Song Of Unmaking

The dream was whirling away. The end of it went briefly strange. It was dark, a swirl of nothingness. She dared not look into it. If she did, she would drown—all of her, heart and soul and living consciousness. Every part of her would be Unmade.

The Unmaking blurred into the bell that summoned the riders to their morning duties. Valeria sat up fuzzily. The dream faded into a faint, dull miasma overlaid with her family’s faces.

Kerrec was gone. He had got up before her, as all too usual lately.

She would be late if she dallied much longer. She stumbled out of bed, wincing at the bruises that had set hard in the night, and washed in the basin. The cold water roused her somewhat, though her mind was still full of fog. She pulled on the first clean clothes that came to hand and set off for the stables.

Half a dozen more of the Called came in that morning, and another handful by evening. There had never been that many so soon after the Mountain began its singing. Some of the younger riders had a wager that the candidates’ dormitory would be full by testing day.

That would be over a hundred—twelve eights. One or two wagered that even more would come, as many as sixteen eights, which had not happened in all the years since the school was founded.

“We’ll be hanging hammocks from the rafters,” Iliya said at breakfast after the stallions had been fed and their stalls thoroughly cleaned. The thought made him laugh. Iliya was a singer and teller of tales when he was not studying to be a rider. He found everything delightful, because sooner or later it would go into a song.

Paulus was as sour as Iliya was sweet. He glared down his long aristocratic nose and said, “You are all fools. There has never been a full complement of candidates, not in a thousand years.”

“There was never a woman before last year,” Batu pointed out from across the table. He was the most exotic of the four, big and broad, with skin so black it gleamed blue. He had never even seen a horse before the Call drew him out of his mother’s house, far away in the uttermost south of the empire.

Valeria, most definitely the oddest since she was the first woman ever to be Called to the Mountain, offered a wan reflection of his wide white smile. “Are you wagering that more will come?”

“That’s with the gods,” he said.

“More females.” Paulus shuddered. “Even one is too many.”

“Everything’s changing,” Batu said. “We’ll have to change with it. That’s what we were Called for.”

“We were Called to ride the white gods in the Dance of Time,” Paulus said stiffly. “That is all we are for. Everything leads to that. Nothing else matters.”

“I’m rather partial to wine and song myself,” Iliya said. He drained his cup of hot herb tea and licked his lips, as satisfied with himself as a cat.

Valeria was long accustomed to his face, but once in a great while she happened to notice that in its way it was as unusual as Batu’s. In shape and coloring it was ordinary enough, with olive-brown skin and sharply carved features, but he was a chieftain’s son from the deserts of Gebu. The marks of his rank were tattooed in vivid swirls on his cheekbones and forehead.

The Call had brought them here from all over the empire. They had passed test after test, and were still passing them—as they would do for as long as they served the gods on the Mountain.

She looked from her friends’ faces to others in the hall. Most of the lesser riders were there this morning. The four First Riders dined in their own, much smaller hall, usually with the Master of the school for company. Today Master Nikos was here, sitting at the head table with a handful of Second Riders.

He caught her glance and nodded slightly. Valeria’s existence was an ongoing difficulty, but after she had brought all the stallions together to mend the broken Dance, he had had to concede that she belonged among the riders. To his credit, he had accepted the inevitable with good grace—which was more than could be said for some of the others.

He was probably praying that all of this year’s Called were male. She could hardly blame him. They had troubles enough as it was.

She pushed away her half-full bowl and rose. The others had had the same thought. There was a classroom waiting and a full morning of lessons, then a full afternoon in the saddle.

Iliya danced ahead of her, singing irrepressibly, though Paulus growled at him to stop his bloody caterwauling. Batu strode easily beside Valeria. He was smiling.

It was a good morning, he was thinking, clear for her to read. Most mornings were, these days, though the school had come through a hell or two to get there.

Maybe there were more hells ahead. Maybe some would be worse, but that did not trouble him, either. Batu, better than any of them, had mastered the art of living as the stallions did, in the perpetual present.

Eight

When winter’s back broke, so did the king’s spirit. He had been fading since the dark of the year, as if he had hung on until his heir came back. Now that Euan Rohe was here, with an acknowledged son of his own, he could let go.

It was soft and slow, as deaths went. He slept more and more and sat in hall less and less. Little by little the king’s various offices fell to Euan.

There were guards on the gates now, inner and outer. The roads were watched and the borders guarded. Nothing could take the clan by surprise.

Spring came with the breaking of ice and the howling of wind, and storms that lashed sleet and rain instead of sleet and snow. The clan began to emerge from its winter’s idleness. The hall became a practice ground. Even when the storms raged, men of the clan went out hunting or raiding.

Scouts were coming in, nearly as ragged as Euan had been. The empire was moving. The emperor and his legions were gathering for war.

Gothard spent most of his time with the priests as either their prisoner or their pupil—or maybe he was their master. Euan was not minded to inquire. Gothard stayed out of Euan’s way, and that suited Euan perfectly.

On the day when the last of the ice broke in the rivers, the latest storm had blown away. Sun shone dazzling bright on the winter-wearied dun. Euan thought he might go hunting boar. He was tired of stringy roast ox and even more tired of being penned up in walls.

On his way to the hall to call up a hunt, he came face-to-face with Gothard. If he wanted to give himself a fit of the shudders, he could reflect that he had been looking straight down the passage and seen Gothard nowhere until he appeared directly in front of Euan.

“It’s happening,” Gothard said.

Mages, Euan thought sourly. “What is happening? War?”

“Among other things.” Gothard smiled. Whatever he was thinking, it gave him great pleasure. “You’d better be ready. As soon as the weather breaks, the high king’s calling the muster.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Euan said—unwisely, maybe.

“I don’t think so,” Gothard said.

“I command you.”

“I’m sure you do.”

The skin tightened between Euan’s shoulder blades. He was not sure what he wanted to say yet. When he was, he would say it, no matter what it cost.

At this particular moment, he pushed past Gothard. He had a boar to hunt, and the men were waiting.

Euan’s uneasiness stayed with him through the hunt and the killing of the boar and the return to the dun. Nothing there had changed. The king was a little weaker, a little greyer, but that had been going on for months.

Every night, no matter the hour, he looked in on Conor first, then his father. Tonight he found himself turning toward his father’s sleeping room. He refused to call it a premonition. Gothard had raised his hackles. He had to be sure there was nothing in it.

Niall was asleep. Lamps burned in a cluster, spoils of the last war with Aurelia. Murna sat beside the bed, stitching at a linen shirt.

Euan wanted to believe in that quiet ordinariness, but he kept seeing Gothard’s face. There was nothing ordinary here. The quiet was a lie.

His mother looked up. Her eyes were somber. “Tomorrow you should send out the summons to clan gathering,” she said.

Euan nodded. That was the king’s duty, but the king was past performing it. The clans should have gathered to plan this year’s war before Euan came back—and here it was nearly spring.

“Better late than never,” he said. Then, “How long do you think he has?”

“The One knows,” she said.