The Mountain's Call. Caitlin Brennan

she saw a wolf at bay, with yellow eyes glittering and teeth bared. Then he was Euan again. “By the One God!” he said. “You scared me half out of my skin.”

      “I’m sorry,” she said without too much repentance. “Why are you sulking? Is it too much for you to share a caravan with another prince?”

      “I am not sulking,” he said sullenly.

      “Then what are you doing?”

      “Being jealous,” he said. “Those are your own kind. It’s like seeing horses in a herd.”

      “They are my kind,” she admitted, “but it doesn’t feel like a herd at all. It feels strange. It makes me itch inside my skin.”

      “Really?” He had brightened considerably. “You don’t want to abandon the rest of us?”

      “Gods, no,” she said.

      It was like standing in front of a fire to feel the warmth coming off him. He sighed deeply. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

      The caravan inched its way through a tumbled landscape of ravine and forest. The towns they passed grew smaller and smaller until they dwindled away altogether. They could not see past the next hilltop. Whenever the trees opened or they reached the summit of a hill, the world was shrouded in mist and rain. Even when it was not raining, the clouds hung so low that they seemed to brush the tops of the trees.

      In that perpetual damp and fog, Iliya wilted visibly. His cheerful babble stopped and his singing died away. Valeria had found it annoying while it went on, but once it stopped, she missed it.

      There was no cure for his sickness but the sun. In this country, that was a rarity.

      Valeria took to riding at the front of the caravan. Guards rode ahead of her, but they did not block what view there was. She could look her fill at trees, rocks and yet more trees. Dacius saw the virtue in what she was doing and rode just behind her. Iliya trailed after him, limp and green-faced. The Call was strong in all of them. They could not turn back now unless they were bound and dragged.

      On the seventh day, or maybe it was the tenth, the clouds actually lifted. Valeria thought for a brief moment that she saw a patch of blue sky.

      They were climbing yet another slope. For once it was not so steep that they needed to get off and walk. The pair of guards in front had gone up and over the top. Valeria’s horse picked up his pace slightly. Maybe it was the faintest hint of sky, or the minute brightening of the perpetual rain-colored light, but her heart felt lighter somehow. She was so full of the Call that she could hardly think.

      As had happened too often before, the road reached the top only to plunge down at once into a deep valley. Just as Valeria paused, the clouds parted. She looked straight across to the country she had dreamed about since she was small.

      It was all there. The long green valley with the river running through it. The walled fortress where the valley curved upward again toward the stony slopes. The sharp rise of the Mountain with its crown of snow. Forest surrounded the valley, but it was open and almost treeless, a gift of the gods to their dearest children.

      At this distance she could see the walls of the school and the creneled bulk of towers, but little else. She needed no eyes to know what was there. The regular patches of brown and pale green around the feet of the walls were the fields and farmlands that fed the citadel. She could make out the clusters of farmhouses and the lines of hedges. The horse pastures were up behind the fortress, in high valleys protected by the Mountain itself.

      The Call broke open inside her and became the whole of her. She had just enough sense left to see that Dacius had come up beside her and Iliya moved ahead of her. The pallor was gone from Iliya’s skin. He was as rapt as the rest of them. His eyes were narrowed and his face was shining as if he stared straight into the sun.

      The guards had drawn aside. The way was open. They knew, thought Valeria. Those were the last words in her until she sat her hard-breathing horse in front of the gate.

      She saw no guards anywhere near it. That did not mean it was unguarded. She looked up at the low round arch. The figures carved on it were so old that they were worn almost smooth. She could just make out a line of horses and riders, and a blurred shape that might be the Sun and Moon intertwined.

      The gate was open, with darkness inside. It looked like a gaping mouth.

      Her horse snorted softly and shook his mane. She started out of her stupor. Iliya snorted almost exactly like the horse. His mare trotted forward. Her hooves rang on the worn stones of the paving, echoing under the arch. She carried her rider inside.

      Dacius’ mule was moving much more stolidly but as steadily as she ever had. They were leaving Valeria alone, with the caravan far behind, and nothing ahead but dreams and fear.

      Valeria had come too far and with too much confidence to back off now. She took a deep breath and wiped her clammy palms on her breeches. The horse started forward without urging.

      The wall was thick, but surely not as thick as this. She was in a tunnel with no end to it that she could see.

      It was not totally dark. There were lamps, just bright enough for her to see the way. They seemed to float in the air.

      On impulse she called one to her. As she had thought, it was a witch light. She asked it to burn brighter. It flared, blinding her. She damped it hastily. This place was full of magic. It turned the slightest whisper of a working into a shout.

      The lamp hung just above her, burning steadily. In its light she saw the fitted stone of the tunnel’s walls and the interlocking tiles of its floor. She also saw that the tunnel bent and then divided. One way went up and one way went level.

      She slid from the saddle and stood holding the black’s reins. There was no sign of the other horses and riders. The horse’s calm was not natural, but neither was this place.

      She had known that there would be tests. What if this was meant just for her? What if she was barred from the school? She could convince men that she was one of them, simply by cutting her hair and wearing their clothes. Magic was not so easy to mislead.

      The Call had come to her. She must be meant for the school. She could pass this test. It was a simple matter of choices.

      “Don’t think,” her mother’s voice said. “Feel.”

      She almost spun around to see if Morag had followed her to the Mountain. Then she caught herself. It was only memory.

      It was also excellent advice. She squeezed her eyes shut and made herself breathe in a slow, steady rhythm. Each breath filled more of the world. It drove out thought and fear.

      When she was empty of everything but air, she stepped forward. Her eyes were still shut. The horse walked quietly beside her.

      She did not turn right or left. She went neither up nor down. She simply walked straight ahead.

      Light dazzled her even through her eyelids. She heard voices and hoofbeats, and smelled horses and leather and fresh-baked bread.

      She opened her eyes on a sunlit square. The gate was behind her. The clouds had parted, or maybe they had never dulled this place at all. She could feel the magic enclosed within these walls, distinct as the feel of sunlight on her skin.

      Iliya was basking in the sun. Dacius looked around him with the same dazed expression she must have been wearing.

      Tall grey buildings surrounded the square. People went back and forth inside it, busy with this errand or that. Not all were men. There were a few women in plain gowns like servants. One had a basket of laundry on her hip, and another stood by the fountain in the middle of the square, dipping water into an earthenware jar.

      “That’s the Well of the World,” Iliya said. “It goes down to the source of all waters. It’s strong magic.”

      There was so much magic in this place that Valeria could not tell if the story was true. She was too overwhelmed to argue with it.