The Hallowed Hunt (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He twisted around out of her arm’s grip, crawling up on hands and knees over the rocks onto the moss-covered bank. Pink water flowed from his hair, growing redder. He dashed it from his eyes and blinked around. The woods here were thick and tangled. He was not sure how far downstream they had come, but the ford, the wagon, and his men were nowhere in sight. He was shivering in shock from the head blow.

  She stood up, water streaming from her clothes, and staggered out of the river toward him, her hand reaching. He cried out, a wordless bellow, and recoiled, wrapping his arms around a small tree, in part to hold himself upright, in part to hold…“Don’t touch me!”

  “What? Lord Ingrey, you’re bleeding—”

  “Don’t come any nearer!”

  “Lord Ingrey, if you will just—”

  His voice cracked. “My wolf is trying to kill you! It is coming unbound! Stay away!”

  She stopped, stared. Her hair had come partly undone, and water trickled from it in sparkling drops, plashing silently into the moss at her feet, steady and fascinating as some strange water clock.

  “Three times,” he gasped hoarsely. “That was the third time. Don’t you realize, I tried to drown you just now? It’s tried twice before. The first time I saw you, when I drew my steel, I meant to run you through on the spot. Then when we were sitting, I almost tried to strangle you.”

  She was pale, thoughtful, intent. Not running away screaming. He wanted her to run, whether screaming or not made no matter to him. As long as she could outrun him…

  “Run!”

  Instead, maddeningly, she leaned against a tree bole and began to remove her squelching boots. It wasn’t until she had tipped out the second one that she said, “It wasn’t your wolf.”

  His head was still ringing from the blow against the boulder. By the unpleasant rumbling in his gut, he was due to vomit some river water soon. He didn’t comprehend her. “What?”

  “It wasn’t your wolf.” She set the boot down next to its mate and added in a tight, even voice, “I can smell your wolf, in a sense. Not smell really, but I don’t know any other way to describe it.”

  “It—I tried to kill you!”

  “It wasn’t your wolf. It wasn’t you, either. It was the other smell. All three times.”

  Now he merely stared, all words deserting him.

  “Lord Ingrey—you never asked where the ghost of Boleso’s leopard went.”

  It wasn’t a stare anymore, he feared. It was a gape.

  “It came to me.” Her hazel eyes met his for one level, intent moment.

  “I…it…excuse me,” said Ingrey hoarsely. “I have to throw up now.”

  He retreated around his too-narrow tree, for what little privacy it could render him. He wished he could say the spasm gave him a moment to gather his wits, but they seemed scattered for a mile behind him up the river valley. Drowned, they were, without benefit of wine. All of the punishment, none of the reward.

  He stumbled back around the tree to find her calmly wringing out her jacket. He gave up and sat down with a thump upon a mossy log. It was damp, but he was damper, his wet leathers sliding and squeaking unpleasantly.

  She looked no different, to his eye. Well, wet, yes, sodden and wild, but still caressed by the slanting light as if the sun were her lover. He saw no cat shape in her shadow. He smelled nothing but himself, a sickly mix of wet leather, oil, sweat, and horse.

  “I don’t know if it was Boleso’s intent that I should have it,” she continued in that same flat tone, undaunted by the repulsive interruption. “It came to me when I touched his dying body, looking for the key. The other animals stayed bound, and went with him. He had held them longer, or perhaps the rite hadn’t been finished. The leopard’s spirit was very frightened and frantic. It hid itself in my mind, but I could feel it.

  “I did not know what to do, or what it might do. Boleso’s men were fools. I said nothing about it, and no one asked.”

  “Your defense—that could be your defense!” he said in sudden eagerness. “The leopard spirit killed the prince, in its frenzy. Not you. You were possessed by it. It was an accident.”

  She blinked at him. “No,” she said in a voice of reason, “I just told you. The leopard did not come to me till Boleso lay dying.”

  “Yes, but you could say otherwise. There is none to gainsay you.”

  Her stare grew offended.

  We must return to this argument, I think. Ingrey waved a weak hand. “Well. And then…?”

