Song Of Unmaking

“At least in the bloody army they let you sleep it off after you’ve won a battle,” someone else said, yawning till his jaw cracked. “Up at bloody dawn to clean bloody stalls. I thought we signed on to be riders, not stablehands.”

Kerrec had a lecture for that, which he decided not to deliver. They were in awe of his rank, at least, and he was kind to their aching heads and churning stomachs, though he doubted any of them was aware of it. He set them simple exercises that would engage their stumbling brains and teach them—or in many cases remind them of—the beginnings of focus.

He could use a course of that himself, he reflected grimly as the rider-candidates dispersed to their afternoon lessons. He would follow them later, to judge each one and mount him accordingly on the stallion who would be his schoolmaster.

He was on his way to Petra’s stable and a lesson of his own when he crossed paths with Gunnar, who was on the same errand. Gunnar was frowning. “Bad news?” Kerrec asked him as they went on together.

“That depends,” Gunnar said. “Did you know our most troublesome pupil is riding the Dance at Midsummer?”

“Valeria?” Kerrec could not find it in him to be surprised. “How?”

“Another whim of the gods,” Gunnar said. “Oda is carrying her—the old one.”

“I thought he had died in that body,” Kerrec said.

“Apparently not.” Gunnar’s frown deepened to a scowl. “A Lady comes to the testing and makes an impossible choice. A Great One returns from the dead to dance the Dance with a novice barely past the Call. And we were thanking the gods that there were no women Called. We were too complacent.”

So they were, Kerrec thought. Gunnar went his way, to find his lofty Alta and school the lesser figures of the Dance. Petra was waiting for Kerrec to do the same. His groom was not Valeria as it should have been—it was one of the others of that year, Kerrec’s cousin Paulus.

From his expression, which was even more sour than usual, Paulus had heard the news. Valeria’s way had never been easy, but this would make it even more difficult.

Kerrec wrenched himself into focus. The truth, his heart insisted on reminding him, was that of the eight who would ride the Dance, the greatest danger to it was not Valeria. It was Kerrec.

Valeria lacked training. Kerrec lacked worse. He lacked strength, focus, and full control over his magic. The voice inside him was whispering its poison even in daylight. Sometimes he could not see the sun for the cloud of hatefulness around him.

Petra would protect him, just as Oda was clearly meant to protect Valeria. This was not supposed to be a Great Dance, in which the fabric of time itself could be unraveled and then rewoven. It was a Dance of foreseeing. It opened the future, but not to alter it. It was meant to read the patterns only, then chart a course through them.

The emperor’s Augurs would be there, looking for signs of hope or warning for the war. That was all they would expect and all they would see.

Kerrec turned his back on the voices inside—both the one that laughed and mocked and egged him on to death and worse, and the one that told him he was wrong to do this. He was not strong enough.

With Petra he would be. He had to be. He mounted, took up the reins and began the day’s exercises.