Song Of Unmaking

It seemed only reasonable, after dinner, for Valeria to divert Briana from the guesthouse toward the rooms she shared with Kerrec. “He’s gone for the testing,” she said, “and there’s more than enough room. Why be all alone in a cold tower when you can be comfortable?”

Briana needed a little persuasion, but Valeria persisted until she gave in. Now they were sitting by the fire in the study, sipping hot herb tea with honey and talking drowsily. They were both bone-tired, but neither was quite ready to sleep yet.

That was when Briana asked her question. “Even after you pass the testing of the Called,” she said, “the testing goes on. Doesn’t it? It never stops.”

Valeria nodded. “Even the Master is still tested. There’s never any end to it.”

“Magic is like that,” Briana said. “It never lets you rest.”

“Even you?”

“My magic is the empire.”

Briana said it simply, but it meant more than Valeria could easily grasp. Briana tucked up her feet and curled in the big carved chair, watching the dance of the flames. If Valeria opened her eyes just so, she could the patterns there. She wondered if Briana could.

Briana had been Called. That was not the name she gave it, but it was the truth. It was a different Call than Valeria’s or Kerrec’s. The empire was in it somehow.

One of the logs in the fire collapsed on itself, sending up a shower of sparks. The patterns broke and fell into confusion. Valeria’s sigh turned into a yawn.

She did not get up and go to bed just yet. “You’re resting here,” she said.

Briana smiled. “Better than I ever have. I could love this life. This place—these people. The stallions. To ride Petra, it was…” She trailed off.

“But you can’t stay,” Valeria said, “can you?”

Briana shook her head. She did not seem terribly sad, but her smile had died. “The Call takes you away from whatever order of magic you might have been sworn to before. The empire takes me away from everything. I was born for it. I belong to it.”

“Your brother—” Valeria began.

“My brother was born for the Mountain,” Briana said. “Even when he was a child, he’d run away from his duties to be with the horses. I ran away from lessons to hide behind my father’s chair and listen to councils.”

“Even lessons with horses?”

Briana’s lips twitched. “Well. Not those. But everything else. I’d bring one of my books sometimes and do my lessons during the dull parts.”

That made Valeria laugh. “Your father knew, didn’t he?”

“Of course he knew,” said Briana with the flash of a grin. “He never said a word—except years later, when he named me his heir. Then he said, ‘You’ve studied for this all your life. Now be what you knew you would be.’” She went somber suddenly. “I didn’t know. Not that my brother would be Called and the office would come to me. But the gods knew.”

“The gods make me tired,” Valeria said, yawning hugely. “Here, you take the bed. I’ll take the cot in the—”

“Nonsense,” Briana said, and would not hear of taking the larger bed even when Valeria pointed out that she had slept on the servant’s cot for most of last year. “Then I’ll be perfectly comfortable in it. Go on, you’re out on your feet.”

Valeria gave way. She was too tired to fight over it. Briana went off yawning, radiating a quiet happiness that made Valeria smile in spite of herself.

The bed was too large without Kerrec in it. Valeria lay on his side, hugging the pillow to herself and breathing deep.

It smelled of herbs and sunlight. She groaned. The servants had been there while Valeria was out, changing the sheets. There was not even his scent to wrap around her and help her sleep.

She did not want to dream of someone else tonight. She wanted Kerrec.

She had a wild thought of finding him in the First Riders’ hall. But she knew better than to try that. The riders scrupulously ignored certain facts of Valeria’s existence, one of which was that she did not sleep in the servant’s room in Kerrec’s quarters. There were no laws against it, since there had never been a woman rider, but there were proprieties—and those took a dim view of what the two of them were to each other.

Mostly she did not care. Now, in the middle of the candidates’ testing, she found she did. The testing was more important than her comfort.

If she wanted to be honest, tonight was no lonelier than the past few months of nights had been. It was colder without his warmth beside her, but his heart and mind had been elsewhere for longer than she had wanted to accept.

Twelve

The first two days of testing went on apart from the rest of the school. Valeria realized as the first day began that she was knotted tight.

There was no eruption of magic from the quarter of the citadel where the testing was being done. No word came of any candidate hurt or killed. The disaster of her year, when three of her group of eight died—one by magic, two put to death for causing it—had not happened again. As far as she could tell, the testing was going on without trouble.

It was maddening not to know what they were doing behind those walls. No one was supposed to know but the candidates and the riders who tested them. It was a mystery.

It was building up to something. What it was kept eluding Valeria, slipping into the core of her, hiding behind the Unmaking.

Sometimes she almost had it. Then it slithered away. It made her think of blind wriggling worms and flyblown corpses.

She almost would rather have the Unmaking than that. There was no one she could tell, because if she told, then she would have to confess the rest of it. Even Kerrec could not know what was inside her. No one could know.

All she could do was watch and wait and be ready for whatever came.

The last day of the testing, the one day that was open to the world, dawned clear and bright. “It’s never rained on a testing day,” Iliya said at breakfast. “Not in a thousand years.”

“Legend and exaggeration,” Paulus said with his customary sourness.

Iliya mimed outrage. “You doubt the gods?”

Paulus snarled into his porridge. Iliya grinned and declared victory.

Their banter was familiar and somehow poignant. Valeria ate distractedly. She could feel the power rising under her, the Mountain preparing to complete what it had begun. That other thing, the thing she could not speak of, had gone quiet—which did not reassure her at all.

The testing ground was crowded already when Valeria came to it. Long rows of benches were set up along the sides of the arena, adding to the tiers of stone seats that had been built into the walls. The riders’ tiers still had room and there were chairs left in the nobles’ box, but people were standing everywhere else.

Briana could have claimed a cushioned chair in the nobles’ box high above the eastward end, but she settled between Valeria and Batu on the lowest tier of the north side, with her feet brushing the edge of the raked sand.

Valeria took a deep breath. Countless patterns were coming together here. All the candidates, their families, the riders, the people who lived in the citadel and served the Schools of Peace and War, the stallions in whose name it all existed, the Ladies who were greater than gods, were part of this.

Every year for a thousand years, that had been true. It was truer this year, because there were so many Called. Some of the riders looked as if their heads ached. The stronger they were, the more they must be able to see.

Kerrec was not there yet. He was in charge of the candidates, along with the rest of the First and Second Riders. They would watch from the sidelines, making sure those who failed were taken care of and those who succeeded knew what to do.

The testing was devastatingly simple. For this many candidates, three eights of stallions entered in procession, saddled and bridled but unburdened by riders. The candidates came in three eights at a time.

Each candidate chose a stallion, which was a test in itself, then did his best to mount and ride. If he got as far as that, the nature of the ride itself was a test and a reckoning. The worst simply sat there, with the stallion motionless under them. The best were offered a few of the movements that, with training, would evolve into the Dance of Time.

It was a long testing—so long that they paused twice for water and refreshment. The stallions were merciless in their winnowing. By midday, twenty candidates had managed to ride their chosen stallions through some fraction of the movements. Three times that number had failed.