The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  “This is war,” Batu said. “That was justice of the battlefield.”

  “It was barbaric,” Dacius said. He had been even quieter than usual since Embry died, but something in him seemed to have let go. He flung down the cleaning rag with his saddle half-done. “This is supposed to be the School of Peace. What do they do in the School of War? Kill a recruit every morning and drink his blood for breakfast?”

  “Take dancing lessons,” Iliya said, hanging upside down from the opening to the hayloft. “Learn to play the flute.” He dropped, somersaulting, to land somewhat shakily on his feet. “Don’t you see? It’s all turned around. War is peace. Peace is war. And if you let go and kill something—” He made a noise stomach-wrenchingly like the sound of a hoof shattering bone. “Off with your head!”

  “How can you laugh?” Dacius demanded. “Did the mage-bolt addle your brain?”

  “That depends on whether I have a brain to addle.” Iliya snatched the broom out of Batu’s hands and began to sweep the aisle. He swept the scorched spot over and over and—

  Batu caught the broom handle above and below his hands, stilling it. Iliya looked up into the broad dark face. “We’re all going to fail,” he said.

  “We are not.” The words had burst out of Valeria. As soon as they were spoken, she wished they had not been. Everyone was staring at her.

  She gritted her teeth and went on. “Do you know what I think? I think we’re the strongest. The best mages, or we could be the best.”

  “How do you calculate that?” Paulus asked in his mincing courtier’s accent.

  “Cullen had no self-control,” she answered, “but he was strong enough to kill. Marcus was trying to strangle him with more than hands. Embry thought he could stop a mage-bolt.”

  “It’s far more likely we’re the idiots’ division,” Paulus said with a twist of the lip. “Three of us died for nothing before the first day was half over. Does any of you begin to guess how much more difficult the rest of the testing will be? We couldn’t even keep the eight together for a day.”

  His logic was all too convincing, but Valeria could not make herself believe it. “The strongest can be the weakest. It’s a paradox of magic.”

  “I know that,” he said. “Which school of mages were you Called from? Beastmasters?”

  “Apprentice mages can be Called?” That she had not known. “Were you—”

  “I was to go to the Augurs’ College,” Paulus said as if she should be awed. “So were you a Beastmaster?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. He shrugged, almost a shudder. “It doesn’t matter, does it? We’ll all leave as Cullen did—in a sack.”

  She had been thinking of him as older than the others. He carried himself as if he were a man fully grown, afflicted with the company of children. She realized now that he was terribly scared, and that he was no older than she.

  It did not make her like him any better. It did soften her tone slightly as she said, “Stop that. If this magic is discipline, then part of discipline is teaching ourselves to carry on past fear.”

  “I’m not afraid!”

  “Don’t lie to yourself,” Dacius said. “We’re all afraid. We thought we’d learn to ride horses, work a few magics and after a little while we’d be in the Court of the Dance, weaving the threads of time. It wasn’t going to be terribly hard. The worst pain we’d suffer would be bruises to our backsides when we fell off a horse.”

  “That’s absurd,” Paulus snapped. “I never thought it would be easy. You commoners, you hear the pretty stories and think it’s as simple as a song. It’s the greatest power there is.”

  “I heard,” said Batu, “that no one who wants it can have it. Wanting taints it. Power corrupts.”

  “You have to want the magic,” Valeria said, “and the horses. That’s a fire in the belly. A rider can’t rule, that’s the law. He serves and protects. He’s no one’s master.”

  “You recite your lessons well,” Paulus said. “The truth is what you saw out there. It’s death to lose control. That’s what it comes to. Discipline or death.”

  “Then we had better be disciplined,” said Valeria.

  Dinner was as much water as any of them could drink. It was pure and cold, like melted snow.

  “Water of the fountain,” Paulus said as he tasted it. For the first time he sounded capable of something other than scorn.

  Valeria could taste the heart of the Mountain in that water, fire under ice. It satisfied her hunger so well that she did not even think of food.

