The Hallowed Hunt

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Ingrey’s return stare was blank, at first. His blood seemed to boil up in his head, and he realized that he smelled a demon, that distinctive rain-and-lightning odor, spinning tightly within this man. One of Lewko’s sorcerers in disguise, reporting Temple business to his master? No, for Lewko’s expression was as devoid of recognition as Ingrey’s, though his body had stiffened. He smells the demon, too, or senses it somehow.

  It was the voice more than the appearance that did it. Ingrey’s mind’s eye scraped away the beard and eleven years from the servant’s face. “You!”

  The servant choked.

  Ingrey stood up so fast his chair fell over and banged on the floor. The servant, already backing up, shrieked, whirled, and fled back out the door, slamming it behind him.

  “Ingrey, what—?” Ijada began.

  “It’s Cumril!” Ingrey flung over his shoulder at her, and gave chase.

  By the time Ingrey wrenched open both doors and stood in the street, the man had disappeared around the curve, but the echo of running footsteps and a passerby’s astonished stare told Ingrey the direction. He flung back his coat, put his hand on his sword, and dashed after, rounding the houses just in time to see Cumril cast a frightened look back and duck into a side street. Ingrey swung after him, his stride lengthening. Could youth and fury outrun middle age and terror?

  The man is a sorcerer. What in five gods’ names am I going to do if I catch him? Ingrey gritted his teeth and set the question aside as he bore down on Cumril, his hand stretching for the man’s collar. He made his grab, yanked back, whipped the man around, and flung him against the nearest wall with a loud thump, following up to pin him there with the weight of his body and glare.

  Cumril was gasping and whimpering: “No, no, help…!”

  “So enspell me, why don’t you?” Ingrey snarled. Sorcerers and shamans, Wencel had said, were old rivals for power. With the dizzied remains of his reason, Ingrey wondered which was the stronger, and if he was about to test the question.

  “I dare not! It will ascend, and enslave me again!”

  This response was peculiar enough to give Ingrey pause; he let his hand, now clenched on Cumril’s throat, ease somewhat. “What?”

  “The demon will t-take me again, if I try to call on it,” Cumril stammered. “You need, need, need have no fear of me, Lord Ingrey.”

  “By my father’s agony, the reverse is not true.”

  Cumril swallowed, looking away. “I know.”

  Ingrey’s grip eased yet more. “Why are you here?”

  “I followed the divine. From the temple. I saw him in the crowd. I want to, I was going to try to, I meant to surrender myself to him. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Ingrey stood back, his brows climbing toward his hairline. “Well, I have no objection to that. Come along, then.”

  Keeping a grip on Cumril’s arm just in case, Ingrey led him back to the narrow house. Cumril was pale and trembling, but as he recovered his breath, his initial shock seemed to pass off. By the time Ingrey pushed him through the door of the parlor and closed it again behind them, Cumril had revived enough to shoot him a look of resentment before he straightened his tabard and stood before Lewko.

  “Learned. Blessed One. I, I, I…”

  Lewko’s eyes were intent. He motioned to Ingrey’s abandoned chair, which Ijada set upright. “Sit. Cumril, is it?”

  “Yes, Learned.” Cumril sank down. Ijada returned to her own seat; Ingrey folded his arms and leaned against the nearby wall.

  Lewko pressed his palm to Cumril’s forehead. Ingrey was not at all sure what passed between the two, but Cumril eased back yet more, and the demon-scent grew weaker. His panting slackened, and his gaze, wandering to some middle distance, bespoke the lifting of an invisible burden.

  “Are you truly of Prince Boleso’s household?” Ingrey asked, nodding to the tabard.

  Cumril’s eyes refocused on Ingrey. “Yes. Or I was. He, he, he passed me off as his body servant.”

  “So, you were the illicit sorcerer who aided him in his forbidden rites. I…it was guessed one must exist. But I never saw you at Boar’s Head.”

  “No, I made very sure you, you, you did not.” Cumril gulped. “Rider Ulkra and the household arrived here late last night. I had no other way to get back to Easthome except with them. I, I could not come sooner.” This last seemed to be addressed to Lewko.

