The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  She shivered, but she said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m too young to make a difference.”

  “We don’t think so,” Gothard said. “My ally here has told you of a school of horse mages where a woman would be welcome. Have you thought about that?”

  “Not much,” she said.

  His lip curled. Whatever he might think of her importance in the realm of magic, he clearly had a low opinion of her intelligence. “You should think about it,” he said. “Think hard. You’ll never be more than a servant on the Mountain. Here is a place where you will be welcome, and where your arts and powers will be venerated.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I’ve never heard of it. There are no stallions there, no white gods.”

  “There will be,” he said. “They’ll come to you. The Mountain doesn’t rule them, whatever the riders there might think. They rule themselves. They’ll go where the true power is.”

  “If that’s so,” she said, “why aren’t they there already?”

  “They’re waiting for you,” Gothard said.

  She shook her head, but there was no use in arguing. “It’s less than a month until the Dance. I still don’t know what you think I can do to it, or why you think I would.”

  “That will come clear in time,” said Gothard. “For now, be content to keep your stallion under control, and to ponder your choices.”

  “And those are?”

  She was trying his patience sorely, but he had more self-control than she might have expected. He kept his temper, just. “To help us willingly or unwillingly. To act under duress, or to act freely as a rider of the School of Olivet. Not a candidate, you will notice. A rider of the first rank, and likely to rise quickly, if your talents are as considerable as I’m told.”

  “I don’t have the choice of leaving?” she asked. “What about Kerrec? Where is he? What are you doing to him? You’ll never make him play your game. He’s a First Rider. He can’t be won away for any—”

  “Mestre Olivet was a First Rider,” Gothard said.

  “Kerrec won’t betray the school,” she said. “He’s not capable of it.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Gothard. He turned his shoulder to her, dismissing her.

  “That went well,” Euan said.

  Valeria glowered at him. She was in no mood to make light of anything, let alone a case of obvious treason.

  Not that he would see it as such. He was a barbarian. He wanted the empire to fall.

  “I don’t like that man at all,” she said. “I don’t care how beautiful his magic is. He’s an arrogant bastard.”

  “He is that,” Euan agreed, “but he’s also my cousin, and he’s useful to our cause.”

  “Not mine,” Valeria said.

  “It could be,” said Euan. “Wouldn’t you be glad to have free rein with your powers?”

  She decided not to answer that. Her silence seemed to satisfy him, to a point. He left her in the room she was thinking of as her prison, and shut the door on her.

  He did not kiss her. Maybe he thought of it, but if so, he did not let her know it.

  She flung herself on the bed and buried her face in cushions, and thought about tears. But those would solve nothing. She decided to stay angry. Anger was useful, if she controlled it properly. Anger would keep her from giving in.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kerrec was drugged. It was an unusual potion, not so much for the herbs that were in it as for the magic that acted on them. He occupied himself for a long while in untangling the different elements. They were complicated, but he liked complicated things. The Dance was the most complicated thing of all. This was mere simplicity beside it.

  It was simple but effective. He could think, more or less. He could see, if his eyes happened to fall open. His body was perfectly immobile. He could not even twitch a finger.

  “Good morning, brother,” a voice said above him.

  He could not turn his eyes to see who belonged to the voice, but that did not matter. He only had one brother, and that brother belonged to the voice.

  Gothard moved into his range of vision. “You’re weaker than I thought. Or am I stronger? How long has it been since we saw one another?”

  Kerrec would not have answered even if his lips had obeyed him. Gothard knew as well as he that it had been five years since they were in the same place at the same time. Gothard had been a sullen boy then. Now he was a bitter man.

  He did seem a fraction less bitter now that he had Kerrec in his power. “Imagine,” he said, “the great mage, the master of gods, captured and held like a common mortal. Are you regretting now what else you could have been?”

  The spell had slipped from Kerrec’s head and shoulders. He still did not choose to speak.

  “You could have been emperor,” Gothard said. “You gave it up, with your name and rank and all else, when you went to the Mountain. That doesn’t trouble you at all?”

  “I know it troubles you that Briana is heir,” Kerrec said.

  “Of course it does,” said Gothard. “She’s younger than I am. She’s female. Her only qualification for supplanting me—the only one, out of all that we both are—is that her mother was Aurelian and empress, and mine was barbarian and a concubine. Therefore she is legitimate and I am not, and she is heir and I, beyond appeal and beyond recourse, am not. Can she lead armies in war? Can she keep the respect of the legions? Can she—”

  Kerrec allowed himself to smile. “You were always an easy mark,” he said.

  He saw the blow coming. He could turn his head enough to ride with it, but it still half stunned him. His cheekbone might be broken. He could not muster enough power to read his body, let alone heal it.

  Pain was illusion. It was not easy to convince his body of that. His eyes persisted in leaking. He blinked at Gothard through the tears.

  “Do you know,” said Gothard, “your little doxy reminds me of our sister. Is that why you keep her? Gods know, there’s not much to her yet. Though I suppose, mewed up on the Mountain, a man will take whatever he can find.”

  Kerrec had always had one advantage over Gothard. He could control his temper. It was harder now than usual, but that was the drug, he told himself.