  Sleep struck her abruptly as she got up from the table. She staggered up the short flight of stairs and into the sleeping room. She was just awake enough to kick off her boots before she fell into bed.

  The dream was waiting for her. It was full of white horses as always, but for the first time since the Call came, there were riders on their backs.

  She recognized the place from a hundred stories. It was a high-ceilinged hall somewhat larger than the open court in which Marcus and Cullen had died. Tall windows let in white light. At the end, framed by a vaulted arch, the Mountain gleamed through the tallest and widest window that Valeria had ever imagined, with glass so pure that not a bubble marred its surface.

  The floor of the hall was raked white sand. Pillars of marble and gold rimmed it, holding up a succession of galleries. Three rose on either side. In the lowest gallery opposite the Mountain, in a box by themselves, three Augurs stood in their white robes and conical caps. A secretary sat just behind them with tablets and stylus.

  Under the Mountain was a single gallery. Draperies hung from it, crimson and gold. In the back of it was the banner of imperial Aurelia, golden sun and silver moon interlaced under a crown of stars, gleaming against a crimson field. On either side of it hung two others. One was luminous blue, with a silver stallion dancing against the unmistakable conical shape of the Mountain. The other was the golden sunburst on crimson of the imperial house.

  This was the Hall of the Dance, where the white gods danced the patterns of fate and time. In her dream they were entering as they had come to the place of the testing, eight of them in a double line, walking in that slow and elevated cadence which was distinct to their kind.

  She recognized the riders’ faces. Master Nikos led one line, First Rider Kerrec the other. Rider Andres rode behind the Master. She would learn the others’ names as the testing went on. They would be her partners and companions when—if—she passed the testing.

  Someone was sitting in the royal box under the gleam of the Mountain. She expected to see the emperor as he was depicted on his coins, a stern hawk-faced man with a close-clipped beard. Instead it was a young woman with a face as cleanly carved as an image in ivory. She was dressed very plainly in a rider’s coat and breeches, and her hair was in a single plait behind her. The elaborate golden throne on which she sat seemed gaudy and common against that unflawed simplicity.

  Only after Valeria had examined her thoroughly did she find the emperor. He stood behind the throne with his hand on the young woman’s shoulder, dressed in rider’s clothes as well. He was younger than Valeria had imagined, and less stern. His hair was still black, although his beard was iron-grey. His eyes were warm, smiling into hers. Magic sang in him like the notes of a harp.

  He reminded Valeria of Kerrec. It was certainly not his warmth or the smile in his eyes—grey eyes, not as pale as Kerrec’s, but still unusual in this dark-eyed country. Take off the beard and the smile and thirty years, and there was the First Rider to the life.

  Could it be…

  The emperor had one living son, and he was half-barbarian, which Kerrec certainly was not. Another, legitimate son, the heir, had died years ago, leaving his sister to take his place. Kerrec must be related in some convoluted degree, like every noble and half the commoners in Aurelia.

  In the shadows behind the emperor, a man was standing. Valeria could not quite make out his face. He was taller and wider in the shoulders than the em
peror, but somehow he seemed stunted. Something was wrong with him, something that crept out toward the emperor and surrounded him with a flicker of darkness and a flash of sudden scarlet.

  In the hall below them, the riders began the Dance. She could almost understand the patterns. They were following the skeins of destiny, tracing them in the raked earth of the floor. The air hummed subtly, and the light began to bend. Time was shifting, flowing. The stallions swam through it like fish through water. The riders both guided and were guided by them. The magic ruled them even as they ruled it.

  With no sense of transition, she had become part of the Dance. The stallion she had dreamed before, the young one with the faint dappling, carried her through the movements.

  She simply sat on his back. When the time came, she would guide him, but in this dream he was her teacher. There was a deep rightness in it. This, she was made for.

