The Mountain's Call

“Don’t think,” her mother’s voice said. “Feel.”

She almost spun around to see if Morag had followed her to the Mountain. Then she caught herself. It was only memory.

It was also excellent advice. She squeezed her eyes shut and made herself breathe in a slow, steady rhythm. Each breath filled more of the world. It drove out thought and fear.

When she was empty of everything but air, she stepped forward. Her eyes were still shut. The horse walked quietly beside her.

She did not turn right or left. She went neither up nor down. She simply walked straight ahead.

Light dazzled her even through her eyelids. She heard voices and hoofbeats, and smelled horses and leather and fresh-baked bread.

She opened her eyes on a sunlit square. The gate was behind her. The clouds had parted, or maybe they had never dulled this place at all. She could feel the magic enclosed within these walls, distinct as the feel of sunlight on her skin.

Iliya was basking in the sun. Dacius looked around him with the same dazed expression she must have been wearing.

Tall grey buildings surrounded the square. People went back and forth inside it, busy with this errand or that. Not all were men. There were a few women in plain gowns like servants. One had a basket of laundry on her hip, and another stood by the fountain in the middle of the square, dipping water into an earthenware jar.

“That’s the Well of the World,” Iliya said. “It goes down to the source of all waters. It’s strong magic.”

There was so much magic in this place that Valeria could not tell if the story was true. She was too overwhelmed to argue with it.

Three men walked toward them. One was middle-aged, with the rolling walk and leathery look of the lifelong horseman. The other two were still a little soft around the edges, but they were cultivating the same weather-beaten style.

The older man greeted them in a broad country burr. “Good day to you, young gentlemen. My name is Hanno. I’m head groom in the candidates’ stable. We’ll take your horses, my boys and I, by your leave.”

None of them had the courage to object. Iliya let his beloved mare go with Hanno himself. Valeria said goodbye to the black. He had not been a friend, but he had been a good servant. She would miss him.

While the grooms took charge of the horses, another man approached them. He was dressed no better than the grooms, but his carriage was different. He walked, thought Valeria, the way Kerrec rode.

She met his glance and froze. He seemed a quiet, unassuming person, middle-aged and middle-sized, but the magic in him was so strong and so profoundly disciplined that she could not move or speak for the wonder of it.

He looked them over carefully, one by one. What he thought, Valeria could not have said. He did not seem terribly disappointed. After a while he said, “In the name of the white gods and the master of the school, I welcome you to the Mountain. You will call me Rider Andres.”

None of them had anything to say to that. He did not look as if he had expected them to. He turned his back on them and walked off at an angle across the square.

Evidently they were supposed to follow. They exchanged glances. Iliya shrugged. Dacius frowned. Valeria started walking in the man’s wake. After a pause, the others did the same.

Rider Andres led them through a narrow wooden door and up a flight of steps. The place to which he brought them was indistinguishable from a legionary barracks. It was a high, wide room with tall windows, open now to let in light and air, and a broad stone hearth at one end. Rows of bunks lined the walls. A hundred men could have slept there.

At the moment, hardly a third of the bunks were occupied. The rest were stripped to the slats.

Rider Andres led them through the barracks and up another, shorter stair to a mess hall and common room. There seemed to be a great crowd in it, but when Valeria stopped to count, there were just shy of thirty people. They were all young, and they were of all tribes and races she had heard of and a few she had not. There were no big redheaded barbarians, but that was the only nation missing.

They all stopped whatever they had been doing and snapped to attention. “Rider Andres,” they said in chorus, “sir!”

He released them with a nod. “Here are the last of you,” he said, “and not before time, either. The testing begins tomorrow.”

That seemed to take a few of them by surprise. Valeria would have liked more time to settle in, but she had to thank the gods for the reprieve. The longer she lived in a barracks, the more likely it was that someone would discover that she was not a man.

Her deception only had to survive until she passed the testing. Once she had done that, they had to accept her. She had the magic, just as they did. It would give them no choice.

