The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  “Wards can avert a thunderbolt,” said Kerrec, “but can they keep the stallions from turning on us?”

  He watched that prospect sink in. They were all blind bigots, but they were still masters of the art. They knew the stallions.

  Kerrec pressed his advantage. “Without the white gods we are nothing but overwrought Beastmasters. Our art does not exist unless they complete it. If we refuse this one whom they have blessed, we forfeit their goodwill.”

  “And if they turn against us,” Gallus said, “the empire will lose its heart. The barbarians have been waiting for just such a thing. They’ll fall on us like a wave breaking.”

  “If there is anything left to fall on,” Kerrec said. “This empire’s existence is bound up in the stallions—in the Dance, in the magic that they embody. If the stallions abandon us, we’ll break into a confusion of warring states. There will be no empire. There will be nothing but chaos. The emperor will do what he can, but between the warlords within and the barbarians without, he’ll be doomed to fail.” Kerrec leaned toward them all, as if he could lift each one up and shake sense into him. “You know what’s been foreseen. You’ve seen the number of futures in which the empire falls, and the terribly few in which it endures. Without us, without the Dance, even those few may vanish. We can’t afford to refuse this candidate, brothers. Woman or no, she is one of us.”

  “Never,” said Mikel. His voice was clotted with disgust. “I will not have a woman in my court, laying hand on my horses. I will not suffer her hysteria if she falls and breaks a nail. I will not—”

  “This woman,” Kerrec pointed out through clenched teeth, “has been living as a man since spring. I believe we can trust her to conduct herself with suitable restraint.”

  “I won’t have it, either,” Regan said. “They are different, boy. They can’t be handled in the same way. They’re weaker, more delicate. Our candidates’ trials are hard enough on a man’s constitution. A woman would sicken and die.”

  “Everyone knows,” said Gallus, third in the chorus, “that the Moon’s children lack the strength of the Sun. Granted that she needs tutelage in the use of her magic, she is still not fit to be taught here. Our methods are not suited to a woman. Astarra is not ideal, but surely, in the circumstances—”

  “Listen to yourselves,” Kerrec said in amazement. “None of you has a wife—and no wonder. Presumably you had mothers. Did you learn nothing from them? At all?”

  “Enough,” Nikos said before the others could erupt. “Kerrec, this woman cannot be admitted to the school. Even if the riders would tolerate her, the masters will not.”

  “She must be trained,” Kerrec said.

  “So she must,” said Nikos, “and you will do it.”

  Kerrec had expected nothing else. He was simply surprised that he had not had to fight for it. “You will give me complete discretion?”

  “Within the bounds of the stallions’ approval,” Nikos said.

  Kerrec bowed to that. “And if she excels? If she proves herself as well as any candidate? Will you reconsider her place here?”

  Nikos paused. The other First Riders were rumbling to the boil. Kerrec kept his eyes steady, willing the Master to see this matter clearly and not through a fog of useless prejudice.

  “I will think on it,” Nikos said at last.

  That was the best Kerrec could hope for. He bowed again, lower. “By your leave?”

  Nikos waved him away. “Go. Deal with her. The sooner the better.”

  They had shut Valeria in one of the storerooms. It was better than a prison cell, and she had found a way to make herself useful. She was sitting in a tangle of straps and buckles, rubbing oil into the discrete parts of a bridle.

  Kerrec watched her for a while before he alerted her to his presence. He had never thought that she looked particularly masculine, but he supposed that if one had not first seen her naked in the midst of attempted rape, the disguise was convincing enough. Her features were strong for a woman’s and cleanly carved. Her body was slender, her limbs long, her breasts small. She moved with a strength and surety that was not common among her sex. Women learned young to shorten their steps and weaken their bodies in the cause of attracting males.

  Even so, her skin was too soft to be a man’s. Her hands were narrow, with long supple fingers. Her neck was long and smooth, with the black curls falling softly on it as she bent to her work. Her mouth was full, the kind of mouth that in another woman would beg to be kissed.

  Kerrec was not a monk or a eunuch priest. He could well appreciate beauty in a woman. But if he was to be her teacher, he must put all such thoughts aside. She needed instruction, not seduction.

  He scraped his foot along the floor. She looked up. At sight of him, her face closed. “You could be more imaginative,” she said. “My mother locked me in the root cellar.”

  “I believe we have one,” he said. “Would you prefer it?”

  “Why not?” she said with forced lightness. “She said a woman could never be Called. Has there never been one? Ever?”

  “Not ever,” he said.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “It’s true,” said Kerrec. “The stallions remember. You are the first.”

  “Why?”

  He was not prepared for the directness of that. He should have been. “Gods know,” he said.

  “It’s not false, is it? It’s real. I can feel the stallions, and the Ladies behind them. I can see patterns. The Dance—”

  “It is real,” Kerrec said.

  “It doesn’t matter, even though I passed the testing. I’ll be sent away. Or killed. Have you come to kill me?”

