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Her skin was smooth, like cream, and more golden than white. Her hair was blue-black, cropped into curls. He ran his hand from her nape down the track of her spine to the sweet curve of her buttocks. She never moved, but her breathing caught.
He followed his hand with kisses. She was breathing more rapidly now. He willed her to turn and look into his face. Her name was on his lips, shaped without sound. Valeria.
Five
“You’re not Amma.”
The voice most definitely was not Valeria’s, nor was it Murna’s. It was a child’s, sharp and imperious.
The golden-skinned lover was gone. Euan’s mother’s bed was as narrow as ever. A child was standing over him, glowering.
It was a young child but long-legged, with a mane of coppery hair imperfectly contained in a plait, and fierce yellow eyes. By the single plait and the half-outgrown breeks, it was male—too young yet for the warriors’ house, but old enough to be well weaned.
Euan shook off the fog of the dream. “I’m not your amma,” he agreed. “I’m waiting for my mother.”
“Wait somewhere else,” the child said. “This is Amma’s room.”
“Not unless she shares it with my mother,” Euan said. His eyes narrowed. “My name is Euan. What is yours?”
“No one’s named me yet,” the child said.
Euan’s brows rose. A child without a name was a child without a father—because it was the father who raised the child before the clan, gave him his name and bound him to the people. This one seemed not to find any shame in it.
“Who is your mother?” Euan asked him.
“Mother’s dead,” the child said. “Where’s the other one?”
“What—”
“The lady. Where did she go?”
Euan’s nape prickled. “You saw her?”
“She’s pretty,” the child said.
“Very pretty,” Euan said a little faintly.
He was beginning to think this was a dream, too. A child of the people who saw the unseen was either fed to the wolves or handed over to the priesthood. Somehow he could not see this bright child as a priest.
He seemed very solid, but then, so had Valeria. Maybe this was all a delusion, some sleight of Gothard’s to trap Euan in the starstone.
If he let his mind run that way, he would turn as mad as Gothard. He sat up and breathed deep. The air smelled and tasted real. The child in front of him did not go away.
He was real, then. So was Euan’s mother, coming up behind him. “Ah, wolfling,” she said, “there you are. Brigid’s looking for you.”
The child shrugged that off. “There’s a man in your bed, Amma.”
“So I see,” Murna said. “Go on now. I’ll find you later and we’ll visit the hound puppies.”
This child was not easily bribed. His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. But Murna had raised many a child. Her own eyes narrowed even more formidably than his.
He was headstrong but he was no fool. He sulked and dragged, but he went where he was told.
The fog was leaving Euan’s wits—and none too soon, either. “I don’t suppose that’s mine,” he said.
“So his mother said.” Murna sat on the stool that stood at the end of the bed.
“Who was she?”
“Her name was Deira from Dun Gralloch,” Murna said. “Her father was—”
“I remember,” Euan said.
That had been another winter before another war. There was a gathering of the clans around Dun Eidyn, to celebrate the dark of the year and plan the spring’s battles. It would be far from Euan’s first battle, but it would be his first war against the empire.
He was full of himself that night, and full of honey mead, too. He looked up from his newly emptied cup to meet a pair of eyes the color of dark amber. Gradually he took in the rest of her, smooth oval face, neatly braided hair the precise color of her eyes, and tall body, well rounded, with deep breasts and broad hips.
When he smiled at her, she did not smile back. She lowered her eyes as a modest woman should do, but she watched him sidelong.
He found her in his bed that night, curled up, asleep. When he touched her, she woke completely. She was older than he was but still a maiden—though he did not know that until after it was done. He did not know her name, either, not for the nine nights she spent in his bed.
They spoke of everything but that—the world and the people in it, the One, the empire, the dreams they had and the life they hoped for. She was the first mortal creature he told of his dearest dream, not only to be high king but to sit in the throne of the emperor in Aurelia. She did not laugh at him, either. She said, “I’ll make you a son to give you strength, and to stand beside you when you take that throne.”
“I’m going to do it,” he said.
“I know you are,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight, drinking in his face. There was something odd about her expression—not sad, exactly, but somehow wistful.
Then she kissed him and he forgot everything else. Five years after, he remembered little of that night but warmth and laughter and such pleasure as a man could never forget.
