The Mountain's Call

by Caitlin Brennan

  He was following patterns, the fretwork of a latticed window, the pattern of sunlight on a tiled floor. They led him down passages that after a while he no longer remembered. He must have left the heir’s wing and crossed to the greater palace. He could not have gone as far as the queen’s palace, which had been empty since his mother died. He must be somewhere in the region of the state chambers or, behind and below them, the warren of cells and passages that was the chancery of the empire.

  These were servants’ corridors, with walls of plain brick or stone and bare floors. The beauties of the public palace were not in evidence here.

  His passage from one to the other was suitably abrupt. He opened a door and found himself in familiar surroundings. The floor was a jeweled mosaic. The walls were painted with frescoes of gardens and forests. Painted marble busts lurked in niches. He recognized a number of his ancestors and at least one blatant usurper, whose bust had been relieved of its nose and ears and hung with the halter of a traitor. It was meant for a warning, and a reminder.

  Mutilated old Fomorius told Kerrec where he was. He was just above the Golden Hall, where each evening the court performed the movements of its own, very earthly dance.

  Kerrec’s will had stopped being his own some time since. He slipped through another door, back into the drabness of the servants’ world, and followed the tugging at his weakened magic. It led him down a narrow stair to a room he had never known existed.

  The room was not particularly small, but it was full of odd things. A box held soft shoes of all sizes, some new, some very well worn. On a table next to it was a heap of fabric that unfolded into servants’ tabards in the emperor’s colors, crimson and gold. There were trays and platters piled on shelves and tables, handled jars from which Kerrec had seen servants pour wine, cups and bowls, and on shelves by the door, a softly gleaming row of water pitchers and ewers for washing the hands after eating.

  The first pair of shoes he tried fit well enough and were new enough for his fastidiousness. The tabards seemed all of a size. Dressed now as a proper servant, he opened the inner door.

  It did not open directly into the hall. There was a passage, better lit than most that he had seen since he left the garden. Others opened into it. The one he noticed in particular bathed him in sounds and scents that spoke vividly of the kitchens. People were running up and down the stair, weighted down with platters and bowls.

  He meant to watch for a while, but a florid personage whom he did not recognize laid eyes on him, scowled and deftly caught one of the runners from the kitchen. Kerrec found himself equipped with a pitcher of wine and ordered into the hall.

  The pitcher looked like gold but was much too light to be genuine. After a moment Kerrec realized that it was gilded glass. The part of him that he had thought long dead, the royal prince, sneered at such cheap mimicry. The rest of him was glad of the lesser burden.

  He had no time to nerve himself for the plunge. The steward was glowering at him. He fell in with the rest of the servants. They swept him with them toward the door and the hall.

  Light and warmth and the mingled roar of conversation, laughter, music, struck him like a blow. He reeled, but somehow he steadied himself. There were patterns—he could see patterns.

  He followed the one that seemed most apt, transcribing a circle around the hall. There were cups to be filled. Sometimes they rose up in front of him. Mostly they expected him to find and fill them for himself. They were attached to hands and arms, silk, jewels, gold and silver. Countless faces hovered in front of him, blurring together. Memory faltered before so many.

  He in tunic and tabard was invisible. When his pitcher was empty, he was halfway across the hall from the servants’ door. Common sense would send him back the way he had come, but he was caught in the patterns that wove and twisted through the hall. People moved in eddies and currents. Factions coalesced and dissipated, touched one another, flowed together or sprang sharply apart.

  Beneath a descant of gossip and frivolous intrigue ran a deep undercurrent of tension. War was in the wind, and these nobles were not in harmony with themselves or their emperor.

  The emperor moved among them in a stately dance of order and precedence. He could have chosen to sit on the throne that gleamed at the far end of the hall, but today he was taking the measure of his court. Kerrec could see and feel how the patterns shifted, some factions gravitating toward the emperor, but others veering carefully away.

  Artorius seemed regally oblivious. The usual flock of sycophants fluttered and cackled around him. They were a blind, Kerrec knew, and a shield. Through their familiar chatter the emperor could listen to the lower voices. He heard the rumbles of discontent and the murmurs of dissension. He could take a count of those who stood against his war, even before he called them into council.

  It was dizzyingly complex for a mind as damaged as Kerrec’s. He could not listen to the words. The patterns were more than enough to follow.

  Little by little he began to recognize faces. Names did not attach to them, not yet, but he knew these people. They had mattered to him once. Now they were bubbles in a pot, and the pot was coming to the boil.

  The emperor had come almost within reach. He did not see Kerrec at all, any more than anyone else did. Suddenly, so suddenly that Kerrec would have missed it if he had not been looking directly at it, Artorius slipped free of his entourage and vanished behind a pillar.

  There was magic in what he did. The gaggle of courtiers did not even know he was gone. Kerrec followed the magic.

  There was a door behind the pillar, hidden in shadow. It led to a passage somewhat too wide to be a servants’ corridor, lit by lamps at intervals along it. Kerrec remembered it dimly. There were corridors like it all through the palace, for the emperor and his family to pass from one hall to the next, or to and from their private apartments.

