Last night’s audience had been a conversation. This was a trial.
The emperor was not alone this time. There was a legionary commander with him, wearing the crowned eagle of the Valeria, and a pair of Augurs in white, and a quiet man in brown whose magic made Kerrec’s bones hum. He wore nothing to indicate which order of mage he was, but there was no doubt of his power.
They sat in the central room, where the horses still were. All three were asleep, with the gelding lying down while the stallions stood over him.
Kerrec had nothing to say to the horses, least of all Petra. The men required at least a greeting. A rider bowed to no one, but he might bend his head in freely offered respect.
The emperor and the legate and the mages bowed in return. Petra began to snore.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kerrec saw Valeria bite her lip. There were times when she reminded him all too vividly of the stallions.
He set his teeth and straightened his back. He was losing focus, and he could not afford that. He had broken an imperial ban and caused the desertion of a legionary. He could be put to death for what he had done.
He could not find it in himself to be afraid. He looked his father in the face. “Let the others go,” he said, “and I’ll pay whatever penalty you exact.”
Artorius was perfectly expressionless. It was the elder of the two Augurs who said, “The omens, sire—if our strategy is to continue—”
The emperor raised his hand. The Augur fell silent. “Master Pretorius?”
The man in brown stroked his close-clipped greying beard. His eyes were bright with good humor, but there was steel beneath. “They are meant to be here. Whether that is safe for us or for your war—that, I can’t tell you. But it would do no good to pack them home. Worse things would come to take their place in the pattern.”
“You are sure of this?” Artorius asked.
The mage shrugged, spreading his hands. “I can only tell you what I see.”
“If you have true sight,” Kerrec said, “you must see what danger my brother represents. He cares nothing for tribes or empire, only for his own ambition. He will use any means possible in order to achieve it.”
“Yes,” said Master Pretorius. “He will. We are aware of him, my lord. We understand what he is and what he may be moved to do.”
“Do you?”
Master Pretorius smiled. “I believe we do. We have taken precautions. If he does in fact attack us, we’ll be ready for him.”
Kerrec wanted to believe him. It would have been so easy to lie back and let the emperor’s mages take the burden he had carried for so long. All he had was hate and a certainty that amounted, in the end, to mere obsession—that he must be here. This was his fight.
The obsession would not let him go. The mage’s smile was too easy. He was indulging the poor broken mage and disregarding his fears.
No one except possibly Valeria could see what Kerrec saw. No one wanted to see it. They all wanted this war to be simple and sane, with no greater fear than a barbarian invasion and no greater danger than a bit of outland sorcery.
They could not even begin to imagine what Gothard wanted to bring down on them all. They should have seen it when he broke the Dance—but they had been as blind then as they were now. None of them would see until it was too late.
Kerrec set his lips together. The mage’s smile widened. He bowed to Kerrec as if he could have had any honest respect for what Kerrec was, and said, “It will be seen to. Trust in that.”
The emperor shifted in his seat, a rare confession to impatience. “That is well and we are reassured. Nevertheless, all other matters aside, we have a deserter and a ban.”
“Please,” Valeria said so meekly Kerrec’s hackles rose. “This soldier is my brother. It’s my fault he’s here.”
“We’ll take that under consideration,” Artorius said. His voice was stern but his eyes were warm. “And you, soldier? Have you anything to say?”
“Only that I’ll pay my own penalty, sir,” Rodry said. “They didn’t force me to come. I saw what they were doing and I made a free choice.”
“Indeed?” said Master Pretorius. “Why would you do that?”
“Because, sir,” Rodry said, “those patterns you see—I don’t have that kind of sight, but I feel things. I have to be here, just like the rest of them. The patterns—or the gods, if you like—brought us here to you. We have something to do. The gods will tell us when it’s time.”
“Your faith is admirable,” Master Pretorius said. “You’re aware, surely, that it leaves you open to court-martial and a deserter’s sentence.”
“I know that, sir,” Rodry said.
For the first time the legionary commander spoke. He was older than the emperor but not as old as the Augur, a sturdy man who looked as if he had spent more time on the battlefield than in a palace. “This rider is your sister, yes?”
“Yes, sir,” Rodry said.
The commander nodded. His eye came to rest on Valeria. “I saw you in the Great Dance,” he said. “I’m no mage, but I’m not a complete fool, either. You are something this empire hasn’t seen before. I’m going to assume that this scout, who has never had so much as a reprimand for being late to morning muster, has blood as well as fate calling him. He’s still a deserter. That charge can’t be evaded.”
“Sir,” she said, “I don’t want him dishonored because of us. If there’s anything you can do—”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said.
“For the moment,” said the emperor, “we have a battle to plan. You three are confined to quarters. I hope your word will be enough. If not, my mages will bind you.”
“We’ll stay,” Valeria said without glancing at the others.
Kerrec held his breath, but his father did not press the others to give their word. He simply nodded. His mind was already elsewhere, focused on his war.
