The Hunter's Rede

by F. T. McKinstry

  Lorth’s stomach growled. He returned to the Ofthos, moved to an ornate table on the edge of the circle and grabbed a slice of nut cake from a tray shaped like an oak leaf. He put it into his mouth and went to his seat, where he settled into a state of body and mind not unlike that of a spider crouching unnoticed in the corner of a room.

  He nearly choked on his cake when Setriana stepped into the morning light filtering through the trees.

  Her face still wore the impression of the Destroyer, but he also saw her truly. Beautiful, with bold features and golden-brown skin, she had dark, almond-shaped eyes and glossy black hair braided into thick rows on the nape of her neck. But her beauty alone didn’t catch and hold the hunter’s mind, because the folds of her cloak couldn’t hide the eight-moon swell of the child she carried.

  Aggressors and protectors. Really? Lorth let out his breath with a silent prayer to Maern the whole cosmos could have heard. He was too stunned to respond to the look Eaglin threw his way. Barenus, whom he expected to beam with victory, instead bore himself in some kind of silent recantation.

  Every man there rose to his feet, including Lorth. Barenus stood by the princess’s side; Setarin on the other. Morfaen moved past them and crossed the floor. In a formal tone, he acknowledged the assembly, and then moved to stand next to Lorth.

  “Playing nice are we?” the commander asked under his breath.

  In response, the hunter sat down and took another bite of his cake. He chewed as if it were a piece of bark from the floor. He barely heard the introductions of the guests, or noted Morfaen’s page bringing around refreshments. He did think to take a cup of mison. It took some effort not to drain the whole thing in one tilt.

  He had believed Setriana wore the face of the Destroyer because she had used the powers of the Old One to work her deeds beneath the minds of wizards. A sign to him, the vision of a Web. But this changed things. It explained Setriana’s power and opacity, as pregnancy fell into the Old One’s domain, and had obviously hidden her to the minds of Ravens. But the Old One wouldn’t have marked a woman with child to a hunter, no matter what she had done.

  With her own face, the Destroyer had meant to warn him.

  Once again, Leda’s resonant voice came into his mind: The deeper patterns around Icaros’s involvement are hidden in the Old One’s domain. Lorth sat there, feeling sick. So that’s it? Icaros, murdered by a pregnant woman protected by Maern? And these men thought Lorth used his natural abilities in bad ways.

  Once silence fell, Aniron took it upon himself to begin. The Raven commander didn’t waste time with pleasantries. He rose with the kind of expression that made Tarthians hate wizards and said, “Princess Setriana. By order of the Lords of Tarth, you are now answerable to the Keepers of the Eye for the murders of Masters Roarin and Icaros.”

  Lorth studied Barenus. The Osprey sat by his lover’s side in a greasy soup of resignation, his face pale with the stench of it. Evidently, the wizard’s vehement denial that Setriana had murdered Icaros didn’t extend to a member of the Aenlisarfon.

  Setriana hung her head and clutched the teacup in her lap hard enough to shatter it. Lorth’s animal alarms rippled as she looked up, gazed directly into his eyes and said, “I must speak to the assassin alone.”

  The men stirred in astonishment. Aniron scoffed, “Impossible.”

  In a kinder tone, Eaglin added, “Anything you say to Lorth concerns us all.”

  “I must speak to him,” Setriana repeated. “Alone.” She lifted her chin with quivering resolve, her voice spinning a tapestry of pain and secrets. Lorth let his wolf’s gaze fall once more on her belly, swollen with child.

  He stood up and brushed the crumbs from his lap.

  Half the assembly rose with him, grasping their weapons in alarm.

  Lorth turned to Eaglin. “By your leave, I’ll honor this request.” In his heart, he added, If you can trust me.

  “Granted,” the Raven said without hesitation.

  Warriors, royals and wizards erupted in protest. Above the fray, Aniron’s voice boomed with the force of a high wizard’s will. “I forbid this!”

  Prince Setarin said, “As do I.”

  Setriana turned and stared at her brother in disbelief. “This is no longer yours to forbid.”

  “No, it is ours,” said Oban, his gray eyes shining with challenge. “You will say nothing to this man outside our knowledge.”

