“Yes, Ellerson.”
“If, however, The Terafin is aware of the possibility that she has introduced you to one who serves the Astari, and she accepts the risk, there is one clear reason for taking it.”
She waited.
“And I want you to tell me what you think it is.”
She hated these questions and almost regretted asking him for the information. But his expression was serious, and she realized that in this place, even speaking was probably a test. A test that, if she wanted to stay here, she couldn’t afford to fail.
So she thought. If there were an outsider in her den, and he was, essentially, spying on it, why would The Terafin want him there at all?
“If The Terafin thinks that what we’re looking for is a threat to the Empire, and not just the House,” she said quietly, “and she can’t take this information directly to the people who would use it, she could let them find out for themselves.”
Ellerson graced her with a genuine smile. “Indeed,” he said. His voice didn’t match his expression. It was grave.
“I don’t understand the politics.”
“Not yet, but you’re learning. Jewel—”
“How big is this going to get?”
“You’re searching for demons,” he replied.
“I’m searching for the undercity.”
He said nothing.
“You think finding one will be finding the other.”
He nodded. “Be wary,” he told her.
Chapter Four
3rd of Corvil, 410 A.A.
Order of Knowledge, Averalaan Aramarelas
SIGURNE MELLIFAS, the presiding ruler of the Order of Knowledge, felt her age keenly in the stuffy and quiet rooms of her chilly tower. She sat behind a well-worn desk, and although the usual piles of official paperwork girded its sides, she was concerned with a single, spare document that lay directly between her still hands. It awaited only her seal and the magical identification that would indicate that it was genuine.
She had yet to apply either, and she rose. The tower had windows, but while tall, they were narrow, and she found them as confining as her desk, her chair, and the duty that she had made her life. No matter how vigilant she was, no matter how carefully she observed, she would be unequal to that duty; the proof of that lay before her now, its spare, austere, and formal words all the accusation required.
So much had happened in the last month.
Ararath Handernesse’s death cast a long shadow. She had known he would face death. Had even gone so far as to warn him, time and again; he would not be moved. And because he would not be moved, she had used his rage and his cunning, and he had given her the information she desired.
But he had given her, as well, information that she could not have known existed: the brief and mysterious vision of gods in the streets of Averalaan. She was by nature a skeptical and pragmatic woman; she could hold fear at bay as she worked, because fear in the end was not practical.
But the Hunter Lords had come to the city, and in their wake, the demons had revealed themselves. Rath’s vision, or rather, the vision that he had shared, had spoken of two: the Hunter God and the Lord of the Hells.
What part has the Order played, in ignorance? What did we foster here? What knowledge of ours, what ancient writings, have brought us to this pass?
When the delicate lattice just above her door began to glow, she welcomed the interruption. The welcome was unusual. She was not Meralonne; she did not snap, snarl, or on occasion open herself up to reprimand for inappropriate displays of magic. But she did not precisely enjoy a steady stream of interruptions, because for the most part anyone who was willing to engage in them did so for the slightest of reasons.
She rose and went to the door, choosing, as she most often did, to open it by hand. Some of the younger mages felt this simple—and decidedly unmagical—act was beneath her dignity. They did not, however, complain about this to her; she heard it from other sources and often diverted those discussions into minor complaints about the attitude of the young and inexperienced.
It was not the young and inexperienced that she now faced.
She opened the door to Meralonne APhaniel, glanced at his grim expression, and stepped to one side to allow him to enter. She then retreated to her desk, and he took one of the two chairs that faced it, placing both feet firmly upon the other.
“Have you any word about our rogue mage?” he asked her, coming directly to what she assumed was the point. Word had, no doubt, escaped since the full council meeting at which the writ was demanded. Word, she thought grimly, of the Hunter Lords, their claim of demons, and their accusations of forbidden magic in the hands of a member of the Order of Knowledge stationed in the Kingdom of Breodanir, was even now filtering, in distorted whispers, throughout the Order’s halls.
She could not put a stop to rumor, and even at her most bored, she would have hesitated to try. All she could do now lay on her desk awaiting only her signature.
She shook her head. “None. We have ascertained that Krysanthos was indeed in Breodanir, as the Hunter Lord claimed; he was there as part of the research team.”
Meralonne’s opinion of such teams—which were often comprised of simple scholars as well as the mage-born—was low. And commonly known. “Did he leave behind anything that might give us some hint of the identity of his allies?”
“We are working on it now. There were, however, deaths.”
Meralonne shrugged. Death did not disturb him. But unlike many with such a cavalier attitude toward life—one that Sigurne did not, and would never, share—he had no particular attachment to his own; she thought he might run toward death with gravity and a strange, uncanny joy, possibly because he was powerful, and so certain of his power that death was always a gamble, never a certainty, no matter what form it took.
He glanced at the writ that lay in the center of her desk. Meralonne, unlike most of the magi who came to her tower, did not pretend he could not read words when they were upside down. She found it refreshing. “Krysanthos.” He frowned. “I am not entirely familiar with the member.”
“He was not a First Circle mage.”
“Second?”
“It is irrelevant. He was not considered a great power.”
