The Hallowed Hunt

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Come with me, then,” she said, and abruptly reversed direction. Though Ingrey’s legs were longer than hers, he had to stretch his stride to keep up.

  She led him through a discreet side entry, down and up some steps, back outside behind the temple, and past the archdivine’s palace into the next street. Down one more narrow alley they came to a long stone building some two stories high, passed through a side door, and wended up more stairs. Ingrey began to be grateful he hadn’t just asked for directions. They passed a succession of well-lit rooms devoted to scriptoria, judging by the heads bent over tables and scratching of quills.

  Coming to a closed door in the same row, she knocked, and a man’s calm voice bade, “Enter.”

  The door swung open on a narrower room, or perhaps that was an illusion created by the contents. Crammed shelves lined the chamber, and a pair of tables overflowed with books, papers, scrolls, and a great deal of more miscellaneous litter. A saddle sat propped on its pommel in one corner.

  The man, sitting in a chair beyond one table near the window, looked up from the sheaf of papers he was reading and raised his brows. He, too, was dressed in Bastard’s whites, but the robes were slightly shabby and without any mark of rank upon them. He was middle-aged, spare, perhaps a little taller than Ingrey, clean-shaven, with sandy-gray hair trimmed short. Ingrey would have taken him for some important man’s clerk or secretary, except that the woman divine pressed her hand to her lips and bowed her head in a gesture of utmost respect before she spoke again.

  “Learned, here is a man with a letter for you.” She glanced up at Ingrey. “Your name, sir?”

  “Ingrey kin Wolfcliff.”

  No special reaction or recognition showed in her face, but the spare man’s brows notched a trifle higher. “Thank you, Marda,” he said, polite dismissal clear in his tone. She touched her lips again and withdrew, shutting the door behind Ingrey.

  “The Learned Hallana instructed me to deliver this letter to you,” said Ingrey, stepping to the table and handing it over.

  Learned Lewko set down his sheaf of papers rather abruptly and sat up to take it. “Hallana! Not ill news, I trust?”

  “Not…that is, she was well when I last saw her.”

  Lewko eyed the missive more warily. “Is it complicated?”

  Ingrey considered his answer. “She did not show me the contents. But I expect so.”

  Lewko sighed. “As long as it’s not another ice bear. I don’t think she would gift me with an ice bear. I hope.”

  Ingrey was briefly diverted. “I saw an ice bear in the temple court, as I came in. It was, um, most impressive.”

  “It is utterly horrifying, I think. The grooms were weeping. Bastard forfend, are they actually trying to use it in a funeral?”

  “So it appeared.”

  “We should have just told the prince thank you, and put it in a menagerie. Somewhere out in the country.”

  “How did it come here?”

  “By surprise. Also by boat.”

  “How big was the boat?”

  Lewko grinned at Ingrey’s tone, and looked suddenly younger thereby. “I saw it yesterday, tied up at the wharf below Kingstown. Not nearly as big as one would think.” He ran a hand through his hair. “The beast was a gift, or perhaps a bribe. Brought by this giant red hairy fellow from some island on the frozen side of the south sea, who is either a prince, or a pirate—it is hard to be sure. Prince Jokol, fondly nicknamed by his loyal crew Jokol Skullsplitter, I am informed. I didn’t think those white bears could be tamed, but he seems to have made a pet of this one since it was a cub, which makes the gift even more dear, I suppose. I cannot imagine what the voyage was like; they say they met storms. I suspect he is quite mad. In any case, he also brought several large ingots of high-grade silver for the bear’s upkeep, which apparently robbed the temple menagerie-master of the wits to refuse the gift. Or bribe.”

  “Bribe for what?”

  “The Skullsplitter wants a divine, to carry off to his glacier-ridden island in place of his bear. This is a fine work of missionary duty that any divine should be proud to undertake. Volunteers have been called for. Twice. If none steps forth by the time the prince is ready to cast off again, one will simply have to be found. Dragged from under a bed, perhaps.” His grin flickered again. “I can afford to laugh; they can’t send me. Ah, well.” He sighed once more and set the letter before him on the table, with the wax seal uppermost. He bent his head over it.

