The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  Valeria exchanged glances with Petra. He brushed his shoulder lightly past that of the stallion beside him. They unwound in a skein, with Sabata in the middle, pacing out of the Hall as they had come in. The warded passage opened for them but for no one else who might have tried to follow.

  Kerrec had left his father and sister to make order in the Hall, and gone hunting Gothard. He still had the master stone, but it proved worthless for leading him to its recent wielder. Where Gothard had been, Kerrec found no trace, not even the scent of magic fading fast.

  Outside of the palace square, the city was surprisingly quiet. The battle was still raging in front of the Hall when he slipped through, but the streets beyond had emptied of crowds. The people of Aurelia, wise to the ways of magic, had shut themselves in their houses. Pilgrims and travelers had either fled or found sanctuary. He could hear them in the temples, raising chants of supplication to the various gods, and in the taverns, worshipping an earthier divinity.

  Gothard’s house was deserted. Even the wards were gone. The walls had a worn look, as if the stones had begun to crumble. All the magic was drained out of them.

  Kerrec halted in the inner court. He had been building a beautiful fire of rage, to be quenched by his brother’s blood. This empty place left him feeling cold and strange.

  If there was a trail to follow, he lacked the power to find it. Gothard, clever to the last, had left himself a bolt hole, but he had been extremely careful to cover his tracks.

  Kerrec searched the house from roof to dungeon and found nothing. He came up into the light again and stood for a long while, struggling for control.

  Somehow, deep inside himself, he found it. He gathered all of it together and blasted the wall of the inner court.

  The stones puffed into dust. The wall slid down like water. The inner rooms of the house lay bare, empty and forsaken.

  He turned on his heel. This was conduct unbecoming a First Rider, but he could not make himself care. He left that place behind, with all its memories and its empty spaces.

  Valeria supposed she was forgotten. There were riders down, people trampled, a battle in the square and still some sort of festival to salvage if possible. How much any of them had seen of what she did, or if any but Kerrec and his family had understood, she could not guess.

  She was feeling rather ill. The stallions had taken her to their stable, where she had drunk from the water barrel with the rest of them, then unsaddled each one and rubbed him as clean as she could. It was not easy, one-handed, but she did it.

  If she had been truly dutiful, she would have cleaned the saddles and bridles, but by the time she had made sure each stallion had a manger full of hay and a full water barrel, she had to sit down. Her sight kept narrowing and trying to go dark. Without any particular reason, only the desire to be somewhere safe, she made her way to Sabata’s stall and propped herself against his manger. He sidled toward her until her good arm was over his back.

  She should find a healer priest to do something about her other arm. She could no longer feel it. Pain had meaning, her mother had taught her. If it stopped before a wound was treated, that was not a good thing.

  She would go out soon and go in search of a healer. There must be one nearby. She would go out in a moment. Yes.

  Euan Rohe knew in his gut what would happen, once he saw the First Rider sitting in the royal box. When the Dance came to the crucial point, he had only half a hope that Valeria would choose the One over the emperor. He was not at all surprised that she preferred to stay an imperial. She was a legionary’s daughter, after all. It was in her blood.

  He was already moving, making for an exit that he hoped no one else would remember. It led not outward to the square but inward to the palace.

  The hours he had spent in the library at the House of War were bearing fruit. He had in his memory a fair-to-middling accurate map of the palace, with certain passages marked that were not on the usual maps. If he could get out fast enough, he reckoned that he should be able to round up his warband and escape before the emperor’s troops moved in.

  He was doing well until he ducked down a corridor to avoid a rattling, clashing company of imperial guards, then found himself trapped between the sound of the guards’ coming and a pair of servants idling in a doorway. His only choice then was to go down instead of up. There was another passage that way, marked on the old map with an odd symbol that he had not been able to decipher. He could not remember exactly where it led, but he thought—hoped—that it would get him out of the palace.

  Not long after that, he knew he was lost. The passage had branched, then branched again. He had to guess which way to go. One grey stone tunnel was very like another. Some were well lit, others less so. Sometimes there were doors, but none of them seemed to be locked. The one that was, the lock fell apart when he touched it.

  That was too strange for comfort, but by then he had gone too far and become too confused to turn back. He had to go on. If he was being led into a trap, so be it.

  Rather abruptly, the passage narrowed. The lamps that had been lit all along it were gone. By the light of the last one, he could just see a ladder of metal rungs going up a blank wall.

  He went up the ladder. The distance was hard to judge in the dark, but he counted rungs and reckoned them against his body, and it came to six times his own height before his head struck the ceiling.

  He clung to the ladder, dizzy with the shock of the blow. Gradually it dawned on him that the ceiling above him had rung hollow. He groped along it, cursing as a splinter stabbed his finger, and found the metal studs that bound the wooden door. After two passes, then a third, he got a grip on a ring. He breathed a prayer to the One and thrust against it.

  The trapdoor crashed to the floor in a room that was dazzlingly bright after the pitch darkness below. Its purpose was obvious. Racks of saddles lined one of the walls, with bridles hanging from pegs above them. Along the wall opposite the saddles was a row of wooden bins. There were stools and benches and one ancient, badly sprung chair.

