Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  In Euan Rohe’s arms, she had taught herself to forget that other half of herself. She loved Euan—she did, truly, as much as she could love any man who was not Kerrec.

  Anger flared up anew. Damn Kerrec, and damn her foolish heart. The harder she tried to drive him out of it, the deeper he wormed himself in. She could not even tell where she ended and he began.

  Once more she turned to Sabata. Oda and Marina stood behind him, ears pricked, waiting. For them this had already happened and would always happen. If the world ended because of the choices she made, then so it did.

  There was no choice. Under Pretorius’ influence, in the fog of her own anger and confusion, she had thought there was. She had imagined that she could do this thing, marry this man whose whole life was focused on destroying Aurelia.

  She was never meant to be a queen. The only throne she had ever needed or wanted was a horse’s back. She was a rider first, foremost, and always—just as Kerrec was.

  Cold sickness had lodged under her breastbone since she turned her back on him and sent him to his bride. It twisted suddenly into pain so fierce she gasped. In that pain was a bitter clarity.

  The patterns around her were shifting and changing, transforming themselves with dizzying speed. When she looked toward Aurelia and Kerrec, the tides of fate and time were incomprehensible. If she turned back toward Dun Mor, the fortress and its people sank into night.

  If she removed herself from the patterns around the dun, the Unmaking faded. She searched through them over and over, to be sure, but there was no doubt about it. She was a curse on that place and its people, and above all its king.

  She had been blinded with delusion. Now in the misty morning her sight came brutally clear.

  If she wanted to destroy Euan’s people, she had only to stay in Dun Mor and let him make her his queen. It would serve Aurelia splendidly. But it would devour her soul.

  Gothard nodded, seeing that clarity in her. He drew a fistful of silk from the purse at his belt. Magic thrummed in it.

  Valeria made no move to take it. She wanted nothing from this man, now or ever.

  “Come, lady,” he said. “Be sensible. It’s a long way to the border, and this is his country. He knows every hill and crag of it. He’ll hunt you without rest or mercy, and he will catch you. He can’t let you go. Even if his heart would allow it, his honor won’t.”

  No matter how much Valeria hated him, he was right.

  “I can protect myself,” she said.

  “As you protect yourself against the Unmaking?”

  She hissed at him. He stood holding out his bit of silk, letting the silence stretch and the truth of his words gnaw away at her resistance.

  This billowing fog of words must conceal some deep and deadly lie. But she could not tell what or where it was.

  She needed any help she could get if she was to win through to Aurelia—and Gothard’s spell would make her magic stronger. She would have to trust that whatever harm was in it, her own protections were strong enough to turn it aside.

  She gritted her teeth and let him drop the thing into her palm. The silk slipped back from an ordinary black pebble. Part of it was smooth and rounded, and part was sharp-edged like shattered glass.

  She remembered that stone. It had been in her hand when she woke after Sabata showed her the place of Unmaking. She had cast it away, but it had followed her.

  When it touched her skin, she gasped as if a dart of ice had pierced her hand. Her fist clenched convulsively.

  The stone both froze and burned. Icy fire ran through her body and burst from the top of her skull. The Unmaking screamed.

  White calm surrounded her. Sabata held her up. Oda and Marina breathed on her, driving away the cold.

  She thrust the stone into her purse. It tried to cling to her hand. She scraped it off. At last, thank the gods, it dropped away.

  There were wards around her, as strong as stone and as transparent as glass. Anything that tried to find her would slip over and past it without touching her.

  She gulped air into burning lungs. Her whole body shook. It took all the strength of will she had to stop the trembling.

  Gothard watched her in cold amusement. “You’ll never make a stone mage,” he said.

  “Gods forbid I ever wish to.” She pulled herself into the saddle. She did not thank him and she did not particularly care what would happen to him when Euan discovered what he had done, but she had to ask. “You’ll be safe?”

  “No one touches a dead man walking,” he said.