  “You are going to learn a lesson,” Gothard said. “I will peel you away layer by layer, body and spirit. When you are naked to the winds of heaven, then I will have a task for you. It will be well suited to your talents. You may even, by that time, enjoy it.”

  “Anger may serve you now,” Kerrec said steadily, “but a time comes when it betrays even the strongest mage.”

  “Oh, but it’s not anger. It’s jealousy and hate. I do hate you, my dear brother. You had the prize in your hand and you scorned it. You walked away. You abandoned it for yourself and for any heirs your so-disciplined body may beget. That was purely selfish, brother. You could refuse the throne, but you refused it for your sons as well. Do you think they’ll forgive you?”

  “Most men of sense would thank me,” said Kerrec. “I set them free.”

  “Selfish,” Gothard said, “and arrogant. Always arrogant. No one is better than you. Are you amazed that I could master you with magic? Are you shocked? Indignant? Horrified?”

  “I’m impressed,” said Kerrec. “The House of Stones was a wise choice for you, as schools of magic go. The stones can channel your temper as well as your magic—for a while. In the end, you’ll either learn to control it, or it will control you.”

  Gothard sneered. “Always the same condescending cant. You’ll never know real joy, real anger, real fear, not on your own. But I’ll teach you. You’ll be a whole man before I’m done with you. Then I’ll break you. That will give me joy, brother, and considerable satisfaction.”

  “You talk a great deal,” said Kerrec, turning his face away.

  He braced for another blow. Somewhat to his surprise, none came. Gothard said to someone out of his range of vision, “Prepare him.”

  The spell was gone. So we
re his clothes. Kerrec could move within the limits of the shackles that bound him hand and foot.

  A massive man in a leather mask stood over him. The mask was blank and featureless. There were not even eyes.

  With great difficulty Kerrec kept his face blank. The Brothers of Pain, who wore that mask, were mages as well as torturers. Their magic was subtle and terrible.

  This was a journeyman of the art. His mask was brown and not the Master’s blank white. It was small comfort. He would still challenge every scrap of discipline Kerrec had left.

  Kerrec looked past him at Gothard and said, “Ah, how disappointing. I had thought you would break me yourself.”

  Gothard refused to answer. He nodded to the torturer. The man nodded back.

  At first there was no pain. There was pleasure, which was startling. The hooded man touched him as a lover would. The thick fingers were as delicate as a woman’s. They found the places where his body shivered in delight. They saved the obvious for last, bringing him almost to the point of release again and again, but never quite letting him go. They fluttered and teased and eventually tormented. But for the rags of discipline, Kerrec would have begged for mercy.

  He built a wall inside. Once that was up, what they did to his body did not matter. His spirit was impregnable.

  The drug was like a creeping vine. It worked tendrils between the stones of his wall, and cracked and split them. It wrapped strong, woody branches around the fragments. They crumbled one by one.

  At long last the torturer flicked a finger just so. The pain was exquisite. The release burned like molten lead. He screamed. His belly convulsed as if hot metal had spurted over it.

  Then his tormentor let him be. It would not be for long, he knew. He could not make himself look ahead to the next refinement.

  Horses, his Masters had taught him, even the white gods, live in the moment. For them it is always and perfectly now. Time for them is all one. Therefore the Dance; therefore their power. There is no past or present or future. Only what is.

  He would think like a horse. He would be in the now. He would think of nothing, not pain, not fear. He would remember nothing and anticipate nothing. He would simply be.

  Someone fed him. He did not see a face, only a pair of hands that forced a bland gruel into him. When he refused to take it from spoon or bowl, they shoved a funnel down his throat and poured it in. Water followed it.

  After his feeding, his tormentors left him alone. He stank of sweat and sex, with a crust drying on his belly and in the hairs of his groin. It itched. He could not reach to scratch it.

  That was a torment. He wriggled and shifted, but he was bound too tightly. He lay still and tried to build his inner fortress again. He would keep trying. It was all he could do.

  The Brother of Pain came back. Kerrec, caught in the perpetual now, did not know or care how long it had been. He had soiled himself, maybe more than once. He could feel the burning of outraged skin where he lay in his own filth.

  That almost made him laugh. He was a rider. His backside was as tough as old leather. He was also fastidious, enough to be a joke among the riders. They said he bathed three times a day, which some days was not far off.

  The torturer cleaned him with those deceptively gentle hands. The water was warm and scented with herbs. The towels were soft and the salve cool and sweet. Kerrec lay on his face while the Brother of Pain stroked his back and buttocks.

  He was not prepared for the sudden, sharp thrust, although he should have been. He clenched against it in pure outrage. That made it much worse. It turned indignity to outright pain.

  Then pain became pleasure, and that was worst of all. It was not the rape, not that he was being used like a brothel boy. It was that he could not shut it out.

  Lie back, they told women, and think of something else. That was the horror of it. He could not. He was absolutely in the moment, and completely in his body.

  Without any raising of power on his part, a vision came to him. He saw a field newly plowed in spring. He saw a hunt, and the quarry on the ground. She had skin like cream and hair so black it glinted blue. She was fighting with everything she had.

