The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  “No!” Kerrec shouted back. He paused, and his death hesitated. “If we destroy the body, we unleash the power. We have to contain him!”

  Someone near Valeria was praying. It was one of the riders on the balcony. His face was the color of wax.

  The stallion whirled in the center of a widening circle. No one but Kerrec dared come near him. The other masters had stopped. Kerrec was still running. He was going to die. He would touch the edge of that maelstrom and spin into nothingness.

  Valeria vaulted over the edge of the balcony and slid down a pillar. The ground came up an instant sooner than she expected. She staggered but managed to keep her feet.

  There were riders in front of her. She darted between them into the full glare of the sun. There was no time to pause or take stock. She ran blindly toward the thing that was no longer exactly a stallion. His mane and tail had turned to streamers of fire.

  Something small and dark tried to thrust her aside. She knew dimly that it was Kerrec. As gently as she could, she lifted him with her magic and set him out of harm’s way.

  She faced the stallion. His rage beat on her. She could feel its power, and yet it did not frighten her. Something in her was resonating with it. She could take it, shape it. She could, with effort, take the edge off it until he could control himself.

  He glowered at her. She glowered back. “You are a Great One,” she said. “Isn’t it time you remembered it?”

  His ears went flat. His lip curled.

  “What would you do on the Mountain? Be a foal again? Try to crawl back to your mother’s teat? Here is where you belong. This is what you were born for.”

  He shook his head and snapped at her, but his fit of temper lacked force. She slipped past his bared teeth and laid a hand on his neck. It was rigid. She smoothed it in long strokes, digging in until the knots loosened.

  The world had settled in its orbit. The earth was solid again. The rest of the stallions were creeping closer, with riders half hiding in their shadows.

  The stallion warned them off with teeth and heels. They backed away. None of them was strong enough to challenge him.

  That, thought Valeria, was the trouble. No one had ever been able to control him. “You are dangerous,” she said, “unless you learn to rule yourself. Great One or not, they’ll kill or cull you. Do you want to waste yourself that badly?”

  His head lowered. She would not call him chastened, but the defiance had drained out of him. Her fingers worked under his mane, massaging his crest. He sighed and gave in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For the second time in three days, Valeria had aroused consternation among the riders. If she had had any hope of changing their minds by saving them from the Great One’s rage, that vanished in front of those stony faces. She had made matters worse, not better. She had reminded them that a woman could outdo them all.

  They had brought her from the square to a room in the citadel, the round floor of a tower with high, narrow windows letting in the light. Between the windows hung portraits of old masters and great stallions.

  The living masters had the same stern and unreadable faces as their painted counterparts. They sat at a half-moon-shaped table, so that they faced her in a semicircle.

  Valeria would rather have faced the stallions. She stood as straight as she could and tried not to look as if she wanted to burst into tears.

  After a long while, Master Nikos sighed. The sound echoed around the room. He folded his hands on the table and leaned toward her. “Suppose you tell us what you thought you were doing,” he said.

  Valeria swallowed. “I was doing what had to be done,” she said, “sir. The Great One was out of control. No one was able to stop him.”

  “And yet you could.”

  “I do apologize,” she said, “if I interfered with the destined destruction of this Mountain and every living thing within a day’s journey.”

  Kerrec made a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter. She refused to look at him. Her eyes were fixed on Master Nikos. He was not laughing, but he had not risen up and thundered anathema at her, either.

  “You are a difficulty,” he said. “Even the most resistant of us cannot deny that you did what no one else was able to do. At the same time, you are here on sufferance. Your formal position is that of a servant. Servants do not tame renegade Great Ones.”

  “So make me a rider,” she said.

  It had slipped out. She never meant to say it aloud.

  “That will not happen,” said the Master on the end opposite from Kerrec. “Not while I live, and by the gods, never after I’m dead.”

  He was an old man, as rigid in the mind as in the spine. He was afraid, she thought, and it made him angry. He did not want the world to change. Above all, he did not want a woman to change it.

  She opened her mouth to ask him why he hated women so much. Before the first word came out, Kerrec said, “I am responsible for her. Whatever sentence you pronounce is mine to serve.”

  “That is absurd!” the old man sputtered. “You cannot—”

  Kerrec regarded him blandly. After a while he stopped sputtering.

  Another of the masters, younger but no less obstinate, said grimly, “You won’t do it. You won’t be allowed. This game has gone on long enough. Let us dispose of her and be done with it.”

  “No.” Master Nikos said that, to Valeria’s surprise. “She will continue as before. She has our thanks for the service she has done us, but now more than ever she must be taught the proper restraint of her power. If needs must, she will participate in lessons and exercises with the rider-candidates, at her master’s discretion.”

  Valeria stopped breathing. Her glance shifted to Kerrec. The Master had laid the burden of decision on him. She caught herself praying to whatever gods would hear.

  Kerrec said nothing. He rose from his chair and came around the table. His shoulder shifted, a gesture as subtle as a stallion’s. She was to follow.

  She did not look back, although she knew they would erupt when she was gone. She could feel the explosion building.

  It was no matter to her. All that mattered was the Master’s decree.

