The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  She angled across the courtyard toward the red gelding. Before she was halfway there, a white whirlwind roared over her. She staggered and clutched at the first solid object her hands could reach.

  Sabata’s mane tangled in her fingers. His neck arched, snaky with fury. He hissed like a cat and struck at the chestnut.

  The gelding was no fool. He backed away hastily, dragging half the line of remounts with him. Sabata shook his mane at the lot of them and presented himself broadside.

  She did not clamber astride as he was ordering her to do. “You can come,” she said. “I’m not the one to stop you. But you’ve never carried a rider. You don’t know what you’re in for.”

  He pinned his little curling ears and refused to listen. He was not going to let her ride anyone else. She would ride him or she would walk.

  “Very well,” she said. “But I did warn you. Come here.”

  She was not entirely sure he would obey, but now that it seemed she would cooperate, he was glad enough to do as she told him. She had to go all the way to the stallions’ stable for a saddle wide enough to fit him, and a bridle made for that short, broad, deep head. He sucked in his breath and fussed at the girth, but he tolerated it. He champed the bit in amazement at the taste of cold metal on his tongue.

  He was still contemplating the novelty when she led him back to the caravan. By then most of the riders were there, and all of the servants. They stared. Some scowled, and others whispered to one another.

  She kept her chin up. This was Sabata’s decision. The riders did not like it in the least, but they were not about to cross a Great One.

  Kerrec was one of the last to come out. Only Master Nikos was still missing. He took in the scene with a lift of the brow that was all the comment he chose to make. When she set about mounting, he was there to steady the stirrup and the horse.

  Sabata did not buck or panic as a mortal horse would have. He was stronger than a mortal horse, too, and bore her weight easily. But he forgot to breathe.

  Kerrec stroked his neck and whispered in his ear. She felt Kerrec’s loving amusement, although none of it showed in that mask of a face. Sabata wheezed, sighed hugely and shook himself from ears to tail.

  “You,” said Kerrec, singling out a rider-candidate. “Make sure her horse is ready. She’ll be changing mounts on the road.”

  Valeria glanced over her shoulder. The rider-candidate he had chosen was Paulus. Valeria would not have done that.

  Paulus would not have, either. His glare in her direction was sulfurous, but he obeyed the First Rider. That much discipline he had learned. He took the chestnut’s rein and mounted his own nondescript brown mare.

  Then at last Master Nikos came out with an escort of riders, guards and servants. He, like Kerrec, took in the sight of Valeria on the Great One’s back and said nothing. That surprised her. She had thought a master would argue with a Great One, but apparently not.

  It was nearly sunup when they rode out. Valeria had been scanning the faces of the crowd that gathered to see them off, searching over and over. There was no big redheaded man anywhere. No Euan, and no goodbye. It would have had to be secret, but she did not care. She needed it. She found herself hating him for abandoning her.

  She turned her mind resolutely to the horse under her and the ride ahead of her. The anger stayed, but she buried it. She would bring it out again when she had time.

  Men, she thought. In the end they were all vermin.

  Sabata walked very carefully, getting the sense of the weight on his back. His brothers and cousins came to surround him, carrying riders who had given up hope of commanding them. They were a grand procession, riding out of the citadel in the first rays of the sun.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sabata lasted until nearly noon. He would have gone longer, but Valeria could feel the tiredness in his unaccustomed muscles. She stood up to him then. When he snapped at the chestnut for daring to carry the one he considered his, she slapped him hard.

  The pain was slight and passed quickly, but the shock lasted for a good hour. Sabata had not had such discipline since he left the mare band as a weanling.

  “It’s about time, then,” Valeria said with a notable lack of sympathy.

  He sulked along beside her with ears flat and nostrils wrinkled, but he did not threaten the chestnut any further.

  No one but Kerrec would speak to Valeria, but that was nothing unusual. Neither were the stares and whispers behind her back. They were closer, that was all. There was no getting away from them.

  In camp the first night, she looked after Sabata because he would let no one else do it. When she went to tend Petra and the chestnut, she found Paulus there and most of it done. She moved to do the rest, but he blocked her. “I’ll do it,” he said. “First Rider’s orders.”

  That was not exactly true. She had heard what Kerrec said. “Get a start on it,” he had said. “Valeria will come when she’s done with the young one.”

  The last thing she needed to do tonight was get into a fight, but she was still raw with Euan’s absence, and she had had enough of cold shoulders and hostile stares. She planted herself in front of Paulus. He would have to knock her over if he wanted to finish the chestnut’s rubdown.

  She watched him think about it, but his eye slid toward Sabata, who was quietly eating grain at the end of the line, and he blanched. That left him with nothing to do but stand and glare.

  “Listen,” she said. “We can play this game forever in the school, but out here we can’t afford a war. I’m sorry I lied to you all about what I am. I’m even sorry I won the testing, since it was for nothing. Less than nothing, from what’s happened since. Can we at least have a truce? We’re in the same caravan, for the same reason. We need each other, however little we might like it.”

  “Are you sorry for that?” Iliya demanded, pointing with his chin toward Sabata. She had not seen him come up with Batu.

