Song Of Unmaking

“Then he took your magic stone and drove you out,” Euan said. “That’s not as broken as I might like.”

Gothard’s face flushed dark in the moonlight, but he did not give way to his fit of temper. “Yes, I underestimated him, and that was a mistake. But that won’t give back what I took away. His powers are in shards. Maybe he’ll be of some use as a riding master, but as a master of the white gods’ art, he’s done for. And so, for all useful purposes, are the horse mages. They’ll be years gaining back even a portion of what they lost.”

“I do hope you’re right,” Euan said, “because there’s a war coming, and now we have an enemy who’s not just defending his lands against invasion. He’s out for vengeance.”

“All the better for us,” said Gothard. “Anger blinds a man—as I know better than any.”

“So you do,” said Euan sweetly. He turned on his heel. It was a somewhat longer way to the river than if he walked by Gothard, but he was not eager to risk a blade in the belly.

Unfortunately for his hopes of escape, he was much weaker than he wanted to be—and Gothard was well fed and armed with magic. His hand gripped Euan’s arm and spun him back. Euan struck it aside with force enough to make Gothard hiss with pain, but the moment for escape had passed. He was not going anywhere until this was over.

“Suppose I take you with me,” he said. “What’s our bargain? You help me become high king and I help you become emperor? What guarantee does either of us have that we’ll get what we wish for?”

“There are few certainties in life,” Gothard said. “Don’t you love a good gamble? There’s a crown for you and a throne for me, and power enough for the two of us. Or we’re both dead and probably damned.”

“I can’t say I dislike those odds,” Euan said. “Come on, then. Take what you need and follow. I want to be well away from the river by sunup.”

“In a moment,” Gothard said. “Wait here.”

Euan considered telling him what he could do with his damned arrogance, or better yet, walking away while Gothard did whatever he had taken it into his head to do. But curiosity held Euan where he was—and weakness, if he was honest with himself. The heat of the star’s fall was nearly gone. The cold was sinking into his bones.

Gothard strode directly toward the pit where the star had fallen. Euan knew what he was looking for. He was a mage of stones, after all, and the star was a stone.

It weighed heavier than ever in Euan’s traveling bag. A hunted renegade, stripped of his warband, needed every scrap of hope or glory that he could get his hands on if he wanted to stand up before all the tribes and declare himself fit to be high king. This was a gift from the One, a piece of heaven. It carried tremendous power.

How much more power might it carry if a stone mage wielded it—and if that stone mage was sworn to Euan?

Gothard was a wrathful man and a born traitor, and he was probably mad. But he had powers that Euan could use—if Euan could keep him firmly in hand.

This was a night for taking risks. Euan stood on the edge of the pit and looked down. Gothard was crawling on hands and knees, muttering what might be spells, or more likely curses.

The firepot was cold. The starstone felt as if it had turned to ice. It was so cold it burned Euan’s hand as he held it up. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Gothard’s back straightened. The pale oval of his face turned toward the moon. His eyes glowed like an animal’s.

His voice echoed faintly against the sides of the pit. “Where did you find that?”

“Not far from where you’re standing,” Euan said. “It was hotter than fire then. Now it’s bloody cold.”

“What were you thinking to do with it?”

“Make myself high king,” Euan said.

“Are you a stone mage, then?”

Euan refrained from bridling at his mockery. “No, but you are. What will you give in return for this?”

“What do you want?” Gothard asked. “We’ve already bargained for the high kingship.”

“Now I’m assured of it,” said Euan. “Wield your powers for me. Help me win the war that’s coming. Then we’ll talk about the empire we’re going to take.”

“All with a single stone,” Gothard said, but Euan could hear the yearning in him.

Euan could feel the power in the stone, too, though thank the One, he had no magic to work with it. His soul was clean of that.

“This is a star,” he said. “There’s nothing stronger for your kind, is there? I see it in your eyes. You’ve never lusted for a woman the way you lust for this. This is every bit of magic you lost when your brother took your master stone—and as much again, and more that I’m no doubt too feebleminded to comprehend. I want my share of it, cousin. Swear by it—swear you’ll wield it in my cause.”