  When the bell rang before dawn, she was awake and refreshed. The others woke groaning or cursing and dragged themselves out. There was no breakfast, not even water, but Valeria did not miss it. The water of the fountain was still in her. Batu, she noticed, seemed at ease. The others were pale and hollow-eyed.

  They had their orders from the night before. There were horses to feed, stalls to clean. When they were done, they had to find their way to a certain room within the school. It was middling large and middling high, and filled with desks and benches. Each desk held a stack of wax tablets and a cup of sharpened styli.

  The rest of the eights were there already. None of them had lost a single member, let alone three. They drew away from the latecomers, whispering among themselves.

  Valeria exchanged glances with the others. She lifted her chin. So did Paulus. The other three followed their lead. They marched boldly down to the front of the room and took the seats that had been left for them there, separated somewhat from the rest.

  Valeria ran a finger over the tablet in front of her. It was a smooth slab of wood coated with wax, blank and ready to be written on.

  She had not expected to find herself in a schoolroom, even though this place was called a school. All the schooling, she had thought, would be in the stable and on the riding field. It was odd to think of book-learning here.

  She looked up from the tablet to find Kerrec at the lectern. He had come in so quietly that she had not even heard him. Neither had any of the others, she noticed. The buzz of conversation was rising to a roar.

  He cleared his throat. The silence was instant and complete. “Today we test knowledge,” he said. “If any of you is unable to read or write, go now with Rider Andres. You will be tested elsewhere.”

  “And failed?” asked Paulus.

  There were a few gasps at his daring. Kerrec answered as coolly as ever. “No one fails for simple lack of skill.”

  “Then what do we fail for?”

  “Lack of understanding,” said Kerrec. He looked away from Paulus, dismissing him.

  One by one, a dozen of the Called rose, clattering among the benches, and made their way toward Rider Andres. Batu was not one of them, which surprised Valeria somewhat. Iliya was. He glanced back before he passed through the door. He was openly scared, but he grinned through it and saluted them.

  When the last of them was gone, Kerrec scanned the faces of those who were left. Then, like any other schoolmaster, he said crisply, “Tablet. Stylus.”

  Valeria’s schoolmaster had been her mother. Kerrec might be stern, but Morag had been formidable. She would have asked far more difficult questions than his. “What is the school? When and by whom was it founded? Who are the white gods?”

  But as with the test of riding the day before, Valeria began to sense that there was something hiding beneath the childlike simplicity. There was a pattern in the questions.

  She looked down at the lines of her brief answers. The School is the academy of horse magic. It was founded in the year that Aurelia was founded, by the first emperor. The white gods are the firstborn children of time and fate.

  The flow of questions went on. She filled one tablet, both sides, and went on to the next. Her hand was writing without troubling her mind overmuch. He was not asking anything that she did not know. As the questions advanced, they needed more time and longer answers. She wrote well and quickly, and was finished, mostly, long before he asked the next question.

  While she waited, her stylus began to wander of its own accord. She watched without trying to stop it.

  It was tracing the pattern of the Dance that she had seen in her dream. Somehow it seemed to relate to the questions Kerrec was asking, although she could not see exactly how.

  It was a maze, she realized as it grew on the tablet. Within an oval boundary, paths crossed and recrossed on their way to an open center.

  As she stared at it, she glimpsed flickers of memory or dream. She saw the emperor’s face and the face of the woman on the throne, and behind them another man. He had been a shadow in her vision before, but now she saw him clearly.

  There was a distinct likeness among them, although the stranger was taller and his face was blunter, and his hair was gold-shot brown rather than glossy black. That must be the bastard son, the half-barbarian. On another path, which crossed theirs repeatedly, she saw Euan Rohe and the hostages of the Caletanni.

  Those paths were dark where they crossed. On one she saw the emperor dead, on another a figure that she recognized with a shock as Kerrec lay broken on a stone table. On yet a third, Euan Rohe hung from a gallows, his naked body pierced with a hundred wounds.