“I do not consider him one, now. But we have witnesses to his culpability. I consider them credible.”
“We would hardly have the writ,” she said, her voice cool and dry, “if the witnesses were not deemed credible.”
“It is of interest to me that Krysanthos’ activity was confined to the Western Kingdoms; he did not do his work at the heart of the Empire.”
She raised a brow. “No. He did not. Why is this of interest to you? The Breodani?”
Meralonne nodded.
“Meralonne?”
He reached into the folds of his robes and drew out his pipe. She did not tell him to set it aside, but it was tempting; it had already been a long and difficult day, and these games of petty annoyance were wearing.
“The Terafin will not allow us to openly approach the Kings.”
“No. But you did not expect her acquiescence.”
“And when the games were smaller, Sigurne—or when my understanding of their possible significance was—I was willing to bide my time. I believe,” he continued, “that the time we now have is very, very short.” He paused. “She has, however, opened both an investigation and the possibility of censure in the Council Hall against Lord Cordufar. I believe some discreet inquiries are now ongoing within the Magisterium.”
Sigurne nodded. “How discreet?”
“I do not think, in the end, it will matter; the Magisterium is not directly connected with The Terafin. Were we able to find some proof that demons exist within their ranks, and that magisterial guards in the three holdings have been subverted, we would have what we need to move openly and quickly.”
“The Terafin grants what she can,” Sigurne replied.
“She is, at the moment, our only u
nimpeachable witness. What she saw, the Kings will not doubt, either privately or in public. But,” he added, grudgingly, “she specifically instructed Devon ATerafin to convey the foreigners to the Twin Courts.”
“The Hunter Lord and his Huntbrother?”
Meralonne nodded. As this was what they had hoped for, Sigurne found his lack of any satisfaction troubling.
He lined the bowl of his pipe with care, but he did not light it. “The Hunter Lord, the Huntbrother, and the wild girl, who is at the heart of this mystery. Teos, Lord of Knowledge, told one of his sons that she was god-born.” He paused, and then added, “Hunter-born. She is the living daughter of the Hunter God.”
“The Breodani god.”
“Yes. You see the difficulty?”
She did. Despite many, many decades of study in the Western Kingdom of Breodanir, no proof, no solid proof, that the Hunter God was a god had been found. His worship was strong, but so, too, was the worship of the Southern Lady; people’s beliefs and the truth often failed to coincide.
Yet if Teos, a true god, claimed that the Hunter God, who did not in theory exist, had fathered a living child, they had miscalculated. She glanced more sharply at Meralonne APhaniel. “There is more,” she said.
“There is more.” He was silent for a long moment, and when at last he spoke, he lifted the unlit pipe to his lips, waiting. The pipe, today, was not a red flag; it was meant as a comfort. The day, which had been long and stressful, suddenly darkened.
“Smoke, if it eases you.”
“Thank you.” The leaves burned, brief and orange, cupped in his hand. “The Huntbrother can, indeed, see the kin without recourse to ancient magics.”
“So you’ve said.” And his role in the Twin Court, as envoy, was the only apolitical way they might inspect the Court for the possibility of demonic presence.
“I do not know how or why, but I can guess.” He raised his head; smoke came in a thin stream from his lips, but he did not blow rings; his thought was upon his words, and their choice. She had never labored under the illusion that he spoke all of what he knew.
“The Huntbrother is oathbound, Sigurne.”
She frowned. “I do not think I know the term.”
“I forget myself. You have a great understanding of ancient and lost arts, but it is narrowly focused.” He rose, still clutching his pipe. “The gods of the Empire are gods; as proof, we have their children, and their children can bespeak them when it is needful.
“This can only happen because the gods exist in the half-world, between our two lands. It is there that the children go, and there that we are summoned. That has been our test of gods for as long as the Empire has studied them.”
She nodded.
“But the wild girl is Hunter-born.”
“There was never, in the history of the gods, a Hunter God.”
“No.”
“Meralonne—”
“But there was a God of Oaths, Sigurne, in the time before the gods chose to depart these lands.”
She did not ask him how he knew. The gods themselves were remarkably reticent about speaking of the world that had existed before they had chosen to withdraw from it.
“The God of Oaths was called Bredan, in the Old Weston style. The Hunter Lords call themselves the Breodani.” Meralonne hesitated for a moment and then set his pipe’s stem between his lips. He was silent, as if lost in thought, and she found it oddly comforting. So much about this man was, to her.
But when he spoke again, all comfort was lost. “Bredan was the God of the Covenant,” he said quietly.
The Covenant.
“When the gods agreed to leave this world to the living, they undertook one last task; they remade the world, and they sundered its ability to easily sustain them. But this was not enough.
“Bredan took the oaths of the gods, and he bound them into the Covenant. They cannot, with ease, return to the world while he holds their oaths, and if he is aware of their passage, he can prevent it.” He paused. “But it is said that at least three gods did not agree to the oath-binding, although they, like the others, drifted from the world.
“Bredan, the Keeper. Neamis, who is called Mystery or Destiny, and about whom very little is known.”