Toward dawn, she kissed him one last time, letting it linger, then drew away as she had done at the end of each night. But she paused, bending down again. Her voice was soft in his ear. “Deira,” she said. “My name is Deira.”
He reached for her to keep her with him. He opened his mouth to ask her the rest of it—her father’s name, her clan, everything—but she slipped away. That day the people of Dun Gralloch left the gathering. That night, his bed was empty. Deira was gone.
He meant to find her. But first there was the war, then they lost it, then he was sent as a hostage into Aurelia. He had not forgotten her, but five years was a long time. He would have expected that she had married and borne another man sons—that was what any sensible woman would do.
Now that he knew what had become of her, he surprised himself with grief. Out of it, he said to his mother, “She really is dead? Was it the child?”
Murna shook her head. “There was plague the year after he was born. He lived. She died. Her father sent him to me as her last gift, with a message. Keep him until his father comes for him.”
“Was she dishonored? Was she mistreated? Did—”
“She was treated as well as she had a right to expect,” his mother said. “The child was allowed to live. He was sent to the king’s house for fostering. That’s more than most fathers would do for a daughter who despoiled herself.”
“I would have asked for her as a wife,” Euan said.
“I’m sure you would,” said Murna without expression. “Will you give the child a name, then?”
“Of course I will,” he said. “I’ll do it today.”
That surprised her. He did not see why, but there was no denying it. “Are you sure?”
He frowned. “Why? Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”
“No,” said Murna. “No reason.”
That was not the truth, but something kept him from challenging her. There would be time later, he told himself. He had come here to ask her advice, not to find a son—and those other matters were pressing.
It was odd how, after all that had happened, even to the unmaking of a priest, Euan remembered little of what he said to his mother or she to him. But he remembered every moment of the exchange with his son.
That was his son—the child of his body. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name and ancestry. He would give the boy a name of his own and the life that went with it, firstborn son of a prince of the Calletani.
Murna brought the boy into the hall after the men had gathered there but before the day’s meal had been spread on the tables. That was the time for petitions and disputes, for men to come to the king with things that needed doing or settling.
Euan had been listening carefully to each one. Some needed his father’s decision, others the warleaders’ or the priests’. As he had when he was young, he committed each to memory.
He did not hold his breath waiting for his mother to bring the child. She might make him send for the boy—and he was prepared to do that.
Late in the proceedings, as two men of the warband argued heatedly over the ownership of a crooked-horned cow, Euan saw his mother standing among the rest of the petitioners. There was a plaid over her head as if she had been a common woman. The child was too small to see among so many grown folk, but Murna looked down once and said something.
Euan did not need that kind of proof. The boy was here. He knew it in his gut.
His heart was racing. For a man to claim a son was a great thing. For a man to do it the day after he had come home from a long exile was greater still. It was like an omen, a promise that his dream would come true.
The petitions that had fascinated him now seemed terribly tedious. There were so many and they were so trivial. If they stretched out much longer, there would be no time.
Just as he was about to rise up and roar his mother’s name, the last petitioner finished his rambling tale and received quick justice from the king. Euan paid no attention. His eyes were on the child, whom at last he could see.
His child. His son. No one could mistake it. There was no sign of his mother in him except for a certain air, a deep and inborn calm. He was long-limbed and rangy like a young wolf, and his eyes were wolf eyes, amber-gold and slanting in the long planes of his face.
He was royal-clan Calletani, like his father and grandfather and all their fathers before them. The One himself had marked him for what he was.
He stood straight beside his grandmother. There was no fear in him, only curiosity. His eyes were wide, taking in everything.
When those eyes fell on Euan, they brightened. He pulled free from his grandmother, who was just beginning to bow in front of the king, and sprang into Euan’s arms.
Euan was as startled as everyone else. The child was heavier than he looked, and strong.
“No need to guess whose litter that cub came from,” someone said.
Euan readied a glare to sweep across the hall, but the child laughed. His mirth was rang out in the silence. Euan swung him onto his shoulder and said so they all could hear, “You guessed right. I’m claiming him. He’s my blood and bone, the wolf-cub of the Calletani. I name him Conor, and bid you all name him likewise.”
The name ran around the room in a low roll of sound. Conor…Conor…Conor.