  “Did anyone else of Boleso’s household know what you really were?” Ingrey pressed.

  “No, only the prince. I—my demon—insisted upon secrecy. One of the few times its will overrode Boleso’s.”

  “Perhaps,” Lewko interrupted gently, “you should begin at the beginning, Cumril.”

  Cumril hunched. “Which beginning?”

  “The burning of a certain confession might do.”

  Cumril’s gaze shot up. “How did you know about that?”

  “I reassembled it for the inquiry. With great difficulty.”

  “I should think so!” Cumril’s obvious fear of Lewko gave way to something like professional awe.

  Lewko held up a restraining finger. “It was my guess that the destruction of that document marked the loss of your control over your power.”

  Cumril ducked his head in a nod. “It was so, Blessed One. And the beginning of my, my, my slavery.”

  “Ah.” A brief smile of satisfaction tugged Lewko’s lips at this confirmation of his theory.

  “I will not say the beginning of my nightmare,” Cumril continued, “for it was blackest nightmare before. But in my despair after the disasters at Birchgrove, my demon ascended and took control of my body and mind. I, we, it fled with my body, which it was overjoyed to possess, and we began a strange existence. Exile. Always, its first concern was to keep out of sight of the Temple, and then, on to whatever erratic pleasures in matter the thing desired. Which were not always what I would call pleasures. The months it decided to experiment with pain were the worst”—Cumril shuddered in memory—“but that pass, pass, passed off like every other passion. Fortunately. I swear it had the mindfulness of a mayfly. When Boleso found…us…and pressed us into his service, it became quite rebellious in its boredom, but it dared not thwart him. He had ways of asserting his will.”

  Lewko moistened his lips and leaned forward. “How did you regain control? For that is a very rare thing to happen, after a sorcerer’s demon has turned upon him.”

  Cumril nodded, and glanced somewhat fearfully at Ijada. “It was her.”

  Ijada looked astonished. “What?”

  “The night Boleso died, I was in the next chamber. To assist him in enspelling the leopard. There was a knothole in the wall, from which we could remove the knot and look and listen through.”

  Ijada’s expression congealed. Cumril flinched under it. Was he, however demonized, to have been a wet-lipped spectator to her rape? Ingrey’s hand, which had been idly caressing his sword hilt, tightened upon it.

  Cumril bore up under their speculative glowers, and continued, “Boleso believed that the animal spirits he took in would allow him to bind each kin to himself. He had a, a, theory that the leopard was your kin animal, Lady Ijada, by reason of your father’s Chalionese bloodlines. He meant to use it to bind your mind and will to his, to make you his perfect paramour. Partly, partly for lust, partly to test his powers before he took them into the arena of politics, partly because he was half-mad with suspicion of everyone by this time and only by such iron control dared to have any woman so close to his person.”

  “No wonder,” said Ijada, her voice shaking a little, “he took no trouble to court me.”

  Lewko said quietly, “That was grave sin and blasphemy indeed, to attempt to seize another’s will. Free will is sacred even to the gods.”

  “Was the leopard spirit meant to go into Ijada, then?” asked Ingrey, puzzled. “Did you put it there?” As you once gave me my wolf?

  “No!” Cumril fell silent a moment, then gathered himself again. “Boleso took it, had just taken
it, when the lady fought free from under him. And then…something happened that no one controlled. I know not by what courage she seized the war hammer and struck him, but death, death opens the world to the gods. It all happened at once, in a moment. I was still working upon the leopard as Boleso’s soul was torn from his body, and the god…the shock…my demon…Boleso’s soul struggled wildly, but could not get free of its defilements either to advance or retreat from the Presence.

  “The leopard, so barely anchored, was torn from him, and fell into…no, was called into the lady. I heard a music like hunting horns in a distant dawn, and my heart seemed to burst with the sound. And my demon fell screaming in terror from it, and released its hold upon my mind, and fled in the only direction it could, inward and inward into a tight knot. It cowers there still”—he touched his chest—“but I do not know for how long.” He added after a moment, “Then I ran away and hid in my room. I wept so hard I could not breathe, for a time.” He was weeping again now, a quiet sniveling, rocking in his chair.

