The Hallowed Hunt c-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He almost leaned into her hand, but it fell back too soon. “I’ve had a very strange night. Something happened at the temple. Lewko is coming to see you tomorrow, by the way. And me. I think I’m in trouble.”

  “Come, then, and tell me.” She drew him down to sit beside her on the steps, her eyes wide and dark with renewed disquiet.

  Ingrey stumbled through a description of his encounter with the bear and its god in the temple court, which twice made her gasp and once made her giggle. He was a little taken aback at the giggle. She listened with fascination to his description of Jokol, his boat, and his verse. “I thought,” said Ingrey, “what happened with Fafa was the white god’s doing, in His wrath at the dishonest grooms. But just now, coming back here with Gesca, it happened again. The weirding voice. I did not know if it was my wolf, or me. Five gods, I am no longer sure where I leave off and it begins! It has never spoken like this before. It has never spoken at all.”

  Ijada said thoughtfully, “The fen folk claimed that wisdom songs were magical, once. Long ago.”

  “Or far away.” The singing woman at the forest’s edge… “This is here, and now, and in deadly earnest. What I wonder is, does Wencel know of such powers? Does he possess them? Why did he not use them on us? I think he stole and read your letter while we were at dinner with him, by the way. Learned Lewko says it was opened.”

  Ijada sat up and caught her breath. “Oh! What did the letter say?”

  “I did not read it, but I gather it described the events at Red Dike in some detail. So, at least from the time he came back in to join us at the table, Wencel knew of the geas, and he knew that I concealed it from him. Did you sense a change in his conversation, then?”

  Ijada frowned. “If anything, he seemed more forthcoming. In hope of coaxing a like frankness?”

  Ingrey shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “Ingrey… “

  “Hm?”

  “What do you know of banner-carriers?”

  “Scarcely more than I know of shamans. I have read some Darthacan accounts of battles with the Old Wealdings. The Darthacans did not love our bannermen. The spirit warriors, and indeed, all the kin warriors, fought fiercely to defend their standards. If the banner-carrier refused to retreat, then the warriors would fight to the last around him—or her, I suppose, if Wencel speaks true. Audar’s soldiers always tried to bring the banners down as quickly as possible, for that reason. It was said one of the banner-carrier’s tasks was to cut the throats of our own who were too wounded to carry away. It was considered an honorable ending. The wounded warrior, if he still could speak, was expected to bless the bannerman and thank the blade.”

  Ijada shivered. “I did not know that part.”

  Her expression grew inward for a moment, on what thoughts Ingrey could scarcely guess. Her dream at the Wounded Woods? But warriors already dead could scarcely require such a gruesome service from their bannerwoman.

  Ijada added, “See what Wencel knows, when you ask him about Holytree.”

  “Mm, and there’s another meeting I’m not looking forward to. I don’t think Wencel is going to be best pleased with me over this spectacle tonight. Farcical as it was, I drew the Temple’s attention in the most serious way. I am afraid of Lewko.”

  “Why? If he is a friend and mentor of Hallana’s, he cannot be dishonorable.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he would be a good friend. And an implacable enemy. It is merely worrisome to imagine him on the other side.” Or was this just habit? He remembered the earnest divines at Birchgrove, torturing him back to silent sanity. It had left pain as an unreliable guide to Ingrey of the line between his friends and his enemies.

  Ijada said impatiently, “What side do you imagine you are on?”

  Ingrey’s thoughts came to a full stop. “I don’t know. Every wall seems to curve away from me. I spin in circles.” He glanced up, finding her eyes, close to his, turned amber in the shadows. The pupils were wide in the dimness, as if to drink him in. He might fall into them as deep wells, and drink deep in turn. She possessed physical beauty, yes, and beneath that the edgy thrilling wildness of her leopard spirit. But beyond that… something more. He wanted to reach through her to that something, something terribly important… “You are my side. And you are not alone.”

  “Then,” she breathed, “neither are you.”

  Oh. Neither time nor his heart stopped, surely, and yet he floated for the space of a breath as though he’d stepped from some great height, but not begun to fall. Weightless. “Sweet logician.”

