Nine White Horses (29 page)

Bronwen tossed her head. “That doesn’t necessarily mean
anything.”

“So? I thought you were going to look for evil Mages in the
town?”

“I’ll do that,” she said stoutly, “and look for them here,
too. So should you, if you can spare time from drooling at that woman’s feet.
What was she, your first love?”

“Yes,” he said, and that took her quite nicely aback. “She
was the first person I ever saw ride, who made me understand that riding is
truly an art, and worth studying for itself. Thanks in large part to her, I’ll
study it for as long as I’m alive and able to balance myself in a saddle.”

“Oh,” said Bronwen in a gratifyingly small voice. “That kind
of love. Believe it or not, I can understand it. I had one of those, too, when
I was too young to know better.”

“It’s a good thing,” he said, “to have an example to
follow.”

“It depends on the example,” she said, springing to her
feet. “For me, it was you.”

She left him with that. It was a nicely dramatic exit, he
had to admit, though it did not embarrass him nearly as much as she might have
hoped.

o0o

Egil woke in the dark. He knew at once where he was and
why, and somewhat of the when. The air had the taste and the texture it always
had just before dawn.

Struck by the desire to breathe it fresh from the source, he
left the bed and went to the window, unlatched it and swung it open. Cool soft
air bathed his face, sweet with the scents of grass and flowers. He drank it in
blissful gulps.

The stars were bright overhead, with neither cloud nor moon
to dim them. He found the pole star and marked the shapes of constellations
rising in the east that, later in the summer, would stand high overhead.

The sky rippled suddenly as if he had cast a stone into a
pool. He staggered, clutching the window frame. When his eyes opened again, it
was as if he stood underwater. Wave after wave ran outward from the center of
the sky.

:Cynara!: he cried inside his head. :Cynara, for the love of
gods! What is happening?:

:Strangeness.: Her reply was as serene as ever. As if she
had power to quell whatever had turned the sky to water, the eerie ripples
slowed and eventually stopped. The stars were still again. The wind blew soft,
bringing the first of the morning light.

o0o

No one mentioned what had happened, and Egil decided to
keep it to himself. They all must have slept through it.

He entertained the brief thought—he almost called it
hope—that he had imagined it. But the shock was still in him. Well after the
sun came up, he caught himself looking upward, as if the sky would turn strange
again, and this time swallow the world.

Nothing that he saw that morning was anything but sane and
earthly. The horses were as fine as Godric had promised, and the riding and
training were very good indeed. He was privileged to meet Madame Larissa’s new
stallion, who showed great promise, and to see her ride him with even more
skill and grace than Egil remembered.

No one asked anything of the Heralds—they would not dream of
it—but Godric and Larissa between them inveigled Egil into riding Cynara in one
of the arenas. Cynara was glad to dance again; she had missed it on the
journey.

So had Egil. Riding across country was a fine and useful
thing, and pleasant enough apart from rain and mud and wind. But this was the
thing he lived for, this art, this dance of horse and rider.

At first he was stiff and self-conscious, but Cynara’s
rather too obvious air of indulging his frailty brought him to order. He forgot
who was watching, and let himself enter into the place where his heart most
truly was.

The world was different there. Words dropped away. Thoughts,
hopes, fears, were dim and distant things. The dance was all there was. Two
bodies so very different and yet so clearly meant to dance together, joined in
balance and harmony. The air was a living thing around them, enfolding each
movement, shaping and transforming it.

For an instant, at the heart of it, he
understood . . . something. Some very important thing about what
the sky had done and why, and who had caused it.

The instant slipped away. The dance unraveled. Cynara stood
in the center of the arena, washed in applause and cheers.

Egil needed to go back. He had to try to see. The answer was
there.

But Cynara had had enough. People were offering other
mounts—horses trained with exquisite skill and artistry. Part of Egil wanted to
grasp at them all, but the part that shared its soul with Cynara said,
Wait.