  “That night, in my cell, I had vivid dreams. Warm forests, cool glens. Tumbling in golden grasses with other young cats, spotted and soft, but with sharp bites. Strange men. Nets, cages, chains, collars. A ship journey, a cart journey. More men, cruel and kind. Loneliness. There were no words in these dreams. It was all feelings, and flashes of vision, and strong smells. A torrent of smells, a new continent of odors.

  “I first thought that I was going mad, but then I decided not. That closet was just like a cage, in a way; cruel and kind men brought food and cleaned it out. It was familiar. Calming.

  “On the second night, I dreamed the leopard’s dreams again. But this time…” Her voice faltered. Steadied. “This time, there came a Presence. There was nothing to see, in that black wood, but the smells were wonderful, beyond any perfume. Every good scent of the forest and field in the fall. Apples and wine, roast meat, crisp leaves and sharp blue air. I smelled the autumn stars, and cried out for their beauty. The leopard’s spirit leapt in ecstasy, like a dog greeting its master or a cat rubbing around the skirts of its mistress. It purred, and writhed, and made eager noises.

  “After that, the leopard’s ghost seemed pacified. No longer frightened or wild. It just…lies there contentedly, waiting. No, more than contentedly. Joyfully. I don’t know what it waits for.”

  “A presence,” echoed Ingrey. No—she said, a Presence. “Did a—do you think—was it a god? That came to you, there in the dark?”

  Did he doubt it? Luminous, Ingrey had called her, with a perception beyond sight, however denied. And even in those first confused moments, he had not mistaken it for mere physical beauty.

  Her face grew suddenly fierce; she said through her teeth, “It didn’t come to me, it came to the accursed cat. I wept for it to come to me. But it did not.” Her voice slowed. “Perhaps it could not. I am no saint, fit to have a god inhabit me.”

  Ingrey grubbed in the moss with nervous fingers. His split scalp had stopped dripping blood into his eyebrows, finally. “It was also said—though not by the Quintarian divines—that the Old Wealdings used animal spirits to commune with the gods.”

  Her lovely jaw clenched; her eyes turned a ferocious light upon him, so that he nearly recoiled. Only then, and only for that brief instant, did he see how much seething terror she concealed—had from the first been concealing—beneath her composed surface. “Ingrey, curse you, you have to tell me, you must talk, or I shall go mad in truth—how did you come by your wolf?”

  Hers was not some idle curiosity, spurred by gossip. It was a most desperate need to know. And how much would he, in his first confusion so long ago, have given for some experienced mentor to tell him how to go on? Or even for a companion as confused as he, but sharing his experience, matching his confidences instead of denying them and naming him demented, defiled, and damned? And all the things he could never have explained even to a sympathetic ear, she had just experienced.

  It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands. He gritted his teeth; began.

  “I was but fourteen. It all came upon me without warning. I was brought to the ceremony uninstructed. My father had been for some days—or weeks—distraught about something that he would confide to no one. He suborned a Temple sorcerer to accomplish the rite. I do not know who caught the wolves, or how. The sorcerer disappeared immediately after—whether in fear of having botched the rite, or because he had deliberately betrayed us, I never found out. I was not fit to inquire, just then
.”

  “A sorcerer?” she echoed, leaning against a tree bole. “I saw no sorcerer with Boleso. Unless he had one hidden in disguise. If Boleso himself was demon-ridden, I saw no sign, not that I would. Well, you can’t, unless you are god-sighted or a sorcerer yourself.”

  “No, the Temple would have…” Ingrey hesitated. “In Easthome, some sensitive from the Temple must have detected it, if Boleso had caught a demon. If he’d caught it more recently, since his exile…he might not have encountered anyone with the gift to discern it.” But whatever had been wrong with Boleso had surely been going on since before he’d slain his manservant.

  “I cannot guess what powers his menagerie might have given him,” said Ijada. “I know things now that I do not see with my eyes. The leopard seems to give me a kind of knowledge or perception, but”—her hand clenched in frustration—“not in words. Why doesn’t your wolf help you so?”