  The smell of horses pervaded the place, along with the smell of dust and age. Light streamed in through high windows. He saw sky, clear and blue and impossibly far away.

  Euan coughed and swallowed a sneeze. His head was still aching where it had struck the trapdoor. There was a knot on his skull, but the skin had held. There was no blood.

  Only one door led out of the room, a heavy wooden panel between the rows of saddles. He gathered his mantle around him and trod softly toward it. He could hear horses breathing outside, and their heavy bodies moving about. There were no human voices.

  He opened the door carefully, with his senses at full alert. The stable was dimmer than the room he had left, but still bright enough for comfort. Horses stared at him over stall doors.

  They were all greys. He took in those arched noses and those excessively intelligent dark eyes, and began to laugh.

  Once he had started, he could not stop. The One had no sense of humor, but the gods of the empire rather too obviously did. They had brought him straight into their own stable, where no doubt he would be judged as he deserved. “I hope,” he said to them, “that you don’t mutilate me too badly. Make sure my father can recognize my head when your servants send it to him.”

  The stallions regarded him blandly, as if they were no more than mortal horses. Only one of them moved, a young one, still dappled. He tossed his head and pawed the door of his stall.

  The sound was deafening. Euan tensed to bolt, but no troop of legionaries came charging down the aisle.

  Slowly his heart stopped hammering. None of the stallions offered a threat, even the noisy one. He made his way carefully down the aisle toward the door at the far end.

  As he passed the young stallion, a human head appeared beside the horse’s. Valeria seemed even more startled to see him than he was to see her. “What in the world—” she began.

  “By the One!” Euan said at the same moment. “What are you doing here?”


  “I should ask you that,” she said. “How did you get in here? What—”

  While she spoke, his mind was racing. Here might be his key to escape. At the very least, she was a hostage. The imperials might not know what to do with her when she was Called to the Mountain, but the mage who had saved the Dance was a valuable commodity.

  There was, however, the matter of her bodyguards, of whom he counted seventeen. Every one had a bright eye fixed on her, and none more intently than the stallion beside her.

  He decided to tell her the truth, or part of it. “I found a way out of the Hall,” he said, “and followed it until it led me here.”

  “You can’t stay,” she said. “They’ll be scouring the city for you—and if they catch you, they’ll kill you.”

  “Or worse,” he said. He edged toward her. The stallion flattened his ears and showed him a double row of strong white teeth. Euan stopped. “What will you do? Set your stallions on me?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I should, shouldn’t I?” she said.

  Euan began to move again, cautiously. This time the stallion merely watched. Euan could see Valeria’s hand on his neck, fingers woven in his mane. She looked tired, he thought.

  If he stopped to fuss over her, he was dead. As long as he stayed moving, he had a chance. Each step brought him closer to the door. Then there was the riders’ house to get through, then the city, then a vast swath of the empire, but he would worry about that when he came to it. First he had to get out of this place.

  One move, one word from her and it would be all over. She stood without moving, watching and saying nothing.

  The closer he came to her, the more powerful was the temptation to stop. At last, directly in front of her, he gave in. “Come with me,” he said.

  Did she hesitate for the slightest fraction of an instant? Maybe. Or maybe he was deluding himself. Her face was never easy to read, but at the moment it was an ivory mask. She shook her head. “I can’t come with you,” she said.

  He sighed faintly. “I didn’t think so,” he said. “Too bad. Here you are, all alone. No one even remembers what you did.”

  “What I did,” she said, “was break my word to you and take away your victory.”

  “I’ll forgive you someday,” he said. “Are you sure you want to stay? I might not be able to offer you much but a long run and a slow death, but I’ll never leave you to fend for yourself. We’ll run and die together.”

  Her fingers tightened in the stallion’s mane. Euan almost smiled. It was not as easy for her to refuse as it might have been. He could almost have sworn that he saw regret in her eyes. “We both know where I belong,” she said. Then after a pause, “You’d better go. They’ve started killing anyone with a barbarian face. You’d do well to cover yours until you’re a long way out of the city.”

  He hardly needed to ask her how she knew. She was a mage, and she was surrounded by gods. She was also right. The longer he delayed, the less likely he was to get out alive.

  He dared one last, mad thing before he dived for the door. He ducked in past the stallion’s head and stole as long a kiss as he dared. It was never long enough. She was barely beginning to respond when he darted back, just ahead of the stallion’s lunge.

  There was no more time to lose. He covered his face as best he could and ran.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Valeria sagged against Sabata’s shoulder. She had just done a terrible thing. Even while she let Euan Rohe go, she knew what it would mean. It was a long way from Aurelia to the hunting runs of the Caletanni. He could still die. But if he did not, if he did escape, she had released an enemy who would never rest until the empire was gone.

  This time she did not even have an excuse. No one but Euan would die if she stopped him now. She made no move to do that. The memory of his kiss burned and would not go away.

  Because of her, the Dance was saved. Because of her, the empire might still be destroyed.