Egil did not want to wait. But he trusted no one else as he
trusted Cynara, and for today, she was done. What riding he did after that was
marvelous in itself, but he never went back to the place where the answers
were. He never even came close.

The Queen’s sources had been right. Whatever was happening
here, it had something to do with the school. Whether it was dangerous—he hoped
not, but he was afraid that it might be worse than that. Very much worse.

o0o

Heralds’ training instructed him to share his thoughts
with his intern, but he was not entirely sure what they were yet. She was
already suspicious, and that was a good thing. No need to swell that suspicion
until he had something solid to tell her.

That night he went to bed early and woke even earlier than
before, but this time nothing happened. The stars stayed in their places,
except for a handful that fell in a shower of silent silver rain. Meteors were
a wonder in their own right, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The next few days were among the most pleasant he could
remember. To be among horsemen all day, every day, sharing what he knew and
learning so much more, was his personal dream of heaven.

Bronwen did not share his obsession with the art of riding.
Once she had won the awe of all the students with her bright hair and her
splendid mount, she grew quickly bored. By the second morning, she demanded
leave to explore the valley.

Egil granted it. Cynara would make sure Rohanan stayed in
contact, and there were always students willing, not to mention eager, to play
escort. At the very least, she would keep herself occupied—and if she did find
anything, Rohanan had orders to report it instantly.

Cynara would enforce those orders. Meanwhile, Egil was free
to indulge himself. He was aware always, of course, that he had a mission, and
that everything he did should aim toward that end.

After a handful of days, Egil began to wonder what had
happened to the moon. It should have been new when they arrived in Osgard, but
that was days ago. And yet every night was the dark of the moon. No thin sliver
of new moon appeared to wax night by night toward the full.

No one else seemed to notice. He detected no signs of a
spell; everyone was normal, and the horses were unperturbed. Yet the sky at
night was crowded with stars, and the moon never rose at all.

The following morning, Egil was up hours earlier than usual.
By full light he had Cynara saddled and ready to ride.

The arena in which he usually rode was already occupied.
That was a minor inconvenience: there were other arenas, and most of those were
empty. But he paused to watch, because there were eight riders—a quadrille—and
one of them was Larissa on a fine black stallion.

Cynara was happy enough to have her reins looped up and be
turned loose to graze for a few moments more before she went to work. As Egil
watched, Godric paused beside him, halter in hand, on his way to fetch the
first training candidate of the day.

“This is the new quadrille,” Godric said in Egil’s ear.
“They’ll perform it in public at midsummer, when the local gentry come to see
what we’re up to this year. That’s when the new students arrive, and the young
horses, too. It’s a great event all around.”

Egil nodded. Others had mentioned that as well. It was still
the better part of a month away, and while he was loving this interlude, he was
practical enough to acknowledge that by then he should be back in the
Collegium.

All the more reason to absorb what he could, while he could.
The quadrille was a courtly dance of riders and horses, usually set to music,
though there was no musician here to set the rhythm. Larissa and seven of her
best young riders on matched blacks transcribed a series of intertwining
figures, moving in a smooth skein that Egil knew from experience was anything
but easy to achieve.

His admiration gave way to a peculiar uneasiness. It was
rather like the sensation that had brought him to Osgard, and rather like a
voice singing just perceptibly off key. It was a lovely, an ingenious
quadrille, beautifully ridden, and there was something deeply wrong with it.

:Do you feel it, too?: he asked Cynara.

She had already lifted her head to watch the dance. Her
nostrils flared; she shuddered, a ripple of the skin over her whole body. The
sight of it made Egil’s own skin crawl.

:Tell them to stop,: she said.

He had never felt what he sensed in her just then. She was
calm—she fought for that. Just how hard, he could see in the rigidity of her
neck and the perfect stillness of her posture.

:They have to stop,: she said.

Egil’s fingers were numb as he fumbled with her reins. When
he touched her, sparks leaped. He flung himself into the saddle with nothing of
his usual grace.

