The Hallowed Hunt (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “I didn’t have him properly skinned and gutted, though, so I expect the effect will be imperfect.”

  “It’s as well the weather is no warmer, then. But it seems we’d best not delay.” Wencel let out a sigh, planted both palms on the tabletop, and pushed himself wearily to his feet. For an instant, the blackness of his spirit seemed to strike Ingrey like a blow, then he was just a tired young man again, burdened too soon in life with dangerous dilemmas. “We’ll speak again.”

  The earl made his way out to the porch, where his retainers jumped alertly to their feet to escort him toward the town temple. In the door of the taproom, Ingrey touched Ijada’s arm. She turned, her lips tight.

  “What do you make of Wencel’s beast?” he asked her, low-voiced.

  She murmured back, “To quote Learned Hallana, if that’s a stallion, I’m the queen of Darthaca.” Her eyes rose to meet his, level and intent. “Your wolf is not much like a wolf. And his horse is not much like a horse. But I will say this, Ingrey; they are both a lot like each other.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  INGREY RETURNED UPSTAIRS TO PACK HIS SADDLEBAGS, THEN sought Gesca. The lieutenant’s gear was gone from the corner of the taproom. Ingrey walked down the muddy street of Middletown—better named Middlehamlet, in his view—to the small wooden temple, in hopes of finding him. He reviewed which of the half dozen village stables they had commandeered for their horses and equipment Gesca was likely to have gone to next, but the plan proved unnecessary; Gesca was standing in the shade of the temple’s wide porch. Speaking, or being spoken to, by Earl Horseriver.

  Gesca glanced up at Ingrey, twitched, and fell silent; Wencel merely gave him a nod.

  “Ingrey,” said Wencel. “Where is Rider Ulkra and the rest of Boleso’s household now? Still at Boar’s Head, or do they follow you?”

  “They follow, or so I ordered. How swiftly, I do not know. Ulkra cannot expect much joy to await him in Easthome.”

  “No matter. By the time I have leisure to attend to them, they will have arrived there, no doubt.” He sighed. “My horses could use a little rest. Arrange things, if you will, to depart at noon. We’ll still reach Oxmeade before dark.”

  “Certainly, my lord,” said Ingrey formally. He jerked his head at the unhappy-looking Gesca, and Wencel gave them a short wave of farewell and turned for the temple.

  “And what did Earl Horseriver have to say to you?” Ingrey inquired of Gesca, low-voiced, as they trod down the street again.

  “He’s not a glad man. I cringe to think how black things would be if he’d actually liked his brother-in-law. But it’s plain he does not love this mess.”

  “That, I had already gathered.”

  “Still, an impressive young fellow, in his way, despite his looks. I thought so back at Princess Fara’s wedding.”

  “How so?”

  “Eh. It wasn’t that he did anything special. He just never…”

  “Never what?”

  Gesca’s lips twisted. “I…it’s hard to say. He never made a mistake, or looked nervous, never late or early…never drunk. It just crept up on you. Formidable, that’s the word I want. In a way, he reminds me of you, if it was brains and not brawn that was wanted.” Gesca hesitated, then, perhaps prudently, declined to pursue this comparison any farther down the slope into the swamp.

  “We are cousins,” Ingrey observed blandly.

  “Indeed, m’lord.” Gesca gave him a sideways glance. “He was very interested in Learned Hallana.”

  Ingrey grimaced. Well, that was inevitable. He would hear more from Wencel on that subject before the day was done, he was sure.

  THE MIDDLETOWN TEMPLE DIVINE WAS A MERE YOUNG ACOLYTE, and had been thrown into panic by the descent upon him, on only a half day’s notice, of the prince’s cortege. But however much ceremony Earl Horseriver was sent to provide, it was clear it was not starting yet. The cavalcade left town promptly at noon with a grimmer efficiency than Ingrey in his vilest mood would have dared deploy. He applauded in his heart, and left the pallid acolyte a suitable purse to console him for his terrors.

  Middletown was not yet out of sight on the road behind them when Wencel wheeled his chestnut horse around beside Ingrey’s, and murmured, “Ride ahead with me. I need to speak with you.”