  Valeria would not have been surprised to be shut in Kerrec’s rooms with every bit and bridle and strap of leather in the citadel, and ordered to clean them all. Instead she found herself behind the stallions’ stable. There were rows of paddocks there. Most held older stallions, let out to bask in the sun, but one in a corner, set apart from the others, held the Great One.

  His brothers were in the stable, learning to live in walls. No one trusted him to do such a thing.

  “That’s a mistake,” she said. “Or am I allowed to say that?”

  “What would you do?” Kerrec asked her.

  “Treat him like the others,” she said. “No singling out.”

  “And if he kills one of them or one of us?”

  “He won’t,” she said. “You know that. You’re a First Rider. I’m only—”

  “Stop that,” he said. “There’s a halter on the gate. Fetch him and take him where you please.”

  The stallion watched their conversation from the far side of the paddock. His anger was not gone, but it had burned low. He had been pacing, pining for his brothers. When Valeria slipped through the gate, he stopped and flared his nostrils at her and snorted.

  “Come,” she said.

  He was not a tame beast, to come at her bidding. He tossed his head until the ragged mane flew.

  She leaned against the gate. Kerrec, outside it, had gone still. He was a horseman. He knew what she was doing.

  So did the stallion, but his kind were born curious. He could not resist the opportunity to investigate her. He went back to his pacing, but with each round, he came a little closer. His eye was on her, with no anger left in it. He had found something to focus on, and that was its own kind of joy.

  Valeria suppressed a smile. He learned fast, once he put his mind to it. He was not at heart a vicious bea
st. It was only that the power in him was so strong and the flesh so feeble, and he found it all so frustrating. He had hated to be a foal. He loathed to be small and helpless, unable to move or think as he knew in his heart that he should. To be so great and to be shut in so small a space had been more than he could bear.

  Now as a young stallion he was closer to what he felt he should be. He did want the art and the Dance. He had not wanted to pay the price for it, the loss of his freedom to run the mountain pastures.

  “It’s a different kind of freedom,” she said. He was directly behind her. It was a dangerous place to be with a stallion who was not to be trusted.

  She trusted this one. “What is your name?” she asked.

  She reeled in a sudden blast of light and sound. A god’s name was beyond words, and almost beyond human endurance.

  “Here he will be called Sabata.” Kerrec’s voice was quiet. It stilled the ringing in her ears.

  The stallion shook his head and pawed, unrepentant. Valeria slipped the halter over his head.

  He stared at her in astonishment. She stayed loose and calm, but she braced for an eruption.

  It did not come. He was thinking hard. His ears flicked and his mouth worked. He ground his teeth once, loudly, and gave himself to her.

  There would be eruptions later, and plenty of them. For now he was inclined to play at obedience. She led him quietly into the stable in which his brothers were.

  They called to him in joy and relief. They had been afraid for him. He called back with a fine edge of arrogance, but when she had brought him to a stall near the middle of the stable, he fell on the manger of hay as if he were starving.

  Horses did that when they needed to think. He had a great deal on his mind. Valeria let him eat for a while, then fetched brushes from the box by the feed room. While he ate, she brushed the mud and dust from his coat and the burrs from his mane and tail, and cleaned and trimmed his feet.

  Kerrec watched in silence. He did not offer to help, and she did not ask him.

  It was surprisingly comfortable to work while he watched. She had already learned that he did not intrude. He knew how to let a servant go about her business. She had stopped minding it, or even being distracted by it.

  When she was done with the stallion, Kerrec said, “You’ll look after him, since he’s agreed to it.”

  “As if I were a rider?” Valeria asked.

  “Don’t say the word,” Kerrec said, but she could have sworn he almost smiled.

  She was learning to read him a little. He was terribly young to be what he was, and his defenses were sometimes excessively strong. Still, once in a great while a crack appeared. Then she could catch a glimpse of the man underneath.

  This crack vanished as soon as she caught sight of it. He was his cold outer self again, expecting her to saddle Petra for the afternoon exercises. She had saddles to clean then, and plenty of them, which kept her busy until sundown.

  Valeria had always been a solitary creature. Even in the middle of a large and boisterous family, she had managed to keep to herself. Here in the school, where women were all wives, daughters or drudges, she was a complete oddity.

  The riders did their best to pretend she was invisible. That hurt more than she had expected. For a few days she had been one of them, and now they would not even look her in the face.

  She told herself she did not care. Nothing mattered but the teaching.

  Kerrec was true to his word, teaching her as the other rider-candidates were being taught. She did not, in spite of what the Master had said, share their lessons. She was alone in that as in everything else. Sometimes she thought that no one in the world cared for her, and Kerrec least of all.

  He was a good teacher. His lessons were clear and to the point, and she never succeeded in trying his patience. She did not succeed, either, in tempting him to act like a human being. Now more than ever, he was the First Rider, the great mage, the master of his art. She looked at him and saw him cased in glass, cool and impenetrable. Nothing she did or said could get a purchase on it, let alone lure him out of it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Euan Rohe had not expected to be engrossed by his studies in the School of War. He was here for a particular purpose, but the pursuit of that purpose meant learning to fight on horseback. He was no better rider than he had ever been, but one thing he could do. He could shoot a bow or aim a spear from the back of a rapidly moving horse, and hit his target more often than not. It was a surprising talent, but a useful one.