She lifted a hand, as if to ward off the last name, the last god. She knew well who it must be.
He nodded, acknowledging both her gesture and her sudden, visceral fear. But he was Meralonne. “Teos offered one other warning to the Hunter Lords and his son.
“The Lord of the Hells is no longer upon his throne.”
She closed her eyes.
“But there is hope, if it is dim,” he said, when the silence had continued for just long enough. “I said, and will say again, that the Huntbrother, Stephen of Elseth, is oathbound. He could not be so if the god himself had not accepted his oath.”
“What oath?” she whispered. She rose. The chair was small and confining, the tower room too dark. She felt trapped by his words, by the weight of what they presaged.
“I am not entirely certain,” he replied. “But I have done some reading and some research; I have visited the Twin Courts and spent some time with the Breodani envoys. They are all, without exception, women; the men, it seems, do not leave the borders of Breodanir.”
“These two have.”
“Yes. Lady Faergif was suitably shocked. As she is a somewhat canny—and suspicious—woman, it was difficult to engage her in conversation. However, when it became clear to her that the only information I was interested in was, in fact, information that even a Breodani peasant knows, she was willing to speak.”
“And that information?”
“The Hunter Lords choose a Huntbrother for their sons. They choose a boy of the same age as their son, and they choose him from farms, or the streets of the city, or even the orphanages; they adopt these boys. The Huntbrother is therefore not noble by birth, but when the family adopts him, he is raised as one. He is, in all ways except blood, brother to the Hunter. He will have some say in his Hunter’s marriage, and he will hunt by his side until one or the other fails.”
She nodded.
“The Hunter Lords do not travel, and they do not travel at this time of year; it is too close, Lady Faergif said, to the Sacred Hunt.”
“This is a . . . ritual?”
“It is more than that, Sigurne. But how much more, I do not think any of us has clearly understood, until now. The Sacred Hunt is called, in the Sacred Grove in the King’s city, once a year. It is called upon the first day of Veral. All Hunter Lords who wish to retain their titles and their lands must travel to the King’s city at this time, and all Hunter Lords must participate in this Hunt.
“She had much to say about the horn calls and the rituals that mark the beginning of the Sacred Hunt, about the drums and the hunted beasts themselves and what they signify. I did not interrupt her, because I did not want to alarm her; I will, however, spare you the grueling details.
“During this Sacred Hunt, one man will die. He will face what the Breodani call the Hunter’s Death. It is, by all accounts, not a pleasant death, but when the death itself is discovered, it signals the end of the Sacred Hunt. The fallen man is honored, and he is returned to his lands by a contingent of Breodani Hunter Lords.
“He is honored,” Meralonne added, “because he has fulfilled the Breodani oath—the ancient oath—to their god. Once a year, the Hunter God hunts his own. For the rest of the year, he protects and succors them.”
“It sounds barbaric,” she said at length. “A human sacrifice.”
“It is.”
“And it continues, even now?”
“This is the interesting part,” he replied, carefully tapping ash out of his pipe and then lining it again. “One King, influenced by foreigners, decided to forego the Sacred Hunt. For three years, he refused to call it. The land withered slowly. The crops failed.
“And when the Sacred Hunt was finally called, there were not three simple deaths—there were a hundred.
It was a slaughter. There are stories from that hunt that speak of the Hunter’s Death as a giant, fearsome beast, a ravening, hungry god with claw and fang and fur; there is nothing remotely human about the description. Nor, apparently, about those deaths.” He paused and then said, “But after those deaths, the land once again became fecund, and after those deaths, the Kings—for the old King, I believe, perished—have called the Sacred Hunt without fail.”
“So the Huntbrother is oathbound? But not the Hunter Lord?”
He lifted a hand, and a thin stream of smoke trailed from between his lips. “Yes. To both questions. But this story does have a point, though a long and winding one.
“The Huntbrothers swear an oath when they take the title of Huntbrother. I do not have the exact oath to hand,” he added, “but the gist of it, buried among all the other vows a boy of eight or ten is expected to make to his adoptive family, is that he will face death in the place of his Hunter.
“During the Sacred Hunt, if the Hunter Lord dies at the hands of the Hunter’s Death—and hands, in this case, is entirely figurative, I assure you—the Huntbrother always follows. He dies a wasting, consumptive death. There has, as far as the members of the Order in Breodanir are aware, been no exception.”
“This is known?”
“It is not entirely clear that the Hunters understand the significance.” He inhaled pipe smoke and blew it out in a thin, focused stream. “Because there is a bond between Hunter Lord and Huntbrother that not even the magi understand. It is more than simple empathy. In the history of the Breodani, many Hunter Lords and many Huntbrothers have died following the loss of their brother in many hunts, not only the Sacred Hunt. The dogs,” he added, “frequently refuse to eat as well.”
“Dogs?”
“Ah. Yes. They treat their hunting dogs as valued personal retainers, and they expect them to be treated that way when they travel. Which is probably the other reason they don’t travel outside their borders. There was a brief incident in the dining hall when the Hunters arrived here; if you have not heard about it yet, you no doubt will. But I digress.
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