Song Of Unmaking

Many of those who passed were older, and nearly all were mages of other orders. The rest failed in various ways—failed to choose, failed to mount, failed to understand that to ride one of the white gods, there had to be complete humility. No man could master a god, but he could become that god’s partner in the Dance.

Some of them left on stretchers. Others limped or walked away, but were not followed or rebuked. The Call itself was a great honor. Failure was no dishonor.

It was painful for Valeria to watch them. She could not look at Kerrec at all or let herself be aware of him. Her skin felt raw and her throat was aching. Her heart kept trying to pound its way out of her chest.

She clung for support to the stallions’ calm. They knew exactly what they were doing.

As noon passed and the sun tilted toward the west, ten more received the gods’ approval. The eleventh made Valeria sit up. It was the boy who had found her the day she went off Sabata. Lucius, that was his name. He looked rather small and very young, but Petra chose him and carried him well, dancing for him as the stallions had danced for few others.

The more elaborate the dance, the stronger the power. Valeria knew that. The stallion who had carried her in her testing had been a Great One like Petra and Sabata. He had danced for her a part of the Great Dance.

Lucius did not get that, but what he got was enough for a murmur of delight and a long ripple of applause. He slid to the ground and staggered, a feeling Valeria remembered well. His grin spread from ear to ear.

He was the last. Valeria remembered, too, when she was last, how the crowd had erupted, and how the riders had overwhelmed everyone who passed the test, laughing and shouting.

Today they seemed stunned by the length of it. All thirty-one new rider-candidates hung about in the arena, blinking and wondering what to do next. The stallions stood in a double line like a guard of honor, but they were not guarding the candidates.

They were waiting for something. Valeria could feel it coming. It was like a storm rising, but the air was clear and the sky cloudless blue. The white cone of the Mountain rose serenely above the eastward wall.

She lowered her eyes from it to the gate through which the stallions had entered, long hours ago. There was a horse standing in it.

It was not one of the stallions. They were all greys—shades of white or silver or dapple or grey. This was a sturdy, cobby creature like them, saddled and bridled as they were, but its color was rich deep red, its mane and tail and legs to the knee glossy black.

A distant part of Valeria named the color. Bay. There was a star on the broad forehead between the dark intelligent eyes.

Valeria rose and bowed low, all the way to the sand.

The bay Lady walked slowly into the arena. The sand was pocked with hoofprints. Her big black hooves dug deeper and yet danced lighter than any of the stallions’. She was lighter in the leg and slimmer in the neck, as a mare should be, but her quarters were deep and broad and she moved with soft power.

There was not a sound in that whole place. All patterns had gathered to her. Every eye was on her.

She knew it, but unlike the stallions, she did not care. Mortal foolishness was not her concern—and to her mind, awe was foolish. So was the thought that rang in the ether, that nothing like this had happened in all the years of the testing. The Ladies never came down from the Mountain. They never troubled themselves with these mortal games.

This Lady had troubled herself with parts of Valeria’s testing. Now it seemed she had another testing to perform. The candidates were all standing, staring, not knowing what to do.

The riders who watched over them were in no better state. Valeria saw Kerrec near the end of the line, doing and saying nothing. His face wore no expression.

She wondered if she should move, once she had straightened from her deep bow. But the Lady’s glance told her to be still.

She bent her head. The gods were incalculable. That was a commonplace of priestly doctrine—and rider doctrine, too.

The Lady came straight toward her, then veered slightly to stand in front of Briana.

Briana had been silent through the whole testing, watching as they all did, the good and the bad. She looked up when the Lady stopped. Her face was blank but her eyes were wide and bright.

She could refuse. She was given that gift.

She stepped onto the sand. The Lady turned as each stallion had done in the choosing, inviting a candidate to mount.

Briana hesitated. For an instant Valeria thought she would refuse after all. But then she took the reins in her hand and caught a hank of black mane just at the withers and set her foot in the stirrup. She mounted gracefully—of course she would. She had been riding since before she could walk.

The stallions had danced. The Lady Danced. It was a dance of cadence and of modulated paces, step by step and movement by movement. It carried Briana through the curves and swooping lines of one of the great patterns, the pattern that foretold a certainty.

What that certainty was, the Lady did not say. There were no Augurs there to interpret it. No one had expected the testing of the Called to turn into a Great Dance.

Valeria felt the pattern in the streams of magic that ran through her body. She knew better than to try to impose understanding on it. That would come when it was ready.

The last movement of the Dance, the exuberant coda after the singing power of the trot in place, was a leap higher than a man’s head, body level with the earth she had scorned, and a sudden, flashing kick that made the air gasp. If any man had stood there, his skull would have burst.

Valeria knew that for a clear and terrible truth. She had seen it happen.

There was nothing but air today. This was pure delight, the joy of a god in the living flesh. Briana laughed, a whoop of joy.

The Lady came back to earth again, dancing into stillness, snorting lightly. That was laughter, too. She had changed the world in ways that no mortal was prepared to understand. Her mirth rippled through Valeria’s blood and bones.

It was like a draft of strong wine. Valeria reeled, but she was grinning.

On the Lady’s back, Briana was grinning, too. No one else was. All the men were blank, stunned. None of them understood. It was beyond them.

Briana dismounted as the candidates had, dizzily, clinging for steadiness to the Lady’s neck. The Lady did not seem to mind. Her nostrils fluttered. She was whickering as a mare does to her foal.

The sound was so tender and yet so imperious that Valeria found her eyes stinging with tears. It was meant for her, too, in its way—and for all of them, whether or not they could understand.

Thirteen

The uproar this year was less pronounced than it had been when Valeria, having become champion of the testing, was unmasked as a woman.

Briana had never pretended to be anything but what she was. What exactly that was at the moment, no one knew, but Master Nikos decreed that the matter would be decided tomorrow. Today the Called would celebrate their elevation to rider-candidates. There would be no further distractions.

Master Nikos had learned a great deal in the past year. They all had.

Valeria had spent her own feast of celebration in Kerrec’s study, cleaning and tidying. She had every intention of doing the same again, but Briana insisted that they both go. “I would really rather be in the stable,” she said as they shared a bath and put on festival clothes, “but this is duty. The stable—and the Lady—will be there in the morning.”

“You believe that?” Valeria asked.

Briana nodded. “She promised.”

“Then it is true,” Valeria said.

“All of it,” said Briana. She was standing perfectly straight, not moving except to speak. Her maids had come down from the tower to dress her properly, which looked like a great ordeal.

No doubt she was used to it. Valeria, quickly and comfortably dressed in the grey coat and doeskin breeches of a rider-candidate, perched on a stool and watched. It was fascinating, the transformation of a stablehand into an imperial princess.

Briana’s gown was very simple compared to some Valeria had seen in the emperor’s court, but it was made of silk that shimmered now gold, now scarlet. She wore a collar of gold set with bloodred stones, and a net of gold and rubies confined the coiled mass of her hair.

Valeria sighed faintly. She never had cared for clothes and pretty things the way her sisters did, but there was something about silk.

Her fingers smoothed the wool of her coat. She had earned it with blood and tears. She would never trade it for anything. But she could be tempted—almost—by that beautiful gown.