  Closing the handbreadth between their lips was the work of a second. Her eyes flared open.

  Her lips were as soft as he’d ever imagined, as warm as sunlight. The first touch was chaste, hesitant, but a great shock seemed to roll through his body, his belly, and echo back up his limbs, which left his hands trembling. He stilled them by gripping her around the waist, around the back of her head, fingers clenching in her loose dark hair. A warm arm wound around his shoulder, flattened to his back, pressed him inward. Fingers gripped his upper arm in turn, spasming. Her lips parted.

  A wave of lust ran in the track of that first shock, firing his loins, kindling an awareness of just how long it had been since he’d held a woman like this…. No, he’d never held a woman like this. The kiss grew abruptly passionate, and not chaste at all. He explored her mouth in desperate haste, and the white hands wrapping him fairly wrenched him toward her, crushing the softness of her body against his. Their breath synchronized; their heartbeats began hammering in time.

  And then they were reaching through each other…

  A magical kiss was suddenly not a romantic turn of phrase. It was not, in fact, romantic at all. It was terrifying beyond breath. She choked, he gasped, they drew apart, though their hands still gripped; not lustful now, but more like two people drowning.

  Her eyes, wide before, were huge, the pupils stretched black with only a narrow ring of gold iris shimmering around them. “What are you…?” she began, as he panted, “What have you done?”

  One hand released him to clutch at her heart, beneath the dark robe. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never… felt… “

  A creak of floorboards, a clank, a scrape; Ingrey sprang back as his chamber door opened. Ijada folded her arms together like a woman freezing, and spat an unexpected short word under her breath. He had just time to cock a wry eyebrow at her, and she to grimace back at him, before he twisted to see Tesko poke his yawning face through the door into the dim hallway.

  “M’lord?” he inquired. “I heard voices… “ He blinked in mild surprise at the pair sitting on the steps.

  Ijada rose, snatched up her candlestick, gave Ingrey a mute look of scorching intensity, and fled up the stairs.

  For a brief, self-indulgent moment, Ingrey pictured himself drawing his steel and beheading his servant. Alas, the hall was too narrow for such a swing to be executed properly. He gave over the vision with a long sigh and levered himself to his feet.

  Tesko, perhaps sensing Ingrey’s displeasure at the ill-timed interruption, bowed him warily into his chamber. The clubfooted youth had been issued half-trained to Ingrey when he had first taken up his place as Hetwar’s more-than-courier. Used to caring for his own needs, Ingrey had treated the menial with an indifference that had overcome Tesko’s initial terror of his violent reputation a little too completely. The day he had caught Tesko pilfering his sparse property, however, he had replaced repute with a vivid demonstration. After that Hetwar’s other servants did more to whip their junior into shape than Ingrey ever had, for if Tesko were dismissed, he would have to be replaced with one of them.

  Ingrey let Tesko remove his boots, gave curt orders for the predawn, and fell into bed. But not to sleep.

  He was too spun up to sleep, too drunk to think straight, too exhausted to sit up. His blood seemed to hiss through his veins, growl in his ears. He was intensely conscious of every faint creak from overhead. Did Ijada’s breathing sti
ll rise and fall in time with his? He was still aroused, and more than half-afraid to do anything about it, because if she felt his every heartbeat and movement the way he seemed to feel hers…

  They had surely been falling toward that moment of meeting for days. He felt coupled to her now as though they were two hunting dogs, leashed to each other for their training. So who is the huntsman? What is the quarry? The heavy click of that binding reverberated in his bones: chains thinner than gossamer, stronger than iron, less readily parted.

  He didn’t have to hear the creaks, as she turned in her bed. He knew where she was as certainly as he knew the position of his own body in the dark. He held out a hand in the dimness. This is an illusion. I am simply going mad with unrequited lust. Except that it hadn’t seemed as unrequited as all that, now, had it? A perfectly demented grin stretched his mouth, briefly.

  He must have slept eventually, for Tesko nearly had to pull him from the covers and onto the floor to wake him again. Tesko’s jerky motions betrayed a fear balanced between the dangers of dealing with an Ingrey half-awake and the dangers of disobeying; Ingrey swallowed the glue from his mouth and assured his servant that disobeying would have been worse. Sitting up proved painful but not impossible.

