The Sacred Hunt Duology

by Michelle West

  Gilliam.

  There, in the darkness. He turned, but in turning was already too late. At the feet of his Hunter Lord—at the feet of the man who was brother and more—was the broken body of Singer. Cut nearly in two, his blood seeped into the darkness of the shadow-covered floor as if it were being drunk. Gilliam reeled with the shock of the sudden death.

  Loss was not unknown to the Hunter Lords, and those well-trained were able to bear the severing of a life bond under the duress of battle. Gilliam was well trained. He kept fighting. But Stephen could hear the keening that began to mount in the wilds of his soul.

  Something was grabbing his shoulders before he realized that he was trying, desperately, to get through the lines; to stand at Gil’s side. His sword was unsheathed—when and how that had happened he could not have said. With an angry shrug, he freed himself; the grip wasn’t a strong one.

  But in the time it took, Corfel was gone, his black and white body vanishing into darkness as the Allasakari continued their chill approach. Gilliam cried out again, and Stephen felt it, although everywhere there was silence. It was almost unreal, this death unfolding before him; the fallen to either side. It was cold in the foyer, and dark; he wondered if death’s lands were not enshrouded in this very fog.

  But Gilliam was real; Gilliam bridged the distance of silence, of darkness, of death. He knew the instant that Gilliam was wounded. Felt the darkness latch on to the open scrape, a dangerous and unknown poison seeping into the blood. There was no scream; not to be heard, not to be felt. As always, physical pain only made Gilliam more determined—it was the dogs that were lolling him with their deaths.

  Stephen struggled forward, and this time the grip on him was strong. He tried to tell them—the Chosen, he thought—that he must go to his Hunter, but not a single sound escaped the tortured, silent rush of his lips. They were large men; Stephen had never been large. And he did not wish, not in this darkness, to turn his sword upon them—for such a division in the face of such an enemy was too grave a wrong. Helpless, he stared into the fighting, watching it unfold in silence.

  The lack of sound made his hair rise; he wondered what else was being stolen, what other parts of the world were being devoured by the shadows the Allasakari carried. If he could somehow be heard—if he could give voice to the fighting Chosen—the battle’s lines would be changed in an instant. For it was clear that the Allasakari were not fully in control of their actions; they did not seem to work from plan, and they were not working together. They were vessels, and only because of the thrall of the darkness did they carry the advantage.

  The hair along his arms began to rise. The dreams returned, because they were also nightmares, and what better to carry them but darkness? His hand slid, nerveless, to the folds of his tunic; to the pouch that rested against his skin; to the thing therein.

  There was one act that he could perform that would shatter that silence.

  Gilliam! he thought, as he raised the simple, bone horn to his trembling lips. He swallowed air, drank it into his lungs as deeply as he could.

  And then, on the ninth day of Corvil, four hundred and ten years after the return of Veralaan with the Twin Kings, Stephen of Elseth winded the Hunter’s Horn.

  • • •

  There was no grace in the note; it was loud and short, more like the honking of an angry, giant fowl than a musical call. But his hands were shaking, it was all that he could manage—and it was heard.

  A ripple went through the ranks of the Allasakari; a shiver through the fog and cloud of shadow. The Chosen of Terafin seemed to straighten slightly, although they did not turn to see what had caused the sound.

  Nothing else happened, and after a moment, the shadow grew stronger and thicker, redoubling its effort as if speed were suddenly of the essence.

  • • •

  It wasn’t enough. Stephen swallowed air; forced his shaking hands to rise again. He knew what he had to do; knew what call he had to make. Years, he and Gilliam had studied these. But it was the Hunter’s duty to call the Hunt, and although Stephen knew the call, he had never made it.

  Such a simple call; the easiest of all to make. Three long, loud notes in a rising sequence, held to the end of the caller’s breath.

  One note, and he could hear Evayne’s pleading; the tenor of the fear beneath her words stronger than he had ever heard it. Two notes, and he could hear the cries of the Chosen of Terafin, free from the bondage of shadow, issuing orders and calling point. Three notes, and he could hear the panicked shouts of the Allasakari and the angry snarl—loud enough to fill the curved ceiling—of a demon lord in combat.

  “You did it!” Evayne shouted, her violet eyes round with relief and wonder. “Whatever you did, it’s—”

  Her words were lost to the roar of thunder; the voice of the storm; the death of the Breodani. Stephen turned his pale face toward the west wall, where the shadow was beginning to buck and writhe like a living thing in agony.

  “What—what’s that?” she cried, her words a frightened echo of the dismay The Terafin’s Chosen showed.

  Stephen took her hand numbly. “Nothing that you need fear,” he said, pitching his voice so that it would carry above the din of the fighting around him.

  “But what is it?”

  He watched as the shadow grew frenzied; watched as a shred of it suddenly flew back. Shedding darkness as if it were colored water, it rose, scaled and furred and fanged. What its shape was, Stephen could not say; it writhed and twisted, shifting from beast to beast, death to death.

  “It is,” he said softly, as even the Allasakari fell silent in awe and terror, “the Hunter’s Death.”

