The Hallowed Hunt

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “—and marry a rich heiress, and retire to a life of ease on her country estates.” He waved about at the enclosing hills.

  “Ease? In this waste?”

  “Well, she may find a task or two to which to turn my hand.”

  “She may,” said Biast, surprised into a chuckle.

  “If she is not hanged.”

  Biast grimaced and waved away this concern. “That will not happen. Not after this. If you do not trust in me and Hetwar, well, I do think Oswin and Lewko will have a thing or two to say about it. Among such a fellowship, some sensible path to justice must be found. And”—his voice grew hesitant not in doubt, but in a kind of shyness—“mercy.”

  “Good,” Ingrey sighed.

  “Thank you for saving Fara’s life. More than once, if she tells me true. Making you her guard wolf was one of my luckier decisions, if luck it was.”

  Ingrey shrugged. “I did no more than my duty to you, nor less than any man’s duty to his conscience.”

  “Any man could not have done what I saw you do last night.” Biast stared at his feet, not meeting Ingrey’s eyes. “If you chose to be more now—to reach for my father’s seat—I do not know who could stand against you. Wolf king.” Not I, his bowed shoulders seemed to add.

  Now he comes to it. Ingrey pointed outward. “My kingdom measured two miles by four, its population included not one breathing soul, and my whole reign ran from one dusk to one dawn. The dead did but lend my kingship to me, and in the end I handed it back. As any king must do; your father, for one.” Although not Horseriver: one root of the problem had lain in that, to be sure. “You, too, prince, come your turn.”

  Upon consideration, Ingrey’s geography lacked a dimension, he decided. Eight square miles by four centuries—or more, for all of the history of the Old Weald had surely concentrated itself upon this patch of ground that fatal night, to be so thoroughly dislocated thereafter. Like the abyss beneath the deceptive surface of a lake that this valley floor resembled, time went down unimaginably far beneath this ground—all the way down. My domain is larger than it looks. He decided not to trouble Biast with these reflections, but said only, “If any kingship lingers on me, this little realm will content it.”

  Biast’s shoulders relaxed visibly, and his face lightened, at this oblique assurance that the wolf-lord of alarming powers desired no more exalted part in Easthome politics. He scanned the horizon, perhaps looking for signs of his bedraggled escort making their way down one of the other gaps, found none, then picked up a few pebbles and tossed them meditatively over the edge.

  “Tell me true, Lord Ingrey,” said Biast suddenly. He turned to look Ingrey full in the face for almost the first time. “What makes the hallow kingship hallowed?”

  Ingrey hesitated so long in answering, Biast began to turn away again in disappointment, when Ingrey blurted, “Faith.” And at the puzzled pinch of Biast’s brows, clarified: “Keeping it.”

  Biast’s lips made an unvoiced O, as though something sharp had pierced him through the heart. He sank back wordlessly. He said nothing for a rather long time. They sat together in more companionable silence as the glimmering fires crept across the ground below, in the last deconsecration of Holytree and Bloodfield’s belated pyre.

  EPILOGUE

  INGREY LEFT IJADA’S FOREST THAT AFTERNOON CLINGING dizzily to his saddle, his horse towed by one of Biast’s late-arriving guardsmen. He spent most of the following week flat on his back in Ijada’s stepparents’ house in Badgerbridge. But as soon as he could stand up without blacking out, he and Ijada were married—or married again—in the house’s parlor, and then he had her fair company by night as well as day in his convalescent chamber. Some things one didn’t need to get out of bed to accomplish.

  Prince Biast and his retinue had hurried back to Easthome and the prince’s duties there; news of his election as hallow king arrived the day after the wedding. Prince Jokol and Ottovin lingered just long enough to enliven the wedding party, and to amaze the town of Badgerbridge, then took horse on the southern road to return to their ship.

  Hallana, too, with her loyal servants, returned immediately to her children at Suttleaf, but Learned Oswin waited with Learned Lewko to escort Ijada, still technically under arrest, back to Easthome. Even with their support, the wheels of the Temple and King’s Bench ground slowly, and it was some days thereafter before the inquest returned its final verdict of self-defense. Oswin adroitly put the pleas for dispensation for Ijada’s and Princess Fara’s spirit animals together in one document, with identical arguments; whatever arm wrestling went on behind the scenes that made Learned Lewko smile wryly, the dual dispensation was forthcoming shortly after the verdict.