  “Certainly.” Ingrey kneed his horse into a trot; he gave what he hoped was a reassuring nod to Ijada as they passed around her riding beside the wagon. Wencel favored her with a somewhat ambiguous salute.

  Wencel turned in his saddle, as the distance between them and the cortege stretched out of any possible earshot, but only remarked, “Wherever did you find the beer wagon?”

  “Reedmere.”

  “Ha. At least one thing about his funeral will match poor Boleso’s taste. They’re hauling that silver-plated royal hearse from Easthome to meet us in Oxmeade. I trust it will not collapse any bridges on the way.”

  “Indeed.” Ingrey tried to keep his lips from twitching.

  “My household awaits me in Oxmeade to attend to my comfort tonight. And yours, if you will join me. I recommend you do so. There will be no lodgings to be found for love nor money once the court arrives there for this procession.”

  “Thank you,” said Ingrey sincerely. There had been duels fought by desperate retainers over the possession of haylofts, in certain unwieldy royal excursions of Ingrey’s experience. Wencel would certainly have secured the best chambers available.

  “Tell me of this Learned Hallana, Ingrey,” said Wencel abruptly.

  At least he did not tax Ingrey for his failure to mention her before. Ingrey wondered whether to feel relieved. “I judged her to be exactly what she claimed to be. A friend of Lady Ijada’s who had known her as a child. She’d been a physician at some fort of the Son’s Order out west in the fen marches—Ijada’s father was a lord dedicat, and its captain, at the time.”

  “I knew something of Lord dy Castos, yes. Ijada has spoken of him. But my mind picks at the coincidence. A sorcerer with some connection with Lady Ijada—and her new affliction—disappears from Boar’s Head. Days later, a sorcerer—or sorceress—with a connection with Ijada comes to her in Red Dike. Is this two sorcerers, or one?”

  Ingrey shook his head. “I cannot imagine Learned Hallana passing without note at Boar’s Head. Inconspicuous, she was not. And she was very pregnant, which I gather lays great constraint upon her use of her demon for the duration. She stays in a hermitage at Suttleaf, for safety. I admit my evidence is indirect, but I’m certain that Boleso was already deep into his disastrous experiments when he murdered his manservant so grotesquely, six months ago. Which must put his pet sorcerer at Easthome then, or near then, as well.”

  Wencel frowned in doubt.

  “It is as much an error to take truth for lies, as lies for truth,” Ingrey pointed out. “The dual-divine was a most unusual lady, but that she might also be Boleso’s puppet is one too many things to believe about her. It doesn’t fit. For one thing, she was no fool.”

  Wencel tilted his head, conceding the point. “Suppose she were his puppet master, then?”

  “Less unlikely,” Ingrey granted reluctantly. “But…no.”

  Wencel sighed. “I shall give up my simplifying conjecture, then. We have two separate sorcerers. But—how separate? Might Boleso’s tool have fled to her, after the debacle? The two in league?”

  An uncomfortable idea. It occurred to Ingrey suddenly that the suggestion—misdirection?—that his geas had been laid on him at Easthome had come from Hallana. “The timing…would not be impossible.”

  Wencel grunted disconsolately, staring between his horse’s ears for a moment. “I understand the learned divine wrote a letter. Have you read it yet?”

  Curse you, Gesca. And curse that gossiping warden. How much else did Wencel already know? “It was not entrusted to me. She handed it directly to Lady Ijada. Sealed.”

  Wencel waved a hand in dismissal of this. “I’m sure you’ve been taught how to do the thing.”

 
“For ordinary correspondence, certainly. This is one from a Temple sorcerer. I hesitate to think what might happen to the letter—or to me—if I attempted to tamper with it. Burst into flame, maybe.” He left it to Wencel to decide if he meant the paper, or Ingrey himself. “Passing it on to Hetwar also has problems. At the least, he would need another Temple sorcerer to open it. I should think even the royal sealmaster would find it a challenge to suborn one to pry into letters addressed to the head of his own order.”

  “An illicit sorcerer, then.” At Ingrey’s sour look, he protested, “Well, you must grant Hetwar could find one if anyone could—if he chose.”

  “If this multiplication of hypothetical sorcerers goes on, we shall have to hang them from the rafters like hams to make room.” Although, Ingrey was uncomfortably reminded, there was still his strange geas to account for.

