The Mountain's Call

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.

The current she followed was leading toward something much more mortal. The stable door opened on a narrow street. At the end of that she turned left into another square than the one she had seen when she first entered the school. This one was empty in the evening light, although she could sense the presence of people behind the blank walls and narrow windows. Behind one of those walls, she found the people she was looking for.

The hostages reacted variously to her arrival. Donn snarled and went back to his mug of ale. Gavin and Conory grinned and saluted her. The others were asleep in beds much more luxurious than she had been given.

“He’s in the jakes,” Gavin said before she could ask. He raised his voice in a roar. “Euan! Euan Rohe! Wipe your arse and come out of there. You’ve got company.”

“No need for that,” she said. Her ears were still ringing from Gavin’s bellow. “I only wanted to see that you were here, and that you were well. And to apologize for—”

“The magic had you,” Conory said. “We know.” He filled a mug sloppily and held it out. “Here. It’s almost decent, for imperial horse-piss.”

Valeria drank a sip to be polite, but then she excused herself. This was not a night to spend drinking with the Caletanni. She needed her head in one piece for whatever would happen in the morning.

She took a different and somewhat roundabout way back. The sun was setting and the shadows were long. The school was much larger than she would have thought, as large as the town of Mallia, where she had joined the caravan. Now and then she saw people intent on errands of their own, but none of them spoke to her. They all seemed to be servants, or else everyone here wore the same plain clothes. She had yet to see anyone but Andres whom she would have recognized as a rider.

Euan caught up with her on the edge of the square with the fountain, directly inside the gate. She felt him before she saw or heard him. It was like a storm coming, a presence so strong that it almost frightened her. He had no magic except the power to lead men, but that was enough.

She could have escaped before he found her. She stopped instead and waited beside the fountain, while the sunset stained the sky with blood and gold.

Her eyes were full of it when she lowered them to meet his. He seemed taken aback. The magic must be running strong in her, for him to see it.

He was too proud to say anything about it. Instead he said, “You didn’t stay.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said. “I’m not supposed to be out.”

“Neither am I,” he said with a hint of his usual humor. “Our test is to stay put until called for.”

“I’m sure they won’t cast you out for failing it.”

She saw the gleam of teeth under the red mustache. It was hard sometimes to tell whether he was smiling or snarling. At the moment it seemed to be a bit of both. “No, they’re saddled with us until the emperor tells them to let us go.”

“I didn’t know they answered to him,” she said.

“Sometimes they do.” He seemed to realize he was looming over her. He sat on the fountain’s rim, not too close to her. “Now tell me why you really came to find me.”

“That was why. And,” she added, “because I couldn’t sleep, and it was an excuse to go prowling.”

That was certainly a smile. “Now that I can believe. What will you do when you’re a rider? The discipline’s hard, I hear. It’s like being a priest.”

“Riders ride,” she said. “That’s what they are.”

“Any time they want?”

“Often enough,” she said.

“Well then,” said Euan, “when you pass all the tests, promise you’ll come once in a while to rescue me. I’m no kind of rider. They’ll have me hauling manure to make me useful.”

“When I pass the tests,” she said. The evening air was chill, but that was not why she shivered. “If you have any luck to offer, I’ll take it.”

“I make my own luck,” said Euan. “I’ve plenty to spare.” He smiled a remarkably sweet smile. “Take it with you, as much as you need. Go and sleep. Dream of victory. Be the bear and the bull and the stallion. Be strong.”

If he only knew, she thought. She had a powerful, almost overwhelming urge to kiss him.

That would have been a very unwise thing to do. She hoped her departure did not look too much like flight.

Chapter Six

As the first light of dawn touched the summit of the Mountain, the Called stood in a line in the inner court of the school. They were all perfectly silent except for the chattering of teeth.

They had been awakened in the dark by the ringing of a bell. Except for the clothes they had worn to sleep in, everything that each of them owned was gone.

The few who, like Valeria, had slept fully dressed were lucky. Some of the rest were naked, and most wore only a shirt. They had to get up and march where Rider Andres led, just as they were. Then they had to stand in the courtyard, shuddering in the early-morning cold. It might be summer in gentler countries, but winter still lingered in the mountains.

Daylight grew slowly. Valeria watched the Mountain brighten. It seemed to hang above the wall in front of her, luminously white against a cloudless sky.

The Call had gone silent. She felt strange without it, like an empty cup waiting to be filled.

Somewhat after full light but before the sun climbed over the wall, she heard the measured beat of hooves on stone. A double row of riders on shining white horses came riding in beneath the arch opposite the Mountain, just as she had heard in all the stories.

Her throat closed. Her eyes were stinging with tears. She had waited so long and traveled so far and given up so much, all for this.

The riders halted facing the line of the Called and spread in their own line. There were eight of them, dressed alike in boots and breeches and coats of a familiar style and plainness. She was wearing much the same, in the same drab brown color.