  Fara settled swiftly into a very private widowhood, under her brother’s protection. If her spirit horse rendered her less a prize for some new political marriage, she seemed more grimly pleased than regretful. Her sick headaches did not recur.

  Just exactly how Lewko and Oswin between them produced a divine for Prince Jokol, Ingrey never found out, but he and Ijada did come down to the docks to bid the island prince and his comrades farewell. The young divine looked nervous and clung to the ship’s rail as though he expected to get seasick going downriver, but seemed very brave and determined. Fafa the ice bear, in a move of swift wit on someone’s part, was gifted to King Biast as an ordination present, and took up residence on a nearby farm, with his own pond to swim in.

  Withal, snow was flying by the time Ingrey and Ijada rode out of Easthome free, on the southeastern road toward the Lure Valley, with Learned Lewko’s expert company. Ingrey spurred them all onward despite the cold. That he was too late about this business was all too probable—but that he might be just too late seemed unendurable. They came to the confluence of the Lure and the Birchbeck on the winter solstice, the Father’s Day, an accident of timing that gave Ingrey’s heart hope despite his reason and the learned saint’s advice.

  “I FEAR IT IS A FOOL’S ERRAND, COUSIN,” OPINED ISLIN KIN Wolfcliff, castlemaster of Birchgrove. “In all the ten years I have lived here, I’ve never seen or heard tell of ghosts in this citadel. But you are certainly welcome to make yourself free of the place to hunt them.” Islin eyed Ingrey and his two companions uneasily, and yawned behind his hand. “When you tire of casting about in the dark and cold, warm feather beds await you. Mine calls to me; pray excuse me.”

  “Of course,” said Ingrey, with a polite nod. Islin returned the courtesy and took himself out of the great hall.

  Ingrey glanced around. A couple of good beeswax candles in silvered sconces cast a warm honeyed flicker over the chamber; a fire burning low in the stone fireplace drove back some of the chill. Beyond the window slits, only midnight darkness lurked, though the gurgle of the fast-flowing Birchbeck, not yet frozen over though its banks were rimed with ice, came up faintly through them. The room was much the same as on the fateful day he and his father had received their wolf sacrifices here, and yet…not. It is smaller and more rustic than I remembered. How can a stone-walled room grow smaller?

  Ijada said in a worried voice, “Your cousin seemed very reserved all through dinner. Do you think our spirit animals disturb him?”

  Ingrey’s lips twitched up in a brief, unfelt smile. “Perhaps a little. But I think mostly he’s wondering if I mean to use my new influence at court to take back his patrimony.” Islin was only a little older than Ingrey, and had inherited his seat from Ingrey’s uncle some three years past.

  “Would you wish to?” Ijada asked curiously.

  Ingrey’s brows bent. “No. Too many bad memories haunt this place; they overtop my good ones and sink them. I would rather leave them all behind. Save for one.”

  Ijada nodded to Lewko. “So, saint. What does your holy sight reveal? Is Islin right? Are there no ghosts here?”

  Lewko, who had been doing his accustomed imitation of a simple, humble, and nearly invisible ordinary divine since they’d arrived that afternoon, shook his head and smiled. “In an e
difice this old, large, and long occupied, it would be more a wonder if there were not a few. What do your shaman senses tell you, Ingrey?”

  Ingrey lifted his head, closed his eyes, and sniffed. “From time to time, it seems I smell an odd little dankness in the air. But at this time of year, that’s no surprise.” He opened his eyes again. “Ijada?”

  “I am too untutored to be certain, I’m afraid. Learned?”

  Lewko shrugged. “If the god will touch me tonight, any ghosts nearby will be attracted to the aura. Not by any spell of mine, you understand; it just happens. I will pray for my second sight to be shared. The gods are in your debt, Ingrey, Ijada; if only you can receive, I think They will give. Compose yourselves to quietude, and we shall see.” Lewko signed himself, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands loosely before him. He seemed to settle into himself; his lips moved, barely, on his silent prayer.