  Lewko blew out his breath and rubbed the back of his neck.

  From his place by the wall, Ingrey growled, “I would know of an earlier beginning, Cumril.”

  Cumril looked, if possible, more fearful, but he ducked his head in acquiescence.

  Ingrey breathed exhilaration and dread. Finally, some truths. He contemplated the miserable sorcerer. Maybe some truths. “How came you to my father? Or did he come to you?”

  “Lord Ingalef came to me, my lord.”

  Ingrey frowned; Lewko nodded.

  “His sister Lady Horseriver had fled to him in great fear, begging his aid. She had a frantic tale of her son Wencel having become possessed by an evil spirit of the Old Weald.”

  Lewko’s head came up. “Wencel!”

  Ingrey choked back a curse. In one sentence, a whole handful of new cards was laid upon the table, and in front of Lewko, too. “Wait…this possession occurred before Wencel’s mother’s death? Not after?”

  “Indeed, before. She thought it had happened at the time of his father’s death, some four or so months earlier. The boy had changed so strangely then.”

  So already Wencel was caught in a lie. Or Cumril was. Or both could be lying, Ingrey reminded himself; but both could not be telling the truth. “Go on.”

  “The two concocted a plan for the rescue of her son, they thought. Lady Horseriver feared to go to the Temple openly, in part for terror that they might burn her boy if they could not release him from the possession.” Cumril swallowed. “She meant to fight Old Weald magic with Old Weald magic.”

  Indeed, the Temple sorcerers had not been able to evict Ingrey’s wolf from him; Wencel’s mother had not been wrong to attempt some other way to spare her son. Ingrey scowled. “I know how badly awry that plan went! The rabid wolf that slew my father—was that chance or design?”

  “I, I, to this day I do not know. The huntsman spoke to me on his deathbed, half-raving by then; he, he, he was not bribed to the deed, of that I am sure. He did not guess his animals were diseased, or I think he would have handled them more carefully himself!”

  Ijada asked curiously, “Where was young Wencel when all this was going on at Birchgrove?”

  “His mother had left him at Castle Horseriver, I understood. She meant to keep her actions secret from him until she could bring help.”

  And the implications of this were…“She feared him? As well as for him?” asked Ingrey.

  Cumril hesitated, then ducked his head again. “Aye.”

  So…if a geas could be set in a man to make him kill at another’s will, as the parasite spell had been set in Ingrey, how much easier would it be to set one in a wolf—or in a horse? Was the death of Lady Horseriver, trampled by her mount, no accident either? What, now you suspect that Wencel killed his own mother? Ingrey’s blood was thudding in his head now, but mostly in a sick headache.

  But the why of his wolf was answered at last. A lethal mix of family loyalty, good intentions, bad judgment…and secret uncanny malice? Or was that last some lesser intent, gone wrong? Had the unseen foe meant to kill Lord Ingalef, or just his animals? “My wolf—what of my wolf, which arrived so mysteriously?”

  Cumril shrugged helplessly. “When its effect on you proved so disastrous, I thought it must have been sent like the rabid ones.”

  Had Wencel sent it, then? Does he have some unseen leash upon me? Going all the way back to Birchgrove? Ingrey unset his teeth and hitched his shoulders against the wall to fight their painful tightness. Ijada caught the gesture and frowned at him in worry.

  Lewko was pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut. “Lord Ingrey. Lady Ijada. You have both seen Earl Horseriver lately, and not just with mortal eyes. What do you say of this accusation?”

  “You have seen him, too,” said Ingrey cautiously. “What did you sense?”

  Lewko glanced up in irritation; Ingrey thought him about to snap, I asked first!, but instead he took a controlling breath, and said, “His spirit seems dark to me, though no more so than many a man who courts death as though to embrace it. It crossed my mind to fear for him, and for those near him, but not like this!”

  “Ingrey…?” said Ijada. Her question was clear in her rising tone: Should we not speak?

  Wencel had been right: once the Temple started looking, they must find. And silence was the only sure safety. And it would, indeed, have been prudent to find and question Cumril before the Temple authorities did. Ingrey wondered grimly what else he would discover Wencel to have been right about. “Wencel bears a spirit animal, yes. Its evil or good I cannot judge. I had guessed Cumril must have laid it in him, too, as part of the same dire plot that gave me mine, but now it seems not.”