  A cold breeze blew through the trees as Eaglin stepped forward, his gray-green gaze settling like a killer frost on his powerful guests. “There are many things here over which the Aenlisarfon has no jurisdiction. Icaros was no longer a Keeper of the Eye. As a man of Ostarin, he fell under my rule. As for Roarin, the Aenlisarfon knew damned well he was using magic to protect Os, but because one of you had a personal issue with him—”

  “How do you know about that?” Aniron demanded.

  “—there was a blind spot in the pattern,” Eaglin finished, ignoring the question. “That put him out of your jurisdiction as well.”

  “You gave Eyrie jurisdiction in this matter when you requested an army to help you reclaim Os from the Faerins,” Aniron pointed out. His cheeks had colored.

  “I made that request on the assumption that Forloc had Roarin killed,” Eaglin returned. “By the Wizard’s Code, you were required to help us.”

  Barenus spoke then, in a stronger voice than his diminished bearing would indicate. “You gave the order for Eyrie to attack based on false information.” He spoke to Eaglin, but looked at Lorth. “It wasn’t Setriana the spy in the forest exposed, but Astarae.”

  “Astarae was not in Os when Roarin was killed,” Lorth said. “I assumed it was Setriana based on prior evidence.”

  “Evidence?” Oban snorted. “What evidence? A grudge? An assumption spun from your grief—or perhaps your guilt for having abandoned an unpleasant assignment in Tarth?”

  At this, Setriana turned a lighter shade. She looked down quickly and sipped her tea as if to hide tears. As the hunter regarded her, he felt a strange, unlikely curiosity. Then he returned his attention to Oban with a blacker bent. “You men talk mightily, for not having been here to watch this unfold. The Old One ruled this from the beginning. We had to use our hearts to make decisions.”

  “Says a Web,” Aniron sneered. “The heart does not make of one a wizard.”

  I’m not a wizard. “What does? So much trouble for you to lower yourselves from your thrones and come to the aid of a land in need. Are you telling me you calculate your structures and study your patterns without considering the heart? And yet you want jurisdiction over it. That’s like pretending the sea doesn’t exist as you get in your ships and sail.”

  One of the guardsmen coughed on a laugh.

  Aniron was not amused. “You will not speak thus of the Keepers of the Eye. We are the force of balance in Ealiron.”

  Lorth laughed. “Balance? Where do you think that comes from, you sodding—”

  “Stop it!” Setriana shrieked. Her cry stilled the hall like a death. She lowered her hands from her face and rose unsteadily from her seat. A tear crept down her cheek. “I will speak to this hunter. Now.” Her fiery stare made each man lower his head in shame.

  Eaglin rose. Whipping his Raven’s cloak around him, he strode to the edge of the Ofthos and pointed to the door of the hall. “Out. The lot of you.” His tone was only slightly less fearsome than that of the pregnant princess.

  No one said anything. They gathered themselves and filed out through the trees with varying degrees of recalcitrance, leaving Lorth alone with the woman who had murdered the only father he had ever known.

  Chapter 23

  Shade of Surrender: All is cyclic.

  Silence returned to the Great Hall of Eusiron. Wind and rain whispered in the trees above Eaglin’s invisible enchantments.

  Lorth moved his chin towards the northwest corner of the hall, where a fire burned. “Shall we go over there?”

  Setriana’s face lit up like a candle.
As she nodded and began to push herself up, Lorth went to her and held out his hand. She hesitated, staring at it as she might a poisonous snake.

  “I will not harm you,” he said.

  She looked up, and then took his hand. As they walked around the dais of the Ofthos she asked, “Are you doing this because you want to hear me”—she glanced over her shoulder towards the door—“or defy them?”

  “Both.” He grabbed a bottle of mison as he passed by the table.

  He settled the princess into a chair by the hearth. He set the wine bottle on the mantel added wood to the fire. Then he turned to Icaros’s murderer, his feet planted somewhat apart and his hands folded in front of him.

  He had arrived. He had stalked this opportunity since finding his master dead on a cold hearth with a rastric bite on his chest. But he found no satisfaction in the turn of events that had put this before him. The Hunter’s Rede no longer served the circumstance.