  Ingrey did his best to quell all desire, will, and fear in his own mind; he wondered if just being very, very tired would be enough, instead.

  At length Lewko opened his eyes again, stepped forward, and wordlessly kissed first Ijada, then Ingrey on their foreheads. His lips were cool, but Ingrey felt a strange welcome warmth flush through him. He blinked.

  “Oh!” said Ijada, looking with interest around the chamber. “Learned, is that one?” She pointed; Ingrey saw a faint pale blob floating past, circling in toward Lewko, scarcely more substantial than a puff of breath in frosty moonlight.

  “Aye,” said Lewko, following her gaze. “There is nothing to fear, mind you, though much to pity. That soul is long sundered, fading and powerless.”

  To imply that Ijada, who had shared the terror and triumph at Bloodfield, might fear a ghost seemed absurd to Ingrey. His own fears lay on another level. “Learned, could it be my father?”

  “Do you sense his wolf, as you sensed the spirit animals within the others?”

  “No,” Ingrey admitted.

  “Then it is some other, long lost. Dying beyond death.” Lewko signed the Five at it, and it drifted back into the walls.

  “Why would the god lend us this sight, if there was nothing to see?” said Ingrey. “It makes no sense. There must be more.”

  Lewko looked around the now-empty chamber. “Let us make a little patrol around the castle, then, and see what turns up. But Ingrey—don’t hope too hard. The ghosts of Bloodfield had great spells and all the life of that dire ground to sustain them beyond their time. Lord Ingalef, I fear, had none of that.”

  “He had his wolf,” said Ingrey stubbornly. “It might have made some difference.” At his tone, Ijada’s hand found his, and squeezed; they left the chamber arm in arm, and took the opposite direction in the corridor from Lewko, the better to quarter the castle while this gift of second sight lasted.

  In the bleak winter darkness the castle was cold and dank even without ghosts, but Ingrey found his night sight keener than heretofore. They paced the corridors and chambers, Ijada trailing her hand over the walls. Exiting the main keep, they circled the buildings along the inner bailey wall; in the shadows of the stable, warm with the breath and bodies of the horses, Ijada whispered, “Look, another!”

  The pale mist circled them both as if in anxiety, but then faded again.

  “Was it…?” asked Ijada.

  “I think not. It was simple like the first. Let us go on.”

  As they trod across the snow in the narrow courtyard, Ingrey muttered, “I am too late. I should have come earlier.”

  Ijada’s hand, gripping his forearm, gave it a little shake. “None of that, now. You did not know. And even if you’d known, you had not yet come to your powers.”

  “But it rides me to know that there might have once been a time for rescue, and it slipped through my hands. I scarcely know whether to blame myself, or my uncle, or the Temple, or the gods…”

  “Blame none, then. My mother and father both died before their times. Yes, they went to their gods, which was some consolation to me, but—not enough. Never enough. Death is not a performance to rate ourselves upon, or berate ourselves upon either.”

  He squeezed her hand in return and bent to kiss her hair in the moonlight.

  They made their way up the inner steps of the wall and along the sentry walk to the battlement’s highest point, above the river, and paused to look out across the steep valley of the Birchbeck. The water of the stream rippled like black silk between the steel sheen of the spreading ice along its banks. The snow cover on the slopes caught the light of the westering moon in a pale blue glow, webbed with the bare tree branches like charcoal strokes, save where stands of black fir marked the rises, or clusters of holly made mystery in the dells. The bare boles of the birches blended with the snow and shadows, eluding the eye.

  They stood for a time, gazing out. Ijada shivered despite her woolens, and Ingrey wrapped himself around her like a cloak. She smiled gratefully over her shoulder. You warm me just as much as I warm you, love…

  For once, Ingrey sensed the revenant before Ijada, although she felt him stiffen and instantly turned her head to follow his glance. A few paces away floated a shape like mist in the moonlight, denser than the others had been, elongated, almost a man length. Within it, another shadow lurked, like smoke shrouded by fog.

  Ingrey’s arms spasmed around Ijada, then released her. “Fetch Learned Lewko, hurry!”

  She nodded and sped away.