Their horses were smaller than they had been in her dreams. Apart from the white gleam of their coats and the magic of their existence, they were stocky and thickset and rather plain. Anywhere but here, she would have called them sturdy grey cobs with arched noses and—

Oh, no, she thought. No. That could not—

Two of the riders moved ahead of the rest. One was an older man, almost as grey as his horse. The other, in the circumstances, did not surprise her at all.

He did not alarm her, either, but that must be shock. She was looking at the end of her hopes. Of all the people in the world who could have appeared to test her, it would have to be the one man outside her family who knew what she was.

Kerrec looked just as chilly and arrogant in this place as he had in Mallia, but here at least he fit. His grey cob greeted her with a dark ironic glance and a flicker of humor that almost tricked a smile out of her. The stallion had taken a wicked delight in pretending to be a common horse. Even she had fallen for the deception, although that, he confessed with a slant of the ear, had not been easy to accomplish.

She supposed she should feel flattered. This was one of the white gods, and he had let her know that her magic was strong enough to stretch his powers a little.

The older man was speaking. Valeria made herself listen. She was not likely to be here much longer, but until Kerrec saw and recognized her, she could pretend that she was still a candidate for the testing.

“I am Master Nikos,” the man said. “This is First Rider Kerrec. Those behind us are riders of the school, with whom you will become familiar as the testing progresses. Our stallions you will come to know when you are ready. This who condescends to carry me is Icarra. Petra carries First Rider Kerrec.”

Valeria bowed to the stallions with the feminine names. Those were the names of their mothers, which they kept as a matter of honor. There would be more to each name, the name of a First Sire, but that, too, she supposed, would come to light when she was ready.

As she straightened from her bow, she saw that a few others had done the same. Iliya was one, Dacius another. Most of the Called still stood at attention. The nobleman, whose shirt was silk and whose legs were as white and thin as a bird’s, was actually sneering. He did not bow to anyone, his attitude said.

Petra had his eye on that one. The nobleman did not seem to care. Did he even know?

He must. He was Called.

Master Nikos went on in his dry precise voice. “I see that some of you understand the proprieties of the school. Let it be your first lesson, then. Men have no rank here and no station but what they earn through the stallions. Whatever you were before you passed our gate, forget. Here you are newborn. Everyone is older and wiser and loftier than you. Loftiest of all are the stallions. If you came here in the delusion that you would master them, wake now. No man is a stallion’s master. He may be companion, he may be partner—but master, never.”

Valeria saw how they were all, men and stallions, noticing who listened and who did not. She noticed for herself how many of the Called did not seem aware that the stallions were part of the testing. They must be too scared or cocky or confused to see it.

“We will divide you now,” Master Nikos said, “eight by eight. Eight is the number of the Dance. In eights you will work and ride and, when time permits, play. Be assured that when your eight is broken, as others fail the testing or withdraw voluntarily, those who pass will continue. No one of you will suffer for the failure of the others.”

“There will be time to play?” someone asked.

“This is only the first testing,” the Master answered. “It is the shortest and simplest of all, and the least dangerous. The consequence of failure is dismissal, but no worse. Your whole life here, if you pass the next three days, will be testing, and some of it will be deadly. Even I am still tested.” His eyes swept their faces. “You may always choose to leave. If any of you chooses now, you will be escorted back to barracks, your belongings returned to you and a horse given you if you brought none. You are free to go.”

There was a silence. No one moved. Valeria thought about it. Every moment that passed brought her closer to betrayal. She could walk out now and no one be the wiser.

She could not do it. The Mountain held her. The stallions watched, studying her. None of them had cried out against her, although they all knew perfectly well that she was female.

Master Nikos nodded as if pleased. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

He beckoned. Three of the riders came out of the line. Kerrec made the fourth. They rode up and down the rank of the Called.

The stallions did the choosing. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, how the horse paused an instant before the rider tapped the candidate’s shoulder.

Petra halted in front of Valeria. She looked up into Kerrec’s expressionless face. There was no sign of recognition in it. His hand fell on her shoulder.

He did not name her female and impostor. He said nothing at all. She jerked forward to stand with the others whom Petra had selected. Iliya and Dacius were there, and to her disgust, the arrogant nobleman. He seemed to think that a First Rider was no less than his rank deserved.

Four more came out of the line to stand with them. When they were all together, Kerrec dismounted with quick grace. “Name yourselves,” he said.

The nobleman was first on the left. He opened his mouth for what was clearly a lengthy proceeding, but Kerrec cut him off. “You may lay claim to one name,” he said. “Choose it well. If you pass the tests, it will be the one by which you are known forever after.”

The nobleman looked as if he had bitten into a lemon. “Only one name? But I am—”

“You are no one,” said Kerrec. “Choose.”

“Paulus,” the nobleman said sullenly. “I’ll be Paulus.”

“Good,” said Kerrec. His eye was already resting on the next.

