The day’s lesson was clear in her head. History and philosophy, dry but essential for understanding the patterns that made the empire what it was. But first she had to get there.
Sabata’s whiskers tickled her ear. She ducked before he snorted wetly in it. He presented his shoulder.
“You don’t want to carry me,” she said. “I’m like a sack of barley.”
His ears flattened. She was being ridiculous and they both knew it. He folded his forelegs and lay down, saddle and all—to Lucius’ vocal dismay.
She sighed, but she yielded to superior logic. She stepped astride.
He rose as carefully as he could. She could not deny that his back was a warm and welcoming place, even as badly balanced as she was. He professed not to mind.
He carried her all the way to the outer court, attracting glances and occasional expostulations, but no one was fool enough to risk Sabata’s teeth and heels. At the door to the schoolrooms, he deposited her with exquisite care.
She had a fair escort by then, rider-candidates of various years and a rider or two. Not all of them were on their way to the afternoon’s lesson.
They would have carried her up the stair if she had let them, but she was humiliated enough as it was. “Damn it!” she snapped at the lot of them. “I’m not a cripple. I can walk.”
“So you can,” said a voice she had not expected to hear at all—not for another month.
She whirled and nearly fell over. Her mother measured her with a hard, clear eye. “Walking’s good for you. Riding, not so much.”
“He insisted,” Valeria said, jabbing her chin at Sabata. The stallion stared blandly back, as if anyone here could believe that he was an ordinary animal.
“He must have had his reasons,” Morag said. “Whatever you were planning to do up there, unplan it. You’re coming with me.”
“I am not—” Valeria began.
“Go on,” said Gunnar, looming above the pack of boys. He was half again as big as the biggest of them, a golden giant of a man. “I’ll manage with this lot.”
“But—” said Valeria.
“Go,” the First Rider said.
That was an order. Valeria snarled at it, but there was no good reason to disobey it. She was tired—she had to admit that. She wanted to lie down.
That made her angry, but she had enough discipline, just, not to lash out. She caught Sabata’s eye. There was an ironic glint in it. She was growing up, too.
Morag’s examination was swift, deft and completely without sentiment. When she was done, she washed her hands in the basin that she had ordered one of the servants to have ready, then sat beside the bed in which Valeria was lying. “You’re certain when you conceived?” she asked.
“Why?” Valeria demanded. She tried to throttle down the leap of alarm, but it was hard. “Is the baby too small? Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing wrong at all,” said Morag, “but she’s nearer being born than I’d expect. Are you sure you’re not a month off in your calculations?”
“Positive,” Valeria said. “She’s really all right? She’s not—”
“All’s well as far as I can see,” Morag said, “but you’ll be pampering yourself a bit more after this. If you’re tired, you rest. And no more riding—no matter how much the horse may insist.”
“I was tired,” Valeria said. “That was why—”
“It was considerate of him,” her mother said, “but you won’t be doing it again until this baby is born. Which may be sooner than any of us expects. Have you had any cramping?”
“Nothing to fret over,” Valeria said.
“Ah,” said her mother as if she had confessed to a great deal more than she intended. “You rest. I’ll let you be. Are you hungry?”
“Not really,” said Valeria. “Where are you going? What—”
“I’ll fetch you a posset,” Morag said. “Rest. Sleep if you can. You’ll be getting little enough of that soon enough.”
Valeria let the storm of protest rise up in her and die unspoken. Morag was already gone. She was almost sinfully glad to be lying in her bed, bolstered with pillows, with the curtains drawn and the room dim and cool.
It was decadent. She should not allow it. But she had no will to get up. The baby stopped battering her with fists and heels and drifted back into a dream. She was as comfortable as she could be, this late in pregnancy.
She let herself give way to the inevitable. Sleep when it came was deep and sweet, with an air about it of her mother’s magic.
Kerrec was putting a stallion through his paces in yet another of the many riding courts that made up the school. Morag watched him with an eye that was, if not expert, then at least interested.
He had changed since she last saw him, back in the autumn. The gaunt and haunted look was gone. He was as relaxed as she suspected he could be. He would always have a hint of the ramrod about him, but he looked elegant and disciplined rather than stiffly haughty.
He was a beautiful rider. He flowed with his horse’s movements. There was no jerkiness, no disruption in the harmony.
His face was naturally stern, with its long arched nose and somber mouth, but there was a hint of lightness in it. He was smiling ever so slightly, and his odd light eyes were remarkably warm.
This was a happy man—in spite of everything he had suffered, or maybe because of it. Morag did not like to cloud that happiness, but there were things she had to say.
He was aware of her—she felt the brush of his thoughts—but he did not alter the rhythm of his horse’s dance. Morag waited patiently. This was a subtle working but a great one, a minor Dance of time and the world’s patterns. The sun was a little warmer for it, and the day a little brighter.
The Dance ended with a flourish that might be for the watcher, a dance in place that stilled into a deep gathering of the hindquarters and a raising of the forehand. The white stallion poised for a long moment like a statue in an imperial square. Then, with strength that made Morag’s breath catch, he lowered himself to stand immobile.