  This one led to the emperor’s rooms. Artorius relaxed ashe left the court behind, and let his shoulders droop, allowing himself a few moments’ indulgence in human weakness.

  He neither saw nor heard Kerrec. Nor, and that was damning, did the bodyguard who walked in his shadow. The man was too much at ease. Either he had not been warned to be on his guard, or he had disregarded the warning.

  There was a great deal of that in this palace. Kerrec surprised himself by caring that it was so. He was dead here. It should not matter.

  The passage ended in a wall and a stair. The light there was dim. There should have been lamps burning above the stair, but they were dark, without even the odor of a spent wick to recall when they had last been lit.

  The emperor was perfectly capable of kindling a witch light, but he knew this way well. Maybe he found the dimness restful. He began to climb the stair.

  His guard pressed in behind him. At the same time another came down from above, with a soft rattle of weapons and a ringing of mail.

  Patterns were swirling dizzily, knotting and tangling around the emperor. Kerrec began to run.

  As he ran, the rags of his magic began to knit. He was still weak, still maimed, but there was enough. Maybe. Enough to lighten his feet until he was all but flying, and slow the world to a dreamlike crawl. He saw the blades in the guards’ hands. He saw their faces, hard and set, and the death in their eyes.

  He flew over the emperor’s head and flung back the guard above. The man was slow, so slow. The attack spun him around and into the wall. The knife escaped from his hand. Kerrec felt the crushing of bones, the snapping of the neck from the force of the blow.

  He balanced himself on the step and turned almost leisurely. The guard below was not so slow, not so easily surprised. Kerrec could taste the magic in him. It was rising, arming.

  The emperor was between them. He had roused, but in the dark he did not recognize his son. He saw his guard dead, the man in the servant’s tabard attacking, and never knew of the blade that slashed toward him from behind.

  He loosed a mage-bolt. Kerrec flashed aside from it, but felt the searin
g heat. Part of the stair crumbled under his feet. He launched himself without grace but with all the speed he could muster, over the emperor’s head, down on the guard below.

  They fell all together, rolling and tumbling down the stair. Kerrec twisted wildly, trying to catch his father, to shield him from the fall and the blade. Memory flickered, knowledge, understanding, but the connections were broken. He could not grasp it. There was only the strength of the body, and what speed he had left.

  The knife struck a glancing blow. Kerrec felt it as if it had slashed his own skin. He broke the hand that held it and turned it on its wielder. It slid up beneath the ribs and into the heart.

  The assassin fell, pulling Kerrec down with him. Kerrec struggled free. His father was lying at the foot of the stair. He was moving, wheezing. The fall had struck the wind out of him, that was all. The blade had only nicked his side.

  Kerrec sat on his heels. He was not breathing too well himself. He was light-headed, as if he had gone too long without food or sleep. The well of his magic was nearly dry.

  The emperor had got his breath back. He sat up, wincing at the pull of torn muscles and slashed skin. His eyes took in Kerrec, and knew him. Kerrec saw how they went cold. “What in the name of Sun and Moon are you doing here?”

  No thanks for saving his life. No pleasure to see his son. Kerrec had expected nothing else. Somehow he got to his feet. He turned, meaning to walk away, but midway he reeled and fell down.

  His father caught him, cursing at what it did to the knife-cut. They went down together, not tidily at all.

  There was a pause. Kerrec was not sure he dared start laughing, not so much because his father would be offended as because once he started, there was no way in the world he could stop.

  “You could have been killed,” Artorius said.

  “You would have died first,” said Kerrec. The floor was almost comfortable. It was a pity he had to get up again, but there were two dead guards to consider, and gods knew what else might be coming. “Now do you believe that you’re in danger?”

  “I’m in danger every moment of my life,” the emperor said. “You on the Mountain with your gods and your magic, you forget what life at court is like.”

  “The dead do forget,” Kerrec said. “So do the living, it seems. Your guards are slack or outright traitorous. Your defenses are weak. Is this some plan too subtle for ordinary mortals to understand?”

  “Are you trying to make me throttle you?”

  “If it will keep you alive until after the Dance,” said Kerrec, “then you’re welcome to it.”

  “That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? The Dance.”

  “If you wish,” Kerrec said. He heaved himself to his feet and stretched out a hand. For a moment he thought the emperor would refuse it, but Artorius was not quite as stiff-necked as that. He let Kerrec pull him up. His grip was strong, almost painful.

  He gasped as he came erect. Kerrec felt the stab of pain in his own side. It was growing worse. There was a burning in it. But even worse than that was the deeper thing, the thing that explained all too much.

  “Father!” Kerrec said. “Your magic—”

  “Get me to my rooms,” Artorius said.

  “Physicians—mages—”

  “Stop babbling,” said the emperor. “Start thinking.”

  His words were like a slap. Kerrec pulled his father’s arm across his shoulders. Stumbling, occasionally staggering, but never quite falling, they made their way up the stair.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Poison,” Briana said.

  Kerrec had done his thinking, quite a lot of it in fact, while he struggled with his father up that endless stair. By the time he reached the top, he knew what he had to do.