  The amusement drained from Ingrey, and he came alert. His blood—that blood—seemed to spin up like a vortex. Lewko did not bear the braid of a sorcerer, he did not smell of a demon, and yet Temple sorcerers answered to him…? Threw their most complicated dilemmas in his lap?

  Lewko laid his hand across the wax seal, and his eyes closed briefly. Something flared about him. It was nothing Ingrey saw with his eyes or smelled with his nose, but it made the hair stir at the nape of his neck. He’d felt a trace of this stomach-wrenching awe once before, from a stronger source, but with inner senses at the time much weaker. At the end of his futile pilgrimage to Darthaca, in the presence of a small, stout, harried fellow, to all appearances ordinary, who sat down quietly and let a god reach through him into the world of matter.

  Lewko’s not a sorcerer. He’s a saint, or petty saint. And he knew who Ingrey was, and he had seemingly been here at the temple for years, judging by the state of his study, but Ingrey had never seen—or was that, noticed?—him before. Certainly not in the company of any of the high Temple divines who waited upon the sealmaster or the king’s court, all of whom Ingrey had dutifully memorized.

  Lewko glanced up; there was not much humor in his eyes now. “You are Sealmaster Hetwar’s man, are you not?” he inquired mildly.

  Ingrey nodded.

  “This letter has been opened.”

  “Not by me, Learned.”

  “Who, then?”

  Ingrey’s mind sped back. From Hallana to Ijada to him…Ijada? Surely not. Had it ever been out of her possession, parted from her bosom? It had rested in that inner pocket of the riding habit, which she had worn…all but at the dinner at Earl Horseriver’s. And Wencel had left the table to receive an urgent message…indeed. Easy enough for the earl to overawe and suborn that warden to rifle Ijada’s luggage, but had Wencel thought to use some shaman trick to fool a sorcerer about his prying? But Lewko is not a sorcerer, now, is he. Not exactly. Ingrey temporized: “Without proof, any guess of mine would be but slander, Learned.”

  Lewko’s look grew uncomfortably penetrating, but to Ingrey’s relief he dropped his eyes to the letter again. “Well, let us see,” he muttered, and stripped it open, scattering wax.

  He read intently for a few minutes, then shook his head and stood to lean nearer to the window. Twice, he turned the closely written paper sideways. Once, he glanced across at Ingrey and inquired rather plaintively, “Does the phrase broke his chants mean anything to you?”

  “Um, could that be, chains?” Ingrey ventured.

  Lewko brightened. “Ah! Yes, it could! That makes much more sense.” He read on. “Or perhaps it doesn’t…”

  Lewko came to the end, frowned, and started over. He waved vaguely toward a wall. “I believe there is a camp stool under that pile. Help yourself, Lord Ingrey.”

  By the time Ingrey had extracted it, snapped it open, and perched himself upon its leather seat, Lewko looked up again.

  “I pity the spy who had to decipher this,” he said, without heat.

  “Is it in code?”

  “No: Hallana’s handwriting. Written in haste, I deem. It takes practice—which I grant I have—to unravel. Well, I’ve suffered worse for less reward. Not from Hallana, she always touches the essential. One of her several uncomfortable talents. That demure smile masks a holy recklessness. And ruthlessness. The Father be thanked for Oswin’s moderating influence. Such as it is.”

  “You know her well?” Ingrey inquired. Or, why does this paragon write to you, alone of all the Temp
le functionaries in Easthome?

  Lewko rolled the letter and tapped it gently on the edge of the table. “I was assigned to be her mentor, many years ago, when she so unexpectedly became a sorceress.”

  Surely it took one sorcerer to teach another. Therefore and therefore…Like a stone across the water, Ingrey’s mind skipped two begged questions to arrive at a third. “How does a man become a former sorcerer? Undamaged?” It was the task of that Darthacan saint to destroy illicit sorcerers, who were reported to fight like madmen against the amputation of their powers, but Learned Lewko had surely not been such a renegade.

  “It is possible to lay down the gift.” Lewko’s mouth hovered between faint amusement and faint regret. “If one chooses to in time.”

  “Is it not a wrench?”

  “I didn’t say it was easy. In fact”—his voice softened still further—“it takes a miracle.”