Euan looked up into the boy’s face. His head was tilted. He was listening hard. When the sound of his name had died down, he nodded. “That’s my name,” he said. “My name is Conor.”
“That was well done,” Gothard said.
Conor was back among the women again. The night’s meal had turned into a celebration, welcoming a new man-child to the clan. Euan staggered out of it, aswim with the last of the wine, to find Gothard squatting in front of the jakes.
He or someone had made a cage of gold wire for the starstone and hung it around his neck. It swung as he rocked, drinking darkness out of the air. “Well done,” he repeated. “Oh, so well done. Show the people you’ve got what a king needs—balls and gall and enough sense to get yourself an heir before it’s too late.”
“I’m glad you approve,” Euan said. He made no effort to sound as if he meant it.
“I only wonder,” Gothard said, rocking and smiling, with the starstone swinging and swinging, “seeing how strongly all the people resist the very idea of magic, how you managed to beget a child who fairly crackles with it.”
Euan had no memory of movement. One moment he was standing on one leg, wondering if he should piss in the bastard’s face to relieve himself and shut him up. The next, his hand was locked around Gothard’s throat.
The stone did not blast him. He found that interesting.
He spoke very carefully, enunciating each word. “My son is not a mage.”
“You know he is,” Gothard said.
Euan’s fingers tightened. Gothard turned a gratifying shade of crimson. “Whatever you think he is,” Euan said, “or think you may turn him into, you will keep your claws off him. If I find even the slightest hint that you have touched him or burdened him with so much as a word, I will flay you alive and bathe you in salt.”
He saw how Gothard’s eyes flickered. His own stayed fixed on that purpling face. “Don’t think your stone will save you. It was mine first. It remembers. And so should you. Hands and magic off my son. Do you understand?”
Gothard’s eyes had begun to bulge. It was a pity, Euan thought, that he needed a stone mage to exploit the full power of the stone. This was the only one he was likely to get. Gothard had to go on breathing—as much as Euan might wish otherwise.
He let Gothard go. Gothard fell over, gagging and choking, wheezing for breath. Euan left him to it.
He could feel Gothard’s eyes on his back as he went into the jakes. The hate in them was strong enough to make his skin twitch.
He shrugged it off. As long as they needed each other, there would be no killing on either side, and no Unmaking, either. After that, the One would provide. It would give Euan great pleasure to finish what he had begun.
Six
The Mountain was singing. It was a deep song, far below the edge of hearing, but it thrummed in Valeria’s bones. When she looked up from the shelter of the citadel toward that jagged peak, gleaming white against the piercing blue of the sky, and heard the great sound that came out of it, she knew a profound and almost unbearable joy.
The Mountain was locked in snow. Winter, like the claws of grief and irretrievable loss, gripped the school as if it would never let go. Yet the sun was just a fraction stronger and the air just a whisper warmer. And the Mountain sent out the Call.
It was strange to hear it and know what it was and feel the power of it, but to be no part of it. She had been Called a year before, and now the Mountain had her. This new compulsion, renewed every spring for a thousand years, was meant for someone else. Many someones, she hoped. The school needed as many new riders as the gods would deign to send.
When the first of the Called came in, she was schooling Sabata in the riding court nearest the southward gate. It was the first day in months that anyone had been able to ride under the sky. The grass around the edges of the court was just beginning to show a glimmer of green.
The raked sand of the arena was a little damp from the winter’s rains, but Sabata moved lightly on it. He liked its softness and its slight springiness.
In fact he was moving a little too lightly. He was fresh and not particularly obedient, and there was a twitch in his back that warned her to be alert.
Sabata was a god and a Great One, but he was also a stallion, and spring was in his blood. He could smell the mares on the other side of the school, in the School of War. If he had had his way, he would have gone courting and won himself a band of them.
“You have a high opinion of yourself,” she said as he tried for the dozenth time to veer off toward the gate. He had not succeeded yet, but he was determined to keep trying. Discipline was the last thing he wanted to think about just then.
“Discipline is the first virtue of a rider,” Valeria said.
Sabata shook his head and snorted. There was a distinct hump in his back under the saddle. He was not a rider, and very glad he was of it, too.
Just as he left the ground, a stranger’s startled face blurred past her. It was only an instant’s distraction, but that was enough for Sabata. He exploded in more directions than she could count.