“I swear,” Gothard said. His eyes were on the stone.

It was growing warmer in Euan’s hand, or else his fingers were too numb to tell the difference. It seemed both heavier and lighter.

Its power was changing. Gothard was changing it—without even laying a hand on it.

Euan refused to give way to awe. He would use a mage for his purposes, but this was still a half-blood imperial with the taint of treason on him. Gothard would keep his oath exactly as long as it served his purpose, and not a moment longer.

Euan would have to make sure that that was a very long time. He was aching, frozen, dizzy with hunger and exhaustion, but he laughed. He was on his way home, and he was going to be high king.

Three

Euan Rohe walked into his father’s dun a handful of days before the dark of the year. A bitter rain was falling, but the west was clear, a thin line of pale blue beneath the lowering cloud.

The dun was older than the Calletani, a walled fort of rammed earth and weatherworn stone. The wall enclosed a half-ruined tower and a clutter of round houses built like the traveling tents of the people. The king’s house was built around the tower, with his hall in the center. All of it sat on a low hill that rose abruptly out of a long roll of downs.

In milder seasons it was a vast expanse of grass and heather shot through with the silver lines of rivers. Now it was a wilderness of ice and drifted snow, whipped with wind and sleet.

Gothard could have brought them there on the backs of dragons, or conjured chariots out of the air around the starstone. It was Euan who had insisted on taking the hard way on foot over the mountains and through the forests into the heartlands of the Calletani. It was a long road and grueling, but it was honest.

It had also given Gothard ample time to learn the ways and powers of the stone. Euan had no objection to the provender it brought, either the game that walked into his snares or the wine that appeared in his cup. It kept them both alive and walking. It protected them against either discovery or attack, and smoothed their way as much as Euan’s scruples would allow.

“You’re as stubborn as the damned horse-gods,” Gothard had muttered one evening, while a blizzard howled outside the sphere of light and warmth that he had conjured from the stone. “They won’t fly, either. The harder their worshippers struggle, the happier they are.”

“That’s the way of gods,” Euan said.

Gothard had snarled at that, but Euan refused to change his mind. Magic was a dangerous temptation. He would use it if he had to, but he refused to become dependent on it.

They walked, therefore, and Gothard played with the stone, working petty magics and small evils that made him titter to himself when he thought Euan was asleep. Gothard had never been what Euan would call sane, but since he had gotten hold of the starstone, he had been growing steadily worse. He was not quite howling mad, but he was on his way there.

He had been talking to himself for two days when they passed the gates of the dun—a long ramble that Euan had stopped paying attention to within the first hour. Part of him listened for signs of immediate threat, but it all seemed to be focused on the riders and their fat white horse-gods, Gothard’s dearly loathed brother, his even more dearly loathed father, and occasionally the sister whom he direly underestimated. Gothard, in true imperial style, had convinced himself that the females of his kind had neither strength nor intelligence.

At last, under the low and heavy lintel of Dun Eidyn’s gate, he stopped his babbling. There were no guards at the gate, and only a single sentry snoring on the wall above. The two wanderers went not only unchallenged but unnoticed.

Euan resolved to do something about that at his earliest opportunity. Winter it might be, but armies could still march and raiding parties rampage through unprotected camps and ill-guarded duns.

There was no one abroad within the walls. Smoke curled from the roofs of the round houses, and lights glimmered beneath doors and through cracks in shuttered windows. Even the dogs had taken shelter against the storm, which with the coming of dark had changed to sleet.

The door to the king’s house was unbarred, and also unguarded. The guard who should have been there was inside with the rest, in the warmth and the smoky firelight of the hall, finishing the last of the day’s meal and passing jars of wine and skins of ale and mead. The songs had begun, the vaunting that would bring each warrior to his feet with the tale of his own exploits and those of his ancestors for as far back as the rest would let him go.

Euan stood in the shadow of the doorway, letting it sweep over him. Five years he had been away, fighting his father’s war and living as a hostage among the Aurelians. He needed time to believe that he was back at last—and to see what had become of his people in the time since he was gone.