  One word and the stallions would go after him. He would be dead, and Aurelia would be safe.

  She never said that word. She felt the tides of time shifting as he went, patterns falling into place that would shape the years ahead. She saw where they could lead and what they could do, and she did nothing. The only thought in her, at the last, was that if he died, the grief would be too much to bear.

  Kerrec found her sitting among the neatly stowed, if less than perfectly clean, saddles. Her eyes were open, and they seemed to recognize him. Her face was the color of cheese.

  He reached to haul her to her feet and shake Gothard’s whereabouts out of her, but even before he touched her, he could feel the wrongness in her body. Her right arm hung at an angle that knotted his stomach. Her fingers were swollen and the tips were blue. When he took them in his hands they were cold.

  Through the levels of his rage, he understood a number of things. She was alone here. The stallions had been groomed, fed and shut in stalls. Their saddles and bridles were put away. She must have done all of that after salvaging the Dance and, perhaps incidentally, the empire.

  It was impossible to hate her. With a sound that was half a groan and half a sigh, he lifted her in his arms.

  She tried to fight him off. “You’re always doing that,” she said. “You need to stop.”

  “Yes,” he said brusquely. “I do.”

  He firmed his grip on her. She had stopped struggling. Her breath was coming hard. If she had been anyone else she would have been in tears, but she was Valeria. Her eyes were dry.

  He carried her to his sister’s rooms. It was not very far to go through the riders’ passage, and there was no crush of people to face, which mattered a great deal just then.

  Briana’s servants asked no questions. They brought food, drink, a bath, and a healer, in that order and without comment. If they recognized Valeria, they said nothing.

  She had no appetite for the meal they brought, but Kerrec coaxed half a cupful of honeyed milk into her. He was ravenous himself, amazingly so. While the healer priest clucked over her, Kerrec worked his way steadily through the tray that the servants had brought.

  Well before the priest was done, Valeria had fallen asleep. He splinted and set the arm and did this and that with the rest of her, finishing with a blessing that made her stir and murmur in her sleep.

  The priest frowned at that, but when he spoke, it was to say, “She’ll sleep until morning. Be sure she’s kept quiet for a day or two. I’ll leave certain preparations with the servants, who can see that she takes them. As for you, my lord—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Kerrec said a little too quickly.

  The priest arched a brow. “Certainly there is not, my lord, but the healing spell she’s set in you is draining her more than she can easily manage just now. You can’t give it back, she’s woven it too well, but you can weave one in return. It’s simple enough. You have only to—”

  Kerrec’s wits had grown horribly slow. The priest had gone on at some length before Kerrec understood what he had said. “Healing spell? She set a healing spell?”

  “She did indeed,” the priest said, “and a very nicely crafted one it is, too. Someone taught her well.”

  Kerrec scowled. “Are you sure? She’s not—this isn’t—”

  “Oh,” said the priest, “I can see it’s not the greatest of her gifts. Am I seeing clearly? Is she a horse mage?” He did not wait for Kerrec to answer. “Remarkable. Most remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “No one has,” Kerrec said.

  “I can imagine,” said the priest. He bowed to Kerrec, then bowed lower to the sleeping Valeria. “It’s been an honor, my lord. I’ll come back tomorrow and see that she’s mending as she should. She’s a great treasure, a great treasure for the empire.”

  He left none too soon, having said a great deal more than enough. Kerrec had much to ponder, little of which was welcome and less of which was comforting. He had been living with sureties, building his world on them,
and now they were all shaken to bits.

  He could not stay there, staring at Valeria, not knowing whether to worship her or strangle her. He prowled restlessly out of Briana’s rooms and back toward the riders’ house, where he should have been long since. He was still First Rider, until or unless he was removed from that office.

  Of the four First Riders, only Kerrec survived. Three of the eight riders of the Dance were dead, and the rest were unconscious under the care of healer priests.

  Master Nikos was both alive and conscious. When Kerrec came into the room in which he had been laid, he tried to rise. The healer attending him held him down, but he was not to be subdued until Kerrec stood beside him. “Kerrec! Thank the gods. Without you, we’d not only be dead, we’d be food for barbarian dogs.”

  “It wasn’t I who saved the Dance,” Kerrec said. It was less difficult to say than he had expected.

  Nikos frowned. He was haggard and his power was running at a low ebb, but his mind seemed clear. “I saw you,” he said.

  “You should have looked behind you,” said Kerrec.

  Nikos’ stare was blank.

  “Sabata,” Kerrec said, “and Valeria.”

  There. He had said her name, and it had not choked him.

  Nikos’ frown darkened. He must be searching his memory, making sense of fragments. There was a pattern there, and he of all mages had the gift to see it.

  It seemed he found it. It did not lighten his mood at all. “She saved the Dance. She—did I dream it? All the stallions—did she—”

  “She mastered them all,” Kerrec said with a kind of bitter pride.

  “That is theoretically possible,” said Nikos, “but in practice—” He broke off. At first Kerrec thought that he was coughing, but it was laughter.

  That was alarming. “Master,” Kerrec began.