  She nodded once. Sabata turned before she could ask. The rain was setting in at last.

  She pulled a woolen cloak from her saddlebag. It was Caletanni weaving, a gift from Euan on the morning after she agreed to marry him.

  She should have cast it away, but it was closely woven and warm, and she would need it. She wrapped it around her, trying not to let the smell of it wake memories.

  She could still go back. She could dare to hope that these new visions were as false as the rest.

  Sabata’s head faced westward. He did not stop or turn at the tensing of her thigh in the saddle. He was going home.

  She sagged on his neck. Hot tears mingled with cold rain on her cheeks. There was nothing to see if she had looked back. Rain concealed the world behind a thick grey curtain.

  Sabata was warm and strong. The rhythm of his paces soothed her body’s tension.

  Her mind had gone numb. She stayed in the saddle by force of habit, letting him carry her where he would.

  Chapter Forty-One

  By the time the rain closed in for good, Euan Rohe knew Valeria had made a run for it. There was no reason to think that except Murna’s words and his own unease. He told himself he would find her in Dun Mor, dry and warm and doing women’s things.

  The brown mage said nothing when Euan left the wall. The last Euan saw of him, he was perched in the same place. The rain barely dampened him.

  More damned magic. His expression was so grim that Euan looked away in self-defense, pulling his plaid over his head and running toward the shelter of the dun.

  Conor perched on the empty pedestal that stood beside the door to the men’s hall. He was as still as if he had been made of stone, but his eyes glittered in the torchlight.

  “She’s gone,” he said as Euan paused in front of him. There were marks of tears on his cheeks. “She’s gone away, and all the bright ones went with her.”

  Even though Euan had known it, his belly clenched. What rose in him was enormous and blinding and completely without reason. The heart of it was Valeria’s face all soft with pleasure, and her eyes smiling while her voice promised that she would be his queen now and always.

  He flung open the doors of the hall. They crashed back. “Up!” he roared at the men who sat up blinking and yawning. “Up! Every man who can sit a horse—get that horse and ride!”

  Half a hundred men sprang up, wide awake and ready to fight. Euan grinned ferociously at them all. When he spun on his heel and bolted toward the stable, they were behind him, snatching clothes and weapons as they ran.

  There was a hard, driving rain coming down as they thundered out of the dun, but none of them cared. Euan glanced back once. Dun Mor was a grey shadow in the downpour, with Conor’s small pale face peering out of its gate. Then a pair of arms pulled the boy inside.

  Euan pulled the hood down lower and bent over his horse’s neck. The road was slippery but the heath alongside offered good enough footing. He led his warband out across country, aiming for the place where Valeria was most often known to go.

  The broken tower had an occupant, but the horse was bay and the rider was Euan’s least beloved cousin. Gothard was dry and apparently warm though there was hardly any shelter in the wind, and he was smiling.

  Euan pulled up in front of him. “What have you done to her?”

  Gothard’s smile widened. “The arrow has flown,” he said.

  Euan leaned down and clamped his hand around the madma
n’s throat. “What did you do?”

  Gothard laughed. It did not seem to trouble him at all that Euan was trying to choke the life out of him. “I told her you know about her child,” he said. “It’s a daughter, I think. Shall I find her for you?”

  Euan’s fingers tightened until Gothard’s face darkened from crimson to blue. “If you harm a hair of either head, I will gut you with a blunt knife.” He let go abruptly, flinging the sorcerer to the rain-wet stones.

  Gothard grinned up at him. “She believed me—every word. Because I told her only the truth.”

  Euan knew Gothard’s kind of truth. Each word might be true, but the whole was twisted into an elaborate lie. “Where has she gone? What have you made her do?”

  “She’s going home,” said Gothard. “It was wonderfully easy to convince her. She’ll serve us there as only she can. With her, we’ll win it all.”

  “This is her home,” Euan said through clenched teeth.