  He let Tesko help wash, shave, and dress him, in the interest of protecting his new bandage; Ingrey frowned to see it nearly soaked through again with browning blood, but there was not time to change it now. The filthy covering on his left wrist he at last abandoned, as that wound was now better than half-healed, all black scabs and new pink scars and greening bruises. The sleeves of his town garb—gray and dark gray—covered it well enough. With sword, knife, and clean boots, he was made presentable, if one ignored the bloodshot eyes and pale face.

  He rejected bread with loathing, gulped tea, and took the stairs down with a faint clatter. He glanced up through two opaque floors. Ijada still sleeps. Good.

  The chill, moist air outside was tinged with just enough light for Ingrey to make his way through the streets. He arrived at the opposite end of Kingstown with his head, though still aching, a little clearer for the walk.

  Color was leaking back into the world with the dawn. The stolid cut stone of the wide front of Hetwar’s palace took on a buttery hue. The night porter recognized Ingrey at once through the hatch in the heavy carved front doors, and swung one leaf just wide enough to admit him into the hushed, rich dimness. Ingrey turned down the offer of a page to announce him and made his way up the stairs toward the sealmaster’s study. A few servants moved quietly about, drawing back curtains, stirring fires, carrying water.

  Ingrey blinked and hesitated when he rounded the corner to find Prince-marshal Biast’s own bannerman, Lord Symark kin Stagthorne, leaning against the wall outside Hetwar’s chamber. Symark exchanged a familiar nod with Ingrey.

  “Is the prince here?” Ingrey murmured to him.

  “Aye.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “We reached the Kingstown gate about two hours ago. The prince left his baggage train in the mire near Newtemple. We rode all night.” Symark hitched his shoulders, dislodging a few small lumps of drying mud from his coat.

  “Is that you, Ingrey?” Hetwar’s voice called from within. “Enter.”

  Symark raised a brow at him; Ingrey slipped inside. Hetwar, seated at his desk, motioned him to close the door behind him.

  Ingrey made his bow to the prince-marshal, seated with his booted legs stretched out before him in a chair opposite Hetwar, then to the sealmaster. Both men returned acknowledging nods, and Ingrey stood with his hands clasped behind his back to await his next cue.

  Biast looked as mud-flecked and road-weary as his bannerman. Prince Biast was a little shorter than his younger brother Boleso, and not quite as broadly built, but still shared the Stagthorne athleticism, brown hair, and long jaw, resolutely shaved. His eyes were a touch shrewder, and if he shared Boleso’s sensuality and temper, they were rather better controlled. Biast had become heir presumptive only three years ago, on the untimely death through illness of the eldest Stagthorne brother, Byza. Prior to those expectations falling so heavily upon him, the middle prince had been guided toward a military career, the rigors of which had left him little time to match either Byza’s reputation for courtly diplomacy or Boleso’s notoriety for self-indulgence.

  Hetwar was already dressed for the day not in his usual sober simplicity, but in full court mourning, his chains of office lying heavy on his fur-trimmed tunic. Presumably, he meant to depart soon to join Boleso’s funeral procession on its last leg into Easthome this afternoon. The sealmaster was of middle height, middle age, middle build; indulgences of the flesh were not among Hetwar’s temptations, surrounded by opportunities though he might be here at the high court. It struck Ingrey that Learned Lewko shared something of the same deceptive mild manner Hetwar routinely bore, concealing complex mastery, which was a curious and unsettling thought.

  What neither sealmaster nor prince-marshal bore was any smell of the uncanny, to Ingrey’s newly awakened inner senses. The perception did not ease him much. Magical powers worked sometimes; material powers worked all the time, and this chamber, these two men, fairly resonated with the latter.

  Hetwar ran a hand through his thinning hair and favored Ingrey with a glower. “About time you showed up.”

  “Sir,” said Ingrey neutrally.

  Hetwar’s brows rose at his tone, and his attention sharpened. “Where were you last night?”

  “What have you heard so far, sir?”

