The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  He fell asleep almost at once, and she made sure he stayed that way. She got up, dressed, and went hunting with redoubled urgency.

  She was almost too urgent. She would not have heard it through the pounding of her heart, but she happened to pause in a hallway not too far from the one that led to her room. The doors on either side were locked. Most of the rooms felt cold and empty.

  One at the far end was occupied. The sounds coming from it raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. They were almost too soft to hear, and not particularly strident. They were still sounds of pain.

  Instinct screamed at her to run in hurling bolts of magic. She forced herself to go quiet and listen. The sounds continued.

  She crept forward as silently as she could. She barely breathed. She approached the door and pressed her ear to it.

  She could not be sure whose voice she heard. The small gasps and suppressed whimpers could have come from anyone, man or woman. Still, all things considered, there was no question as to who was in there and what was happening to him.

  It went on for what seemed a very long time. Her nails had drawn blood from her palms by the time it stopped. Footsteps sounded, moving away from the door. She stopped on the verge of running for the nearest block of shadow.

  She had to think fast. If this was Kerrec, and if she was going to get him out, it had better be tonight. She had no plan, no preparations and no means of escape. Except…

  The hardest thing she had ever done was to turn and walk away from that door. Within a few strides she was running.

  Euan was still asleep. She cast the spell again, although it was a risk to both of them, to keep him under until morning. While he snored on the bed, she pulled what she needed from the chest of clothes, rolling it together and fastening it with belts. Then she ran for the stables.

  No one was standing guard there. She got Sabata out easily. The riding horses were a bit more of a challenge. She had to groom and saddle them in the dark, and lead them out without setting off the rest of the horses. For that she used a variation on the same spell that bound Euan.

  She was tiring. Magic drew from the same well as physical strength, but faster and harder. She would have to use it judiciously if she was also going to carry a semiconscious man from a prison cell to the yard in front of Sabata’s stable. At least the stallion could keep the horses under control while she ran back to Kerrec.

  The door was locked. She had expected that. There was a spell for it, which her mother had taught her. She did not have the herbs to burn, but the words were strong in themselves. She drew the rest out of her own magic, knowing what it would cost, but no longer able to care.

  Kerrec was lying on the stone table that she had seen in her dream. He was naked, his body clothed in bruises. None of them had broken the skin. That would come later, if she left him there.

  At first she thought he was unconscious, but as she started to dress him in the shirt and breeches she had brought, his eyes opened, peering at her without recognition.

  That was not supposed to hurt. She finished dressing him, set her teeth, and heaved him up onto her back. He wheezed with pain, but she could not help that. Staggering slightly under his weight, she carried him out.

  She paused only once, to shut and lock the door. That would baffle searchers for a little while.

  It was a long, hard way back down to the stables. The gods were with her. She met no one out walking the hallways at night. There was no one in the stables, and the yards were empty and still.

  Sabata was still waiting. The mortal horses were asleep, nose to tail. They woke quickly when she slung Kerrec over the bay’s saddle.

  So did he. He scrambled blindly until he was sitting upright. His head drooped, but his back was almost straight. Even in pain, even semiconscious, he could ride.

  She had bet their lives on that. She kept the bay’s rein as she mounted the black. Sabata was already moving. There were no gates where he was, and fences came down before he touched them. He passed through Gothard’s wards as if they had not been there—and that was a very interesting fact, if she had had time or wits to think about it.

  She hesitated as she approached the wards. Sabata glanced over his shoulder. His eye drew her onward.

  There was a slight tugging as she passed the wards, a hint of resistance, but nothing more. They had not broken or fallen. No alarm had sounded. She, with Kerrec beside her, had simply flowed through them.

  She followed Sabata because she could think of nothing better to do. She knew nothing of the country, and the ways he took seemed as good as any. They were mostly south and east, she noticed. He was taking them out of the mountains.

  Just before the sun came up, he stopped. The trees had opened on a grassy clearing. There was a stream, cold and clean, and room for the horses to lie down and roll after she had pulled off the saddles.

  Kerrec had dismounted on his own, although his knees collapsed under him after half a dozen steps. She did what she could for him. The box of medicines that she had put together at the school must be in Aurelia by now. She had cold water, a few handfuls of feverfew and a bit of comfrey that she had found growing wild near the lodge. With a little magic and a charm or two, they were the best she could do.

  Kerrec was quiet while she worked, except for a hiss now and then when she could not help but hurt him. He kept his eyes on her. She could not meet them except in quick glances. They were too raw. Whatever had been done to him had stripped away years of defenses.

  She did not know the person who looked at her out of those eyes. The Kerrec she knew was a cold and haughty man. At vanishingly rare intervals, he showed a spark of humanity. Sometimes she tried to imagine him with a woman, or for that matter a man. The effort made her head hurt. There was passion in him, and plenty of it, but it was all given to the stallions and the art.

  He still had his magic. The discipline was there, surrounding it with walls and shields. Torture had not touched that.

  The same could not be said of his spirit. When she looked into his face, she did not see a man at all, but a deeply wounded boy. There was no arrogance left.