  What was this man? “I have served four years here in Easthome. I’m surprised our paths have not crossed before.”

  “But they have. In a sense. I am very familiar with your case, Lord Ingrey.”

  Ingrey stiffened, especially at Lewko’s choice of words: case. “Were you the Temple sorcerer sent to Birchgrove with the inquiry to examine me?” He frowned. “My memories of that time are confused and dark, but I do not remember you.”

  “No, that was another man. My involvement at the time was less direct. The inquirer brought me a bag of ashes from the castle, to turn back into a letter of confession.”

  Ingrey’s brow wrinkled. “Isn’t that what I believe Learned Hallana would call a bit uphill for Temple magic? Chaos forced back to order?”

  “Indeed and alas, it was. It cost me a month’s work and probably a year of my calling. And all for very little, as it turned out, to my fury. What do you remember of Learned Cumril? The young Temple sorcerer whom your father suborned?”

  Ingrey stiffened still further. “From an acquaintance lasting the space of an hour’s meal and a quarter of an hour’s rite, not much. All his attention was on my father. I was an afterthought.” He added truculently, “And how do you know who suborned whom, after all?”

  “That much was clear. Less clear was how. Not for money. I think not for threats. There was a reason—Cumril imagined himself doing something good, or at least heroic, that went horribly awry.”

  “How can you guess his heart when you don’t even know what his mind was about?”

  “Oh, that part I don’t have to guess. It was in his letter. Once I’d reassembled it. A three-page screed descanting upon his woe, guilt, and remorse. And scarcely one useful fact that we didn’t already know.” Lewko grimaced.

  “If Cumril wrote the confession, who burned it?” asked Ingrey.

  “Now, that is a guess of mine.” Lewko leaned back in his chair, eyeing Ingrey shrewdly. “And yet I am surer of it than many an assertion for which I had more material proof. Do you understand the difference between a sorcerer who rides his demon, and one who is ridden?”

  “Hallana spoke of it. It seemed subtle.”

  “Not from the inside. The difference is very clear. The gulf between a man who uses a power for his purposes, and a power that uses a man for its purposes, is…sometimes less than an ant’s stride across. I know. I rode dangerously close to that line myself, once. It is my belief, after the debacle that left your father dead and you…well, as you are, Cumril was taken by his demon. Whether despair made him weak, whether he was overmatched from the first, I can’t now guess, but I believe in my heart that the writing of that confession was Cumril’s last act. And the burning of it, the demon’s first.”

  Ingrey opened his mouth, then closed it. In his mind, he had always cast Cumril in the part of betrayer; it was uncomfortable to consider that the young sorcerer, too, might have been in some strange sense betrayed.

  “So you see,” said Lewko softly, “Cumril’s fate concerns me. More, it nags me. I fear I cannot encounter you without being reminded of it.”

  “Did the Temple ever find out if he was alive or dead?”

  “No. There was a report of an illicit sorcerer in the Cantons some five years ago that might have been him, but all trace was lost thereafter.”

  Ingrey’s lips started to shape the word Who… but he changed it: “What are you?”

  Lewko’s hand opened. “Just a simple Temple overseer, now.”

  Of what? Of all the Temple sorcerers of the Weald, perhaps? Just seemed scarcely the word for it, nor did simple. This man could be very dangerous to me, Ingrey reminded himself. He knows too much already.

  And he was about to learn more, unfortunately, for he glanced down at the paper and asked Ingrey to describe the events at Red Dike. No great surprise; Ingrey had certainly guessed those at least would be in the letter.

  Ingrey did so, honestly and completely, but in as few words as he could coherently muster. Disaster was in the details, every spare sentence skirting a morass of more questions. But his stiff little speech seemed to satisfy the divine, or at least, questions about the restraint of Ingrey’s wolf did not immediately arise.

  “Who do you think placed this murderous compulsion, this strange scarlet geas, upon you, Lord Ingrey?”

  “I very much wish to know.”

  “Well, that makes two of us.”

  “I am glad of that,” said Ingrey, and was surprised to realize it was true.

  Then Lewko asked, “What do you think of this Lady Ijada?”

