Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  Rodry had not moved since Valeria left him. He would not look at either of them. He had heard every word.

  Valeria’s cheeks were hot, but she was not about to apologize. If her brother was shocked, so be it. Neither she nor Kerrec could help what they were to each other.

  This latest arrival of the clans was large enough to be called an army. It took a long while to pass, then a longer while before they felt safe to go on.

  In all that time, none of them spoke. Apart from the danger of being discovered, they had too much thinking to do.

  Finally they left their hiding place. They did not need Rodry to show them the way—there was no doubt as to where the clans had gone—but a trained scout knew how to travel both fast and undetected. He could read the signs and tell the others when to ride and when to hide.

  The vision was still working inside Valeria. Kerrec had distracted her from it, but as she went on, it woke again.

  There was more to it than the emperor and his armies or the barbarians in their horde. It hovered briefly above one barbarian, lingering as if to tempt her with Euan Rohe’s fine white body, before it closed in on Kerrec’s face. Close beside it hovered another that Valeria remembered too well. She would never forget Gothard, however dearly she wished to.

  He had been dangerous before. He was worse than that now. The new power he had, the dark stone, turned against Kerrec. Kerrec in the vision was beautiful in his strength, but Gothard was stronger. Kerrec tumbled in ruin.

  With his last stroke, he destroyed his brother—but even as Gothard’s body and soul shattered, Kerrec was already gone. There was nothing left of him but a drift of ash on the wind.

  Valeria’s arms tightened around Kerrec’s waist. She unlocked them with an effort before he had time to protest.

  It had all seemed so simple. The empire was threatened by something much more terrible than a barbarian invasion. The emperor’s life was in danger. She would give Kerrec whatever powers he needed to bring down his brother, and so save the empire and hold back the Unmaking.

  This vision turned a certainty into a dilemma. Save the empire, destroy Kerrec. Save Kerrec, see the empire fall.

  She tried to see a way around it. Maybe there was more to the vision. Maybe she was misreading it. Prophecies were notoriously difficult to interpret.

  No matter how she tried, this one was all too clear. She could see the brothers face-to-face, with the same profile after all, though so much else was different. They fought as mages did, with blasts of magic—and they both died. No matter how she tried to shape the patterns, that was the only outcome she could see.

  She opened her eyes on rapidly fading daylight. They were at a standstill again. Valeria did not need Rodry to tell her the enemy’s camp was just over the hill. She could feel it inside her, in the blight that was the Unmaking.

  By then it was nearly dark. They made a fireless camp where trees had fallen together in some long-ago storm. The maze of fallen trunks and tangled branches hid them completely.

  For once it was Kerrec who ate his frugal supper and went straight to sleep, and Rodry who held on grimly to wakefulness. “Someone has to keep watch,” he said.

  “I’ll do a turn later,” said Valeria. She knew she should sleep if she was going to do that, but she was wide awake.

  It should have been pitch-dark in their makeshift shelter, but the Lady had the same soft glow about her as the stallions. Her bay coat made it redder—more like sunlight, in its way. By that light Valeria caught Rodry darting glances at her, then looking away.

  Valeria stood it for as long as she could, but finally she said, “Don’t tell me you’re scandalized.”

  In that light it was hard to tell, but Valeria thought her brother turned crimson. “Is it even legal?” he asked.

  She laughed—softly, so as not to wake Kerrec. “There’s no law against it.”

  Rodry scowled. “Is he cruel to you? Because if he is, First Rider or no, I’ll—”

  “He tries too hard to protect me,” Valeria said pointedly.

  Rodry had grown up in the same family Valeria had. He took the point. But he said, “Tell me you haven’t given yourself to a man who can’t give back. Because you deserve better.”

  A day or two ago, Valeria would have agreed with him. Tonight, she said, “He is exactly what I deserve. We both have our obsessions. Outside of those…he’s the other half of me.”

  Rodry chewed his lip. “You really mean that?”

  She nodded. “He knew what I was from the first, and he never betrayed me. Before they let me be a rider, he was the only one who would teach me. Don’t trust his face, Rodry. He wears it like a mask. Sometimes it even deceives me.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Rodry said.

  “I know I am,” said Valeria.

  Forty-Three

  Rodry tried to convince Valeria not to take the second watch of the night, but he was out on his feet. She knocked them out from under him and sat on him until he gave in. When she stood up again, he was already halfway into a dream.

  She slipped out of the deadfall past the warm and breathing bulk of the Lady. The stars were out. The moon had risen.

  At first she thought the world was perfectly still. Then she heard it, a deep pulse like the earth’s heart beating.

  It was a drum. She glanced back. The Lady flicked an ear.

  Rodry and Kerrec would be safe. Valeria crept through a tracery of moonlight and shadow, moving as softly as she knew how. That was very soft—Rodry had taught her.

  Near the top of the hill, she dropped onto her belly and crawled to the summit.

  The trees were thinner here. There was a wide clearing beyond the hilltop, sinking into a shallow bowl.

  It was all but empty. Most of the clans camped under the trees. She could feel them—thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Their fires were banked and their voices silent.