  “Not to her. I hardly had to mention it before I had her in my hand. She is fond of you—no one can deny that—but she’s Aurelian to the bone. Which,” said Gothard, “is our great good fortune. She’ll give us the empire, its gods, everything. We’ll win back all we lost.”

  Euan’s heart clenched. He had dreamed of such a weapon and such a stroke. He had done everything he could to make it happen.

  He had never meant that weapon to be Valeria.

  It was not going to be Valeria. He whirled his horse around, tumbling Gothard underfoot. His warband was more than ready to follow.

  In Dun Mor Valeria had forgotten the strange things this country’s magic could do to her. As she rode away from it, the strangeness came back tenfold. Her head was light and she was dizzy, and she could not seem to focus properly.

  Part of that was her body’s betrayal. Her courses had come on fast and hard, doubling her up with pain.

  She was glad. Grania did not need a half-barbarian brother or sister. No one did. Gothard was proof of that.

  She paused to do the necessary, got the cramping under control, mounted again and went on. She had to get to the border, and then she had to make her way to the imperial city. She had to find Kerrec.

  Above all, she had to see Briana. Briana more than any must know what was brewing among the tribes.

  The rain lightened to a drizzle and then to a mist. It was well past noon, but the stallions showed no sign of tiring.

  They would stop when it pleased them. Valeria was neither hungry nor thirsty, though she had her bit of breakfast if she was minded to eat it. She closed her eyes, but that only made the dizziness worse.

  At first she thought she heard thunder. Then she recognized the thudding of hooves—a herd of horses, dozens strong.

  It could not be pursuit. Gothard’s spell protected her against it. It must be a hunting party from one of the clans.

  The mist blew away in a sudden swirl of wind. She looked directly into a pair of yellow wolf-eyes.

  Gothard had lied. She dug heels into Sabata’s sides, so hard he squealed in protest and leaped forward.

  “Valeria!” Euan roared behind her.

  She urged Sabata from hand gallop to headlong run.

  Euan’s voice boomed over the moor. “Valeria! Valeriaaaaa!”

  She felt nothing. It could have been the baying of hounds or the cry of a horn. All it meant was that she was hunted—and her erstwhile ally had betrayed her. Fool that she was, to trust him even for an instant.

  Euan Rohe had his whole warband with him, his closest friends and companions. They were all mounted and riding breakneck behind their king.

  An arrow flew past her. She crouched as low as she could. Sabata’s mane whipped her cheek.

  Euan shouted again, not her name this time. It sounded as if he was cursing the man who had shot at her.

  That could not be so. He wanted her dead. They all did. She had broken her word. No high king could suffer such dishonor.

  Euan would have to kill her. He had no choice.

  First he had to catch her.

  Damn the woman, she would not stop. Euan howled at her, promising her anything if she would leave off running. She only rode the faster.

  It must be true. All her promises had been false. The moment she had the chance to go back to her own country, she had taken it.

  Euan refused to believe that. Gothard lied. When he did not lie, he twisted the truth out of all recognition.

  If Euan could only catch her, he would find a way to explain. She did love him—he was as sure of that as he was of his own love for her. He would break whatever spell Gothard had laid on her, take her home and finish making her his queen.

  She could win the world for us.

  That was Gothard’s voice, winding like a snake through Euan’s mind. Euan shut it out. They did not need her. All their forces were moving into place, preparing to strike before the empress tried again to take the throne.

  Valeria would sit on that throne. She would fight it, and for a while she would hate Euan, but she would come round to it in the end. She would see the advantage in her position—the ability to speak for her people before the high king, and the capacity to make him understand them.

  But first she had to stop and listen. Her white horses were not as fast as Euan had been led to expect. They ran like the thick little cobs they were—doughtily and with great endurance, but speed was not their best virtue.

  His fingers twitched toward his bow. The idiot who had shot at her would get a flogging with the flat of a sword, but he had reminded Euan that a wise cavalryman shot at the enemy’s horses.