She barely waited for him to settle before she reared up on
her hindlegs and screamed.

No horse, even dying in agony, had ever made such a sound.
Even the wind stopped, appalled. The quadrille staggered to a halt; riders
clapped hands over ears, and horses bucked and plunged.

With that one enormous eruption of fear and rage and sorrow,
the tension had gone out of Cynara. She pawed the sand, ears flat, snapping
teeth in the startled face of Larissa’s stallion.

Larissa was incapable of being truly angry at a Companion,
but she was visibly out of temper. “That had a purpose, I hope,” she said.

Egil scraped his wits together and put them in some sort of
order. “Those figures,” he said. “Where did you learn them?”

“They’re my own,” she said without either anger or
defensiveness.

He shook his head. He did not mean to be tactless, but
Cynara’s scream was echoing still inside his skull. “Something inspired you.
Didn’t it?”

“Well,” she said, “yes. There’s an old book in the library,
full of patterns like these.”

“Show me,” said Egil.

o0o

“These are spells.”

Egil had known as soon as he saw the quadrille. The book
from the high shelf in the library, with its ancient and battered cover and its
crumbling pages, had done nothing to change his mind. The drawing on the page
confirmed it.

He did not recognize the language in which the book was
written, except that it was old. How old, he was almost afraid to guess. On
each page was a pattern, deceptively pretty, like something a lady would
embroider on a coverlet.

Any coverlet embroidered with these would be weapon enough
to start another Mage War. Egil forced his eyes to slide past them and not sink
into them, trapped within their curves and corners. Each one was a maze to bind
a spirit, along with any powers that spirit had.

“Why did you choose this one?” he asked, not quite pointing
at the page Larissa had marked for him.

She shrugged. “It seemed the most ridable,” she said. “It
has a flow to it that suits a horse’s gaits perfectly.”

Egil looked for signs of deception, but her eyes were clear.
She might be an accomplished liar; that was always possible. He could not bring
himself to think so. Horses were the most honest of creatures; anyone who
trained them truly well could no more lie than a horse could.

There was a difference between lying and self-delusion. “Did
you know these were spells?” he asked her.

“Not at first,” she said, “but after a while I began to
wonder. There’s a pattern to them; they flow from one to the next. They’re
protective spells, I think. Wards. They bring safety to whoever works them.”

“Did someone tell you that?”

“No,” she said. “It’s a feeling I get when I look at them.
They make me feel safe.”

That was not the effect they had on Egil at all. This was
far outside any sphere of competence he might lay claim to. It needed a Herald
Mage, and he was as mere and ordinary as a Herald could be.

“I have to send word to the Queen,” he said. “In the
meantime, I’m afraid I have to ask that you choreograph another quadrille for
your festival—and not one inspired by this book.”

Larissa frowned. She was not angry, or else she was trying
hard not to be, but he could tell she was confused. “Why, sir? Is there a law
against it?”

“You don’t know what you’ve done, do you?” As soon as Egil
said that, he regretted it. She was his elder; she was by far his superior in
the art of horsemanship.

He stiffened his spine. He was the Queen’s Herald, and
Selenay had sent him on this mission. Now that he was here, he had begun to
realize just how serious this problem was.

Larissa obviously did not. “I haven’t been working spells,”
she said. “I’ve been riding patterns, that’s all. As training exercises,
they’re quite ingenious.”

“They’re more than training exercises,” Egil said. “Have you
by any chance been wondering what happened to the moon?”

She stared at him. “The moon? What does that have to do
with—”

“I’ve been here for eight days,” he said. “I haven’t seen
the moon once. That comes on top of other anomalies—the Queen gave me a fairly
lengthy list. You’ve been riding these patterns since last autumn, am I right?”

“Yes,” she said, “but—”

“The weather has been exceptionally mild here, yes? Has it
rained since autumn?”

“Rained and snowed both,” she said, “in appropriate amounts.
We haven’t been suffering.”