The gods had no mercy, but sometimes they could let a bit of luck slip past their guard. Kerrec pushed it a step further. “The stallions can’t stay here. They need free air and room to run. If you could—”
“We’ll look after them,” the brown man said.
“Thank you,” said Valeria.
That was not what Kerrec had been going to say. He shut his mouth with a snap.
They were dismissed. Guards surrounded them, herding them toward the door. Kerrec contemplated blasting the lot of them.
He let himself be led, not back to the room they had all slept in, but to a tent beside the emperor’s. It was wide and high and there was a room for each of them, with servants as well as guards.
There were books. There was ink and parchment. There was a board for chess, a set of knucklebones, and a servant who said, “Whatever you wish, lords and lady, only ask.”
Our freedom, Kerrec knew better than to answer.
Valeria was investigating the books. She held one up. Kerrec recognized it. It was the same history of the empire from which Valeria’s year had been reading.
The rest were a mingling of dull, didactic, and diverting. Valeria laid claim to a volume of poetry from the court. Kerrec considered forbidding her—some of those verses were hardly fit for a young woman to read—but Valeria was not the usual sort of young woman at all.
He retreated to the sleeping room farthest from the door. Outside in the larger room, he heard Valeria and Rodry talking in low voices.
They sounded calm enough. Valeria would protect her brother—or force the stallions to do it. Her determination was warm and solid inside of Kerrec, close by the magic that had been growing steadily since he left the Mountain.
The master stone was safe in its pouch around his neck. None of them had been searched or their belongings taken.
That was careless of his father’s guards. At least one of the guards was a mage, but he was not a mage of stones. The wards he raised were not badly made at all—if he was keeping in the ordinary sort of power.
It was all an afterthought. The emperor was planni
ng a great battle to end this long war against the barbarians. There was no time to spare for his scapegrace sons—either the one who had betrayed him or the one who had hunted the traitor.
In spite of everything, Kerrec caught himself smiling. Maybe he could forgive Petra after all. He had brought Rodry and Valeria here, where they were as safe as they could be in the middle of such a war. The emperor would look after them while Kerrec went where he had to go.
The great weakness of a tent as a prison was that its walls were canvas—and they were not mortared to the floor. There was the matter of the tent’s being in the center of a large and watchful camp under manifold magical protections. But Kerrec could walk invisible, and the master stone gave him power over wards and defenses.
There were hours of daylight left. He took advantage of them to rest and gather his strength.
Valeria looked in on him once. She was hardest of all to deceive, but she seemed to accept that he was asleep.
He went as still as he could, inside and out. The earth was quiet beneath him. The camp’s buzz and clamor dropped away. The deep, growling roar of war retreated from his awareness.
The patterns had come back. The intricate levels of his power were restoring themselves one by one. He was not whole, not nearly, but neither was he broken.
Good. The more nearly himself he was, the better chance he had of destroying Gothard. It did not matter if he went down with his brother. No one would be terribly unhappy to be rid of him.
The moon was only slightly less bright than it had been the night before. Kerrec was ready for it as he slipped out under tent wall and wards. He was a shimmer of moonlight rather than a curl of mist above the river.
There was no Petra to betray him, and he was not about to risk it again. He went on foot. Surely, once he was across the river, he would find a horse to ride—somehow.
He passed like a breath of wind through the camp. It was settling late tonight. Councils were meeting and runners dispensing orders. Men were polishing their armor. Battle was close.
Where it would be or how it would be waged, Kerrec neither knew nor cared. Close by here, he supposed, in a place where the legions could fight in the open.
Gothard had never been a man for open battle. He would stay hidden in the trees if he could, and let others die for him.
The ford was guarded as before. Kerrec’s powers were fresh tonight, and stronger than they had been in a long while. He slipped through the lines of archers and set out once more across the river.
Halfway, he fought every instinct that cried out to stop. The moon’s light was constant. His spell was unshaken. The world was perfectly still.
His foot touched the far bank. No alarm sounded. No arrow flew. The gods might not love him, but tonight they were indulgent.
Again he resisted the urge to stop. He could not do that until he was well away from the river, hidden in the forest.
He was barefoot as he had gone into the water, with his boots hung by their straps around his neck. He stopped to dry his feet and pull them on, sighing a bit. They were made for riding, not for walking.
They were all he had. He took a deep breath and sprang up the slope from the river into the shelter of the trees.
Forty
Euan was ready to start the battle himself, and to hell with the Ard Ri. They were playing at negotiations again, sending messengers back and forth and pretending either side wanted anything but a good, solid fight.
The men were losing their edge—again. Boredom made them unruly, and reduced rations did nothing to improve their mood. There were too many of them now to feed off the land—and this country was nearly empty of towns and villages to raid.
There had to be a battle, or else they had to retreat without a fight. There were no other choices. The one some of the men were muttering about, to move farther upriver and start raiding all over again, would only prolong the agony. The only way to win this war was by backing the legions into a corner and cutting them to pieces.
The night he decided to confront the Ard Ri and be damned to what came of it, he was stopped on the way to the council fire by one of Gothard’s traitor princelings. The boy was babbling, but Euan slapped a little sense into him. His babble shifted to more or less coherent words.