  The Brother of Pain had not broken him, not quite. His soul was like his body, badly bruised but still intact. She had come in time for that much at least.

  He was refusing to sleep. She finished making camp, which did not take long. She would not risk a fire so close to the lodge. His eyes followed her as she came back toward him. “You have to sleep,” she said, kneeling beside him. “Sleep heals.”

  “Dreams can kill.”

  His voice was a raw shadow of itself. She coaxed more water into him, until he grimaced and turned his face away. “I’m here,” she said. “So is Sabata. We’ll stand guard over your dreams.”

  He made a rasping sound that after some time she recognized as laughter. “A child and a half-broken colt. What do you think you can do?”

  That was more like the old Kerrec. She resisted the urge to slap him. He did not need more bruises, even if he had asked for them.

  She settled for silence. He shocked her by saying, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t called for. I can’t seem to keep my tongue in order.”

  “It’s no matter,” she said. “We’ll watch over you.”

  “Yes.” It was a sigh.

  He still struggled. He had been fighting sleep and dreams too long. He could not stop.

  She took his head in her lap. Even with the herbs she had given him, his forehead was burning hot. She cooled it with a cloth dipped in water from the stream.

  “Good,” he said dreamily. “Cool.”

  She laid her palm against his cheek. It was rough with stubble. She had never seen him dirty or untidy before. He had always been perfectly clean.

  She was losing her grip on herself. When she tried to remember Euan, she could not see his face. Kerrec’s kept coming between.

  It was not supposed to do that. But here she was, and not with Euan.

  She could not stay here long. For
now, Sabata was hiding them from discovery, but it would be much better if they increased the distance between themselves and Gothard. Valeria kept an eye on the sun, ready to move when it came halfway to the zenith. Kerrec had fallen asleep, thank the gods. If he could manage even an hour, he would be the better for it.

  Valeria started awake. She had closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, the sun was gone. The sky was thick with cloud and a chill wind was blowing. She smelled rain.

  She could feel the sun faintly through the clouds. It was past noon. She had slept far too long.

  Kerrec was snoring softly. Her legs were numb. She eased herself from beneath him. The horses had their backs to the wind, heads down, waiting for the rain. Sabata stood guard.

  He snorted at her. He was not sorry he had let her sleep, but it was time to wake and ride.

  She hated to rouse Kerrec, but when she touched him after the horses were saddled, she could feel that he was awake. He would not let her help him up. His face was set and his breath hissed, but he pushed himself to his feet and stood reasonably steadily.

  Once in the saddle, he took a moment to simply breathe. Valeria left him to it under cover of mounting her own horse and turning the gelding where Sabata led.

  The rain began soon after they left the clearing. Under the trees it was not too wet, yet. Valeria had brought a blanket for each of them, which kept off the rain that penetrated the branches.

  They rode without speaking. Valeria watched Kerrec, at first for worry and then because her eyes would not leave him. He seemed unaware of her. His pain was a constant thrum on the underside of her awareness, but she thought it was a little less than it had been. Simply being away from that room, on the back of a horse, with sky overhead, was helping to heal him.

  The day grew darker, the rain heavier. The wind had an edge to it. Kerrec began to shiver. Valeria was none too comfortable herself.

  “Sabata,” she said to the white blur ahead of her. “Sabata!”

  She felt his response. If it had been set in words, it would have been, “Hold on. Just a little farther.”

  She was not at all sure that Kerrec could hold on. She rode her horse up beside him. His head was bowed. The blanket had slipped from it. His hair was plastered to his skull.

  She slid from her saddle to his horse’s croup and wrapped her arms around him. His whole body was shaking.

  “Sabata!” she said again. “We need to stop now.”

  Soon, he replied inside her.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It would never be soon enough before they got out of the rain. It was coming down in torrents. Kerrec was cold to the bone, even with what warmth Valeria could give him.

  She could no longer see where she was going. Her horse was following Sabata, she hoped. For all she knew, they were wandering aimlessly through the wilderness of trees.

  They stopped abruptly. The bay’s nose was pressed to Sabata’s broad dappled rump. Valeria squinted through the rain.

  There was an opening in the hillside, with a ledge of rock overhanging it. Brambles hung down like a curtain. Sabata disappeared behind them.

  Valeria slid to the ground, slipping in the mud, and led the mortal horses in Sabata’s wake. They hesitated to pass the brambles, but she willed them to move and they obeyed.

  The cave was surprisingly large and light. A crack, a sort of chimney, led upward in the back of it. It was angled so that rain did not come in but light did, such as there was on as dim a day as this. It was enough to show a ceiling higher than a mounted man’s head, and a not too uneven floor of earth and stone. Most wonderful of all, under the chimney was a ring of stones, charred with fire, and nearby someone had piled enough cut wood to warm the place for a week or two.

  There was no sign of whoever had left the wood. It was dry and well seasoned. The fire pit looked as if it had not been used in months or years.