  So did the emperor. They managed because they must. Artorius walked into his rooms past guards who seemed loyal, but who knew? Not Kerrec, just then.

  He was blind to the patterns again. The strength that set his father on his feet had come from him. He did well to stay on his own feet, keep his head down and play the servant.

  Servants were waiting in the emperor’s chambers. Artorius dismissed them. They eyed Kerrec askance. They knew he was not one of them, but they did not recognize either their lost prince or the First Rider from the Mountain.

  For the moment it was enough that they withdrew in silence. One had an errand, to fetch Briana. He performed it with dispatch.

  She said what Kerrec had already understood. “There was poison on the blade.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Kerrec asked her. He had had to sit down, but his head was surprisingly clear. Whatever spell had been set in him to mend him, it was growing stronger rather than weaker the longer it went on.

  “I would guess akasha,” Briana said. “It’s nasty—it doesn’t harm the body, but it eats away the magic. As to who has done it or why…Father?”

  Artorius had collapsed into bed as soon as his servants were gone. She had cleaned and bandaged the wound, but it was too late to scour the poison from his blood. He was still conscious, but struggling. “We can’t ask mages to help us. We can trust no one. Whoever has done this—”

  “You know who it is,” Kerrec said.

  “Not until I have proof,” said Artorius, as stubborn as ever. To Briana he said, “Find an antidote. Be quick about it.”

  “What if there’s none?” she asked.

  “Find one,” he said.

  Briana set Demetria on guard over her father. She dared trust no one else. Demetria, born warded, immune to magic, could protect him as no one else could.

  Demetria came in from disposing of the would-be assassins. She asked no questions. When she was in place, Briana could turn her attention to Kerrec.

  At first she had thought he was wounded, too, but there was no mark on him that had not been there before. He was in a most peculiar state of mind. Even as a child he had never been one to be rattled, but that was just what he seemed to be now. He could not settle. He would not eat or sleep.

  She got him out of their father’s chambers. He could walk, which surprised her, although he needed her shoulder to lean on. He seemed dizzy or drunk, but there was no smell of wine on his breath, and no drug in him that she could detect.

  “Patterns,” he said. “I keep seeing patterns. In and out, round about…”

  Petra was not in the garden when they came there. She got the servant’s tabard off him and coaxed him into bed. He tossed restlessly. He was feverish, but he shook off cool cloths and would not drink the tonic she prepared for him.

  Finally, in a combination of desperation and disgust, she left him to it. She knew as well as he who had ordered the assassins to attack her father. That they could put on the uniforms of imperial guards and establish themselves in the emperor’s personal contingent was not only distressing, it was alarming.

  Eight more days, and then the Dance. She was the next target, if this went as such things usually did. Her guards were alert, her wards at their strongest. Her father’s guard would have to be examined and purged, and quickly, but at the same time secretly. The same went for the palace guard, and probably the city guard as well.

  Everyone that she could trust in this matter was either tossing on the bed in front of her or doing much the same in the emperor’s rooms, or standing guard over the garden or the emperor. Her mind raced through names and faces in court or council. The few who were honest or honorable were weak or vulnerable, or useless in a battle of magic. The temples had their own concerns, few of which served her purpose. The riders…

  In this she was alone. Whatever choices there were, she had to make them.

  “Briana,” her brother said.

  His voice was steady. He sounded sane. His eyes were almost clear.

  “The Dance,” he said. “The Dance counters the poison.”

  She was all fuddled. She could not be sure she understood him. “What—”

  “There is no potion or counterspell for akasha,” he said, “exc
ept the Dance.”

  “But how—”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember. I just know this. We have to do what we can for him until the Dance.”

  “What can we do?”

  His eyes closed. He was breathing hard. She was trying to lean on him, and he was too frail to support her.

  She had to think for herself. That was easy when she was judging the law or making order in the empire. But this was anything but simple, and the stakes were desperately high.

  Briana had not meant to fall asleep. The guard who woke her was apologetic, but Demetria needed her.

  She had been sleeping with her head on a stack of books, not one of which offered anything useful. There was a crick in her neck and a cramp in her back, and the imprint of a scroll case on her cheek.

  She would have gone as she was, but her maid Maariyah was lying in wait for her. Maariyah had a way of conveying volumes with a glance, and this glance declared that she had suffered days of creeping about, keeping secrets and letting guards do what servants could do far better and with less fuss. She said none of it, but herded Briana into the bath and, quickly but thoroughly, made her fit to be seen.

  Briana knew better than to twitch. Still, time was running on. Then as Maariyah’s deft fingers plaited her hair, her maid said, “Lady, you know I have a sister, who married a man from up by the border.”

  Briana twisted around in shock. Maariyah had never, in all the years she had been looking after Briana, indulged in idle chatter. That she would do it now was inconceivable.

  There was no spell on her. She arched a brow as Briana gaped at her. “My sister’s husband,” she went on imperturbably, “serves with the personal guard of your brother—not the one who is dead and who is sleeping in your garden and being waited on by ham-handed soldiers rather than servants who know their business. The other one, the one who is supposed to be out looking after his estates.”