  “No, no,” muttered Cumril, rocking again. “Not me.”

  “You did not mention this earlier,” said Lewko to Ingrey, his tone suddenly very flat.

  “No. I did not.” He returned the tone precisely.

  “Wild accusations,” murmured Lewko, “a questionable source, not a shred of material proof, and the third highest lord in the land. What more joys can this day bring me? No, don’t answer that. Please.”

  “Gods,” said Ijada. “Remember?”

  Lewko glowered at her.

  Cumril’s confessions didn’t make sense, in Ingrey’s head. Why sacrifice one child to save another? What gain could there be in both heirs being defiled? His thrill at the seeming chance of uncovering old truths faded. “How was making my father and me into spirit warriors supposed to rescue Wencel?”

  “Lady Horseriver did not tell me.”

  “What, and you did not ask? It seems a blithe disregard for your famous Temple disciplines, oh sorcerer, to kick them all aside at a woman’s word.”

  Cumril stared at the floor, and muttered with extreme reluctance, “She was god-touched. Most…most grievously.”

  A new thought chilled Ingrey. If bearing an animal spirit sundered one from the gods, like Boleso, what had happened to Lord Ingalef’s soul? That funeral had long been over before Ingrey had recovered enough to ask about it. None had told him that his father was sundered. None told me otherwise, either. Lord Ingalef had been as well buried in tacit silences as in earth.

  He must have been sundered. There was no shaman at Birchgrove to cleanse him.

  Oh. Wait. There had been one, hadn’t there. Potentially. Ingrey’s heart seemed to halt. Might I have saved…?

  He gulped back the unbearable realizations and stared at Cumril in a frustrated, hostile silence. Lewko’s silence was far less revealing. Their gazes crossed and clashed. Ingrey began to suspect he was not the only man here who preferred to collect the information first and dole it out at his discretion later. The divine rose abruptly to his feet.

  “You had best come up with me to the temple now, Cumril, till I can make better arrangements for your safety. We will speak further on these matters.” In private hung unspoken.

  Cumril nodded as if in understanding and clambered up as well.
Ingrey gritted his teeth. Safety from what? Cumril’s demon reascending? Wencel? Nosy Temple inquirers? Ingrey? Aye, Lewko had damned well better protect Cumril from me.

  He saw shepherd and lost sheep out the front door; Lewko bade him and Ijada farewell with a promise, or threat, to meet again soon. Now that they seemed to have emerged officially from the private conclave, the warden fell upon her charge and hustled her upstairs once more. Ijada, her face set with dark thought, did not resist.

  Ingrey took the stairs two at a time to his room, there to shed his court finery for clothing he could better move in, which would not catch his blades. He had a visit to make, and without delay.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IN THE WANING AFTERNOON LIGHT, INGREY MADE HIS WAY through the crooked streets of Kingstown. He wended past the old Rivermen’s Temple that served the folk of the dock quarter, then around the town hall and the street market in the square behind it. The market was closing down for the day, with only a few peddlers left under awnings or with their goods spread out on mats, sad leftover vegetables or fruits, wilting flowers, rejected leatherwork, picked-over piles of clothing new or used. He threaded his way upslope into the district of great houses nearest the King’s Hall, deliberately dodging over one street to avoid Hetwar’s mansion and the heightened chance of encountering men he knew.

  Earl-ordainer Horseriver’s Easthome manse was a bride gift from Princess Fara, the cut-stone facade decorated with a frieze of bounding stags for the Stagthornes. Only the banner over the door displayed the running stallion above the rippling waters of the Lure, the badge of the old high kin that marked the earl as in residence.

  In residence, but not yet at home, Ingrey shortly discovered from the liveried door guards. The earl and princess’s party had not yet returned from the interment and whatever funeral feast had followed in the hallow king’s hall. Ingrey encouraged the porter’s assumption that he bore some important message from Sealmaster Hetwar, letting himself be escorted to Wencel’s study, provided with a polite glass of wine, and left to wait.