  She looked where he pointed. A faint sigh escaped her. “No, I’m not. Will it help if I’m sorry I’m not sorry?”

  Paulus’ scowl deepened. Iliya frowned as he tried to make sense of that. Batu laughed suddenly. “I wouldn’t be, either. Do you know what I think? I think if you were a man I would hate you because you’re so much more than I’ll ever be. Because you’re a woman, I don’t need to bother with hate. I’m angry because we traveled so far and went through so much and I never guessed—but that’s not anger at you, not really. I’m mad at myself. We all are.”

  “Except Paulus,” Iliya said. “He hated you to begin with. Now he just hates you more.”

  “I do not.” Paulus drew himself up. “I couldn’t possibly hate you more than I did before. I’ll never be your friend. Don’t even think it.”

  “Not for a moment,” Valeria assured him. “Still, even if we loathe each other, we can be allies, can’t we? It happens all the time. Look at the empire and the Caletanni.”

  “Why would I want to be your ally?”

  “If you really are a duke’s son,” she said, “I don’t need to answer that.”

  His teeth clicked together. “Allies have to trust one another. You came here on the back of a lie. How do we know that anything you say is true?”

  “You’re a mage,” she said. “You can tell.”

  “Oh, I do hate you,” he said.

  “We know you do,” she said. “Truce? He wants us to work together. Can you do that much?”

  “I have to, don’t I?” he said bitterly.

  She did not offer a handclasp. That would have been too much. “Allies, then,” she said.

  “Allies,” said Batu and Iliya, a heartbeat before Paulus grudgingly said the word. She had not been asking them to say anything. The fact that they had, made her feel much less alone.

  “We were the broken eight,” Iliya said. “We had to fail, or we had to succeed beyond anyone else. That binds us, even if we can’t call it friendship.”

  “You have to admit,” Batu said, “there was never an
eight like us. Three dead, two failed, three passed and one leaped right up over us and found herself on the back of a Great One. They may never make you a rider, but the gods don’t care. They’ve done it in spite of everything.”

  “They’ve done it in spite of me,” Valeria said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you did,” Paulus said. “We all do. Just not so fast. Are you going to let me finish with the horses, or will you do it?”

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  “We’ll all do it,” said Batu. “Then we’ll eat. Are you hungry? I’m starving.”

  Batu’s gift, Valeria thought as she worked with them to settle the horses, was to turn a budding war into an uneasy but reasonably peaceful alliance. He seemed actually relieved to have her back in the circle again. Iliya, too. Paulus was disgusted, but he always had been. Paulus would never be happy as long as someone else was better at anything than he was.

  She would have gone off to eat by herself, but Batu would not let her. The hardest part was filling her bowl from the rider-candidates’ pot under all their eyes, and sitting down between Batu and Iliya. Once she had done that, the rest was easier. They were working hard to forget what had happened since the testing. They almost succeeded in making it feel natural.

  She was grateful to them for that. They let her go finally, because they were as tired as she was, and morning came early. Her bedroll was spread by Kerrec’s, with no one else near and the stallions close by. They were a little apart from the rest.

  Kerrec was already wrapped in his blanket. She thought he was asleep until he said, “You did well there.”

  She paused in slithering into her bedroll. “That was Batu. Did you put him up to it?”

  “Batu is a born peacemaker.” Kerrec raised himself on his elbow. The nearest fire was too far away to illuminate anything here, but there was enough light from a sliver of moon that she could make out the pale outline of his face. “You need allies. You’ve been too much alone.”

  Not at night, she thought. Euan and the stallions had seen to that. She bit her tongue before she spoke the words aloud. “I don’t mind being alone,” she said.

  “Most mages are solitary children,” he said. “Even the ones with great followings are alone in the crowd. That’s why we form alliances, schools, priesthoods, cabals—anything to lessen the loneliness.”

  “I’m not lonely,” she said. “I like being by myself. It’s quieter. No one troubles me.”

  “What, no one at all?”

  She was glad it was too dark for him to see her expression. He was provoking her. She could not seem to armor herself against it. “Why are you doing this? What benefit do you get from it? Are you trying to help, or are you simply cruel?”

  She heard the hiss of his breath. That had stung. Good, she thought. “Those were your friends,” he said, “your comrades in arms. They were ill-advised to turn against you, and you were unwise to let them. Riders who pass the testing together are bound in heart and magic.”

  “I’m not a rider,” she said. “That’s been driven home to me far too often.”

  Kerrec snorted. “I heard what Batu said. He’s right. The stallions have made their own judgment. No matter what we may say, you are what you are.”

  “Would you say that in front of the other riders? Would you even dare?”

  “I have,” he said. “They can’t hear it. It’s more than they’re ready to face.”

  “Why? What’s so terrible about a woman and this magic? Most schools of mages make no distinction between male and female. The few that do are more likely to exclude men than women. Why is it so unbearable that a female should be given this gift?”

  She had not meant to burst out with all of that. She blamed it on the dark and the moon and the way his voice sounded warm in the night, nothing like his cold daylight self.