  Wencel gave a short, unhappy nod, then fell silent for a little. “Yes, speaking of hams,” he finally said. His voice grew conversational. “It is not, you know, that you lie well, cousin. It’s merely that no one is foolhardy enough to call you on it. This may have given you an inflated idea of your skill at dissimulation.” The voice hardened. “What really happened in that upstairs room?”

  “If I had anything more to report, it would be my duty to report it first to Lord Hetwar.”

  Wencel’s brows climbed. “Oh, really? First, and yet somehow…not yet? I saw your letters to Hetwar, such as they were. The number of items missing from them turns out to be quite notable. Leopards. Sorceresses. Strange brawls. Near drownings. Your romantic lieutenant Gesca would even have it that you have fallen in love—also, if more understandably, without hint in your scribblings.”

  Ingrey flushed. “Letters can go astray. Or be read by unfriendly eyes.” He glowered, pointedly, at the earl.

  Wencel’s lips parted, closed. He attended for a moment to his horse, as he and Ingrey separated to ride around a patch of mire. When they were stirrup to stirrup again, Wencel said, “Your pardon if I seem anxious. I have a great deal to lose.”

  With false cheeriness, Ingrey replied, “While I, on the other hand, have already lost it all. Earl-ordainer.”

  Wencel touched a fist to his heart, in acknowledgment of the hit. But he added quietly, “There is also a wife.”

  It was Ingrey’s turn to fall silent, abashed. Because Wencel’s marriage was arranged—and, up till now, barren—did not necessarily entail that it was also loveless. On either side. Indeed, Princess Fara’s betrayal of her handmaiden spoke of a hot unhappy jealousy, which could not be a product of bored indifference. And the hallow king’s daughter must have seemed a great prize to so homely a young man, despite his own high rank.

  “Besides,” Wencel’s voice lightened again, “burning alive is a most painful death. I do not recommend it. I think this missing sorcerer could be a threat to us both, in that regard alone. He knows many things that he should not. We should find him first. If he proves to contain nothing, ah, personally dangerous, I’d be glad enough to pass him along to Hetwar thereafter.”

  And if the sorcerer was dangerous to him, what did Wencel propose to do then? And, five gods, how? “Leaving aside all questions of duty—this is not an arrest I am equipped to handle, privately or otherwise.”

  “How if you were? Does having first knowledge not attract you?”

  “To what end?”

  “Survival.”

  “I am surviving.”

  “You were. But your dispensation from the Temple depends, in part, upon a bond of surety now broken.”

  Ingrey’s eyes flicked to him, wary. “How so?”

  Wencel’s lips tightened in a small smile. “I could deduce it by the change in your perception of me alone, but I don’t have to; I can see it. Your beast lies quietly within you, by long habit if nothing else, but nothing constrains it except that you do not call it up. Sooner or later, some Temple sensitive is bound to notice, or else you will make some revealing blunder.” His voice grew low and intense. “There are alternatives to cutting off your hand for fear of your fist, Ingrey.”

  “How would you know?”

  Wencel’s hesitation was longer, this time. “The library at Castle Horseriver is a remarkable thing,” he began obliquely. “Several of my Horseriver forefathers were collectors of lore, and at least one was a scholar of note. Documents lie there that I am certain exist nowhere else, some of them hundreds of years old. Things old Audar’s Temple-men would not have hesitated to burn. The most amazing eyewitness accounts—I should tell you some of the anecdotes, sometime. Enough to lure a not very bookish boy to read on. And then, later—to read as though his life depended on it.” His gaze found Ingrey’s. “You dealt with your so-called defilement by running away from all knowledge, and acknowledgment. I dealt with mine by running toward. Which of us do you think has the best grip by now?”

  Ingrey blew out his breath. “You give me a lot to think about, Wencel.”

  “Do so, then. But do not turn away from understanding, this time, I beg you.” He added more softly, “Do not turn your back on me.”

  Indeed not. I should not dare. He gave Wencel an equivocal salute.