  Her sight was brutally clear. It was part of her gift. “You will not be killed or sent away,” he said. “You can’t be admitted to the school, but you are allowed to stay. You will have instruction. Whatever the gods have in mind for you, you will not face it without knowledge.”

  She had not been expecting that. He watched the play of emotions across her face, the shuttered mask forgotten. She was angry and disappointed, and no wonder. But this was more than she had any right to expect.

  “I’m…to learn?” she said. “How—”

  “I will teach you,” he said.

  She was less than delighted. The best he could say was that she was resigned. It hurt a little. He would have liked her to be happier about it.

  “You knew this would happen,” she said. “You’ve known all along what I am. Why didn’t you speak?”

  “You were Called,” he said.

  “That didn’t make any difference to anyone else.”

  “It did to me.”

  “Why?”

  She was as persistent as a small child. “Not every family is glad to lose a son to the Mountain,” he answered.

  “You’re the firstborn?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m the fourth,” she said, “but the first daughter. I was going to be a wisewoman in Imbria when Mother got tired of it.”

  “That would be like keeping an eagle to chase the crows off the corn.”

  That startled her into laughter. “What, you’re a farmer’s son, too? And here I was thinking you were at least as high up as Paulus.”

  Kerrec refrained from responding to that. It did not matter what he had been before he came to the Mountain. He said, “Bring the bridle with you. Once you’ve finished cleaning it and put it back together, it’s yours.”

  She stood up hastily, but he noticed that she had the whole bridle in her hands, bit and reins and all.

  “A First Rider may have a personal servant,” he said. “You will occupy that position. It will give you—”

  “Won’t people talk?” she interrupted him. “They all know what I—”

  “You will not interrupt,” he said coldly. “A First Rider’s servant has a room of his—or her—own. It’s small but adequate, and offers you both privacy and modesty. You will perform such duties as I set you, while pursuing the studies of a rid
er-candidate. I will expect the same of you as of any other candidate. Is that understood?”

  “Quite well,” she said.

  The ease that had been growing between them was gone. He refused to let himself miss it. She must be perfect in her discipline and impeccable in her pursuit of her studies if she hoped to remain here. No one must be able to accuse either of them of impropriety.

  In time he would explain it to her. For now it was enough that she observed his distance and imitated it.

  He turned without another word. She was behind him as he left the storeroom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  While the youngest of the rider-candidates celebrated their success with a revel that ran far into the night, Valeria cleaned saddles and ran errands for her new master. He was ingenious at finding things for her to do. He was also merciless in demanding that she do everything exactly as he wanted.

  It was obvious that he had not had a servant in quite some time. His rooms were clean, after a fashion. The First Riders’ tower had servants for that purpose. They were not dedicated to any task more complicated than sweeping the floors and making the beds. His clothes were washed regularly, at least. He must insist on that.

  Everything else was left to itself. His clothes were piled wherever they happened to fall. His belongings were in a shocking clutter. She found books everywhere, and pots of ink and pens and scraps of parchment and enough tablets to test another year’s worth of the Called, tumbled in with bits of harness and stray buckles and, buried in a corner, an ancient and crumbling saddle that must once have been resplendent. The gold plating on it was tarnished or gone, the straps and billets were missing and the seat was worn through.

  It was more than a full day’s work to make order of that chaos. She did what she could, for a start, while Kerrec went off on some business of his own. She supposed he was attending the feast.

  For her there was a loaf of bread and a jar of quite decent wine, which she ate and drank when she remembered. The bread sank like a stone. The wine went straight to her head.

  She was shifting books from the floor to a shelf when he came in. Night had fallen. None of the lamps was lit, but she had a witchfire hanging above her, casting a cold blue light on her work.

  Kerrec was weighted down with plates and bottles, which he set on the table. “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  “Something I shouldn’t?” she guessed.

  “No,” he said. “No, no. It’s very diligent. It’s also rather late. You should eat and then sleep.”

  “I ate,” she said. “I’ll sleep when I can. I’m wide awake now.”

  “I brought you dinner from the hall,” he said. “You did earn it.”

  “I was the champion of the testing,” she said. It was petty, but she could not stop herself. “Who drank the champion’s cup? Paulus?”

  “No one,” he said. He uncovered plates and poured from bottles, as deft as if he had been the servant.

  She truly had not been hungry until she saw so many different delicacies arranged in front of her. She recognized bread and roast fowl. The rest she had only heard of.

  There was a great variety of everything, but not so much that her stomach revolted. When the edge was off her hunger, she paused. “No one drank the champion’s cup?”

  “The champion was not present,” he said. He had sat across the table from her while she ate.

  “Should I have been?”

  “No.”

  She nibbled a bit of stewed fruit. “You must all be in a terrible state.”

  His lips thinned. “You will do best to keep your head down and your face out of sight for a while. Eventually everyone will grow accustomed to you.”

  “You think so?”

  “The quieter you are, the more likely it is.”

  She bit her lip. She had no good reason to provoke him. He had taken her when no one else would. Whatever hope she had of learning the ways of her magic, he was the means to that end.