  The next screams that filled the hall were the last that the Allasakari closest to the western wall would ever utter.

  • • •

  Gilliam knew the Hunter’s Death at once; his entire body resonated with recognition. With a wild cry he drew his horn and winded it, loud and long, calling the hunt Stephen had called, but without the timidity of the huntbrother—acknowledging his Lord’s price with the defiance, marred by only the smallest of fear, with which the Hunter Lords had always approached it.

  “Terafin!” he shouted, suddenly in his element in the damaged halls of an alien land. “Order your Chosen to retreat!”

  • • •

  The Terafin stiffened at his command—as did her Chosen—but she saw the look in Lord Elseth’s eyes, and knew that he knew what he dealt with. She did not; her mage was in a combat that was hidden by the folds of shadow and darkness, and she could not reasonably turn to him for advice or counsel.

  I can well see, she thought, as he gathered his wounded beasts around him, why the demons feared you.

  She turned to Torvan. “Signal a retreat to the Hall of the Lattan Moon.”

  Bloodstained and wearied, he nonetheless saluted sharply and carried out her command, his voice filling the air where hers did—and could—not. And then, as the Chosen began to form up, fighting their way into retreat position, Torvan ATerafin pivoted neatly and lifted his arm. Its shadow, short and squat, fell upon The Terafin’s exposed back.

  • • •

  Jewel saw him and froze. Torvan’s helm caught the light and threw it up in shards as his hand came down. The knife that he carried found its mark easily in the exposed back of the woman he served.

  Not Torvan, she thought, her hands sliding from the rails that she’d gripped during the onslaught of the Allasakari. Not Torvan.

  Carver wasn’t beside her; she spun to give orders as her voice made its way up the closed walls of her throat, and found herself talking to air. Angel tapped her shoulder lightly before he bounded down the stairs, taking them three at a time and barely touching down before he was off again.

  “Stay where you are!” she told the rest of her den, feeling failure and fearing it. Using the rails as a guide, she tore down the sta
irs—too late, already too late. The Terafin’s body sprawled, in a half-turn, across the floor. A flash of crimson lay beneath her, running through the supple plates of her armor to cool against marble.

  Carver was there, dark hair and shadowed visage a contrast to the light reflecting off Torvan’s glinting armor. He was armed with daggers, a long, thin stiletto in his right hand, and a thicker, cutting knife in his left. Of the special dagger that Jewel’d gone through so much trouble to borrow, there was no sign.

  Had there been, Torvan would not have noticed it. His movements were stiff and jerky; his face had the appearance of thickness, of heaviness, that made it look as if he were wearing a mask.

  A flesh mask.

  Some of the Chosen cried out—those who were in a position to see what had happened. Swords, already drawn and blooded, were turned back, retreat was forgotten.

  Not for the first time, Jewel understood just how special, and how honored, the Chosen felt in their service. For where they had shown no fear at the onslaught of the darkness and its terrible silence, their expressions now were those of open horror. Like Jewel, they were momentarily frozen and silent.

  The silence dissolved in a roar that filled the hall with loss, with a keening wail that spoke of betrayal and failure so large that it made Jewel’s guilt seem—for as long as the cry lingered—paltry. Torvan turned to face them, casting his sword and his dagger aside, arms wide, lips trembling.

  And she saw his face.

  She saw his face.

  Shadow parted where the Hunter’s Death tore it free from ground and alcove, from wall, mirror, and painting. But it did not give ground easily, and it did not give ground without making the gains of the great beast costly.

  Had there been blood before the Hunt was called? Stephen couldn’t remember it. The darkening splatters on his clothing were pale evidence; easily forgotten as he watched the progress of death itself across the width of the foyer.

  Savaged bodies lay aground like shattered vessels. The hand of night was lifting, and Stephen could see, behind the roving frame of the beast, the clash of swords that were more magical than physical: Meralonne and Sor na Shannen. Light arced around them, in pale twists of different colors; light the offense, and light the defense. On such stuff as this, he had first learned to read, to dream, to remember the glory of ages past.

  He never, never wished to see it again.

  For here, in this hall, power spoke with such savagery that the conflict behind it was almost forgotten. Where at first he thought the bodies in the wake of the called Hunt were due to the Hunter’s Death, he realized now that they were also the casualty of the battle between the two mages. Neither mage seemed to care what cost they exacted from their surroundings; the columns that framed the southern halls had crushed two of the Allasakari in their fall.

  He looked away with a lurch as Gilliam reached out to grab—and hold—his attention.

  Saving only Sor na Shannen, there were no more of the enemy; the last had given up its feeble struggles with a screaming wail that made Stephen long for the silence the Hunter’s Horn had destroyed. The great beast of the Sacred Hunt roared in triumph—and then it turned its wide, feral jaws to the retreating forces of The Terafin. To Gilliam, Espere, and Evayne.

  To Stephen of Elseth.

  “Call it off!” someone shouted. Stephen turned to see the ashen face of a lithe and lean guard. “We can’t retreat—The Terafin’s been injured. It’s done what it was summoned for—call it off!”

