“No, no,” the tribune said. “Oh, no, sir. I wish I could help you. But the emperor—”
“The emperor,” Kerrec said in a still, cold voice. “Yes.”
“Please, sir,” the tribune said. “Accept our hospitality. Stay as long as you like. This ban won’t last forever. In a day or two or eight, you’ll be free to cross. Meanwhile, we’ll be delighted—privileged—to have you here.”
“Many thanks,” Kerrec said with perfect civility. “You are generous.”
“We are honored,” the commander said. “Please, sir, if you will—will you dine with me tonight?”
Kerrec inclined his head. There was nothing else he could do, not if he wanted to be polite.
Valeria, safely invisible in her guise of male and servant, was glad of this obstacle. The emperor could not have known that his son was pursuing rampant insanity within reach of the war, but his order had come just in time. Kerrec could not hunt Gothard down if he could not get across the river.
She knew better than to think Kerrec had given in. But for tonight he was trapped. He had to accept the commander’s invitation.
She had no such obligation. She was free to assure herself that the stallions were well looked after, and to explore the fort. Cropped hair and riding clothes served her as well here as they had while she answered the Call. Soldiers did not look for a woman and therefore did not see one.
Rodry brought dinner to the guest barracks. She had been ready to try her luck in the soldiers’ mess, but this forestalled her.
She said so. He looked as if she had proposed she sell herself to the lot of them. “You can’t do that!”
“Why? You don’t think I can look after myself?”
“Not against five hundred randy men you can’t.”
“What do you think I do every day in the school?” she demanded. “I’m the only woman there.”
“Those are riders,” Rodry said. “They’re different.”
“You think so?”
“He’s different.”
“He most certainly is,” Valeria said acidly. “But that’s no reflection on the rest of them. I can take care of myself, elder brother.”
“I’m sure you can,” said Rodry, “but five hundred legionaries under lockdown…would you torture them with what they can’t have?”
“Lockdown?” said Valeria. “All the commander said was—”
“Corinius was being circumspect,” Rodry said. “We’re all confined to quarters except for the patrols—and they’re lying as low as they can. There’s a battle coming. The emperor’s trying to draw the main force of the enemy across the river.”
“So we can’t go anywhere until it’s over,” Valeria said. “Can we leave? Go back westward?”
“You’ll have to ask Corinius,” Rodry said.
Valeria shook her head and sighed—a hiss of frustration. “Kerrec won’t go. He’s determined to get across the river.”
“Why?” said Rodry. “Does he know something we don’t?”
“Maybe,” Valeria said. “Maybe he’s simply out of his mind.”
“Then why do you follow him?”
“Because I have to,” she said.
“Orders?”
She did not answer that.
Rodry, damn him, refused to let it go. “Why does he have to cross the river? Why can’t he leave it to the emperor and his mages? What is this traitor, that a First Rider pursues him to the ends of the earth?”
“The traitor wants Kerrec dead,” said Valeria, “and had him tortured until he was not far short of it.”
“But he’s alive,” Rodry said. “He’s walking—riding. He’s not broken.”
“The deepest torture doesn’t break the body,” she said.
“He’s not broken,” Rodry repeated.
“He was,” she said. “Large parts of him still are.”
“That can’t be all it is.”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“There must be more,” Rodry said.
Valeria took a deep breath. “The traitor wants to be emperor,” she said. “We told you he tried to kill his father. He did get six riders killed in the Great Dance, and nearly destroyed us all. If he’s with the tribes, and if they’ll use whatever it is we think he has, the legions are in real danger. He won’t care who dies or how, as long as he gets what he wants.”
“And you two think you can stop him if a whole army of mages can’t? Even if he won’t go to the emperor, can’t he tell Corinius and have him pass it up the chain of command?”
“Probably,” Valeria said. “Then again, all I’ve seen of men in authority is that they don’t listen. Here we are, a pair of riders. One has been sent away from the Mountain because his powers are so damaged he can no longer control them. The other is female, anything but submissive, and notoriously resistant to her order’s discipline. The fact we’re telling the truth won’t matter. We’re simply not respectable.”
Rodry snorted the way he did when he was trying not to laugh. “When you put it that way, I see your point. Still—”
“If you have doubts,” Kerrec said from the door, “by all means give in to them. Just tell us how to find the Calletani, and we’ll go.”
“I’ll show you,” said Rodry.
“Your orders—” Kerrec began.
Rodry’s head shook tightly. His lips were tight, too.
Valeria knew that expression all too well. Rodry was as stubborn as a human creature could be. And he was in love with a myth and a dream.
“Protect me,” he said, “and I’ll guide you.”
“You’ll be a deserter,” Kerrec said.
“I’m sworn to serve the empire,” Rodry said. “The white gods are the empire’s heart. You serve the white gods. Therefore—”
“Spare me your logic,” Kerrec said. “Tell me where to go.”
“I can’t,” said Rodry. “Navigating those woods is like riding. It’s done by feel and art. The tribes have their ways and their logic, but it’s not something I can convey in an hour. I have to show you.”
“You could lose your place in the legion. At the very least.”
