Shattered Dance. Caitlin Brennan

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СКАЧАТЬ do smell better,” Gothard pointed out. For him, that was rollicking humor. “You’re given three days to enjoy your elevation. Then the reality of it comes crashing in. I’m to remind you that these aren’t the tribes your predecessor ruled. They’ve suffered a monstrous defeat and great loss of life and strength. The winter has been brutal and the weak or wounded who did not die in battle are dead of starvation and sickness. It’s a raw, bleak spring with a grim summer ahead, while the empire strips us of what little we have left and crushes us under the heels of its legions.

      “You are high king of the people, and that’s a great thing—but it’s also a heavy burden. Even if they were victorious, you would still bear all their ills as well as their triumphs. Now in defeat, it’s all on your shoulders. You bear the brunt and you carry the blame.”

      Euan’s shoulders sagged as if they were indeed loaded down with all the horrors of a disastrous war and its even grimmer aftermath. But he was no mage’s toy, whatever Gothard might hope to make of him. He shook off the spell with a snap of contempt. “You don’t think I know all that? This is mine and always has been. I was meant for it.”

      “Surely,” said Gothard, “but are you prepared for the bad as well as the good?”

      “I’ve ridden out two great defeats,” Euan said. “There will be no third. You are going to help me make sure of that.”

      Gothard’s brows arched. “A new plan, my lord?”

      “Maybe.” Euan rose carefully from his blankets. “Maybe the same one, with refinements. We don’t need to destroy the imperial armies if we destroy its leaders. We’ve known that from the beginning.”

      “But war is so much more glorious than conspiracy and assassination.” Gothard’s tone was mocking but his eyes were deadly earnest. “Will the tribes understand, do you think?”

      “The people won’t be going to war again for a long time,” Euan said. “It’s not a choice between glory and practicality. There’s no glory left.”

      “You want revenge.”

      “Don’t you?”

      Gothard’s smile showed an edge of fang. “What do you have in mind?”

      “Come to me after the kingmaking is over,” Euan said. “It’s time to strike the deathblow against the empire. We’ve failed twice. Third time will end it—one way or the other.”

      The gleam of Gothard’s eyes told Euan his words had struck home. Gothard was half an imperial. The late emperor had sired him on a concubine, and by that accident of birth denied him the right to claim the throne—a fact for which Gothard hated his father with intensity that had nothing sane about it.

      Gothard had raised the powers that destroyed the emperor and almost taken the rest of the world with him. If he had his way, his sister who was soon to be crowned empress and his brother who was something else altogether would be worse than dead—Unmade, so that nothing was left of them, not even a memory.

      Gothard said no word of that, nor had Euan expected him to. He turned on Euan instead and said, “You’d die and abandon the people?”

      “I’ll go down with them,” Euan said, “if that’s how it has to be.”

      “Maybe you are meant to be king,” Gothard said.

      “If I had been king sooner, we would not have lost the war.” Euan could feel the anger rising, old now and deep but as strong as ever. He throttled it down. There was no profit in wasting it on Gothard, who was his ally—however unwelcome.

      He forced a smile. It was more of a rictus grin, but it would have to do. “Still. Now I am the Ard Ri. Maybe I’ll do better than the one who went before me. Maybe I’ll do worse. But I’ll do the best I can for my people. That, I’m sworn to.”

      It was not so far off from the oath he had taken while the last challenger’s body was still warm, when he was lifted up in front of the people and invested with the mantle and the spear and the heavy golden torque. But now, in front of his most hated ally, he spoke from the heart. He felt the earth shift under his feet, rocking and then going still, as it was said to do when a man of power swore a great oath.

      He meant every word. He would live and die by it. Life and soul were bound to it.

      That was as it should be. He left the tent that he had won and the ally the One God had imposed upon him, and stepped out into the cold bright morning, the first morning of his high kingship.

      Chapter Two

      The Mountain slept, locked deep in winter’s snow. Far beneath the ice and cold and the cracking of frozen stone, the fire of its magic burned low.

      It would wake soon and send forth the Call, and young men—and maybe women—would come from the whole of Aurelia to answer it. But tonight it was asleep. One might almost imagine that it was a mortal place and its powers mortal powers, and gods who wore the shape of white horses did not graze its high pastures.

      Valeria leaned on the window frame. The moon was high, casting cold light on the Mountain’s summit. It glowed blue-white against the luminous sky.

      “Has anyone ever been up there?” she asked. “All the way past the Ladies’ pastures to the top?”

      Kerrec wrapped her in a warm blanket, with his arms around that, cradling the expanding curve of her belly. He kissed the place where her neck and shoulder joined and rested his chin lightly on her shoulder. His voice was soft and deep in her ear. “There’s a legend of a rider who tried it, but he either came back mad or never came back at all.”

      “Why? What’s up there?”

      “Ice and snow and pitiless stone, and air too thin to breathe,” he said, “and, they say, a gate of time and the gods. The Great Ones come through it into this world, and the Ladies come and go, or so it’s said. It’s beyond human understanding.”

      “You believe that?”

      “I can’t disprove it,” he said.

      “Someday maybe someone will.”

      “Not you,” he said firmly, “and not now.”

      She turned in his arms. He looked like an emperor on an old coin, with his clean-carved face and narrow arched nose—not at all surprising, since those bygone emperors had been his ancestors—but lately he had learned to unbend a little. In spite of his stern words, he was almost smiling.

      “Not before spring,” she conceded. She kissed him, taking her time about it.

      The baby stirred between them, kicking so hard she gasped. He clutched at her. She pushed him away, half laughing and half glaring. “Stop that! I’m not dying. Neither is she.”

      “Are you sure?” he said. “You looked so—”

      “Shocked? She kicks like a mule.” Valeria rubbed her side where the pain was slowly fading. “Go on, go to sleep. I’ll be there in a while.”

      He eyed her narrowly. “You promise? No wandering out to the stable again?”

      “Not СКАЧАТЬ