The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  A stallion screamed in earsplitting rage. Valeria was moving—bumping, swaying. Her head was full of fog. It ached horribly. She groped for the comfort of her magic and fell headlong into emptiness.

  She clawed her way back up. There was no passage of time in this world she had fallen into, but somehow she knew that hours had passed in the place where her body was. She also knew, as her mind cleared slightly, that she was on the back of a horse. She was trussed like a sack and hung face-down over a saddle. Someone was riding behind her, holding her in place.

  Her magic was still out of reach. She was dizzy with trying to find it.

  The stallion screamed again. It was Sabata. There was the sound of a struggle and a man’s sharp curse, then the clatter of hooves and an explosion of breath on the back of her neck.

  The rider either dismounted on his own or fell. Valeria started to slip. She tucked her head and tried to roll, but even with that, the landing knocked the wind out of her.

  She lay in a heap. Sabata was standing over her. She could feel the heat of his body and the stronger heat of his rage. His magic was trapped, but that was not the reason for his anger.

  She rolled and wriggled until she was on her back. Then she could sit up. She was half-blind with the ache in her head, but she could see well enough.

  Tall trees loomed overhead. Light filtered through the branches. Two dozen men on horseback had stopped to stare. Half of them were ordinary dark-haired men in hunting clothes. The other half seemed as tall as the trees, and their hair was either gold or copper.

  In between them was a man who seemed half of one and half of the other. He was tall, but not as tall as the Caletanni. His hair was light, but not as light as theirs. With a small but powerful shock, she recognized him from her visions of the emperor and the Dance.

  Maybe he was the emperor’s son. Maybe not. Whatever the truth of that was, one thing was absolutely certain. He was a mage. Even with her magic closed away where she could not touch it, she could recognize the power in him. His spell had trapped her and Sabata and, she saw as she turned her head, Kerrec.

  He was bound hand and foot as she was, but he sat upright on the back of a plain bay horse. There was a net of magic over him, so strong she could see it in the daylight. It held him perfectly still. The only living part of him was his eyes. They were open, alert and fully as enraged as Sabata.

  “Tell your stallion to stand aside,” the mage said. His accent was not Caletanni at all. He sounded like Kerrec. When she gaped at him, he said with even less patience, “Tell him we will unbind your hands and feet and let him carry you, but he must let us near enough to cut the cords.”

  “No,” said Valeria. That made him gape in his turn. “I’m not riding him. He’s too young. Give me a horse that’s strong enough to carry me. I promise I won’t try to bolt.”

  “You will not in any case,” the mage said, “but your promise is reassuring.” He gestured toward the dark-haired men, who must be his guards.

  They came forward warily, even after Sabata moved off at Valeria’s insistence, and cut her bindings and hauled her to her feet. She promptly lost the last of her dinner in the roots of a tree, but once her stomach was empty, she felt better.

  There was a horse waiting for her, which she managed to mount without disgracing herself. She stroked the horse’s neck in apology and glared at Sabata when he snapped his teeth in the gelding’s face.

  Sabata followed reasonably tamely as the riders took to the road again. It was a narrow track winding among trees, mostly uphill. The Caletanni rode in the front and rear. The Aurelians were in the middle, surrounding their captives.

  The mage was behind her. He was strong. He had snatched a First Rider and a rider-candidate out of an armed camp under the eyes of two quadrilles of stallions, and captured and more or less controlled a Great One.

  Valeria had had no inkling. She wondered if the stallions had.

  She looked back over her shoulder. The man seemed mortal enough. His face was shuttered and his lips were tight. He was tiring, maybe, but she could not feel any weakening of the bonds.

  Somewhere deep down below her magic, she was afraid. Fear made her angry, and that was good. It kept her headache from overwhelming her. She had to think clearly, to be ready for whatever came, in whatever form.

  Kerrec was riding in front of her. Even spellbound and half-conscious, he rode beautifully.

  He must be the reason for this. She must be incidental, and Sabata, like an idiot, had followed and been caught along with her.

  Those were not comforting thoughts. Neither were her speculations as to what their captors meant to do to them, especially Kerrec. She was not dead yet, which meant she was going to be kept alive for a while. Probably she would live long enough to find out why the three of them had been captured.

  The Aurelians did not speak to her or to each other. The Caletanni exchanged a word or two now and then, but they were mostly silent as well. They made as little noise as possible, riding under a shield of magic, up and over a long ascent and down to a big rambling house in a sudden clearing.

  It was a hunting lodge, built entirely of wood except for the hearths, which were of stone. Trophies of the hunt were everywhere. The rugs were hides of bear and deer and boar. Antlers and skulls hung on the walls. She noticed gaps where weapons might have hung, but those had all been taken away.

  The Caletanni carried Kerrec into the depths of the lodge. The Aurelians left her in a room that did not much resemble a prison cell, or a root cellar, either. It was nearly as big as the house in which she was born, with a bed in it that could have held all her brothers and sisters and a dog or two for good measure. Sabata could have taken a corner of it and barely crowded her out, if she had not seen him safely settled in the stable before she came into the house.