Rodry’s eyes barely flickered. “He’ll go after the emperor again, won’t he? Only this time there are three legions with him, and they’ll all come under fire, too. That makes it worth the cost. All I ask of you, if it comes to a court-martial, is to speak for me.”
“It’s not going to come to a court-martial,” Valeria snapped. “You’re not doing this. It’s insane.”
“I think I have to,” Rodry said with quiet obstinacy. “Just like you. What will you lose? Will they dock you? Throw you out?”
“Probably throw her out,” Kerrec said. He shook his head and sighed. “Very well. If I can protect you, I will. How soon can you ride?”
“I can go now,” Rodry said. “You?”
“When it’s full dark,” said Kerrec. “I’ll get us past the sentries. We probably shouldn’t try to cross right under their noses. Where do we go? Upstream or down?”
“Downstream,” said Rodry.
Kerrec nodded. “You think they’ll be close?”
“The main camp, no,” Rodry said. “That’s at least two days downriver, probably more. But I have a fair sense of where they would have to be.”
“Good,” said Kerrec. Valeria would have liked to slap him for it. “Go. Act casual. Come back after the second bell.”
Rodry leaped up. Once he was on his feet, he stood straight and deliberately drained the eagerness out of his body. He sauntered through the door as if he had done nothing more significant than share his dinner with a guest.
Valeria packed her traveling bag in grim silence. There was precious little to pack, but she took as long about it as she could reasonably manage. Kerrec was done already—he had never unpacked at all. He lay on his distant bunk and closed his eyes.
She debated a long while before she moved. Then she stood over him, glaring down.
He spoke, still with closed eye
s. “Tell me what other choice we have.”
“Give it up. Go home. Let your brother dig his own grave. He will do that, you know. He won’t be able to help it.”
“Not before he digs my father’s grave. And my sister’s. And as much of the empire’s as he can. Whatever he has, it’s strong. Even stronger than what he had before.”
He said it so calmly that he almost convinced Valeria. But she said, “If he’s that much of a threat, your father knows it already. He’s as powerful a mage as you ever were.”
“My father should have strangled him in the cradle,” Kerrec said dispassionately. “We all knew what that child was. He was born hating anyone who had what he couldn’t have. I was older and my mother was empress. Briana was born after our father left his concubine and went back to his wife. Gothard hated us both—and half of it was envy. He even hated his mother, because she failed to make herself empress and him the heir, as she promised.”
“Did he kill her?”
Kerrec opened an eye. It was the color of steel. “She killed herself. She was mad. So is he. It runs in the blood.”
“Then how did your father—”
“My father is as mortal as the rest of us. She came as a hostage, one of many, to be educated in the palace. Even in the throes of madness, just before she died, she was magnificent. When he first saw her, she took his breath away. Hair as red as fire. Skin as white as milk. Eyes as yellow as a cat’s. She was a full head taller than he was, and strong enough to flatten three of the imperial guards with a blow. He had never seen anything like her.”
Valeria had no trouble imagining it. She had her own dreams of red hair and amber eyes and hands so big they swallowed both of hers in one.
She was angry enough with Kerrec to let him see what she was thinking. His stare grew a fraction colder, but that was all.
She did not want to feel what she was feeling. She wanted him to be hers again, her lover, her friend and teacher. Not this cold and remote creature who barely cared that she was dreaming of his old rival.
“Are you sure,” she asked him, “that your brother is the mad one? He seemed sane enough to me. Whereas you…”
“I am what he made me,” Kerrec said, so quiet it made the small hairs rise on her neck.
Valeria threw up her hands. “Well then. We’ll die with both of you. Will that make you happy?”
“No,” he said.
He might have said more, but they both heard Rodry coming, a quick light step and a sudden slide as he slipped through the door. “It’s time,” he said.
The fort was dark but for shielded lamps along the wall. The air was thick and damp and breathless. The stars were hidden in haze.
Rodry had the horses ready and waiting. They rode out with no overt attempt to be either quiet or secret. Valeria felt the magic that flowed softly over them, like mist and water and the fall of shadow.
For a broken mage, Kerrec had remarkable stores of power. He took them remarkably for granted, too. This spell of concealment was no part of the horse magic, but it came out of him as easily as he breathed.
What Valeria had said in temper, she began to believe as they rode away from the fort and down along the river. Kerrec was not sane. His magic was healing fast, but his spirit was still badly damaged.
Thirty-Five
The Ard Ri was on his way west. His messengers put him two days out, with as many men and as much baggage as he had. He had been looting in the wake of the emperor as he too moved west—stripping the frontier of every scrap of food or precious thing that earlier raids had left.
The Calletani hunting camp was three times its old size already, with outliers from the Prytani and the Mordantes and—unexpected but more than welcome—the Skaldi who lived in the far reaches of the north. They were all fresh and hungry and spoiling for a fight.
Euan Rohe knew better than to taunt them with promises. “When the high king comes,” he said when they came to him, “he’ll give you the word.”
“How evil of you,” Gothard said one bright morning. Euan had not seen him in days. He had been shut away with the priests and his captive children, working magic that, at odd moments, set Euan’s teeth on edge.
