The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  She darted between two heavy, maddened bodies. There was a body on the sand, human, crumpled and still.

  Sabata was calling. Valeria moved past the fallen rider, unable to pause or discover who it was. The four great dancers loomed in front of her. She met a wild dark eye, and found nothing there that would yield to mortal persuasion.

  The stallion reared up over her like a white wave, battering with hooves. She ducked just a little too slow. The blow caught her arm below the shoulder and sent her sprawling.

  The pain was dim and far away. Much nearer was the massive weight crashing down on her, and the madness of chaos in it.

  Sabata screamed. The sound ripped the darkness into shreds.

  The lesser stallion was gone. Valeria rolled onto her back. Her right arm would not do what she told it to. Delicately Sabata took her left sleeve in his teeth and tugged.

  She got up. Sabata was not giving her a choice. He dropped to one knee. She slid her leg over his back, and he stood upright.

  The pain in her arm nearly turned her inside out. It was broken—the same one, in almost the same place, that she had broken when she tried to touch her mother’s green bowl. She could appreciate the irony of that, here at the end of everything, with the world whirling away like a handful of leaves.

  She still had one arm that worked. She wound her fingers in Sabata’s mane and sat as straight as she could. He pawed the sand lightly.

  Nothing in the Hall had changed. No one even seemed to have noticed that a trespasser had walked on the sacred sand, or that there were thirteen stallions instead of twelve.

  Valeria drew a deep breath. An instant later, Sabata did the same. He was waiting for her to come out of her daze and do what she had been born to do.

  “Blasted gods,” she muttered. Naturally he would not explain. She was supposed to know.

  The stallions were turning on one another. Valeria did the one thing she could think of, which was to reach out with her magic and take hold of each one.

  She never reflected that it was not possible, because obviously it was. Each stallion was like a different thread on a loom. It was an odd image for a rider, but she was a woman. She knew how to thread a loom, and how to weave a pattern of many colors.

  There were thirteen colors here. Sabata’s was the brightest, but they were all beautiful, once she had coaxed them free of the darkness that was trying to swallow them. One by one she wove them into a net, a barrier against the Unmaking.

  One by one they renewed the Dance. They were all riderless now, all looking to her, finding the pattern in her, the steps of the Dance as it must be danced in this age of the world. Eight of them cantered their circle, perfectly in unison. Four took places again at the corners of the turning world. Sabata in the center began the cadenced gait, beat and beat and beat, that drew up power from the heart of all that was.

  With only the slightest breath of warning, he sat on his haunches and leaped. Four times he leaped, then four again, while Valeria clung blindly, too shocked even to pray.

  That was only the beginning. He came down lightly, snorting and tossing his mane. Then, having drawn all power to himself, he danced.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Kerrec wanted to die. It was a rational decision, made with deliberate care. He could not be a rider. He could not join in the Dance. Therefore, he preferred to be dead.

  There was a minute amount of satisfaction in appearing before the court and the enemies who had wanted him dead, in the one place where none of them had expected to see him, but that satisfaction faded fast.

  He felt Gothard slip through gaps in the net of wards and establish himself in the Hall, smooth and subtly vicious as a knife slipping through ribs. There was nothing Kerrec could do about it, but some remnant of inborn idiocy compelled him to try. Even as the stallions came into the Hall, he slipped out of the royal box.

  Although he could not see the Dance begin, as he made his way along passages and down stairs he could feel it. It was as close as the blood in his veins, and as distinct as the ache of old bruises and half-healed wounds.

  The pattern was there inside him, close and clear as the whorls of his fingertips. It had not left him when he yielded to his sister’s persuasion. He knew every step as the stallions danced it, and he knew when Gothard’s allies unleashed the Unmaking. They were just a moment too quick, their control just a fraction too weak.

  By then he was down on the lowest level, working his way through the mass of bodies in the colonnade. When the attack came, he had just enough time to flatten himself against a pillar.