  The princess didn’t feel his doubt. Her breast rose in a faster, deeper rhythm, blood pulsed in the hollow at the base of her neck and her fingers clasped together tightly. Too frightened to speak, she gazed into the fire as if praying to it for comfort.

  Lorth took the wine from the high shelf and held it out to her. She looked as if she might ask for a glass. But desperation overwhelmed propriety: she took the bottle and tilted it to her lips like a sailor. After a long draught, she wiped her mouth with her fingers and exhaled.

  “It’s good.”

  “It’s made here, from mison flowers. They grow in the mountains, in the fair season.”

  She took another sip and then set the bottle on the floor. “In the height of what you call the fair season, I fell in love.” Her voice shook, and she didn’t look up to see Lorth’s blank expression. “He was the only man I’ve ever loved. He was Anglorean.”

  Whatever Lorth had expected her to say, it wasn’t this.

  She continued, “He was captain of a garrison that patrolled the forests south of the Tanglor River. His name was Micat.”

  Micat. Lorth only remembered the name because the assignment had been so strange—low profile, high secrecy, twice the pay—an unknown captain in whose bedding he had released a rastric spider. Lorth hadn’t even glanced at the shadow of the man’s death as he had slipped from the shelter of the babargon trees with Freil’s message on his heart.

  His throat turned dry. “I was under orders from the King himself to hunt Micat. He told me to make it look like an accident.”

  Setriana made a small sound of derision. “To whom? Rastric does not live in the jungles where he was. How much did they pay you?”

  Lorth exhaled slowly to ease the ghosts in his spine. He sat down on the hearth, draped his arms over his knees and gazed into the flames. “I never collected it.” He regarded her with the remains of his conscience. “I wasn’t told why they wanted him. It’s not a hunter’s business to question his assignments.”

  “Would that have mattered?” she retorted, wiping a tear from her cheek.

  Lorth ran his fingers through his hair. No answering that in a good way.

  The Princess of Tarth stared down at her lap. “My father sent me away when he found out I’d been seeing Micat. He sent me north to Tana’tin to visit the tombs of my mother’s ancestors. I feared the worst for Micat—I knew what my father would do. I brought with me only my most trusted guards and servants; I wanted to lie in those tombs myself. I didn’t plan to return to the Seat of Setar.

  “During our journey, I discovered I was with child.” She placed her hand over her belly. “I couldn’t bear feeling shame over something that gave me such joy. I wanted revenge. More than that, I wanted my child to grow up in a world where Tarth and Anglorea are not at war. I left some of my people in Tana’tin to answer for me, and journeyed to Aesfoth.”

  Lorth lowered his hand from his face. “You made a deal with Forloc.”

  “I offered him Os by removing his obstacle there. In return, he would attack Sceil and cause trouble on the coastal towns—something I hardly needed to barter for. My father has spent his life, and his father before him, to hold Sceil. It would have drawn his attention away from Anglorea.”

  “An ambitious plan. Forloc gathered an army thousands strong on a mere assumption you would be able to murder a Master of the Eye who had protected Os from invasion for decades. How did you convince him of that?”

  “I claimed to be a witch.”

  Lorth surprised himself with a laugh. “Are you?”

  “No. But since”—she paused, as if frightened to continue—“since I conceived, I was able to see things, and hide things, even from my father. It was subtle, but I noticed a change.”

  Lorth’s dry amusement fled as he recalled the miasma of Tarth hanging over Icaros’s living space. He leaned forward. “Forloc was neither a wizard nor a fool. He wouldn’t have believed such a claim on your word alone.”

  “He didn’t have to. We agreed the deal would be sealed when he received word of the wizard’s death. He sent a messenger with me, a falconer. The message returned quickly.” She looked at the fire and settled her arms over her belly. “It is said that a wizard can see minds and feel intentions. But the one you call Roarin didn’t see me. I took a chance.” She reached for the wine again. “When it was done, I fled the city. I had left my people in Tana’tin instructions to journey to Daasin and wait for me there.

  “When I reached Daasin, I received a message from my brother, Prince Setarin. He was coming to Os, and planned to fetch me. I feared he had learned about the child. But my people swore on their ancestors that no one betrayed my confidence. So I waited, and as I did, Forloc invaded Os. He must have gathered his army on faith, to invade in any case.”