  In the clearing was a standing stone. Human figures stood around it, swaying gently. She could not see the drum, but its beating filled her body.

  A low chant rose up out of the clearing. The sound of it raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Something was bound to the stone. She could not—in truth would not—make out its shape, but it glistened wetly in the wan moonlight.

  She clung dizzily to the tilting earth. They were chanting the battle chant and performing their sacrifice of blood and bone, glory and pain. They were calling up the One—raising the Unmaking.

  New shapes moved toward the priests and the sacrifice. They were all men, and naked. Their white skin gleamed in the moonlight. Their hair was long and loose, flowing down their backs.

  She could not see their faces. They wore masks without features, with blank slits of eyes.

  These could not be Brothers of Pain. That was an imperial order. But they wore the mask.

  They spread in a circle. Their arms locked. Their feet stamped. The chanting swelled from pulsebeat to another, equally familiar rhythm.

  It throbbed in Valeria’s body. So much bare and glistening flesh, long muscled backs, taut buttocks, phalluses erect and thrusting into the yielding air—she bit down hard on her tongue.

  The pain helped her focus. Her skin felt as if a touch would ignite it. Her center was melting.

  She had never known they did this. The blood and pain, yes, she knew of those. Torment for the tribes was a sacrament.

  She could shrink from that in all good conscience. But this called to instincts far deeper and far less easily resisted.

  The chanting deepened to match the drumbeat. Through blood and pain and hot desire, they were opening the gates of the earth. Valeria knew too well what waited on the other side.

  The power of priests raised this working, but the power of a mage controlled it. Valeria had no need to wonder who that mage was. Gothard must be one of the shadows around the standing stone.

  The stone itself was the drum. Something else, something enormously powerful, was beating on it from outside.

 
This was stone magic as it had never been intended—magic made purely for destruction. It created nothing. It preserved nothing. Even under potent restraint, it shook apart the bindings of things.

  The air blurred around it. The earth crumbled.

  It took every scrap of will Valeria had to crawl down the hill and make her way back to the others. The Lady was awake, watching as she came. She looked into the dark and liquid eye. It calmed her, though it did nothing to lessen the sense of urgency.

  She touched Rodry’s foot. He came awake all at once, hand to knife hilt. The sight of her, glowing with witchlight, did not seem to reassure him. She beckoned him outside.

  The Lady followed them into the starlight. The sky was growing pale in the east. “Rodry,” Valeria said, “you have to go back and warn the emperor. They’re raising something more than battle magic. All those men and armies are a feint. The real attack will come from the priests—or from something worse than priests.”

  “He must know that,” Rodry said. “He has a whole battalion of mages.”

  She shook her head sharply. “You heard what his mage said to Kerrec. They think they know what’s coming, but they aren’t looking far enough. Kerrec is right, Rodry. This is stronger than anyone expects, and it’s aimed at the emperor—at the heart of his bond to the empire. Once they have him, no mage’s power will be able to save him or anyone who owes allegiance to him. They’ll Unmake us all.”

  “If I go back,” he said, “I won’t get near his majesty. I’ll be arrested and hauled off to a hanging.”

  “Not if you go with her,” Valeria said, tilting her head toward the Lady. “She’ll take you where you need to go.”

  “But—”

  “Save the emperor,” Valeria said. “I’ll do what I can to save his son.”

  Rodry eyed the Lady. She moved between them, presenting her back. He half turned, probably to fetch the saddle, but she blocked him.

  Valeria laced her fingers. Rodry looked dubious, but he set his foot in them and let her toss him astride. There was just enough time for him to find his seat before the Lady wheeled and sprang away.

  Valeria let out a slow breath. The Lady would keep him safe. Now there was only Kerrec left, and a battle that might kill them all.

  She was still standing there when Kerrec came out beside her. The stars were fading. The drum had stopped. The tribes had resumed their march toward the river.

  She wound her fingers with his. He did not pull away. “So,” he said. “You sent your brother to safety.”

  “Someone has to warn the emperor,” Valeria said. “What’s coming is worse than they want to imagine. They need to know how much worse.”

  He turned her to face him. “You believe me now?”

  “I always have,” she said. She rested her palm against his cheek. “It comes down to us, doesn’t it?”

  “It often does,” he said dryly. He caught her hand before it dropped, then turned his head and kissed it. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I can be.”

  He nodded. “Will you eat? There’s the last of the bread.”

  “I think we need to do this fasting,” she said, “all empty and clean.”

  He took a deep breath. With no more warning than that, he set off toward the hill.

  Valeria followed. Now that there was no turning back, she was calm.

  It was a white calm. The stallions were in her, below even the Unmaking. She could see the circle of them, the long white faces and the dark eyes.

  They might let her die or worse. Still, she was glad they were there. They helped her find strength, and steadied her steps as she made her way back up the long slope.

  It was a harder journey than it had been in the night. The powers that the priests had raised were awake and moving. Other powers were advancing against them. The emperor’s mages had begun the battle even before the armies met. War raged in the heavens and rampaged across the earth.

  None of it had anything to do with a pair of horse mages separated from their horses. Whatever buffets they took to their magic, none of the blows was meant for them.