He had one of the boys with him, the big fair one with the soft face and the eyes as black and bottomless as a priest’s. Rumor had it that he was a gelding—and not by choice.
He followed Gothard like a dog, and like a dog, he seemed to see little else. Gothard ignored him.
“Are you ready at last?” Euan asked.
“Almost,” Gothard said, by no means for the first time. But this time he added, “We’ll try a working today. It may be a little startling.”
“Why? What is it?”
Gothard’s eyes glinted. Euan preferred him sour—when he was as cheerful as this, it boded no good for anyone but Gothard. “You’ll know when you see it.”
“You don’t know, either, do you?”
Gothard lifted a shoulder in one of his maddening half shrugs. “I’ve never tried it before—bringing a dozen mages together within the circle of a stone. And this stone being what it is…I can’t predict what it will do.”
“You had better try,” Euan said with more than a hint of a growl. “If you harm a hair of any head in this camp…”
“I’ll do my best,” Gothard said. He sounded remarkably unconcerned.
He was deep in the spell of the stone. His yellow dog was deeper still. Not for the first time, Euan wondered if he should have left Gothard to die where the stone fell—or at least kept the stone from him.
By nightfall the whole camp could be dead or worse. If that happened, it would be the One’s pleasure. But Euan would do his utmost to assure that no such thing happened.
He stood up and walked away without the courtesy of a farewell. Gothard’s laughter followed him.
Now that Euan was warned, he saw sorcery in every breath of wind that made him shiver and every cloud that crossed the sun. He thought of going out hunting, but he refused to abandon the camp. He joined the clan chieftains and the elders in their circle, though they were saying nothing they had not said a hundred times before.
The mood in the camp was strange and growing stranger. The young men had got up a mock battle, a gathering that was half dance and half war. The sounds of stamping and shouting and the beating of drums rolled steadily under the drone of the elders’ conversation.
Just as Euan decided to rise and join the dancing, a shout rang out on the edge of the camp. Drums were beating and voices shrilling the war cry of the Ard Ri.
The high king had come in ahead of his army, with a dozen men of his warband and a handful of priests. They were running long and easy, as men did on the hunt or on the war trail. As they loped through the camp, a ragged cheer followed them.
The elders were all on their feet. Euan was last—deliberately.
The high king halted in the middle of the circle. His broad breast heaved, gleaming with sweat. His teeth were bared in a cheerful snarl. “Good day to you all,” he said. “Are you making a war without me?”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Euan said.
“I’m sure,” said the high king. “You, brother. Come with me.”
The elders nearest Euan moved slightly but distinctly away. Euan shook his head at their cowardice. The Ard Ri was watching, smiling.
Euan smiled back as sweetly as he knew how. He fell in beside the high king and walked through the camp, easily, matching his stride to the bigger man’s.
“You have ambitions,” the Ard Ri said after a while.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Not everyone acts on them,” said the Ard Ri.
“Not everyone gets to be a king.” Euan clasped his hands behind him and lightened his step a fraction. “You’re here early. Have you had word from the imperials? Are we finally going to have a real battle?”
“I heard a rumor,” the Ard Ri said. “Have you been indulging in fits of magic?”
“Hardly,” sai
d Euan, sternly suppressing his memory of the seeing-stone. “What is this? The yammering of my enemies?”
“I would like to think so. You don’t have a pack of imperials, then, doing your bidding?”
“They’re hardly doing mine,” Euan said, “but I can’t deny I’m getting some use out of them.”
The high king grinned. “I like your honesty. What are they doing, then? Dancing for that cousin of yours, the emperor’s by-blow?”
“They dance like priests,” Euan said. “Exactly like priests. For the glory of the One and the honor of oblivion.”
That made the Ard Ri’s eyes widen. He made a sign as if he had been a child or a woman, to avert ill omen. “That’s a deadly weapon you’re playing with,” he said.
“It is,” Euan agreed, “to the empire. We’re safe enough as long as we keep a grip on it.”
“Better you than me,” said the high king.
“I’m glad you approve,” Euan said, “my lord.”
“Would it matter if I didn’t?”
“You are the Ard Ri,” said Euan.
“I rule by consent of the people,” the high king said, “and the grace of the kings. Remember that when you make your move, boy. You can probably win it, you’re clever enough, and you fight well enough for a pup. But then you have to keep it. There have been nine-day kings before. You’ll want to watch that you don’t become another.”
“I do plan to be watchful,” Euan said, “and I thank you for your advice.”
“Ah, well,” said the Ard Ri, shrugging, “you’ll forget it as soon as I’m out of sight. But the people will remind you. So will this hot coal you’ve taken in your hand. Maybe it will win the war for us—and maybe it will be the end of you. Either way, you’ll get the blame but I’ll get the glory.”
“That’s always so with kings,” Euan said coolly. “I’m not challenging you—yet. I have too much to learn first.”
“Good lad,” said the high king, slapping him on the back so hard he staggered. The Ard Ri barked laughter and left him standing in the middle of the camp, alive and more or less intact.
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