  Hetwar’s lips curved a little at the cautious riposte. “An extraordinarily garbled tale from my manservant this morning. I trust that you did not actually enspell a giant rampaging ice bear in the temple court yesterday evening. What really happened?”

  “I had gone up there for a brief errand on my way here, sir. Indeed, an acolyte had lost his hold on a new sacred animal, which had injured him. I, um, helped them regain control of the beast. When the Temple returned it to its donor, Learned Lewko requested me to accompany it back through town, for safety’s sake, which I did.”

  Hetwar’s eyes flashed up at Lewko’s name. So, Hetwar knew who Lewko was, even if Ingrey had not.

  Ingrey continued, “The owner, Jokol, proclaimed himself as a prince from the southern islands, and it seemed to me undiplomatic to refuse the hospitality of his ship, which he pressed upon me. The islanders’ drinks proved deadly and their poetry, very lengthy. When Gesca rescued me, it was too late to attend upon you.”

  A small snort from Biast, with a renewed look at Ingrey’s pallor, testified to the prince-marshal’s amusement. Good. Better to be the butt of a tale of drunken foolishness than the nexus of out-of-control illegal magic, shattering miracle, and worse.

  Ingrey added, “Learned Lewko was witness to the whole of the incident with the bear, and the only one I would suggest that you regard as reliable.”

  “He is peculiarly qualified.”

  “So I understood, sir.”

  A passing stillness of Hetwar’s hands was all that revealed his reaction to this. He frowned and went on. “Enough of last night. I am told your journey with Prince Boleso’s coffin was more eventful than your letters to me revealed.”

  Ingrey ducked his head. “What did your letters from Gesca say?”

  “Letters from Gesca?”

  “He was not reporting to you?”

  “He reported to me yesterday evening.”

  “Not before?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I suspected he was penning reports. I assumed it was to you.”

  “Did you see this?”

  “No,” Ingrey admitted.

  The eyebrows climbed again.

  Ingrey took a breath. “There are some things that happened on the journey even Gesca does not know.”

  “For example…?”

  “Were you aware, sir, that Prince Boleso was experimenting with spirit magic? Animal sacrifice?”

  Biast jerked in surprise at this;
Hetwar grimaced, and said, “Rider Ulkra apprised me of some dabblings. Leaving a young man with that much energy too idle may have been a mistake. I trust you removed any unfortunate traces, as I requested; there is no point in besmirching the dead.”

  “They were not idle dabblings. They were serious and successful attempts, if ill controlled and ill-advised, that led directly to a state of mind I can only name violent madness. Which also leads me to wonder, for obvious reasons, how long they had been going on. Wen—it is suspected the prince had the aid of an illicit sorcerer at one point or another. Lady Ijada testifies Boleso had some garbled theory that the rites were going to give him an uncanny power over the kin of the Weald. He strangled a leopard the night he tried to rape her, and she killed him trying to defend herself.”

  Hetwar glanced worriedly at Biast, who was now sitting up listening with a darkening frown. Hetwar said, “Lady Ijada testifies? I trust you see the problem with that.”

  “I saw the leopard, the strangling cord, the paint traces on Boleso’s body, and the chamber. Ulkra and several others among the prince’s household can confirm this. I believe her without reservation. I believed her from the first, but later, another incident confirmed my conviction.”

  Hetwar opened a hand, inviting Ingrey to go on. His expression was anything but happy.

  “It became apparent to me… it was revealed that… “ This was harder than Ingrey had expected. “Someone, in Easthome or elsewhere, had undertaken a plot to murder my prisoner. It is not clear to me who, or why.” He kept half an eye on Biast as he said this; the prince looked startled. “It became clear how.”

  “So who was this assassin?”

  “Me.”

  Hetwar blinked. “Ingrey… “ he began warningly.

  “It was revealed to me, through four failed attempts on my prisoner’s life and the help of a Temple sorcerer we met in Red Dike, one Learned Hallana—who was once a pupil of Learned Lewko’s, by the by—that a compulsion or geas had been placed upon me by magical means. Hallana says it was not common demon magic, not something related to the white god’s powers.”