The four whom Valeria did not know were called Marcus, Embry, Cullen, and Batu. The first three were ordinary enough, black-haired and olive-skinned people of Aurelia. Marcus had a quickness about him that made her think he had a temper, and Cullen had a surprising crop of freckles—a mark of barbarian blood, like his short, upturned nose and square jaw. Batu was something else altogether. He was as black as a ripe olive, with a broad, blunt face and hair in a hundred oiled plaits wound close around his skull. He had come even farther than Iliya to answer the Call, from a country where horses were all but unheard of.

She was the last of the line, and the most reluctant to speak. She could not believe that Kerrec did not recognize her, but when his eye fell on her, it was as blank as before. “Valens,” she said. “My name is Valens.”

He nodded briskly as he had to everyone else. “Now you know each other,” he said. “Come with me.”

The other eights had already left the courtyard. So had the remaining riders and their stallions. Kerrec left Petra behind and brought his charges into a dormitory much smaller than the barracks in which they had been staying. With its wood-paneled walls and mullioned windows, it might have been a room in an inn. The beds were hard and plain, but they were beds rather than bunks, four on one side of the room and four on the other. On each lay a saddlebag or a pack, a set of clothes and a pair of boots.

Valeria’s saddlebags lay on the bed farthest from the door, as if someone knew that she had been out wandering last night. Its advantage was that it was closest to the hearth. Iliya’s was next to it and Batu’s across from it.

“Put on these clothes,” Kerrec said, “and rest if you can. There’s a room yonder for the shy or the incontinent. In an hour I’ll come to fetch you for the first test.”

Valeria almost thought that his glance had fallen on her when he spoke of the inner room. It was a bathroom, she discovered, with a large wooden tub and something Valeria had heard of but never seen, a water privy.

She could have spent the whole hour playing with the water that ran from pipes, not only cold but, to her lasting delight, hot. But there were others waiting and a test coming. She settled for a quick scrub of face and hands before she stripped off her travel-worn clothes and put on the new ones. The coat and breeches were dark grey instead of brown, but they were otherwise identical to the riders’. The boots were riding boots, and they fit well. There were a belt and a cap, which she put on. The cap was embroidered with a silver horsehead.

She went out to face the rest, feeling awkward and shakily proud. Most of them were already dressed, except for one or two who professed to be as shy as she was. She wondered a little wildly if any of them was protecting the same secret.

It was odd to see them all dressed alike. Nothing could make Batu look less exotic, but Iliya seemed almost ordinary without his ragged robes. Except for the clan marks on his cheeks and forehead, he was enough like the rest of them to be barely noticeable.

None of them had much to say. The reality of the testing was coming down on them all. Some lay down and tried to rest as Kerrec had commanded. Iliya paced like a tiger in a cage until Marcus growled at him, then he sat on the floor and tried visibly not to twitch. Cullen amused himself with plaiting ropes of sunlight and shade. He had so much magic in him that he left a faintly luminous trail when he moved.

Valeria did not dare lie down. If she did, she would fall asleep, and she needed to be wide awake when Kerrec came back. She sat on the bed and tucked up her feet and reached for the quiet place inside her, where her magic was.

It was elusive. When she did find it, it was full of white horses. They were standing in a circle all around her, staring at her.

It was quiet, in its way. It was also deeply disconcerting. Her magic was hers and no one else’s. Her mother had taught her that, and she believed it. What business had these horses, even if they were gods, to trespass in it?

The horses did not see fit to answer. They were studying her.

“Still?” she asked them.

They did not answer that, either. She was going to have to live with their silent scrutiny, whether she liked it or not. She could only hope that they came to a decision about her sooner rather than later.

Chapter Seven

When the hour was up, it was not Kerrec who came to fetch them but a young man somewhat older than they. His grey coat was edged with a thin band of lighter grey, and the badge on his cap showed a horse dancing against the rays of the sun. He named himself a cadet captain, and let them know that he was four years past his Calling.

He led them briskly through a confusing variety of halls, corridors, courtyards and alleyways to a square of grass surrounded by the inevitable grey stone walls. Kerrec was waiting there, and grooms with horses.

One of the Called behind Valeria groaned. He had voiced the disappointment they all felt. These were not white stallions but common bays and chestnuts. To add insult to injury, as Paulus observed in a clearly audible mutter, they were all either mares or geldings.

“These mounts are lent to us by the School of War,” Kerrec said after they had formed their line in front of him. “They will administer the simplest of the tests. Each of you will choose a horse, then groom, saddle and bridle him. Stand then and wait on further orders.”

Some of the Called were relaxing and smiling. Valeria was much too suspicious for that. She had seen a white shape in the shadow of the portico, and felt Petra’s eyes on her and the rest. This test was not what it seemed.

There were twice as many horses as candidates. Paulus went straight to the tallest, whose coat was like a gold coin and whose mane was a fall of white water. He was even showier than the hunters’ horses outside of Mallia. He was also sickle-hocked and camped out behind, and that lovely big eye was as dull as dirt.