  “Forloc didn’t take magic seriously,” Lorth said. “I fear your success in killing Roarin only strengthened his doubts.” He didn’t add that the source of Setriana’s power—the Old One—had also caused the warlord’s demise. “Setarin sent you that message before the invasion. Why did he come to Os?”

  “To find you,” she said with an offhand lilt. “He told me Micat was dead. That the one we call kav’tib had killed him, and then disappeared.” She breathed a dry laugh. “One does not walk away from the King of Tarth—not after a kill of that nature. He sought out the Keepers to help him find you.”

  “The Keepers had their own reasons for wanting to do that.”

  “So I’ve gathered.” She regarded him for a moment. “When Setarin learned that Os had been taken by Faerin, he joined the Keepers to make sure Forloc didn’t invade south. I was devastated. Micat was dead, I had murdered a wizard and now my plan for ending the war with Anglorea had been dashed—all because of you. I suggested to Forloc and the Keepers that you had killed the wizard. Forloc used it to clear his name by joining the hunt.”

  Lorth rubbed his eyes, inhaled and leveled a gaze on the princess that caused her to ease back in her seat. “So you found out Icaros was dear to me and killed him to avenge Micat. Who told you, Barenus?”

  Her expression filled with trouble. “Barenus knew nothing about you that he didn’t learn from my brother. I was present when they both learned, from a spirit in the air”—she made a swirling motion with her hand, and looked over her shoulder—“it looked like the one who rules here. The spirit told them if you returned, you would seek out a wizard in the north named Icaros. That very day, one of my people told me of a Tarthian merchant vessel. I went there and spoke to the captain. He told me about you.

  “I told no one. I went into the city, where I had heard a great many things can be found, things from other lands, forbidden things.”

  “The Undersides,” Lorth muttered, sickened by the irony of this. “You found a rastric spider.”

  She began to fumble with the silken fabric of her cloak. “The venom is used for many things. I hired a guide to take me north. He knew where Icaros lived.” She paused, breathing heavily. “I rode out that night. The guide warned of a snowstorm and hastened us; day
and night, we rode.”

  “How did you end up with Asmat?”

  “I met him on my return. As I feared, you had escaped the city; the Faerins were out looking for you. I told Asmat I had come to track you, and joined him.

  “When Forloc later found out Eusiron was sheltering you, he offered your lords here an alliance hoping to drive a rift between Sourcesee and Tarth. But after the feast, he discovered Eusiron planned to retake Os. So he found a better way. He sent a message to the King that I had murdered two Keepers of the Eye and was pregnant by a third. Forloc didn’t know whose child it was. But my father, he is shrewd, and he knew.

  “My brother Setarin told the Masters of Eyrie that the King is granting them my execution because he fears war with the Eye.” A tear slid down her cheek. “But that is not the reason. He doesn’t want an heir born in the royal seat who’s half Anglorean.”

  As Lorth rose to his feet, he noticed that the wolf impression over her features was gone. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She gazed at him with strange, resigned calm. “Because I didn’t kill Icaros.”

  The scar on Lorth’s neck throbbed with pain. “I have the same ability you do, to see in darkness. Only mine doesn’t depend on blood and cycles. I saw your spirit in Icaros’s house the day after you left.”

  “I went there to kill him. I wanted revenge.” She hung her head. “He brought me in from the cold, and cared for me. Once there, I didn’t wish to harm Icaros. I asked him for a good luck charm for my baby. He gave me one—I still have it.” She fumbled in her cloak and pulled out a tiny leather pouch stitched with a pentacle surrounded by a circle. She drew open the string, and tenderly emptied out a little green river stone and a withered sprig of sage into her hand. She held it up like an offering to an angry god, tears streaming down her cheeks. “On my ancestors, I swear, I didn’t kill him.”

  Lorth didn’t need tears or charms to believe her claim; swearing on one’s ancestors in Tarth had the same weight as swearing on the Old One in Ostarin. But the facts remained. “He died of a rastric bite,” he said, staring at the charm in her outstretched hands. “I found him.”