  Ingrey stood silent, scarcely daring to breathe, lest this image fade or flee like the others. A head end it seemed to have, and feet, but he could not discern any features. His imagination tried to paint it with his father’s face, but a chilled realization came over him that he no longer remembered exactly what Lord Ingalef had looked like. His father’s appearance had never greatly mattered to Ingrey; it was his solid presence that had warmed, and his rumbling voice, resonating in a chest to which a child-ear pressed, that had promised safety.

  The illusion of safety. I might now become a father in my turn, and I cannot give such perfect safety. It was always an illusion. Will my own children forgive me, when they find out?

  Rapid footsteps scrunching through the snow and heavy breathing heralded the return of Ijada with the divine, making their way up the steep steps to this high point. Lewko paused at the top, gazing past Ingrey at the smoky revenant. “Ingrey, is it…?

  “I…” Ingrey started to say, I think so, but changed it to, “Yes. I am sure of it. Learned, what should I do? I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but it has no mouth. I don’t think it can speak. I don’t even know if it can hear me.”

  “I believe you’re right. The time for questions and answers seems past. You can only cleanse it, and release it. That is what a shaman does, it seems.”

  “And when he’s cleansed and released, will the Father of Winter take him up? Or is he sundered beyond recall? Are there no rites you can offer to help him?”

  “He had his funeral rites long ago, Ingrey. You can do what you can do, which is cleanse him; I can pray. But if it has been too long, there will not be enough of him left to assent to the god, and then not even the god can do more. It may be that all you can do is release him from this thrall.”

  “To nothingness.”

  “Aye.”

  “Like Horseriver.” Horseriver’s hatred of irrevocable time made more sense to Ingrey now.

  “Somewhat.”

  “What is the use of me, if I can send four thousand stranger-souls to their proper gods, but not the four-thousand-first that matters most to me?”

  “I do not know.”

  “And that is the sum of Temple wisdom?”

  “It is the sum of my wisdom, and all the truth I know.”

  Was Temple wisdom like a father’s safety, then, an illusion? And it always had been? Would you rather Lewko told you comforting lies? Ingrey could not walk back through that veil of time and experience to a child’s sight again, and wasn’t sure he would if he could. Ijada stepped forward and laid a hand upon his shoulder, lending
the comfort of her presence, if not the comfort of some more desirable answer. He let himself absorb the warmth of her body against his for a moment, then touched her hand for release and stepped forward.

  From a pouch on his belt he fumbled out a fine new penknife, purchased in Easthome for this moment. The thin blade reflected the face of the moon in a brief blink. Ijada gritted her teeth along with Ingrey as he took it in his left hand and pressed the edge into his right index finger. He squeezed his fist and raised his hand to the top of the fog-shape.

  The drops fell through onto the trampled snow in a spatter of small black circles.

  Ingrey’s breath drew in, and he clutched the knife harder. Lewko barely caught his arm as he made to stab his hand more deeply.

  “No, Ingrey,” Lewko whispered. “If a drop will not bless it, neither will a bucketful.”

  Ingrey exhaled slowly as Lewko let go again, and tucked the knife back in the pouch. Whatever of his hallow kingship lingered in his blood, it seemed it had no power over this. I had to try.

  He took a long, slow, last look, wondering what to say. Fare well seemed a mockery, be at peace little better. He moistened his lips in the frosty, luminous air.

  “Whatever you thought you were about, the thing you began here is finished, and done well. Your sacrifice was not in vain.” He thought of adding I forgive you, then thought better of it. Fatuous, foolish, hardly to the point now. After a moment he merely said, “I love you, Father.” And, after another, “Come.”

  The dark wolf-smoke spun out from the pale fog and through his fingers, and away.

  More slowly, the frost-fog dissipated as well, with a last faint blue sparkle.

  “The god did not take him up,” Ingrey whispered.

  “He would if He could have,” Lewko murmured back. “The Father of Winter, too, weeps at this loss.”

  Ingrey was not weeping, yet, although little trembles ran through his body. He could feel the second sight fading from his eyes, the gift returned. Ijada came to him again and tied a strip of clean linen around his finger. They wound their arms around each other.