  He was silent for long enough that she knew she had overstepped and he would not answer. Then he said, “I think it’s jealousy, and a fair amount of fear. We don’t like to admit it, but the stallions don’t rule on the Mountain. The Ladies do. The Lady who came to you in the testing is a Great One, as Sabata is. It’s unheard of for one of them to come down and pretend to be a mortal horse and examine one of the Called. Sabata is her son, did you know?”

  “No,” Valeria said. “No, I didn’t. Then she was—”

  “She was judging you,” Kerrec said, “but you knew that. She was deciding whether to send you the one who was meant.”

  “That is…amazing,” Valeria said, “but what does it have to do with the riders refusing to accept me?”

  “Everything,” he answered. “The Ladies never come down, never trouble themselves with mortals. They bear their sons for us and their daughters for themselves, and of what they think or do, even what they really are, we know next to nothing. Most of us are content with that. It lets us think they’re too far beyond us to be bothered, and from that we conclude that only the stallions will concern themselves with the empire and dance the Dance.”

  “And only men will ride the stallions.” Valeria shook her head. “Any decent horseman knows a woman makes a better stallion-handler than a man. A man is a rival. A woman is the queen mare.”

  “But you see,” he said, “a woman has never been Called. Not in a thousand years.” We allowed ourselves to conclude that none ever would be. Then you came.”

  “You knew,” she said. “You knew what I was, and you never said a word.”

  She thought maybe he shrugged. It was in his voice. “I could feel the Call. I asked Petra, and he said to let you be. Then the Lady came.”

  “You told me that before. It doesn’t explain anything. The others are absolutely horrified, but you never were.”

  “I’m the youngest,” he said. “I suppose I’m still flexible.”

  “That can’t be all it is,” she said. “Why are you the only rider who can stand the thought of me?”

  It seemed that she had finally gone too far. He did not answer that. When she looked, he was lying down with his back to her, and his blanket was pulled up over his ears.

  She hissed in frustration, but short of hauling him out and shaking an answer out of him, there was nothing she could do.

  She finished crawling into her bedroll. With all she had to think about, she barely even thought of Euan. Only on the very edge of sleep, just before she slipped off, did she know a brief stab of anger and then of sadness. He’s not dead, she thought halfway into her dream. Why am I…

  The thought never finished itself. Whatever the dream was, it was gone when she woke.

  Chapter Twenty

  This caravan traveled more quickly than the one that had brought Valeria to the Mountain. It had much farther to travel, and a much more urgent errand. The riders had to be in Aurelia well before the Dance.

  After eight days on the road without sight or sound of a threat, some of the travelers were beginning to wonder why they needed an army of guards. “Maybe it’s a diversion,” one of the rider-candidates said. “Maybe there’s going to be an attack on the Mountain.”

  The others scoffed at him. Valeria did not believe it, either. If anything had threatened the Mountain, the stallions would have known. They were quiet, keeping their thoughts to themselves. It was easy to think of them as horses and forget what else they were.

  The caravan was still deep in the mountains. A day or two before, she had stolen a look at the guides’ maps and seen that they were angling through rough and remote country instead of taking the longer but easier way through the northern passes. They were avoiding attention, and keeping the stallions away from unfriendly eyes.

  Even with that, they were coming toward the end of the mountains. Then was a green plain in a ring of snow-crowned peaks, rolling down to a broad bay of the sea. On the bay with its sheltered harbor was the city of Aurelia.

  There was no indication at the moment that they were coming to gentler country. The road was little better than a goat track, winding up along
knife-edged ridges and down into steep and narrow valleys. The mountains rose higher and higher around them.

  This way, as steep and difficult as it was, was the only pass through that jagged range. They had not seen so much as a village in two days. In two more days, if all went well, they would come down out of the pass and find themselves on the edge of the plain.

  The stallions were unperturbed by the roughness of the road. Valeria had the distinct sensation that they were humoring their riders. They could have walked through veils of time and space and gone wherever they pleased, but humans had to do it the hard way.

  That day they stopped early. It was still broad daylight, but they had come to the last large, level space that they would find until they reached the lowlands. Travelers had obviously camped here before. There was a stone-wall enclosure for the mortal horses, and a circle of stones filled with the ashes of old campfires.

  It did not look as if anyone had camped there in some time. The grass in the horses’ enclosure was thick and tall. The stallions shared it while the riders made camp, but one by one they leaped the wall and sought out their riders.

  Sabata hung over Valeria’s shoulder while she baked bread for the servants’ dinner. He was a frightful nuisance, but after the third time she tried and failed to push his head out of the way, she sighed and let him be. He was interested in the barley bread, and ate part of her share when it was cool enough to touch.

  Batu and Iliya and even Paulus had grown used to him. As Batu remarked, “We’ll all be feeding our dinners to white horses when the time comes. Hers came first, that’s all.”

  That was an eminently sensible way to look at it. Sabata approved. He lipped Batu’s hair and charmed an apple out of him, then dribbled bits of it over them all.

  Valeria was smiling when she went to her bedroll. It was set apart as usual, with Kerrec’s between it and the rest, and the stallions just behind it. She wrapped herself in her blankets, for the nights were cold at this height, and closed her eyes.