What sense Euan made of it sent him off at a run. The boy trailed behind, wheezing for breath.
Gothard had had the same thought as Euan. The Ard Ri dwarfed him as they stood face to face just outside the priests’ circle. The moon washed their faces with a deathly pallor.
As Euan loped to a halt, the Ard Ri’s finger stabbed at two of the boys behind Gothard. “Those two are sons of an imperial general. I need them to bargain with.”
“And I need them to win the battle,” Gothard shot back, “if there ever is one.”
“There will be a battle when I say there is a battle,” the high king said. “I’m leaving you the rest of them. These two I take.”
“I need them all,” Gothard said.
“We’ll win with or without you,” said the Ard Ri. He lifted his chin. Four of the men behind him, burly warriors all, moved toward the boys.
Euan’s skin prickled. He flung himself backward.
The blast caught him and flung him sprawling. Men were screaming. He smelled burning flesh.
When the world stopped rocking under him, he staggered to his feet. The Ard Ri’s warriors lay in smoking ruin. The high king was alive, but his face and chest were scorched and his eyes were wild.
Gothard stood untouched amid the carnage. He smiled at the high king. “The time for games is over. Let your men off the leash. Or are you afraid? Is that why you keep them so long in camp? Is it cowardice? Weakness? A simple inability to act?”
“You know nothing of what it is to be a king,” the Ard Ri said.
He was not a coward if he could say that to the man who had just blasted his best men to cinders. He was a fool, then—a fool with a death wish.
Gothard clearly shared the thought. “I may never have been a king,” he said, “but, sir, from all you’ve done or failed to do, neither have you.”
There must be a dizzy freedom in saying what one pleased, to whomever one wanted to say it. Gothard had a starstone. He paid homage to no one.
The Ard Ri’s expression was so bland that Euan’s nape prickled. “You may not answer to me,” he said, “but you will answer to the One.”
“I have every expectation of so doing,” Gothard said. “Go on, rally your men. You’d better do it quickly—because if you won’t lead them, someone else will.”
“One of your puppets, I suppose,” said the Ard Ri.
Gothard smiled. “You have puppets. I have allies. They think for themselves.”
“Like these?” said the Ard Ri, darting a glance at Gothard’s captives. They stood in their circle, swaying slightly on their feet, with eyes that had long since seen through the world to something unimaginable.
“These are priests of a new order,” Gothard said, “an order that strives for the purity of the One. They are bound together in soul as in body. They will teach the empire to bow to the One and to worship oblivion.”
The Ard Ri held himself stiffly, as if to keep from turning and bolting. “That had better be the truth,” he said. “We’re moving in the morning. If you’re not ready, you’ll be left behind.”
“We’ll be ready,” Gothard said.
The high king swallowed hard, then spat. Then he seemed to find the courage to turn his back on that nest of mages, priests, or whatever they pleased to call themselves.
Euan was gone almost before the Ard Ri. By the time the call to arms went out, he had his men rousted out of bed or away from their jars of mead and ale. Not one of them grumbled once he knew the reason why. Some actually sang as they gathered and packed and stored their belongings. Every now and then, one or more of them would erupt into a brief war dance, leaping and spinning.
Euan caught a dose of their excitement, though his was leavened
by what he knew of Gothard and the starstone. Gothard was touching on things not meant for mortals. Maybe he had promised to keep the people safe, but he would have some difficulty doing that from the depths of endless night.
No risk, no glory. There would be no sleep tonight. Tomorrow would be a long day’s march down to the river. The day after, the One willing, it would all, finally, come to a head.
Win or lose, Euan welcomed it. His blood was already running high at the thought of a battle. Good, clean, and bloody—that was the life for a man. And that was the death, too, if so it was meant to be.
Forty-One
Kerrec strode as swiftly as he could through the keen scent and whispering stillness of pines. Tall trees marched away into the dark. The undergrowth was thin, bracken mostly, with here and there a dead branch or a fallen tree.
When he was out of sight of the river, Kerrec stopped under an overhang of rock and ferns and uncovered the master stone. It lay in its leather wrappings like a pool of darkness. Moonlight and starlight were swallowed in it.
Magic here was wild, with no mages to bind it in structures of magic and discipline. Patterns crowded around him, tangling and untangling.
The stone kept him from reeling with the complexity of it all. He pressed it to his lips, whispering the name he hated. “Gothard.”
The air he breathed was sharp and clean, but it was under-laid with something dark, like mold and old stone. Moonlight dazzled him. The patterns flickered, shaping and reshaping.
Gothard was in them. The taste of him was like clotted blood. The heated bronze of his anger, so deep and abiding that it had come to define what he was, struck Kerrec with such intensity that he nearly let go of the patterns.
They strained against his will, but he held on. One more moment, just one, and he would know—
There.
Eastward away from the river, deeper into the forest. Kerrec slipped the stone back into its pouch. He was a little dizzy, and his head ached. He needed rest.
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