She remembered to breathe again. Kerrec sprang lightly from the saddle and bowed to the stallion. The beast bent his head as if he had been an emperor granting the gift of his favor, then lipped a bit of sugar from his rider’s palm.
A boy led the stallion away. Kerrec turned to Morag at last. “Madam! Welcome. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Have you?” said Morag.
He stripped off gloves and leather coat and began to walk toward the edge of the courtyard. She fell in beside him. He was only a little taller than she—not a tall man, but graceful and compact and very strong.
He did not respond until they had entered the shade of the colonnade. There was a bench there, though he did not sit on it. He stopped and faced her. “You’ve seen her. What do you think?”
“I think the baby will come within the week, if not sooner,” Morag answered. “She seems to be in a hurry to be born.”
“It’s not terribly early,” he said. “Is it? She’ll be safe. They both will.”
“Gods willing,” Morag said. “Why? Is something troubling you?”
He shrugged. He looked very young then, almost painfully uncomfortable with the emotions that tangled in him. “It’s just fretting, I’m sure. The Healers say all is going as it should. She’s managing well. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Healers aren’t midwives,” Morag said, “or wisewomen, either. Yes, you’re fretting, but sometimes there’s a reason for it. I don’t suppose you’ve taken any time to find a wetnurse?”
He frowned. “A nurse? Are you afraid she won’t be able to—” He stopped. His whole body went still. “You think she’s going to die.”
Morag glared. “I do not. I’m being practical, that’s all. How long do you think she’ll let herself be tied down to a baby? She’ll be wanting to ride and teach and work magic as soon as she can get up.”
“Yes, but—”
She cut him off. Men were all fools, even men
who were mages and imperial princes. “Never mind. I’ll see if there’s someone suitable here. If not, we’ll send to the nearest city.”
“I’m sure there’s someone here,” he said a little stiffly. “I’ll see to it today.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Morag said. “You go, do what First Riders do on spring afternoons. Valeria isn’t going to die, and she’s not likely to drop the baby tonight. We’ll both watch her. Then when it happens, we’ll be ready.”
He nodded. Some of the tension left him, but his shoulders were tight. She had alarmed him more than she meant.
Maybe it was to the good. Kerrec had certain gifts that made him a remarkable assistant during a birthing. If he was on guard, those gifts would be all the stronger.
She patted his arm, putting a flicker of magic into it. He relaxed in spite of himself. “Stop fussing,” she said. “I’m here. If I have to go to the gates of death and pull her back with my own hands, I will keep my daughter safe. You have my word on it.”
“And your granddaughter?”
She almost laughed. Trust that quick mind to miss nothing. “Safer still. She’ll have a long and prosperous life, if I have any say in it.”
“And I,” he said with an undertone that made her hackles rise. She should not forget that he was a mage and a powerful one. Even the gods would yield to his will if he saw fit to command them. In this, for the woman he loved and the child of his body, he most certainly would.
Chapter Five
Valeria woke to morning light, a noble hunger, and a plump and placid girl sitting by the window, nursing an equally plump child.
She scowled. It was her window, she was sure of that, in the room she shared with Kerrec. And here was this stranger, who might be a servant, but what was she doing with a suckling child?
Morag’s tall and robust figure interposed itself between Valeria and the girl. “Good morning,” she said. “Breakfast is coming. Come and have a bath.”
Valeria sat up. She had been dreaming that the baby was born and she was her slender self again, riding Sabata through a fragment of the Dance. The dream had been sweet, but her mood was strange.
She felt heavier and more ungainly than ever. The bath soothed a little of that. Breakfast was more than welcome, but her appetite faded as fast as it had risen. She ate a few mouthfuls and pushed the rest away.
In all that time, Morag had not explained the girl by the window. The child finished nursing, clambered down from the girl’s lap and came to stand with his thumb in his mouth, staring at Valeria with wide brown eyes.
“This is a rider’s son,” Valeria said. “Is that his mother?”
“That is Portia,” Morag said. “Portia is deaf and mute, but she’s quite intelligent. She’ll nurse your daughter when you go back to being a rider.”
“She will not!” Valeria said fiercely. “I’ll raise my child myself. I don’t need—”
“Of course you do,” said Morag. She dipped a spoonful of lukewarm porridge and cream. “Here, eat. You’re feeding the baby, too, don’t forget.”
“Are you trying to make me sorry you ever came?”
“You’ll be glad enough of me before the day is out,” Morag said. “Finish this and then we’ll walk. You want to visit your horses, don’t you?”
Valeria glowered, but there was no resisting her mother. “This argument isn’t over,” she said. “When I come back, I want that girl gone.”
“I’m sure you do,” Morag said, unperturbed. “Eat. Then walk.”
Morag was relentless. Valeria did not like to admit it, but she was glad to be up and out. She was not so glad to be marched through the whole school and half the city, then back again. She was a rider, not a foot soldier.
At least the long march included the stable and her stallions. Sabata and Oda were in the paddocks behind the stallions’ stable. Marina was instructing a rider-candidate under Kerrec’s stern eye.