  Valeria. Her name was a handhold. She had never been grateful to him for saving her from violation. Maybe she would have fought her way free, after all. She was much more than he had known then. How much more, he was still discovering.

  Her face hung in front of him. He dwelt on each separate feature. The curve of her cheek, the faint dimple in the corner of her mouth, enthralled him.

  Voices were whispering. At first he ignored them. All his focus was on Valeria.

  The voices crept through the walls of his resistance. All too soon, the words came clear.

  “Think of what you gave up. You gained magic and power, very great power, but you forfeited the throne. Is that fair to your heirs? Should you not rule both the stallions and the empire?”

  He tried to shut out the voices, but they only grew clearer in the silence of his mind.

  “Think,” they whispered. “Your brilliance, your power, your discipline. What emperor has ever been as perfectly trained as you in the arts of both magic and empire? What man has ever been more deserving of the throne? Your breeding is flawless. Your mastery is unparalleled. You are the youngest First Rider that the Mountain has ever known. Your destiny is above all others.”

  No, he said inside himself. I will not listen.

  “Look before you—see. What an emperor you will be! What beauty, what power. What mercy and justice. All your people will love you, and your enemies will despair.”

  His mind filled with visions. He saw himself in a golden diadem, wrapped in a mantle of crimson silk, seated on the throne in Aurelia. He saw the court bowing before him. The massed ranks of the legions roared his name. He was no longer simply Kerrec. He was his old, imperial self.

  “Ambrosius! Ambrosius! Ambrosius!”

  “Ambrosius Aurelianus.” The Brother of Pain spoke as softly as a woman. “Great lord, noble prince.”

  Kerrec gritted his teeth. He was not his imperial highness Ambrosius, crown prince of Aurelia. Not now. Not ever again. That had ended the morning he woke and looked up toward the Mountain and heard it singing. He walked away without a glance. He had not looked back since.

  The voices whispered and whispered. They told him he was wonderful, he was glorious, he was irretrievably wronged. “You should rule. You, and none other. The emperor should die. You can be the instrument of his death. His life can lie in your hand.”

  Kerrec probably should not have spoken. It was a failure of discipline, but he had to say it. “It is useless to tempt a man with the last thing he could possibly want.”

  That stopped the voices, at least for a while. He hoped the torturer was taken aback.

  “No one with a grain of sense wants to be emperor,” Kerrec said. “The hours are endless and the responsibility crippling. Every move is watched. Every breath is counted. Not one thought can be his own, until he determines whether his advisors will allow him to think it.”

  “How is that different from the life of a rider?” the torturer asked in that soft, cooing voice.

  Visions flooded at the sound of it. Every slight, every humiliation, every shameful moment that Kerrec had ever suffered on the Mountain reared up and crashed down on him. Life as a nameless nobody had not come easily to an escaped imperial heir. He had been a monster of arrogance and grandiose ignorance. His peers had hated him. His masters had despised him. The stallions had humbled him in every way they knew.

  No. Again, finally, he had the sense not to say it aloud. It wasn’t like that at all. I was a flaming idiot, but no worse than many another. I took my lumps as we all did. I was happy. I loved it, even when my body and pride together were one enormous bruise.

  The visions were relentless. He was a fool and blind. He told himself lies to cover the truth. He had been unspeakably wretched and bitterly homesick.

  Then his father found him.

&nb
sp; He tried to run from that. Of all the memories hidden inside him, it was the most painful. He had faced it four times, once in each test of rank. By the fourth, the edge was a little blunted.

  This was all edges. Memory was agony. Every word, every glance, cut like slivered glass.

  The emperor came to the Mountain unannounced on the last day of the testing. Kerrec had expected him sooner, and hoped that he would come much later. Never would have been best, but that was too much to hope for.

  Artorius chose the most important day of all to appear with next to no escort. He had traveled as if to battle, armed and mounted on fast horses. The guards at the gate recognized him as a mage of another school, but did not see the emperor in the windblown, mud-stained, and travel-worn rider who came asking to speak to their master.

  He had warded himself from his son. The first Kerrec knew of the arrival was in the middle of the final test, when he looked up as his mount began one of the leaps, directly into his father’s eyes.

  Kerrec stayed in the saddle. The gods loved him that day, or he would have tumbled to the sand. Maybe he would have failed the test, and his father would have reclaimed him and taken him back to Aurelia.

  As it happened, he not only stayed on, he completed the test. He passed the last of it in a daze, and accepted the champion’s cup with numb surprise. By the time he was carried off to bed, he was so full of wine and beer that he did not care who had come to claim him.

  He was called to the Master’s study the next morning. The Master was not there. Artorius was sitting in the Master’s chair, hands tidily folded, completely alone. There was not even a guard hidden behind the ancient and much faded tapestry.

  Kerrec stood stiffly at attention, but he did not bow. He was a rider now. Riders bowed only to the stallions.

  His father studied him for a long time before deciding to speak. Kerrec had a cramp in his neck from standing so stiffly, which would torment him for days afterward. He gritted his teeth and withstood the pain.