  She wrenched her mind away from those horrors, back toward the rim of the maze. The young stallion stood there as if he had been waiting for her to notice him. His white calm soothed her.

  “What is this?”

  Valeria started so violently that the stylus leaped from her hand and fell with a clatter. The sound of it seemed deafening, but none of the Called looked up. They were all scribbling studiously.

  Kerrec bent over her. He had the tablet in his hand, the one with the maze. “Come with me,” he said.

  When she stood up, that did attract attention. Kerrec’s glare quelled even the boldest of them. Somehow, while she was lost in her maundering, another rider had come to stand at the lectern. “Explain,” he said, “how one fits a saddle properly to a broader back.”

  Valeria could have answered that if she had not so obviously failed the test by losing interest in the questions. She tried to hold her head up as she followed Kerrec through the door behind the lectern.

  The door led to a narrow hallway and then to a small room that must be a study. It had a worktable and a pair of stools and an ancient and visibly comfortable chair. Books and scrolls and tablets lay on every available shelf and surface. Its single window looked out into the court where Cullen and Marcus had died.

  Master Nikos was sitting at the worktable, frowning at what looked like a book of accounts. He looked up in some surprise at their arrival.

  “Your pardon,” Kerrec said, “but this couldn’t wait.” He set the tablet in front of the Master.

  Master Nikos studied it for some time. Kerrec stood at ease like a soldier. Valeria tried to imitate him, but her knees kept wanting to collapse under her.

  This was it. This was the end. She would be revealed as a female and sent away in disgrace.

  After a terribly long while, Master Nikos looked up. His frown had changed, although Valeria could not have explained exactly how. “Where did you see this?” he asked.

  His voice was mild, almost gentle. Valeria answered as steadily as she could. “I dreamed it,” she said, and belatedly added, “sir.”

  His lips twitched very slightly. “Did you? When?”

  “Last night, sir,” she said.

  His brows went up. “Indeed. Tell me. When you drew this, could you see anything other than the lines on the tablet?”

  “Faces, you mean?” She nodded. She was not relaxing, but she was less terrified than she had been. This was not going the way of any
punishment she had ever had. “I saw people. And horses—stallions.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She did the best she could. The Master and the rider listened without comment. Once she had put it in words, it sounded weak and foolish.

  “That’s all I can remember,” she said at the end of it. “It’s the water, isn’t it? It gives dreams.”

  “You recognize the water?” Master Nikos asked.

  “We all do,” she said. “It tastes the way the Mountain feels.”

  “Feels?” the Master echoed her.

  Her cheeks had gone hot. “I know I’m not saying it well. Words don’t seem to fit. I can’t—”

  “No,” said the Master. “You can’t.” He glanced at Kerrec. “This one broke through faster than any I’ve seen. Even you took somewhat longer.”

  Kerrec astounded her with a smile that made him look remarkably human. Of course it was not aimed at her. “I was still floundering when Petra kicked me into the wall and knocked some sense into my head.”

  “Broke your arm, too, as I recall,” the Master said.

  “Oh, no,” said Kerrec. “That was pure stupidity. I tripped over my own feet and snapped my wrist.” He rubbed it, flexing the hand as if it still remembered pain, and shook his head. “I was a terrible combination—both clever and arrogant. Petra dealt with me as I deserved.”

  “They will do that,” said Master Nikos. “So, what of this one?”

  Kerrec froze into his grim and familiar self again. “This is the one the Lady chose.”

  Master Nikos’ brows went up. “Ah, so. Well then. We won’t waste time with any more of the lesser testing. Is any of the others fit to partner him?”

  Kerrec frowned in thought. “Not really, no. There is one, but he needs every one of the minor tests. Unless…”

  “Yes?” the Master prompted when he did not go on.

  “Unless we ask the Lady.”

  “You know what they think of all our testing.”

  Kerrec almost broke into another smile. “Humans are idiots. That’s a given. Will you ask her or shall I?”