Orontius was a competent rider, but he was profoundly in awe of Kerrec. That awe distracted him and made him clumsy. He almost wept at the sight of Valeria.
She forgot her strange mood and her body’s sluggishness. “There now,” she said. “Remember what we practiced yesterday? Show us how it went.”
Orontius breathed so deep his body shuddered. Then, to Valeria’s relief, he remembered how to focus.
Marina’s own relief was palpable. A stiff and distracted rider was no pleasure for any horse to carry, even one as patient as the stallion. As Orontius relaxed, his balance grew steadier and his body softer. He began to flow with the movement as a rider should.
Kerrec would hardly unbend so far as to laugh in front of a student, but his glance at Valeria had a flicker of mirth in it. He knew how he seemed to these raw boys. Sometimes it distressed him, but mostly he was indulgent.
Valeria could remember when he had been truly terrifying. He was merely alarming now. He was even known, on rare occasions, to smile.
She slipped her hand into his. His fingers laced with hers, enfolding her in warmth. She knew better than to lean on him in front of half a dozen rider-candidates and their instructors, but his presence bolstered her wonderfully.
Orontius finished his lesson without falling into further disgrace. Lucius was waiting his turn, holding the rein of Kerrec’s stallion Petra. Valeria caught his eye and smiled.
“I’ll teach this one,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Kerrec asked.
He was not asking her. His eyes were on Morag.
Valeria’s temper flared. She opened her mouth to upbraid them both, but the words never came. She felt…strange. Very. Something had let go. Something warm and wet. Something…
Kerrec swept her off her feet. She struggled purely instinctively, but his single sharp word put an end to that. She clutched at his neck as he began to run—biting back the question that logic bade her ask. “Why carry me? Can’t I ride?”
She knew what his answer would be. Not now.
The baby was coming. Not this instant—Valeria was not a mare, to race from water breaking to foal on the ground in half a turn of the glass. Human women were notably less blessed. But the birth had begun. There was no stopping it.
She had thought she would be afraid. Fear was there, but it was distant, like a voice yammering almost out of earshot. The pains were much more immediate.
They were sharper than she had expected, and cut deeper. They wrenched her from the inside out.
Kerrec was with her. He would not let her go.
A very remote part of her was comforted. The rest was in stark terror.
The pains were too strong. They should not be like this. They set hooks in the deepest part of her, the part that she had buried and bound and prayed never to see again.
The Unmaking had roused. Absolute nothingness opened at the core of everything she was.
All because she had read a spell in an old and justly forgotten book, not so long ago. It had been quiescent since she came back to the Mountain from the war and the great victory. She thought she had overcome it.
She had been an idiot. It had been waiting, that was all, biding its time until she was as vulnerable as a human creature could be.
She should be riding out the pains, guiding her child into the light. Instead, all the power she had went into holding back the Unmaking.
She did not have to panic. Her mother was there. So was Kerrec. They would keep the baby safe. She had to believe that.
She could feel Kerrec around her, holding her. His quiet strength brought comfort even through the terror that was trying to swallow her. It was always there, always with her, no matter where she was or what she did. It was as much a part of them both as the color of their eyes or the shape of their hands.
She leaned back against him. It was a strange sensation, as if she moved her body from without with a third hand while the rest kept a death grip on the Unmaking. His lips brushed her hair, a gesture so casual and yet so tender that she nearly wept.
She
had no choice but to hold on and be strong. No one could help her with this. No one here even knew.
They could not know. If they did, they would try to help—and the Unmaking would lair in them, too. She would rather give herself up to it than destroy them.
That hardened her heart. Her grip had been slipping, but now it firmed. She walled the Unmaking in magic, calling on the strength of the Mountain and the stallions who were always within her.
She would never have dared to do that if it had not been for the three whom she protected—not only her lover and her mother but the child who struggled to be born. The Unmaking must never touch them. That was a great vow, as deep as the Unmaking itself.
Valeria lay barely conscious against Kerrec’s body. Pains racked her, but her spirit was elsewhere. She had gone far inside herself behind walls and wards so strong he dared not break them for fear of breaking her.
“Is it always this way with mages?” he asked her mother.
Morag’s frown was etched deep between her brows. “I’ve never midwived a horse mage before. No one has. Her body is doing well enough. The baby is coming as it should. But—”
“But?”
“I don’t know,” Morag said, and that clearly angered her. “Is there something about horse magic that makes this unduly difficult?”
“Not unless the old riders are right and it matters that she’s a woman.” Kerrec shook his head as soon as he said it. “No. That’s not what it is. It’s not our magic at all.”
“Then what—”
“I can’t tell,” Kerrec said with tight-strained patience. “She won’t let me in. And no, I can’t force it. She’s woven the wards too well.”
“We’ll do our best without her, then,” Morag said. “Damn the girl! She’s never in her life made anything simple.”
Kerrec bit his lip. He would be the first to admit that the two of them were all too well matched.
Shattered Dance Page 3