  Valeria got Kerrec off the horse, leaving the animals to stand—with a pang of horseman’s guilt—while she tended the man. She spread the blankets on the floor next to the fire ring, persuaded Kerrec to sit on them, and set to work making a fire.

  That was simple. She stacked the logs, arranged the kindling, and spoke the Word that her mother had taught her when she was a child.

  The fire leaped from her hand and dived hungrily into the kindling. While it explored its new home, she pulled the clothes off Kerrec, against his halfhearted protests.

  She had never seen him completely naked. While she was his servant, he had bathed and dressed without her help.

  There was no time now to be modest. His lips were blue. He was shivering uncontrollably.

  The fire was burning well, but it took time to grow to its full strength. She tried to persuade Kerrec to drink a little wine, but he was shivering too violently to swallow.

  With a hiss of frustration, she pulled the saddles from the two ridden horses, rubbed them down hastily, then shook out the warm and redolent blankets and dropped them over Kerrec. As the horses nosed along the cave’s edge for the grass that grew in mats and patches under the ledge, she pulled off her own clothes and climbed under the blankets.

  The smell of horse was overpowering, but she found it more pleasant than not. She pressed her body to Kerrec’s. His skin was icy. She rubbed his hands until some little bit of life came into them, and folded them between her belly and his. His teeth chattered in her ear. She ran her hands up and down his back and buttocks, rubbing them as she had his hands, being careful not to cause him pain.

  Slowly warmth crept into him. His shivering slowed and then stopped. His teeth no longer chattered. The rigidity left him. He sighed, gusting warm breath past her ear.

  His blood was flowing again. She knew how strongly by the thing that hardened between them.

  She could have drawn away and left him to his blankets and the heat of the fire. She found she did not want to. He was smaller than Euan, and his skin was smoother. He was only a little taller than she, but she knew well how strong he was.

  It was odd to kiss a shaven face. The stubble scratched and pricked, but not too badly. His skin tasted of horses and of rain.

  At first he was stiff with shock. Then suddenly he gave way. It was like a rush of fire.

  With Euan, gods knew, there was passion enough. She loved him, maybe. She lusted after him for certain. With Kerrec it was more. More everything.

  Euan had no magic. Kerrec was overflowing with it. Even after torture, exhaustion, the sick aftermath of the drugs he had been fed, he was a master mage. The sheer beauty of what he was made her want to burst into tears, or go all dizzy with joy.

  He wanted her. It was not only that he had been cold and was warm again, and his body knew what to do to finish driving out the chill. He looked into her eyes and saw her—herself, no one else.

  This man, cold? No more than the sun was. It had all been walls and shields and defenses.

  There were no walls here. She kissed him until her head swam. His arms locked around her. His back arched just as she opened to him.

  There was no awkward moment, no half-comic tangle as they struggled to fit. He knew and she knew exactly how and where to move. It was as smooth and inevitable as the Dance.

  He had taught her that every rider had his own rhythm, and so did every horse. A rider learned to ride whatever he was given, to find the horse’s rhythm and match it. But when horse and man were matched by nature, then everything was infinitely easier.

  It was the same with this man. His presence that had been such an endless irritation was as soft as the slide of silk. She could feel what he wanted and where he wanted it. What she wanted, he gave her before she had time to think it. They were like one body and one spirit. What thoughts were hers and what were his, she could no longer tell. They were all one.

  He had loved her from the moment he saw her, but he had hidden it because he was her teacher. Distance, discipline—he had tried too hard to cultivate them. He had come all too close to making her hat
e him.

  For a dizzying while, her body overwhelmed her mind. Words vanished. The whole world was the touch of his lips and hands, and the heat of him inside her.

  She cried out. An instant later, so did he. Her body throbbed. She clung to the moment of climax for as long as she could. But all mortal things ended, and this was briefer than most. She let go and sank with a sigh.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  They were still joined in the spirit. His puzzlement stumbled through her.

  “Why did you hide it?” she pressed him.

  “You know why,” he said.

  “So what if you were my teacher? I’m not so weak I can’t refuse a man I don’t want—even if he does outrank me.”

  “It wasn’t fair,” he said. “And you disliked me so very much.”

  “I thought you despised me.”

  “Gods, no,” he said. “I was terrified that you would see how undisciplined I really was. I wanted you desperately, but not by force. Not because I was your master and you were my servant.”

  “You don’t know me very well, do you?”

  He bridled at that. The union between them stretched but did not, miraculously, snap. “What if I had told you how I felt? Would you have laughed, or would you have slapped me? Would you have hated me even more than before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Honesty was not easy, but there had been too little of it between them. “I didn’t know you very well.”

  He laughed. It was almost a gasp of pain. “I don’t think I know myself.”

  She lifted herself on her elbow. It was nearly dark, but she could see him perfectly clearly. She did not think she would ever be blind to him again. He was inside her, as deep down as the stallions were.

  This was more than she had bargained for. She had a sudden urge to leap up and run far away. All that held her was the howling of wind outside and the hiss of the rain—and the sight of him lying there, a mass of bruises and half-healed cuts, smiling crookedly. He looked nothing like First Rider Kerrec.