  Then there were the hours that he had expected to be deadly dull, shut in walls away from the air and subjected to the torture of books and words. Those books were books of war. The words were strategy and tactics, great battles and great generals, and defeats as well as victories.

  “Victory is a grand thing,” said the grizzled warrior who taught the newcomers, “but defeat teaches a commander to be wise. We learn from our mistakes, if we survive them, and we benefit from the mistakes of others. Study the great losses, gentlemen, as well as the great triumphs. Learn to see where failure begins, the better to avoid that failure in the heat of your own battles.”

  Gavin sneered at that and was caned for it. Punishment here was swift, and the masters never shrank from it, regardless of the rank or station of the victim.

  Euan kept his thoughts to himself, good or bad, and avoided the whip and the cane. He was not here to gain stripes. He was here to defeat the empire.

  One day that was as hot as days could be on this mountain, he was on his way from a long morning of mounted exercises and an afternoon of lessons in the art of war. Even at sunset the heat weighed heavy. He was alone, having stayed behind to answer questions from some of the imperial recruits as to how he managed to nock an arrow, aim and shoot while the horse was in motion. The men of his warband had gone ahead in search of a more pleasant dinner than they could find in commons.

  His kinsmen had laid claim to a little hole of a tavern near the western gate. It was run by a big fair-haired woman whose mother had been a battle captive from the Caletanni. She knew how to brew ale in the real way, the way of the tribes. It was good ale, brown as an acorn and nearly as bitter, and she served it with gritty bread and hard cheese and butter as sweet as any he had tasted.

  Imperials scorned butter. It was rancid cream, they declared, and far inferior to the oils in which they soaked their thin and tasteless bread.

  His mouth was watering with anticipation. He paid little attention to the sounds of commotion in the tavern. It was always boisterous—the ale was strong and imperials were weak in the head.

  Then he heard Gavin’s voice lifted above the rest. There were no intelligible words in it. He sounded like a bull at the slaughter.

  Euan lengthened his stride.

  There were a few imperials in the tavern, but they were trapped there and visibly unhappy about it. Euan’s kinsmen had caught themselves a coney, as they would put it.

  Euan had thought that they knew better than to flout imperial law with regard to women. Then he saw the jar on the table. It was not the plain, squat earthenware jug in which Gitta served her ale, but a finer glazed pottery with the seal of one of the imperial vineyards. They had been drinking wine, the idiots. From the strong sweet smell and the high flush of their faces, they had not been watering it, either.

  Gitta was nowhere to be seen. Her husband, a little brown mouse of an imperial, was cowering behind the bar. The girl who fetched the beer and fed the customers was struggling in the middle of Euan’s warband, and giving a good account of herself, too.

  Conory let out a yelp. Gavin cursed. They still had their trousers on. It had not gone too far yet, then. They were trying to force wine into the girl, to soften her up. She was objecting, strongly.

  Just as Euan gathered himself to wade in, someone brushed past him, running very fast. A sharp scent prickled in Euan’s nostrils, like hot metal.

  It was Valeria. Euan would know her in the dark, by the way his skin q
uivered and his heart beat faster.

  She was oblivious to anyone but the hostages and their prisoner. She heaved up Conory and tossed him out of the way. Stools and benches splintered where he fell.

  Gavin grinned with drunken delight. “Little rider! Just in time. You want some? There’s plenty.”

  Valeria’s fist caught him in the teeth. He roared in pain.

  He roared even louder when she broke his jaw.

  The captive had broken free. Her face was sticky with wine, and wine stained the front of her gown. She snatched the knife from Conory’s belt and stood at bay.

  They had all forgotten her. Valeria had Gavin down on the floor, the whole massive bulk of him. She was not going to stop until Gavin was dead.

  Euan was no coward, but it took every scrap of courage he had to lay hands on Valeria. Somewhat to his surprise, she neither blasted him nor laid him flat. She went still in his grip, breathing hard, shaking in spasms.

  Gavin lurched to his feet. Valeria jerked toward him, but she had come to her senses somewhat. She made no effort to break away from Euan.

  Euan let her go. As he had hoped, she stayed where he put her.

  Gavin was too far gone to notice that he was hurt. His eye fell on the tavern girl with her torn shift and her ripe breast showing, then shifted to Valeria in her sexless rider’s clothes. He reached for one or both, it little mattered which.

  Euan sighed faintly. Blasted fools, all of them. They left him no choice. He moved coolly, with considered judgment, to beat his kinsman to a pulp.

  Gavin fought back weakly, but after he went down, he stopped even that. Euan looked up from his bloodied body. The serving girl had finally had the sense to get out of there. So had everyone else who was not one of his own.

  His warband stared blankly at him. So did Valeria. He scowled at her. “Get out,” he said.

  She did not move.

  He hissed in exasperation. “The watch will be here any moment. Get out before they see you.”

  She still did not appear to understand.