  These were not horses. If one of them was wounded or killed—if they could be killed—the One alone knew what the consequence would be.

  Euan was not that desperate. Yet.

  In all this mist and fog, no one could properly tell where they were. There was no road or track to guide them. They must be going westward, but how far they had come, Euan could not have said. All of his distances were calculated at the speed of a man on foot.

  He only had to outlast her. His horse was a strong beast as well as fast—they bred for it in the imperial studs. Euan’s rump was not nearly as well accustomed to a saddle as hers, but it was only pain. Pain was his gift to the One.

  Euan had stopped roaring at her, which was a relief. He had not stopped following. The moor went on forever and so did the chase, silent now and as relentless as a nightmare.

  She was not going to wake from this one. Sabata’s neck was slick with sweat as well as rain. He had to slow soon, to breathe and drink. She was not a barbarian who could ride his horse into the ground and not care.

  The moor had been mostly level, but now it began to slope downward. The fog that seemed to have been lifting was thicker here. It had a cold smell, almost like the sea.

  There must be a river nearby, but there was no sign of it in the mist. Valeria could not have heard it running through the pounding of hooves and the hammering of her heart.

  When it seemed the chase would truly be endless, like the hunt of the gods-cursed in old stories, the long slope leveled. A shape appeared in the mist, a shadowy man on horseback, beckoning urgently.

  Valeria caught the hot-metal smell of magic even as she recognized Master Pretorius. It truly was the mage and not the traitor Gothard—his magic was unmistakable even to her fuddled senses.

  He was calling to her to turn aside from the direct way and cross the slope slantwise. Her belly knotted. Did she dare to trust him?

  If it ended this chase, even an ambush would be welcome. Sabata was flagging. Marina and Oda, though unburdened by a rider, were not as fresh as they had been.

  Oda’s breath came hard. God he might be, but his body was old.

  One of the pursuers’ horses went down, rolling end over end. The others did not even check their stride. Another arrow flew, this time toward the riderless stallions.

  Marina ducked and veered. Sabata stumbled, rolling stones underfoot, but just as fear opened
wide in Valeria, he recovered and went on as strongly as ever. Thank the gods, the arrow had not touched him.

  Pretorius glimmered ahead of them. He seemed to float in the mist, hovering above the tumbled ground.

  Sabata plunged through him and swerved—and the earth gave way.

  Valeria looked down into empty space and, far below, a swirl of foaming water. Sabata scrambled frantically as the cliff’s edge crumbled. His hooves slipped and flailed.

  Valeria acted by pure instinct, lying back as far as she could go. The sky whirled overhead. It was raining men and horses.

  Sabata hurtled downward. By some miracle he kept his haunches under him and his shoulders up. At least one horse somersaulted over him, saddle empty and stirrups flying.

  Sabata’s fall ended abruptly, nearly launching Valeria over his head. She held on with every scrap of balance she had.

  A thicket of brambles had caught him, stabbing her with innumerable thorns.

  She welcomed the pain with all her heart. The river roared just beyond the thicket, tumbling the bodies of Euan’s warband among the carcasses of their mounts. Of Oda and Marina she saw no sign.

  A narrow track ran along the riverbank. Sabata needed badly to rest, but she dared not stop, not there. Once they had extricated themselves from the brambles, she had just enough room to slip off his back and spare him the effort of carrying her.

  She tried to go upstream away from the tumble of drowned men and horses, but the brambles there were impenetrable. The only way to go was downstream.

  It was a wet, slippery, grueling road. She was scratched and bleeding, but the multitude of small pains kept her in her body. Sabata plodded behind her, head low in exhaustion.

  Road and river bent around the base of the cliff. Valeria knew better than to look back, but she could not help herself.

  Most of the warband had been carried away downstream, dead or dying. A handful of twisted bodies lay on the bank. Even if any of them had survived, he would not be following her.

  One big red horse lay dying by the water. His back was broken.