  He rode out the heaving of the earth. When time frayed, he held on—even coming face-to-face with his younger self, a remarkably callow and haughty child rocked by the force of the Call and pulled inexorably toward the Mountain. Somehow, in those wide and startled eyes, he found the will to continue.

  People were trampling one another, screaming wordlessly. They were all mad, even the stallions in the arena.

  Madness was a gift of the One, the barbarians said. Kerrec, who was already mad, felt no change in his sanity or lack thereof. His mind was perfectly clear. He saw the mages battling around the hall. He also saw the one place where no battle was.

  Gothard was in it, side by side with Euan Rohe. The master stone was still drawing in power, binding itself to the Unmaking.

  The Dance was in ruins. The stallions had forgotten themselves. The pattern was lost to them, but Kerrec still had it. It was whole in him, perfect and pure.

  Just as he moved away from the pillar, the heart of the Dance gave birth to a Great One. Sabata stood in the center of chaos, with his young dappled coat and his wild eye.

  And she came.

  Kerrec never remembered what he did just after that. When he was conscious again, he had gone the length of the colonnade, somehow passed Gothard without killing or being killed, and come to a halt under the Augurs’ gallery. The Dance was restoring itself. She was controlling it. All the stallions were in her power.

  All of them. Every one. The pattern was taking shape again. She spun it out of herself and took it into herself with such beauty and effortless ease that even through the fire of his hatred, he stood in awe.

  The Unmaking was as strong as ever. The barbarian priests had sung it into the world, and Gothard’s stone was keeping it there. Now, as Kerrec watched, the stone turned that force of not-being against the new-formed Dance, and against the lone power that ruled it.

  Twelve horse mages had not been strong enough to stand against the master stone. One more-than-mage almost was, but only almost. She was still mortal, and the god to whom she was bound was young to this world. One of the stallions in the outer circle faltered, losing the exactness of the rhythm. His misstep fouled the stallion behind him. The circle began to crumble.

  No single magic was strong enough to overcome the stone, and no weapon could destroy it. Kerrec did the only thing he could think of, which was to slip the buckle from his belt and weigh it in his hand. It was a heavy thing, a disk of bronze plated with gold, almost exactly the size and weight of the master stone.

  He had skipped stones across water in the harbor when he was a child. So had Gothard. Even then the younger brother had had a gift for making stones do what he told them, but Kerrec had won the game as often as not. He never resorted to magic, but he had a knack, a quickness of hand and eye.

  Maybe he still had it. The buckle fit comfortably in his palm. The air, roiled by the currents of magic that filled the Hall, had grown thick and almost as fluid as water.

  The buckle skimmed those currents, skipping two, three, four, six, eight times. On the eighth leap, it struck the master stone full on and sent it flying out of Gothard’s hand.

  Kerrec dived after it. Gothard, stunned and empty-handed, could not move at all—but not so Euan Rohe. He lunged toward Kerrec.

  Kerrec had just enough warning to throw himself to the side. Euan skidded and went down. Kerrec hurdled him, ducked and rolled, and fell on t
he stone.

  What wards he had were in tatters. The stone’s magic burned like acid. He set his teeth against it, ripped off his coat in a spray of golden buttons, and flung it over the stone. He scrambled it up in a bundle, lurching to his feet as both Euan and Gothard sprang at him.

  He leaped for the only safety he could see, which was the floor of the Dance. It was beyond foolish, but at the moment he knew only one thing. Neither the mage nor the barbarian could penetrate the last and strongest wall of wards, the one that protected the arena.

  Kerrec barely felt them. He was a rider—he belonged there. The stone, which did not, had gone quiescent in its wrappings.

  The Dance had found its beauty again, with a purity that he had never seen before. One mind ruled it, and one power shaped it.

  He did not want to find beauty there. Not coming out of her. And yet he was too honest to deny it. There was a crystalline perfection to it, a shimmering symmetry.