  The cortege came then to a rocky ford, fortunately not in so great a spate as the near-disastrous crossing on the first day, and Ingrey turned his attention to getting all across in safety. A mile farther on, the wagon nearly bogged in a stretch of mud, then a guardsman’s mount went lame from a lost shoe. Then, at a stop to water the horses, a fight broke out between two of Boleso’s retainers, some smoldering private quarrel that burst into flame. Ingrey’s customary menace almost did not contain it, and he turned away from the separated pair pale with worry, which they fortunately took for rage, about what might happen the next time if mere threat was not enough, and he was forced to follow with action.

  He remounted his horse more blank-faced than ever. Wencel, he had to admit, had thrown his mind into chaos. The earl’s twisting conversation gave Ingrey a sharp sense that the pair of them were fencing in the dark, blades stabbing at hidden targets. Both concealing and confiding dangerous secrets to each other, feint and parry…equally? I think Wencel conceals more. To be fair, Wencel had also seemed to reveal more.

  Ingrey had thought his anxiety over the strange geas to be his most pressing problem. The notion that Wencel’s lore might contain clues to the matter was doubly exciting. It suggested Ingrey might have an ally to hand. It equally suggested that Ingrey might have found his unknown enemy. Or, how was it that Wencel seemed to regard illicit sorcerers as minor inconveniences, to be so readily handled? He glanced toward the head of the cortege where Wencel now rode, beyond earshot once more, interrogating one of Boleso’s men. The guardsman was a big fellow, yet his shoulders were bowed as though trying to make himself smaller.

  Wencel had dragged a number of lures across Ingrey’s trail, yet it was not the new mystery but the old one that most arrested him, caught and held him suspended between fascination and fear. What does Wencel know about my father and his mother that I do not?

  OXMEADE WAS LARGER THAN RED DIKE, BUT BOLESO’S CORTEGE was received at its big stone temple that afternoon with only moderate ceremony, mostly, it seemed, because the town was a madhouse of preparation for greater events tomorrow. Ingrey was hugely relieved finally to hand off responsibility for the corpse and its outriders to Wencel, who handed them in turn to his sober seneschal, a gaggle of Easthome Temple divines, and a formidable array of retainers and clerks. Princess Fara and her own household, Ingrey was glad to learn, had not followed on, but awaited them all in the capital. It was not yet twilight when Ingrey and his guard mounted up again with their prisoner and followed Wencel through the winding streets.

  Passing along the edge of a crowded square, Wencel pulled up his horse, and Ingrey stopped beside him. A street market was open late, presumably to serve the needs of the courtiers and their households already starting to arrive for the last leg of Boleso’s funeral procession. Ingrey was not sure at first what ha
d caught Wencel’s attention, but he followed the earl’s gaze past the busy booths to a corner where a fiddler played, his hat invitingly laid upside down at his feet. The musician was better than the usual sort, certainly, and his mellow instrument cast a strange, plaintive song into the golden evening air.

  After a moment Wencel remarked, “That is a very old tune. I wonder if he knows how old? He plays it…almost rightly.”

  Wencel kept his face averted until the song ended. When he looked forward his profile was strange. Tense, but not with anger or fear; more like a man about to weep for some inconsolable, incalculable loss. Wencel grimaced the tension away and clucked his horse onward without looking back, nor sending anyone to throw a coin in the hat, though the fiddler looked after the rich party with thwarted hope.

  They came at length to the large house Wencel had rented, or commandeered, one of several in a row in this wealthy merchants’ quarter. Bright brass bosses in sunburst patterns studded the heavy planks of its front door. Ingrey handed off his horse to Gesca, shouldered his saddlebags, and oversaw Lady Ijada and her young warden taken upstairs by a maid. By their strained greetings, this was a servant who had known Ijada before. The Horseriver household, it seemed, found the justice of Ijada’s case as disturbingly ambiguous as did their master.

  Before Wencel went off to deal with the sheaf of messages that had arrived in his absence, he murmured to Ingrey, “We shall eat in an hour, you and Ijada and I. It may be our last chance for private speech for a while.”

  Ingrey nodded.

  He was guided to a tiny chamber on the top floor, where a basin and a can of hot water were already waiting for him. It was clearly a servant’s room, of whatever wealthy family the earl had dislodged, but its solitude was most welcome to him. Horseriver’s own servants were likely crowded into some lesser dormitory or stable loft in this crisis, and Gesca and his men would fare little better. Ingrey trusted Horseriver’s cook would console them.