Chapter Five

Rider Andres left the newcomers to sort themselves out. It seemed a logical thing for him to do. They had all come to the same Call, and they were all gifted with magic in some degree. Those who passed the testing would be part of a brotherhood as close as any that humans knew.

For tonight and until the testing was over, they were all bitter rivals. Some of them had been there for months, since shortly after the Call went out. Those had formed an uneasy alliance. Later comers had fallen into divisions of their own. The last three arrivals, by default, were yet another faction.

“If we’re lucky,” said a lanky young nobleman in silk and gold, “a quarter of us will pass into the school—and maybe one of those will become a rider. It’s not enough to be Called. That only means you have ears to hear. You have to be a great number of other things besides.”

“Such as?” said Iliya. He was his lively and garrulous self again, now he had had his moment in the sun.

“Such as a Beastmaster. A scholar. A reader of signs and omens. A dancer. One of the tests is in dancing, did you know?”

“No one knows what the tests will be,” someone said from the edge of the room. “That’s what makes them so hard. There’s no way to study, and no way to cheat.”

“Nonsense,” said the nobleman. “There have been riders in my family for generations. We all know what they test for, if not exactly how they test from year to year.”

“It’s the how that kills you,” Iliya said lightly. “I can dance. Will they ask us to sing, too?”

“Sometimes they do,” the nobleman said.

“Then I’ll be a master,” Iliya said. He beamed at them all. “Can you believe it? We’re here. We’ve come to the Mountain!”

His enthusiasm was infectious. Even the nobleman allowed himself a small, tight smile. Valeria could have kissed Iliya. There had been an ugly undercurrent in the conversation, but he had dissipated it.

Not long after the last of the Called came in, servants came with plates and bowls and platters and fed them a simple dinner. The stew was made with roots and beans and vegetables, no meat, but it was good, and filling. It came with loaves of the heavy brown bread that Valeria had smelled baking, and wedges of sharp yellow cheese. To drink with it they had a cask of ale and a tall jar of wine.

They were all encouraged to eat and drink their fill. “There will be no breakfast tomorrow,” the chief of the servants said, “and nothing to drink but water until the testing is over. Enjoy yourselves while you can. The next time you see this much food, you’ll either be eating it in the candidates’ mess or taking potluck on the road.”

A collective sigh ran through the room. Someone at the end opposite Valeria dived for the bread. As if that had been a signal, they all fell to it.

In spite of the warning, she refrained from gorging herself. She wanted strength, not a sick stomach. She drank a little wine to steady herself, but she watered it heavily.

Not every one of the Called could hold his liquor. Some did not hold their food so well, either. By the time she left, the mess hall reminded her forcibly of a soldiers’ tavern.

She was the first to leave. All the bunks were made up, including three new ones. She recognized her saddlebags at the foot of one, and Iliya’s shabby-elegant and heavily embroidered pack on the bunk above it.

She intended to sleep as long and well as she could manage, but for the moment she was still wide awake. The door to the outside was not barred, which surprised her. She had thought that the Called would be locked in until after the testing.

Something touched her awareness as she opened the door and slipped through it. It felt like a light set of wards, just enough to let a mage know that someone had gone through the door. Without even thinking, she raised her own protections. The wards withdrew, convinced that nothing was there.

She found her way by the same instinct that had disposed of the wards. This place was so full of magic that she could follow the currents of it wherever she wanted to go.

One led her to the stable where guests’ horses were kept. Her black and Iliya’s bay mare and Dacius’ mule were stalled side by side and perfectly content. Of course they would be. Here of all places, people knew how to look after horses.

She fed each of them a bit of bread that she had brought from the mess hall. They were pleased to accept tribute, although none of them was hungry.

Once she had given them their due, she sought out another current, one that led her past the rest of the horses in the stable. None of them was anything but ordinary. She had yet to see any of the white stallions. When she tried to discover where they were, she was gently but firmly turned aside. All in good time, said a voice that was not a voice. She knew somehow that it was one of the stallions.