valeria go but stayed beside her, watching Gothard with ears pricked and nostrils slightly flared. “I think,” she said, “that you had better speak fast and forget whatever game you had in mind. Sabata is not patient.”

  “They know,” Gothard said, “about the child.”

  Chapter Forty

  Valeria’s knees went weak. When she had ordered Gothard to be direct, she had not expected him to obey. This struck like a blow to the gut. “What—who—”

  Gothard smiled. It looked like the grin of a skull. “Your husband-to-be and his mother,” he said, “have deduced that you have a child in Aurelia. It appears not to matter to him, but she sees it as a tie that may bind you when the game plays itself to the end.”

  “I’ve made my choice,” Valeria said, tight-lipped. “His mother may not approve of me, but he does—and he is the one who matters.”

  “You think so?” Gothard said. His tone was dispassionate, as if he lectured in a schoolroom, but his eyes were a little too wide and a little too fixed. “The queen mother rules the dun and through it the tribe. The high king may vaunt himself in war and in front of the men, but his mother tells him what to do and what to think. She doesn’t love you, and she isn’t pleased that he’s chosen an imperial woman for his queen.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Valeria said.

  “Believe this, then. The Ard Ri is coming to claim you. He thinks that if he binds you with the marriage vows, you can’t turn against him when he mounts the next assault on the empire—and that is coming fast. My sister’s downfall has begun. The One’s servant in Aurelia is leaving a trail of blood and slaughter. Each ritual and each sacrifice brings your lover closer to the throne he’s lusted for since he first knew it existed.”

  Valeria swallowed bile. “That’s all your doing. Isn’t it?”

  Gothard laughed like a cry of pain. “Do give your lover credit, lady. Whatever I did to help him on his way, his foot was on it first. He wanted your empress dead, not merely damaged. Behind that charming smile, your dearly beloved barbarian is no better a man than I am.”

  “You are not fit to fasten his shoe.”

  Gothard shrugged off her scorn. “He uses me. I use him. How am I different from you? You’ll be empress if he wins the game. Then you’ll have what he promised you years ago, the Mountain for yourself and the palace to play in. Does that make you happy?”

  “It will never happen,” Valeria said. “His armies are broken. It will be years before they can think of invasion—and in all that time, the empress will be strengthening the empire against him.”

  “This invasion has nothing to do with armies,” Gothard said. “He believes that once you’re bound to him, he can use your magic and the power of the stallions to finish what he’s already begun.”

  “That goes both ways,” Valeria said. “I can use him, too. Have you thought of that?”

  “Often,” said Gothard. His head tilted as if a new thought had occurred to him—or as if he had seen something new and utterly fascinating in Valeria’s face. “So has he—and he’s taken steps to stop you. As soon as he has you secure, he’ll call in the priests to bind your magic. Your white gods are strong, but the One is stronger. But you know that, don’t you? The One is inside you. The heart of your magic is the Unmaking.”

  Gods damn him for seeing what no one else but Briana had ever seen. In those eyes Valeria saw herself as in a dark glass.

  However strong she was, however skilled her magic, its center was primordial nothingness. She was the worm in the empire’s heart—more than anyone else, more even than the spies and priests who crept through the shadows of Aurelia.

  Now she was in the One’s country, betrothed to the One’s chosen. Away from Euan’s warmth and inescapable humanity, she could see clearly what she was doing and what would come of it.

  Her dreams of peace had been merest fancies. These laughing people with their strong music and their visible joy in life were altogether different when they stood in front of their god. Like the twofold god of the empire, who looked both before and behind and ruled over both darkness and light, they presented one face to the daylight and another to the moon’s dark.

  “There will be nine sacrifices in the dark of the moon,” Gothard said in a tone of dreamlike contentment, “and nine vows made to eternal Night. What will happen to you, lady, when those vows open the doors of Unmaking? You may hope to destroy the people who would use you so—but once those doors are fully open, all that is made will be unmade.”

  “They won’t allow that,” Valeria said. “He won’t. He wants to live and rule, not vanish into nothingness.”

  “Ah,” said Gothard, “but he doesn’t know what you really are. He thinks he has a horse mage in his power, a strong one who will tax his priests’ best efforts to control her, but simple enough in the end. He doesn’t know what else is inside you.”

  “Then I’ll tell him,” she said.

  “If you do,” said Gothard, “no matter how much he loves you, he will hand you over to the priests. His people would rise in revolt otherwise. They know what they worship—and how to keep it from destroying them.”

  Valeria pressed her hands over her ears to keep from hearing any more. This was the worst enemy Aurelia had, worse than any barbarian king, because he knew the empire so well and hated it so profoundly. Every word he spoke was calculated, shaped and honed to snare her heart and soul.

  And yet, as terrible as they were, those words made sense. She wished to the gods that they did not.

  Sabata tossed his head. Droplets of mist flew from his mane. She pulled his nose around and pressed her forehead to his.

  She found calm in him, but she also found the same truth Gothard saw.

  And she saw another thing. She saw Euan Rohe waiting for her, alight with purpose. He meant to bind her now, tonight. He would carry her off and speak the words and make her his before she could muster the wits to resist.

  The choice she had made with such lofty intentions was crumbling under the onslaught of doubt. She had not thought it through. She had taken one look at Euan Rohe’s fine white body and all good sense had flown out of her head.

  She straightened and turned to face Gothard, fixing him with her hardest stare. “Tell me what you get
out of this. Why aren’t you letting it happen? I would think you’d prefer to see me caught in the trap.”

  “It would be a pleasant prospect,” Gothard granted her, “but there’s too much risk. I want the throne after he’s taken it for me. That won’t happen if you have any say in it.”

  That too was true. “What, then? Is this an ambush? Will I be dead within the hour?”

  “You’ll be gone,” Gothard said, “but you’ll live as long as you can keep running. I’ll give you a spell that will keep the priests and the warbands off your trail until you cross the river.”

  Valeria’s nape prickled. “I have spells of my own,” she said.

  “None like this one,” said Gothard. “The One’s priests can find the Unmaking in you and draw it back to them. The wards you know won’t help you. The priests call like to like. My spell blinds them. And,” he said, “it will blind the mage who inveigled you into this.”

  Mention of Pretorius swayed Valeria more than she liked to admit. She stiffened her spine. “Why should I trust you? Why don’t you just kill me and have done with it?”

  “Because if I did,” he said, “your stallions would rend me limb from limb. I want you away from this place and these people. I don’t care if you survive to reach Aurelia. It will fall no matter what you do.”

  “I will do my best to prevent that.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Valeria stood motionless. All the careful structure of her world was crumbling around her.

  It should not be doing that. She had chosen already. She would take Sabata and ride back to Dun Mor and finish what she had begun. What difference did it make whether she said the words now or five days from now?

  She could not be entertaining for a moment the thought of sealing a bargain with this of all creatures in the world. And yet if she did that, she could go home.

  Home. Aurelia. The Mountain and the school.

  Kerrec with all of his faults and his sharp edges and his princess wife. Kerrec who had never stopped loving Valeria, even while he did what he had to do.