  Ingrey swallowed, his mind seeming to spiral down like a bird shot out of the air. He asked me what I think about her, not what I feel about her, he reminded himself firmly. “She undoubtedly bashed Boleso’s head in. He undoubtedly deserved it.”

  A silence seemed to stretch from this succinct obituary. Did Lewko, too, understand the uses of silences? “My lord Hetwar did not desire all these posthumous scandals,” Ingrey added. “I think he has even less than your relish for complications.”

  More silence. “She sustains the leopard spirit. It is…lovely in her.” Five gods, I must say something to protect her. “I think she is more god-touched than she knows.”

  That won a response. Lewko sat up, his eyes suddenly cooler and more intent. “How do you know?”

  Ingrey’s chin rose at the hint of challenge. “The same way I know that you are, Blessed One. I feel it in my blood.”

  The jolt between them then made Ingrey certain he’d overstepped. But Lewko eased back in his chair, deliberately tenting his hands. “Truly?”

  “I am not a complete fool, Learned.”

  “I do not think you are a fool at all, Lord Ingrey.” Lewko tapped his fingers on the letter, looked away for a moment, then looked back. “Yes. I shall obey my Hallana’s marching orders and examine this young woman, I think. Where is she being held?”

  “More housed than held, so far.” Ingrey gave directions to the slim house in the merchants’ quarter.

  “When is she to be bound over to stand her indictment?”

  “I would guess not till after Boleso’s funeral, since it is so near. I’ll know more once I speak with Sealmaster Hetwar. Where I am obliged by my duty to go next,” Ingrey added by way of a broad hint. Yes—he needed to escape this room before Lewko’s questions grew even more probing. He stood up.

  “I shall try to come tomorrow,” said Lewko, yielding to this move.

  Ingrey managed a polite, “Thank you. I shall look for you then,” a bow, and his removal from the room without, he trusted, looking as though he were running like a rabbit.

  He closed the door behind himself and blew out his breath in unease. Was this Lewko potential help or potential harm? He remembered Wencel’s parting words to him: If you value your life, keep your secrets and mine. Had that been a threat, or a warning?

  He had at least managed to keep all mention of Horseriver from this first interview. There could be no hint of Wencel in the letter; his cousin had not impinged on Ingrey’s life until after Hallana had been left behind, thankfully. But what
about tomorrow? What about half an hour from now, when he stood in his road dirt before Hetwar to report his journey and its incidents?

  Horseriver. Hallana. Gesca. Now Lewko. Hetwar. Ingrey was starting to lose track of what all he had not said to whom.

  He found the correct direction and began to retrace his steps back to the shortcut through the temple, keeping the cadence of his footfalls deliberate.

  It struck him only then that in delivering Hallana’s letter to Lewko, he had also, without any need for spell or geas, delivered up himself.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AS INGREY MADE HIS WAY UP THE CORRIDOR TOWARD THE side entrance of the temple court, a cry of dismay echoed along the walls. His steps quickened in curiosity, then alarm, as the cry was succeeded by a scream. Frightened shouts erupted. His hand gripped the hilt of his sword as he burst into the central area, his head swiveling in search of the source of the uproar.

  A bizarre melee was pouring out of the archway to the Father’s court. Foremost was the great ice bear. Clamped in its jaws was the foot of the deceased man, an aged fellow dressed in clothes befitting a wealthy merchant, the stiff corpse bouncing along like some huge doll as the bear growled and shook its head. At the end of the silver chain hooked to the bear’s collar, the groom-acolyte swung in a wide and stumbling arc. Some of the braver or more distraught mourners pelted after, shouting advice and demands.

  His voice nearly squeaking, the panicked groom advanced on the bear, yanking the chain, then grabbing for the corpse’s arm and pulling. The bear half rose, and one heavy paw lashed out; the groom staggered back, screaming in earnest now, clutching his side from which red drops spattered.

  Ingrey drew his blade and ran forward, skidding to a stop before the maddened beast. From the corner of his eye he could see Prince Jokol, grasped in a restraining hug from behind by his companion, struggling toward him. “No, no, no!” cried the red-haired man in a voice of anguish. “Fafa only thought they were offering him a meal! Don’t, don’t hurt him!”