  It was an advantage, in its way. They could not have asked for a more effective diversion.

  By the time they reached the hilltop, Valeria felt bruised inside her skull. Blasts of magic and countermagic raged overhead, roaring like thunder or howling like wind. Lightnings cracked, now from one side of the sky, now from the other.

  The clans had left their camp. The forest was still. Down in the clearing, the stone stood by itself, with nothing bound to it. The earth had swallowed the blood of the sacrifice.

  The camp was not deserted. The priests were still there. So was the power Kerrec had come to find.

  Kerrec had been right in everything. Gothard had not gone to the battlefield. He was fighting from this safe place, surrounded by lesser powers that fed the greater one.

  “He has a starstone,” Kerrec breathed in Valeria’s ear as they paused on the summit.

  She looked at him.

  “A stone that fell from the sky,” he said. “A gift of the gods. I’m an idiot for not having realized it sooner. No wonder he has all his power back. Even a master stone is a small thing beside that.”

  “Then you don’t think we can—”

  “We’re not stone mages,” he said.

  He stood up. She snatched, meaning to pull him back into hiding, but he was already out of reach, walking coolly down the hill.

  Gusts of random power tugged at him. He held steady. Clouds raced above him. Lightning danced its wild dance.

  A bolt struck near enough to make Valeria’s hair stand on end. She choked on the acrid reek of it. Kerrec never faltered.

  He had the master stone in his hand. She could barely pick out its presence amid so much warring magic. She hoped—prayed—that none of the other mages noticed it.

  Prayer was hard. So was walking. The Unmaking was singing.

  There was a tent pitched on the edge of the clearing. Two circles of men sat in front of it. The ones on the outside were all naked. There was no hair at all on their bodies. Their skin was blue-white but their eyes were as dark as oblivion. They made Valeria think of blind things that crawled in caves.

  The men in the inner circle were dressed like tribesmen, but most were slight and dark—imperials, and nobles from the look of them. They were much less repellent than the others, but they had the same eyes. If anything, the darkness in theirs was deeper.

  She had no trouble recognizing Gothard. He wore leather leggings and a gaudy plaid, and his hair was plaited down his back. He had grown a soft reddish mustache since she last saw him. He still had the curved nose and dark eyes of an imperial noble, and the look of profound and inborn discontent that Valeria remembered too well.

  He sat cross-legged in the center of the twofold circle. His hands cradled a black stone no larger than a baby’s fist.

  The stone’s color was dull black, but there was more to its darkness than that. Dark light rose from it.

  Gothard raised his eyes. He was staring straight at Valeria. For a long moment she was sure she was safe, that Kerrec’s spell concealed her.

  Then she knew there was no concealment, not from the Unmaking. It was not only inside her. It was all around her.

  Gothard’s eyes opened wide. Valeria snatched desperately at the rags of her magic.

  They were already out of reach. Nothingness had swallowed them. She could not find the stallions anywhere. They were gone.

  She had no weapon to fight him off. Her hands would not obey her will.

  Her body stumbled and fell. All her power swirled away into the dark.

  Forty-Four

  At long last, the second dawn after Gothard provoked the Ard Ri into calling out the muster, the tribes crossed the river. They left the priests—of the old order and the new—behind in their previous night’s camp. That was close enough for the working, Gothard said, but far enough to be safe if it failed.

  Euan Rohe d
id not believe anywhere would be safe if Gothard lost his grip on the starstone. Every day that he and his pack of boys wielded it, it came closer to the heart of the One. And the heart of the One, as any tribesman knew, was annihilation.

  They were all in a wild mood—even wilder than usual before a battle. None of them had slept since the weapontake began. The night had been one long roaring tumult of thunder, shot through with bolt after bolt of lightning. No rain had fallen and no relief had come, until morning brought a brazen light and the call to battle.

  Somehow, below thought or reason, they all knew what the stakes were this time. More than death would fall on the field that day. More than a pair of worlds hung in the balance.

  They marched as they lived, in loose order. Even those who had horses chose to go on foot as the people had done since the dawn of time.

  There were no ranks or columns. Clans and tribes held together by the cut of their plaids. They flowed like water through the trees, pouring down toward the river.

  The imperials were waiting. They had deliberately left the ford unguarded. It was open like a gate, luring the tribes onto the field that they had chosen.

  The Calletani, with the royal clan in front, took their time coming out of the trees. For once the Ard Ri led his people—his warband was first to reach the river. Clans of Prytani and Mordantes and Cymbri swarmed in his wake. The Galliceni and the handful of Skaldi hung back behind the Calletani.

  Euan’s heart was with the first crossers, but the part of him that was king was minded to wait a bit. He knew the land well by now, with and without the seeing-stone—every tree and stone on both sides. The imperial camp with its high palisade and square towers lay just upriver. There were men on the palisade—he saw the flash of helmets.

  The imperials’ greatest advantage was their discipline. Their legions fought in ironclad ranks, with every place accounted for and every eventuality taken into consideration. He had read that in their officers’ manual when he was in the School of War. He would wager he remembered the details better than most half-baked young tribunes just out from Aurelia.