  Because I have worked for a decade and more to cripple it, bind it down tight. And I thought I was safe, and now your questions frighten me worse than the wolf-within. “You said there was a thing, another…smell, not me or my wolf. A third thing.”

  She stared at him unhappily, her brows drawing in, as though she grappled for a description of something that had no relation to language. “It is as if I can smell souls. Or the leopard does, and leaks it to me in patches. I can smell Ulkra, and know he is not to fear. Another few men in the retinue—I know to stay out of their reach. Your soul seems doubled: you, and something underneath, something dark and old and musty. It does not stir.”

  “My wolf?” But his wolf had been a young one.

  “I…maybe. But there is a third smell. It is wound about you like some parasitic vine, pulsing with blood, that has put tendrils and roots into your spirit to maintain itself. It whispers. I think it is some spell or geas.”

  Ingrey was silent for a long moment, staring down at himself. How could she guess which was which? His wolf spirit was surely a kind of parasite. “Is it still there?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice tightened. “Then in my next inattentive moment, I might try to kill you again.”

  “Perhaps.” Her eyes narrowed and nostrils flared, as if seeking a sensation that had nothing to do with the senses of the body. As futile as trying to see with her hands, or taste with her ears. “Till it is rooted out.”

  His voice went smaller still. “Why don’t you run away? You should run away.”

  “Don’t you see? I must get to the Temple at Easthome. I must find help. And you are taking me there as fast as may be.”

  “The divines were never much help to me,” he said bitterly. “Or I would not still be afflicted. I tried for years—consulting theologians, sorcerers, even saints. I traveled all the way to Darthaca to find a saint of the Bastard who was reputed to banish demons from men’s souls, to destroy illicit sorcerers. Even he could not disentangle my wolf spirit. Because, he told me, it was of this world, not of the other; even the Bastard, who commands a legion of demons of disorder and can summon or dismiss them at His will, had no power over it. If even saints cannot help, the ordinary Temple authorities will be useless. Worse than useless—a danger. In Easthome, the Temple is the tool of the powerful, and it seems you have offended the powerful.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “Who put the geas on you? Must it have been someone powerful?”

  His lips parted, closed again. “I am not sure. I cannot say. It all slips away from me. Unless I am reminded, I don’t even remember, between one time and the next, trying to kill you. A moment’s distraction on my part could be deadly to you!”

  “Then I will undertake to remind you,” she said. “It should be easier, now that we both know.”

  As he opened his mouth to protest, he heard a distant crashing in the woods. A man called, “Lord Ingrey?” and another, “I heard voices toward the river—over that way…!”

  “They’re coming!” He struggled to his feet, swaying dizzily, his hands extending to her in pleading. “Before they find us. Flee!”

  “Like this?” she said indignantly, sweeping a hand down her damp costume, her bare feet. “Soaking wet, no money, no weapons, no help, I am to run off into the woods and—what? Be eaten by bears?” Her jaw set. “No. Boleso came from Easthome. Your geas came from Easthome. It is there that the source of this evil must be stalked. I will not be diverted.”

  “Someone there would kill you to keep you silent. They’ve already tried. They might kill me.”

  “Then you’d better not babble about this to anyone.”

  “I don’t babble—” he began in outrage, but then their rescuers were upon them, two of Ingrey’s men on horseback hacking through the undergrowth. Now he wanted to talk to her, and could not.

  “My lord!” cried Rider Gesca in gladness. “You have saved her!”

  Since Ijada did not correct this misperception, neither did Ingrey. Evading her gaze, he climbed to his feet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE WAGON WAITING ON THE far bank, the sun had slipped behind the treetops. A level orange glint shone through the tangled branches by the time Ingrey and his prisoner had traded off for dry clothes and mounted their recaptured horses. Ingrey’s head, wrapped in a makeshift strip of cloth, was pounding, and his shoulder was stiffening, but he refused even to contemplate the idea of sitting in the wagon atop Boleso’s box. The cortege clambered out of the wooded valley and on into the gathering twilight.

