The Mountain's Call

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter One

The Mountain floated over the long roll of field and forest. Even in summer its peak was white with snow. In early spring, when the grass had begun to grow green in the valleys, its summit was locked in winter.

There was a fire of magic in its heart, welling up from the deep roots of the earth. It bubbled like a spring from the white fang of the peak, and rippled in waves through the vault of heaven. The tides of time began to swirl and shift.

In the citadel on the Mountain’s knees, the master of the Schools of Peace and War woke from a stranger dream than most. He stumbled from bed, flung open the shutters and peered up at the glow of dawn on the snowbound slopes.

Every spring the power rose; every spring the Mountain’s Call went out, summoning young men to the testing. Every spring and summer they came, straggling in from the far reaches of Aurelia’s empire, coming to claim the magic that they hoped was theirs. White magic, stallion magic. Magic of time and the gods.

This year’s Call was different. How it was different, or what it portended, the master could not tell. The gods in their pastures, cropping the new green grass, would not answer when he asked. The Ladies in the high valleys, greater than gods, chose not to acknowledge him at all.

This was a mystery, that silence said. Even the master of the school must wait and see, and hope that when the answer came, it would be one that he could accept.

Valeria had been walking in a fog for days. Sometimes she wondered if she was ill. Other times, she was sure that she was losing her mind.

There was a voice in her head. It called to her with the sound of wind through pines. It whispered in the hollows of her skull. Come. Come to me.

She staggered on the path to the widow Rufo’s house. Her mother’s hand gripped her wrist and wrenched her upright.

The pain helped Valeria to focus. It was harder every day. Sometimes now she could barely see. She had to struggle to hear what people said to her. She thought she might be losing her mind altogether, except that there was a deep sense of rightness to it. She was meant to hear this call. She was meant to go—

“Valeria!” Her mother’s voice cut through the fog of confusion. She blinked half-wittedly. She was standing in the widow Rufo’s cottage. Her head just missed brushing the roofbeam.

“Valeria,” Morag said. “Start brewing the tea.”

Valeria’s hands knew what to do even when her wits were drifting away toward gods knew where. She dipped water from the barrel by the door and poured it into the kettle, then set it to boil on the hearth. The fire had burned too low. She whispered a Word. The banked logs burst into flame.

The widow Rufo’s breath rattled. Morag spread a paste of pungent herbs over the bony chest and covered it with soft cloths. Herbs just as pungent steeped in the boiling water, brewing into tea. When it was strong enough, Morag coaxed it into her sip by sip.

Valeria squatted by the fire. It was full of visions. White mountains. White clouds. The toss of a white mane, and a noble head on a proud arched neck, turning to fix her with an eye as dark as deep water. The depths of it were full of stars. Come, said the white god. Come to me.

“She’s getting worse.”

Valeria lay in the wide bed with her three younger sisters. She was the innermost, with Caia’s warmth on one side and the chill of the wall on the other. Her sisters were snoring on three different notes. They almost drowned out the murmur of their mother’s voice on the other side of the wall.

“She can barely keep her mind on her work,” Morag went on. “She started to say a birthing spell over Edwy’s burned hand this morning—thanks to Sun and Moon I caught her in time, or he’d have sprouted a crop of new fingers.”

Her father’s laughter rumbled through the wall. Morag slapped him. He grunted. “There now,” he said in his deep voice, roughened from years of bellowing orders on battlefields. “What was that for?”

“You know perfectly well what for,” Morag said sharply. “Our daughter is losing her mind.”

“If she were a boy,” Titus said, “I’d be thinking it was the Call. I saw it a time or two when I was in the legion. One of the youngest recruits would get up one fine spring morning with his eyes all strange, pick up his kit and walk out of the barracks, and no one with any sense would try to stop him. Our girl’s just about the same age as they were, and gods know she has a way with animals. Horses follow her like puppies. The way she taught the goat to dance—”

“She is not a boy,” said Morag. “This is a spring sickness. There’s magic in it, she stinks of it, but it is not—”

“What if it is?”

“It can’t be,” Morag said flatly. “Women aren’t Called. She has a good deal more magic than she knows what to do with, and it’s laid her open to some contagion off the mountains.”

Titus grunted the way he did when he was not minded to argue with his wife, but neither was he inclined to agree with her. “You’d better cure her, then, if she’s as sick as that.”

“I’ll cure her,” said Morag. Her tone was grim. “You go in the morning, husband, and talk to Aengus. She likes that son of his well enough. There’s time to make it a double wedding.”

“I’m not sure—” said Titus.

“Do it,” Morag said with a snap like a door shutting.