Caitlin Brennan - Shattered Dance

Maurus nodded. “I wish Valeria was there. Or even—you know—him. They’d know what to do.”

“Riders will be there soon—a whole pack of them. Coronation’s in less than a month. They must be on their way from the Mountain by now.”

“But,” said Maurus, “what if that’s the plot—to stop the Dance again? Or if it’s supposed to come off before they get here? Or—”

Vincentius looked as desperate as Maurus felt. “I don’t know. This wasn’t even my idea. Didn’t you make any plans for after?”

“I just wanted to see what Bellinus was doing,” Maurus said. “I thought I’d corner him later and make him stop. Even though I knew, from what I’d heard, that nobody can do that. The only way out is to die.”

“What about us, then? Do we even dare to tell? We don’t know what they’ll try to do. Mages must be spying, too. Someone must know—someone who can do something about it. They’ll stop it before it goes any further.”

“Are you sure of that?” Maurus said. “Maybe we should go to the empress.”

“Nobody gets near her,” Vincentius said. “Even if we could, what would we say? I thought I recognized some of the voices. That’s all well and good, but if I give any of them up, how do we know they won’t lead the hunters to your brother?”

Maurus’ head hurt. The only clear path he could see still led toward Valeria. She had taught him to ride last year before she ran off to save the world, she and the First Rider who had been born an imperial prince.

Valeria was the strongest mage he knew, and one of the few he trusted. She would know what to do.

What if she did not come with the riders to the Dance? Would they even let her off the Mountain after all she had done?

He would have to reach her somehow. A letter would be too slow. He did not have the rank or station, let alone the coin, to send a courier all the way to the Mountain.

He would find a way. Then she would tell him what to do. Valeria always knew what to do—or else her stallion did. He was a god, after all.

Maurus set off down the street as if he had every right to be there. Vincentius, who was much taller, still had to stretch to keep up. By the time they reached the turning onto the wider street, where people were up and about in the bright summer morning, Maurus felt almost like himself again.

The school on the Mountain was in a flurry. For the second time since Valeria came to it, the best of its riders and the most powerful of its stallions were leaving its sanctuary and riding to the imperial city.

That was a rare occurrence. Considering how badly the last such riding had ended, it was no wonder the mood in the school was complicated to say the least. Nor did it help that by ancient tradition the coronation must take place on the day of Midsummer—and therefore the strongest riders and the most powerful stallions would not be on the Mountain when this year’s Called were gathered and tested.

They had to go. One of their most sacred duties was to Dance the fate of a new emperor or empress. They could no more refuse than they could abandon the stallions on whom their magic depended.

And yet what passed for wisdom would have kept them walled up on the Mountain, protected against any assault. Nothing could touch them here. The gods themselves would see to that.

The Master had settled on a compromise. Half of the First Riders and most of the Second and all of the Third and Fourth Riders would stay in the school. Sixteen First and Second Riders and sixteen stallions would go to Aurelia.

Valeria went as servant and student for the journey. Then in Aurelia she would stay after the Dance was done, under Kerrec’s command.

They were going to try something new and possibly dangerous. But Kerrec had convinced the Master that it might save them all.

He was going to extend the school to Aurelia and bring a part of it away from the fabled isolation of the Mountain into the heart of the empire. If their magic could stand the glare of day and the tumult of crowds, it might have a chance to continue, maybe even to grow.

It needed to do that. It was stiffening into immobility where it was.

In the world outside its sanctuary, all too many people had decided the horse magic had no purpose. Augurs could read omens without the need to study the patterns of a troupe of horsemen riding on sand. Soothsayers could foretell the future, and who knew? Maybe one or more orders of mages could try to shape that future, once the riders let go their stranglehold on that branch of magic.

Valeria happened to be studying the patterns of sun and shadow on the floor of her room as she reflected on time, fate and the future of the school she had fought so hard to join. The only sound was the baby’s sucking and an occasional soft gurgle.

The nurse sat by the window. Her smooth dark head bent over the small black-curled one. Her expression was soft, her eyelids lowered.

Valeria’s own breasts had finally stopped aching. After the first day there had never been enough milk for the baby, but what feeble trickle there was had persistently refused to dry up.

However much she loathed to do it, she had had to admit that her mother was right. She needed the nurse.

The woman was quiet at least. She never hinted with face or movement that she thought Valeria was a failure. She did not offer sympathy, either, or any sign of pity.

“It’s nature’s way,” Morag had said by the third day after Grania was born. The baby would not stop crying. When she tried to suck, she only screamed the louder. Yet again, the nurse had had to take her and feed her, because Valeria’s milk was not enough.

“Sometimes it happens,” Morag said. “You see it with mares, too, in the first foaling, and heifers and young ewes. They deliver the young well enough, but their bodies don’t stretch to feeding it. You’d put a foal or a calf with a nurse. What’s so terrible about doing it with a baby?”

“I should be able to,” Valeria said, all but spitting the words. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You said. The Healers said. I shouldn’t be this way!”

“But you are,” her mother said bluntly. “Stop fighting it, girl, and live with it. There’s plenty of mothering to do outside of keeping her belly filled.”

“Not at the moment there isn’t,” Valeria said through clenched teeth.

“Certainly there is,” said Morag. “Now give yourself a rest while she eats. You’re still weak, though you think you can hide it.”

Valeria had snarled at her, but there was never any use in resisting Morag. The one time she had succeeded, she had had the Mountain’s Call to strengthen her.

The call of mother to child was not as strong as that—however hard it was to accept. She had bound her aching breasts and taken the medicines her mother fed her, and day by day she had got her strength back.

Now, almost a month after Grania was born, Valeria was nearly herself again. She had even been allowed to ride, though Morag had ordered her to keep it slow and not try any leaps. She might have done it regardless, just to spite her mother, but none of the stallions would hear of it.

They were worse than Morag. They carried her as if she were made of glass, and smoothed their paces so flawlessly that she was ready to scream.

“I like the big, booming gaits!” she had shouted at Sabata one thoroughly exasperating morning. “Stop creeping about. It’s making me crazy. I keep wanting to get behind you and push.”

Time was when Sabata would have bucked her off for saying such things. But he barely hunched his back. He did, mercifully, stretch his stride a little.

It was better than nothing. After a while even he grew tired of that and relaxed into something much closer to his normal paces. Valeria was distressed by how hard she had to work to manage those. Childbearing wrought havoc with a woman’s riding muscles.