  A chill mist began to arise from the ditches and fields. Ingrey was just about to order his lead riders to light torches to guide them when a distant glow on the road resolved into a string of bobbing lanterns. A few minutes later, an anxious Halloo sounded above trotting hoofbeats. The man Ingrey had sent ahead that morning to ready Reedmere for Boleso spurred forward to greet them. He brought with him not only Temple servants with lights, but a fresh team of horses already harnessed, together with a wheelwright and his tools. Ingrey gave the prudent guardsman a heartfelt commendation, the teams were exchanged, and the procession started up again at a faster pace. In a few more miles, the lights above the walls of Reedmere shone to guide them to the gate held open for them.

  Reedmere was no hamlet, but a town of several thousand souls, and the local center of Temple administration. Its temple on the town square, though large, was still very much in the old rural style: a five-sided wooden hall decorated outside and in with elaborate twining carvings of plants and beasts and scenes from saints’ tales. The roof was wood shingle, doubtless lately replacing rustic thatch. In any case, it made a fit enough barn to store Boleso’s coffin for the night. Reedmere’s anxious ruling lord-divine, assisted by most of the lay stewards of his civic council, hastened to oversee the prince’s placement therein and intone prayers. A gaggle of curious townsfolk had dressed up and assembled into a passable choir. More superior citizens mustered to make loyal obeisance at the bier; Ingrey sensed a slight disappointment that the coffin was closed. Ingrey let his bandages excuse him from the ceremonies.

  The temple’s outbuildings seemed mostly to consist of nearby houses recommissioned to new duties. The divine’s residence was in a building with the Temple notary’s office; the library and scriptorium shared quarters with the Daughter of Spring’s Lady-school for the town’s children; the Temple infirmary, dedicated to the Mother of Summer, occupied the back rooms of the local apothecary’s shop. Ingrey saw his prisoner turned over to some stern-looking female Temple servants, gave a few coins to the wheelwright for his time, made sure the horses were stabled and his men housed, paid off the yeoman-teamster and his wife and found them and their horses lodgings in the town for the night, and, finally, reported to the infirmary to have his head stitched.

  To his relief, Ingrey found that the Mother’s practitioner here was more than just a local seamstress or midwife; she wore the braid of a school dedicat on the shoulder of her green robe. With briskly efficient hands she lit wax candles, washed his head with strong soap, and sutured
his scalp.

  Sitting on her bench staring at his knees and trying not to wince at every needle poke or tug of the threads, he inquired, “Tell me, does Reedmere harbor any Temple sorcerers? Or saints? Or petty saints? Or…or even scholars?”

  She laughed. “Oh, not here, my lord! Three years ago, a Temple inquirer from the Father’s Order brought a sorcerer with him to investigate a charge of demon magic against a local woman, but nothing was found. The inquirer gave her accusers a pretty scorching lecture, after, and they were fined his travel costs. I must say, the sorcerer was not what I expected—sour old fellow in Bastard’s whites, not much amused, I gathered, to be dragged out onto the roads in winter. There was a petty saint of the Mother at my old school”—she sighed in memory—“I wished I’d had the half of his plain ordinary skill, as well as his holy sight and touch. As for scholars, Maraya who runs the Lady-school is about the best we can do, apart from the lord-divine himself.”

  Ingrey was disappointed, but not surprised. But sorcerer or saint or someone Sighted, he must find, to confirm or deny Lady Ijada’s disturbing assertions. And soon.

  “There,” added the dedicat in satisfaction, giving a tug to her last knot. Ingrey turned a small yelp into a grunt. A snip of scissors told him this little ordeal was over, and, with difficulty, he straightened up again.

  Voices and footsteps sounded at the back door of the shop, and the Mother’s dedicat looked around. The pair of female Temple servants, one of the lay stewards, Lady Ijada, and Rider Gesca trooped in. The servants were carrying piles of bedding.

  “What’s this?” said the dedicat, with a suspicious glance at Lady Ijada.

  “By your leave, Dedicat,” said the steward, “this woman will be housed here tonight, as there are no sick in your chambers. Her attendants will sleep in the room with her, and I will sleep outside the door. This man”—he nodded toward Ingrey’s lieutenant—“will post a night sentry to check from time to time.”