  She bent to the feast that he had brought her. Her appetite was gone, but she made herself eat every bit of it. If she paid for it later, then so be it. Kindness was not a common thing here. She should take advantage of it while she had it.

  The day of Midsummer was a great festival in the empire. Here on the Mountain, it was more. The sun’s longest day and the moon’s longest night tugged at the tides of time. Just at sunrise, when the moon was still above the horizon, the stallions entered the Hall of the Dance.

  Valeria had discovered an unexpected advantage in being a servant—she could watch from the stallions’ own entrance. It had been her responsibility to see that her rider was properly dressed, his coat and breeches spotless and his boots polished.

  The rest of the riders’ servants had left, either to find seats in the gallery or to amuse themselves while the Dance went on. Valeria stayed where she was. This was the first true, full and formal Dance that she had seen outside of dreams.

  It was better and stronger than dreams. She woke from it to find her face wet with tears, but she could not remember having shed them.

  This Dance had not changed the world. It had confirmed the stars in their courses and steadied the sun as it rose toward the summit of heaven. It was a Dance of strength and stability. When it was done, the Augurs raised their staffs in a gesture that, she had learned, meant It is well.

  She could feel it in herself as the riders left the Hall. She was stronger. Her head was clearer. Her heart was light as she went to her duties. They were few today, and when she had done them, she would be free to do as she pleased.

  Everyone was talking of the second great event of the day, the coming of the young stallions to the school. Riders had gone up to the spring pastures days before and brought back those in their fourth year. Today they would see the inside of these walls for the first time. Riders would take them in hand and assess them before beginning their training.

  After the ordered perfection of the Dance, this was happy chaos. Riders drove the herd down the processional way from the north gate into the central square of the citadel, which was paved with grass and surrounded by high walls. Some of the riders were already in the square, mounted on older stallions. Spectators watched from windows and balconies.

  Valeria had squeezed onto a balcony midway down one of the walls from the entrance. She did not know any of the people crammed in with her, including the pair of riders. They did not seem to know who she was, either, which suited her perfectly.

  Long before the horses came in sight, the waiting crowd heard the thunder of hooves. It grew louder as the herd drew nearer. Valeria could feel the vibration in the stones under her feet.

  She could feel the coming of power. These were gods, raw and young. They came like a storm off the Mountain, pouring into the square, a tumbled stream of black and brown and grey, with here and there a flash of white.

  They were rough and bony and big-headed and beautiful. They swirled around the square like the herds of Valeria’s dreams. There were fragments of the Dance in the patterns, and movements that with time and teaching would transmute into art.

  They shied at the confinement of walls, but most settled in time and stopped to crop the grass. A few remained rebellious, and would not stop running.

  One was standing perfectly still in the center of the square. Valeria started slightly at the sight of him. He was nearly white, with a hint of dappling like the face of the moon.

  She knew him. She had dreamed him over and over, but he was not the calm presence of her dreams at all. His stillness was somehow ominous, like a storm rising.

  Her skin prickled. The others were gods, but this was something more. Just as there were levels of mastery, there were levels of godhood. This stallion was born beyond mastery, and almost beyond restraint.

  He was angry. He had lived free on the Mountain and been happy. He knew that he was fated to come here, and that order and discipline were his lot, but he had no intention of submitting to them.

  All
the young riders and rider-candidates, along with a few of the higher-ranking riders, had come down to the square with ropes slung over their shoulders. Valeria’s heart clenched at the sight of Batu and Iliya together not far below her. She should have been there. She should have been with them.

  Her anger threatened to match the young stallion’s. That could not happen. She must not let it. Discipline was a rider’s first virtue. If she ever hoped to be a rider, she had to be more disciplined than any of the men.

  The young stallions had drawn in toward the square’s center. The circle of riders closed around them. Each young stallion would find a rider, a companion and teacher for his first year. Some riders would take more than one. Others might not be chosen at all. It was the stallions’ choice.

  The stallions had all gone calm, even the rebels. Only the angry one was still in the center, still seething. He did not want to be calm or focused. Above all, he did not want to submit his will to any pallid slug of a man.

  Valeria eyed the distance to the ground. No one else seemed to notice that there was trouble brewing. Men and stallions were finding one another, the patterns drawn like lines of force across the square. The angry one was a smoldering hole in the middle.

  Some of his brothers jostled him, crowded even more tightly now that there were humans mixed into the herd. One man, a rider whom she did not know, moved as if to slip a loop of rope over the stallion’s head.

  The pattern was warping and fraying. Valeria could see the void underneath the world.

  The rider was oblivious. When the stallion shook him off, he came on more strongly.

  The stallion erupted. His brothers scattered. The rider screamed as he fell under trampling hooves.

  All the masters ran from the corners of the square. Valeria was aware of Kerrec, youngest and fastest, aiming straight for the death in the stallion’s eyes.

  Through the tumult of shouts and cries, she heard a master’s strong voice calling. “Kill him! Quickly!”