  The gates of time were opening. There were eight times eight, and eight again, each a facet of what was now and what could be.

  Whiteness gleamed in front of Kerrec. Where Petra had come from and how he had got there, Kerrec might never know.

  He pulled himself gratefully onto that familiar back. When he looked up, he realized that Petra was standing directly below the royal box. Briana was still in it, still struggling to hold together what was left of the wards. He could not sense his father at all.

  The gates of the Hall groaned. People were battering on them from without as well as within. They would not hold much longer.

  The stone stirred in its wrappings. Kerrec was desperate, or he would never have done what he did. He seized on its power and made of it a healing spell, a spell of calm and of spreading peace. The Unmaking sucked at it, but the stone could turn even that to its use.

  Slowly the Hall quieted. The tumult at the doors had muted. There was a battle beyond, but either the emperor’s guards were driving back the barbarians, or Kerrec’s borrowed spell was stronger than he had reckoned.

  The circle of stallions slowed to a halt. The four great dancers stood motionless. Only Sabata still danced. He wound around and through the great dancers, transcribing an interlacing of circles like the intricate knots of Eriu. Where each circle met, a gate glimmered into existence.

  There were the futures, one by one. In some, the empire continued as it did now. The emperor went to war, and won as he had before. But those were all too few. In most, either the barbarians broke down the Hall’s gate and overwhelmed the Dance, or the Dance escaped but the emperor died, or the emperor survived this day but died later—of the akasha, of an assassin’s knife, of an enemy’s weapon in battle.

  And yet it was not as simple as choosing one of the futures in which he lived. Maybe the emperor should not live at all. Maybe the empire only survived if he died.

  Kerrec could see all the gates with bitter clarity, but he could not act. Petra stood rooted. All the power was in the hands of one solitary girl. The Mountain had rejected her. The empire’s enemies had offered her great rewards to choose the path that most favored them.

  Her face was serene. She might have been practicing figures in the riding court in the school, transcribing each exactly, with no expression except a small frown of concentration. Sabata, untrained colt though he was, carried her with ease and grace. He was a god, and in this place he did not suffer the constraints of earthly flesh.

  Gradually the pattern of circles carried her closer to Kerrec. At the outermost of them, she looked up into his face and smiled. It was a devastatingly sweet smile. Her eyes were clear, as if her heart were at ease.

  Hatred was a simple thing when Kerrec was apart from her. In her presence, he could barely cling to it. She was still Valeria, still her inimitable self.

  All the gates were open. The tide of Unmaking was rising. Once again the void gaped to swallow the sun. Barbarians beat on the gates. Every sign, every portent gathered, poised to fall in a cloud of ill omen.

  The sun still shone on Valeria. The ring of stallions around her glowed like the moon. She turned her face to the flood of light. Her eyes were open wide. Kerrec saw the effort it cost her to fill herself with so much power, but she never faltered.

  Sabata wheeled, and the gates wheeled with him. One by one they fell away, sinking like stones in a turbulent sea.

  Valeria was losing her grip. Her face lost its deep calm. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  As the Unmaking loomed closer, Kerrec made a choice. Once more he uncovered the master stone. Once again he focused his power through it, aiming it toward Valeria, pouring it into her.

  Two gates remained, two possible destinies out of all that there had been. In one, hordes of barbarians swarmed over the empire. In the other, the empire stood, beleaguered but intact, and for a while—however brief a time that might be—held back the onslaught.

  Kerrec could not choose. No one could, except Valeria. She hovered exactly in the middle. Even the Unmaking held back, as if the priests behind it understood that any move, any breath of compulsion, might sway her against them.

  She lowered her eyes from the sun to a lesser light, one that shone from the gallery above Kerrec’s head. He felt the power that woke there. It was not Briana’s. It flared like embers in a banked fire, then roared into flame.

