Shattered Dance

Master Nikos’ lips quirked. “Of course she has. My apologies. We’re overly protective of you, I know. For all the grief we’ve laid on you, you are precious to us.”

Valeria almost smiled. Her eyes were trying to go misty—a last remnant of the easy tears of pregnancy. “I know that, sir,” she said. “I won’t do anything foolish. I promise.”

He patted her hand a little awkwardly—such gestures were foreign to him—and led his stallion on past toward the head of the caravan.

Valeria finished tightening the girth with a little too much help from Sabata. He was losing patience. He could never understand why caravans took so long to move. If he had had any say in it, they would have been gone an hour ago.

Valeria slapped his questing nose aside and swung into the saddle. He nipped at her foot, but he did not swing his hindquarters or try to buck. He knew better.

His flash of temper made her laugh. She was still grinning when Kerrec rode up beside her. He grinned back and stole a kiss.

“You’re in a fine mood this morning,” she said.

“So are you.” He let the reins fall on Petra’s neck and turned to scan the faces of the riders who had come out to see them off. Everyone was there, from the youngest rider-candidate to the First Riders who would stay behind to welcome the Called and dance the Midsummer Dance.

Valeria’s eyes lingered on each face. All of her yearmates were staying behind to continue their studies, along with the rest of the recently Called. She caught herself committing them to memory, as if she never expected to see them again.

She shook herself before she fell any deeper into foolishness. She was only going away for a season or two. The Mountain was still home and always would be, however far she traveled.

Still, this was a new thing she and Kerrec were doing. No one could be sure what would come of it. Then there was Maurus’ message. She was not fool enough to think that because armies had been defeated and mages destroyed, others would not spring up to take their place.

For today she would focus on her increasingly fractious stallion and her still recovering body and try not to wallow too much in the last sight of the school that she would enjoy until at least the coming of winter. The caravan was beginning to move. The sun was up and the night’s mist was blowing away. It was a glorious morning, a fine day to be riding to the imperial city.

Morag kept a careful eye on her daughter. Valeria, like most young things, suffered from delusions of invincibility. She was still recovering from a hard birth—harder than she or her otherwise perceptive lover seemed to understand.

If Morag had had any hope of being listened to, she would have kept Valeria in the wagon from the start. But Valeria was a rider. She had to ride—it was as vital to her as breathing. So, it seemed, was her insistence on riding the wildest of her three mounts.

God or no, the beast was being an idiot. Morag let him know it in no uncertain terms.

She was somewhat gratified that he deigned to notice. He still jigged and danced, but he stopped plunging and flinging himself about. After a while he settled even more, until he was walking more or less quietly, with only an occasional toss of the head or lash of the tail.

Valeria was still riding with that upright and beautiful carriage which distinguished the riders of the school, but Morag could see the subtle stiffness in her shoulders. Just as Morag decided to comment on it, Valeria swung her mount in toward the wagon and stepped from his back to the wagon’s bed.

It was prettily done. Morag acknowledged it with a sniff. Valeria was a little pale but otherwise well enough.

The tension left Morag’s own shoulders as Valeria made herself comfortable amid the bags and bundles that Morag had agreed to carry for the riders. The nurse, who was no fool, handed the baby over to her mother.

Valeria did not melt as some women did in the presence of their offspring. Her affection was a fiercer thing. She cradled the small blanket-wrapped body in her lap, head tilted slightly, and watched the child sleep.

Morag was growing drowsy herself. The wagon’s rocking and the clopping of hooves and the slowly rising warmth of the mountain summer were incitement to sleep.

She had little need to guide the mule. The caravan surrounded her with protections as strong as she could manage herself. It was full of mages, after all.

They were quiet about it, but they were on guard. Very little would get past them unless they let it. They had learned that lesson all too well.

Morag slid into a doze. She kept her awareness of the road and the caravan and the magic that surrounded it, but her consciousness slipped free.

It wandered for a while, drifting into Imbria and passing by her husband and children who were there. That was a pleasant dream, and it made her smile.

Gradually the dream darkened. It came on like a summer storm, a wall of cloud rolling in from the east. There was no clear vision in it, only formless darkness and the howl of wind.

A tower rose on a bleak hilltop like one of the old forgotten fortresses in her native Eriu. Wind and rain battered it. Lightning struck it and cast it down.

In the ruins where it had been, the earth opened like a mouth. The heart of it was nothingness.

That nothingness swallowed everything. Earth and sky vanished. There was nothing left but oblivion.

Valeria gulped air. In her dream there had been nothing to breathe, nothing to see, nothing at all except the Unmaking.

She lay in her nest of bundles and bags. Dappled sunlight shifted over her. Her daughter stirred in her arms.

She welcomed every bit of it—even the knot in her back and the whimper that turned to a wail as Grania woke to pangs of hunger. In Valeria’s dream, it had all gone. The Unmaking had taken everything.

She surrendered Grania to the nurse and sat up in the wagon bed, rocking with it as it descended a long slope.

From the driver’s seat, her mother looked over her shoulder. Morag’s green eyes were unusually dark.

“You saw, too,” Valeria said. The words slipped out of her, too quick to catch.

Morag’s nod was hardly more than a flicker of the eyelids.

“That’s not good,” Valeria said. “If it’s as strong as this, this close to the Mountain…”

“Maybe you should turn back,” said Morag.

“We can’t do that.”

“But if the Mountain can protect you—”

“Who will protect the empress?”

“Doesn’t she have every order of mages at her command?”

“Not against this.”

Morag turned on the bench, leaving the mule to find its own way. “What about the baby, then?”

Valeria’s glance leaped to the bundle in the nurse’s arms. Her face flushed. She had not thought that far at all.

“I’m not a good mother, am I?” she said. “I love her. I’d kill anyone who laid a hand on her. But there’s so much more to the world than that one thing.”

“There is,” Morag said in a tone that gave nothing away.

“She doesn’t come first,” Valeria said. “You knew it before I did.”

“I know you,” Morag said. “You’re not meant for the small and homely things.”

That was the truth. Valeria had not expected it to hurt quite so much. All the dreams she had had while she carried Grania, the things she had imagined that she would do, beginning with the simple human task of feeding her, had melted as soon as Grania saw the daylight. The agony of bearing her and the torment of the Unmaking had come too thoroughly between them.