  She missed him. The room was enormous, and it was cold. The fire in the hearth barely took the edge off the chill.

  There was a copper basin by the fire, full of steaming water, and all the necessities for a bath. After the hot water had warmed Valeria’s bones, she found a thick robe to wrap herself in. Servants, whom she had last seen doing guard duty on the road, brought mulled wine and roast venison and fresh-baked bread.

  Her first impulse was to refuse it all, violently, and run screaming after Kerrec, but sense prevailed. She needed her strength. She should eat, then she should sleep.

  The room was warded within and without. She could not use magic, but neither would the wards let any other magic touch her. She was as safe as she could be in enemy hands.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Morning found Valeria awake in the enormous bed. She had been trying for half the night to break the wards or else slip through them, without success. Her headache was notably worse.

  She closed her eyes for a few moments. When she opened them, Euan smiled down at her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. That was not the dream she wanted, at all.

  When she looked again, he was still there. His smile had died, but it lurked in his eyes. He had abandoned the drab coat and breeches of the School of War for the richly embroidered tunic and vivid plaids of the Caletanni. There was a golden torque around his neck and a heavy gold armlet on each arm. He was as gaudy an object as she could bear to look at this early in the morning.

  “I should have known it would be you,” she said.

  “You’re angry,” he said. “Will it help if I grovel?”

  “Nothing will help,” she said, “but letting us go.”

  He raised his brows. “Don’t you want to know who we are and what we want?”

  “You’re enemies of the empire,” she said. “You want to disrupt the Dance. You didn’t go about it very well. It won’t make any difference just to take one rider, even a First Rider. That’s why they went in double strength, in case something happened to one or more of the riders. Now you’ve taken us, they’ll be on guard. You won’t get near them again, even with the magic that you’ve managed to
raise. The stallions will stop you.”

  “You know a great deal,” he said, not obviously making fun of her, but she could feel it underneath. “Come with me. We need you.”

  She stayed where she was, buried in blankets. “Not without clothes, I’m not.”

  “In the chest,” he said, “at the foot of your bed. Would you like me to help?”

  “Get out,” she said.

  He laughed, but he got out. She could feel him on the other side of the door.

  She was tempted to take half the day to put on whatever she found in the chest, but something else had crept through the wards, a sense of urgency.

  The clothes in the chest were women’s clothes. She tossed them across the room. She would have shredded them, except for the one who was calling her. His anger was much stronger than hers.

  She stalked to the opposite wall and snatched up the blouse and short jacket and the divided skirt. The boots were riding boots, at least. The skirt was a little better than useless. She pulled it all on, cursing the excess number of fastenings.

  Euan was still outside the door. It was not locked, which surprised her. She glowered at him. “When I get back,” she said, “I want proper clothes in that chest.”

  “I had thought those were—” He stopped before she could hit him. “I’ll see to it. Will you come now?”

  “Didn’t I just say I would?”

  She knew she was walking a thin line. Euan was not a friend, no matter how many nights they had been lovers.

  This morning he needed her. That made him tolerant. She resolved to keep her temper under control, the way she was learning to do in the school. Rider’s discipline was to be calm and focused no matter what she might be feeling underneath it.

  She needed every scrap of that as she came nearer to the force that called her. It was Sabata, of course. He was locked in a stable with wards on it so strong they made her stomach heave. Even through those she could feel his rage.

  She broke the lock with a little rage of her own. It was wonderfully satisfying to spray the metal in molten droplets across the door. Even more satisfying was the sudden pallor of Euan’s face.

  He must have forgotten the extent of what she was, or else never believed it. Magic was not common at all where he came from. But the magic she had was not common anywhere.

  Sabata had broken down the inner walls of the stable. They were smashed to kindling and flung up against the outer walls, which the wards protected from destruction. He stood in the middle of the empty space, pulsing so brightly that she shaded her eyes. She moved toward him carefully. He was no danger to her, not really, but he was angry enough to forget himself.

  She had hardly thought it before he exploded in a whirlwind of hooves and teeth.

  Euan was behind her. She struck him with a blast of her own rage. It was focused and controlled as Sabata’s was not, and it drove Euan back without harming him, out of the door and into the safety of the stableyard.

  Sabata could not touch him there. The stallion did not care. The man was gone, that was all that mattered.

  He came quietly to Valeria and breathed into her hands. “Can you get us out of this?” she whispered into his ear.

  It flattened. As little as he liked to admit it, he could not. The wards were too strong.

  “There must be a way,” she said. “You need to eat and drink, to keep up your strength. I’ll try to find Kerrec. He’ll know what to do.”

  Sabata snapped lightly at her. He was frustrated even more than angry. He was too young and weak. This body was still growing and changing. He was not master of it yet, or of the power that had been born in it.

  She comforted him as best she could. He had not destroyed the hayloft or the grain bin, and the water barrel was full. She fed and watered him, then groomed him with a twist of straw. They were both much calmer when she was done.

  Euan was still outside when she came out. “No one will come near him but me,” she said. “No one else should try.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange,” he said dryly.

