Song Of Unmaking. Caitlin Brennan

      

      SELECTED PRAISE FOR

       THE MOUNTAIN’S CALL

      “Definitely a don’t-put-this-down page-turner!”

      —New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey

      “A riveting plot, complex characters, beautiful descriptions, and heaps of magic.”

      —Romance Reviews Today

      “Caitlin Brennan has created a masterpiece of legend and lore with her first novel. Hauntingly beautiful and extremely powerful…Take Tolkien and Lackey and mix them together and you get this new magic that is Caitlin’s own. You will stay enthralled with each page turned.”

      —The Best Reviews

      “Caitlin Brennan is a fantastic world builder who creates a world where magic is an everyday occurrence…. There is plenty of action and romance in this spellbinding romantic fantasy.”

      —Paranormal Romance Reviews

      CAITLIN BRENNAN

      SONG OF UNMAKING

      For Shenny

       Maybe now your friends will believe

       that your aunt writes books!

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Chapter Twenty-One

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      Chapter Twenty-Seven

      Chapter Twenty-Eight

      Chapter Twenty-Nine

      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 Fifty-One

      Chapter Fifty-Two

      Chapter Fifty-Three

      Chapter Fifty-Four

      Chapter Fifty-Five

      Chapter Fifty-Six

      Chapter Fifty-Seven

      Chapter Fifty-Eight

      Chapter Fifty-Nine

      Chapter Sixty

      Chapter Sixty-One

      Chapter Sixty-Two

      Chapter Sixty-Three

      One

      The sky was raining stars.

      Euan Rohe lay in the frozen sedge. The river gleamed below, solid with ice from bank to bank. The brighter stars reflected in it as they fell, streaks of gold and white and pallid green.

      He was dizzy with cold and hunger and long running—and there were the damned imperials, yet again, between him and his hope of escape. Though winter had set in early and hard, the border was crawling with them. Every ford, every possible crossing was guarded.

      For days Euan had been struggling along the river, while the hunting grew more and more scant, and the cold set in deep and hard. He was ready to swear that the emperor’s patrols were waiting for him, even herding him, driving him farther and farther downriver. His own country seemed to mock him, rising in steep slopes black with pine and white with snow, so near he could almost reach out and touch, but impossibly far.

      He could appreciate irony. He had come out of the heart of the empire, a big redheaded man in a world of little dark people, with a price on his head and a cry of treason that echoed still, months after his stroke against the emperor had failed—and none of the emperor’s hounds had been able to find him. But then, why would they trouble themselves? All they had to do was close the border.

      He was trapped like a bear in a pit. They would herd him all the way down to the sea, then corner him on the sand—or they would catch him much sooner, when cold and starvation and sheer snarling frustration made him drop his guard.

      Maybe he would die and cheat them of their revenge. They could do what they liked with his corpse—he would not be using it any longer. Even soft imperials might turn savage toward the man who had reduced their emperor to impotence, disrupted their holy Dance, and come near to destroying their herd of horse mages.

      His lips drew back from his teeth when he thought of those stiff-necked fools with their overweening arrogance and their worship of fat white horses. At least six of them were dead, and good riddance, too.

      One of them was still alive, and that might be good, or it might be very, very bad. If he closed his eyes, he could see her face. Its lines were burned in his memory, just as he had seen her in that last, desperate meeting. Black hair in tousled curls, smooth rounded cheeks and firm chin, and eyes neither brown nor green, flecked with gold. She was bruised, filthy, staggering, with one arm hanging limp—but she held his life in her one good hand.

      She could have killed him. He would have bared his throat for the knife. He could have killed her—and by the One God, truly he should have, because she had betrayed him and broken her word and brought down his plot against her empire.

      She had let him go. And he had let her live. Because of her he had failed, but also because of her, he had escaped.

      That might have been no mercy. He had won through to the border, but the border was closed. The emperor’s legionaries would do her killing for her.

      Twenty of them camped now between him and the river. He was not getting across tonight.

      His