  The emperor’s power had come back in full force, bound to the Dance, awakened and healed by it. Kerrec saw him reflected in Valeria’s eyes, upright and still as an icon in a temple.

  It was still her choice. She was still stronger. She could choose—to destroy the emperor, or surrender the Dance to him.

  Once more she met Kerrec’s stare. What he saw there made him reel.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Everything had stopped. Even the gates of time were still. Valeria was full of sunlight, overflowing with it, but it had not blinded her. She could still see.

  She looked up into the emperor’s face, which was more than ever like his son’s. His hair was tousled, and there was a bruise on his cheekbone where he must have fallen during the attack on the Hall’s wards.

  He stared gravely down. He was brimming over with magic, humming and singing with it, but he was perfectly in control of himself. She would have given her good arm to be as calm as he was.

  The Unmaking pressed on her, twisting her, sucking away at the power she had gathered. Time mattered nothing to it. Magic was the fuel that fed it. It willed her to turn toward the empire’s destruction, and open that gate and let the tides of time run toward the end of everything.

  The emperor’s face kept her in the world. She would not call him a kindly man, any more than Kerrec was, but he had the gift of understanding. He could see what was in her and what it was doing to her. He laid no compulsion on her, but even more than that, he did not burden her with guilt. Just like the stallions, he set her free to do what she must.

  She tried to raise her hands to him. One would not move. The other shook abominably. She folded it to her breast in a sort of salute, and bowed her head in respect.

  Sabata turned under her. She had not asked, but it was not against her will. The gates had come alive again. The gate of the Unmaking pulled at her. The other did nothing. It simply was.

  She chose simplicity. The Unmaking roared, reaching to suck her down. She clung to Sabata’s neck. Even he was buffeted in that fury, but step by step he walked toward the gate she had chosen.

  The Unmaking swirled toward it, gaping to swallow it. Valeria had very little magic left to wield. What there was, she scraped together as best she could. She could feel the emperor’s will behind her, firm as a hand on her back, and two others coming almost in the same instant.

  Kerrec she would always know. The other was his sister. With them, she was strong enough—just. She guided Sabata into the conjunction of circles that was the gate. The Unmaking screamed. She could feel her edges fraying, and the bonds of her body and soul letting go.

  It would not matter if she died. S
abata was immortal. He had only to reach the center of the gate and secure it with the power of his presence.

  She held on as tightly as she could. Four more steps. Three. Two. She could no longer see. Everything was lost in a storm of darkness. Only Sabata was still real. She buried her face in the coarse silk of his mane and left it to him to make that last step. He advanced steadily, then stepped into infinity.

  The Hall was absolutely silent. The sun was shining, clear and bright and blissfully ordinary. Sabata stood in the trampled sand, surrounded by riderless stallions.

  Valeria’s arm hurt like fury. It had not taken kindly to all the riding and leaping and struggling.

  The pain was as beautifully mortal as the sunlight. It told her that she was alive, and that the Dance was over. The Unmaking was still inside her, but it had sunk deep.

  The empire would go on for a while longer. The emperor was alive, and his magic was whole. The Dance had restored it. As she lifted her eyes to him once more, she saw the power in him, not just his own, sole and mortal strength, but the strength of the empire. She had done that when she opened the gate that gave him his life and his war and, if not an assured victory, at least no assurance of defeat.

  People were stirring, coming to themselves. Some of the fallen riders had begun to regain consciousness. The battle outside seemed to have moved away from the doors.

  She was not going to indulge in a fainting fit. Not this time. Sabata was still carrying her easily, which was a good thing. She did not think she could walk.

  The rest of the stallions had drawn in close. They were still inside her, still part of her. Whatever was going to happen next, it would come through them before it touched her.

  Petra had joined them, but Kerrec was gone. The imperial gallery was empty. People were running out on the sand toward the fallen riders. She recognized Batu and Iliya and Paulus. They veered wide around the circle of stallions, eyes averted as if they were afraid.