  “You don’t think you can use him against the Dance, do you? He’s a Great One, but he’s terribly young, which is how you can hold him captive at all. His control is poor. He wants to carry a rider, but he’s not really ready. If you had to steal a white god, you should have stolen any one of the others—if you could have held him.”

  “He was the one that came,” said Euan. “He insisted on it, rather strongly.”

  She could imagine how strongly Sabata had insisted. “What do you want of me?” she asked. “Really. Tell me the truth. I’d be dead if you didn’t want or need something you think I have. What is it?”

  He should not have been as surprised as he seemed, if he knew her at all. It was the first time she had ever seen him at a loss for words. “I think,” he said, “you had better come with me.”

  She was not afraid to follow him. Euan, like Sabata, would not hurt her if he could help it. He could still kill her, just as the stallion could, but not unless she pushed him to the limit.

  This place was enormous. There were wings opening into wings. A maze of dark, wood-paneled corridors led to blind turns, sudden courtyards and occasionally a hall big enough to ride in. Large parts of it must be underground or built into the hillside, because she did not remember its being nearly so large on the outside. Whoever had built it must have had a mind as twisty as these passageways.

  She tried to remember the way, but she was hopelessly turned around by the time Euan halted. This hall was smaller than some, and its windows opened on a long view of hillside and trees and, in the distance, the glimmer of a lake. A man was sitting against the light from the windows, playing chess on an inlaid board. His opponent was visible as a flicker of light and shadow. It was substantial enough to move the pieces, but Valeria could see through it as if it were made of glass.

  She hardly needed that to know that the man was the mage who had captured both a First Rider and a Great One. He was little more than a silhouette, except for his hand. There was a ring on his finger, heavy gold, set with a carved black stone. Her eyes would not fix on that stone for anything she could do. The harder she tried, the more they slid away.

  His magic was in the stone. She raised her eyes from it to his face, narrowing her eyes against the glare, peering until his features came clear. He looked more like the emperor than she had thought when she first saw him, but mostly he reminded her of Paulus. He had the same mincing accent when he spoke, and the same air of grievance with the world.

  “You took your time,” he said.

  “The stallion is calm,” she replied, “for the time being.”

  He curled his lip. His eye bent to the board and fixed on the king, which was crowned with a golden diadem. It marched unimpeded toward the enemy’s camp. “Checkmate,” he said.

  The shadowy opponent dissipated into sunlight. The man’s hand swept over the board. The pieces scurried for cover, diving beneath the squares or springing into the box that lay beside the board.

  Only the knight stayed on the board. He was beautifully carved, shaped like a rider on a cobby white horse. The horse tossed its ivory head and sprang into Valeria’s hand.

  She stared down at the chess piece. Once it touched her skin, it turned into carved ivory, cool and inert in her palm. She laid it down carefully.

  “You have strong magic,” she said.

  “Are you awed?” he asked.

  “No.”

  That stirred him out of his boredom. “You are.”

  “I’m not.” She sat where the shadow-thing had been. It made her shiver, but she was not about to let him see that. “Euan thinks I’m too clever for my own good. Suppose you tell me what you want, and what it has to do with me.”

  “You are clever,” the mage said, “and well above yourself. What are you, a farmer’s daughter?”

  “And you are an emperor’s son,” she said. “Does it matter, in your order, what you were before you
were called to it?”

  “In my order we are all princes,” he said.

  “In mine,” she said, “we are all horsemen.”

  “But you are not a man,” he said.

  She smiled her sweetest smile. It made him blink. “Nor do I wish to be. So, sir prince, what do you want with a farmer’s daughter?”

  “Not what you might be thinking,” he said with a glance that dismissed the whole graceless length of her. Even in a skirt, it said, she was no more alluring than a boy.

  “Gothard,” Euan said in a surprising growl, “get over yourself and answer her question. Or I will.”

  “Gothard?” said Valeria. “That’s not an Aurelian name.”

  “So it isn’t,” Euan said. “I believe they call him Marcellus Aurelianus when he’s at home.”

  Valeria nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, that’s the name I remember from my lessons. Not that I care, mind you. Rude is rude, whether you’re a slave or a prince. He’s not going to answer my question. Do I have to keep guessing?”

  Gothard’s face had gone stiff. Euan looked as if he was fighting back laughter. “You guess well in light of what you know,” he said. “We have in mind to influence the Dance, yes. We work toward a certain future, and the Dance can shape it.”

  “Then why do you need me? I’m newly Called. I’m years from being able to dance the Dance.”

  “If you were to stay on the Mountain,” Gothard said, “most likely you would never dance it at all. They won’t grant that privilege to a woman.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said. “No one does, even the riders.”

  “You know them,” he said, “and you can say that?”

  Her jaw set. She wanted to keep defying him, but he was too nearly right. “It’s not me you need, anyway, is it? It’s the First Rider. I’m just an accident.”

  “Actually,” said Gothard, “no. You are an anomaly. A woman has been Called, and a Great One has come to her. These are great things, unheard-of things. I’m not a mage of the Dance, or an Augur, either, but I have a degree of foresight. I see how the tides of time swirl around you.”