  He stared at her helplessly, and she repeated the words, loudly and slowly, as if she were speaking to an imbecile. What answer could he offer her?

  “CALL IT OFF!”

  Call off the breaking of the earth; call off the wail of the sea’s retribution; call off the wind-tossed storms that ravaged the eastern plains, or the fires that claimed the forests, or the mountains that surrendered their snow in a rush that buried whole villages. Sooner that than the Hunter’s Death.

  “We don’t—we don’t control it,” he shouted back. “It’s—you’ve got to flee!”

  • • •

  It wasn’t like Rath.

  With Rath, at first sight, she’d known. That knowledge drove her here, with what was left of her den under wing—to Torvan. To Torvan, who had carried Arann, dying, in from the streets where any other guard would’ve probably given them the heave. And that man was there—she knew it just as surely as she’d known that Rath was not.

  Problem was that he wasn’t alone. Something was in there with him.

  “Don’t kill him!” she shouted, and her voice reverberated in the clamor below. Too late—was it always to be too damned late? Lightning lanced down from the ceiling above, speeding unerringly by in a crackle of magical blue light.

  Torvan didn’t move; struck where he stood, he faltered, stumbled, and then righted himself. He looked up, scanning the mezzanine until he found what he sought. Morretz. His lips turned up in the rictus of a smile, and Jewel knew that Torvan was still there—but whatever was in there with him had just gained a whole lot of ground.

  “Stop it!” she shouted to the domicis. “Stop it—you’re just making it worse!”

  Lightning, called by the unseen other, lanced up from the floor, drawn in a circle of gesture and fire. Morretz leaped off the landing before the rails were made kindling and smoldering brass.

  The Chosen closed.

  As did Jewel.

  • • •

  She knew that her part was a small one. No one would listen to her, and she didn’t blame them—or she wouldn’t later when she was thinking clearly—but she had to do something, and she lit upon the only idea that made any sense. Carver.

  It was easy enough to reach him; he hadn’t a chance at getting past the armored men and women who were trying to reach The Terafin’s body.

  “Where is it?” she asked, as quietly as the noise allowed.

  He jumped five feet and spun, daggers point out; relaxed a bit when he saw who it was. His face was pale beneath the darkness of his hair; wasn’t hard to guess how much he wanted to toss the knives and run. But he hadn’t. She caught his left forearm, squeezed it, and nodded, a weary smile dimpling her cheek. Carver and Duster had killed before they’d come to her den, but Carver hadn’t killed since. She was suddenly glad, in the midst of this slaughter, that he wasn’t going to have to start now. “Where is it?”

  He reached into his shirt, pulled hard, and handed her the sheathed dagger. She was surprised at how heavy it was.

  “It’s not Torvan, is it?” Carver asked her.

  “It’s not just Torvan—but he’s there. In there.”

  He spit to the side. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Nothing.” She unsheathed the knife. “Nothing at all. Just get the Hells out of the halls, and take everyone else with you.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Get out!” Lightly and quickly, weaving around the rigid bodies of moving men and women, she began to hunt her target.

  • • •

  Salas’ brown coat was matted and sticky; his legs were cut, and blood clotted the wounds slowly. But he stood at his master’s side, growling, his ears so far back against his skull they might as well have been missing. Connel, young and light on his feet, was limping. Hard to tell whether or not that meant a break. Stephen might have prayed to the Hunter God for better fortune, but he knew that right now, no one was listening.

  Ashfel, the largest of the alaunts, iron-gray and iron-hard, stood in the front, bristling. He knew the Hunter’s Death, but he did not fear it; he was Gilliam’s liege, and that was his only cause. Marrat’s body lay where it had fallen beside him.

  The beast roared, and Ashfel growled back, lips curled up over sharp, white teeth. Gilliam, sword blooded and readied, stepped forward. Espere whimpered, and Gilliam’s jaw set in a tight, angry li
ne.

  He was trying to send her away. She refused to leave. And Stephen knew that Gilliam was dangerously close to the end of his reserves; he would not waste them on struggling with the wild one. The wild one.

  She turned and roared at the beast; the beast pulled up on its hind legs and roared back. Stephen thought—for just a moment—that she might somehow be able to speak with the creature. Something flickered in its multicolored eyes; something that seemed almost intelligent.

  Then it was gone, and the beast continued to stalk a quarry that barely moved.

  • • •

  Jewel.

  She looked up at the sound of her voice, even though she knew at once that she would see no one calling.

  Jewel.

  No time for it; not now. Or maybe there was, curse it. The Chosen were determined to end this in their own way—and as fire lapped up from the ground to sizzle their legs, she wondered if she would have any chance to reach Torvan before she, he, and they perished.

  Jewel, listen carefully. Raise your right arm if Torvan is of the kin. Raise your left if he is not.

  Something about the voice was familiar. She couldn’t place it. Didn’t matter. She lifted both her arms in a quick sweep and then lowered them again.

  In the silence of her private ear, the voice said something extremely curt and extremely rude. So it was odd that she would recognize his voice only then: He was Morretz, the domicis—the most trusted servant that The Terafin had.

  “Morretz!” she shouted, hoping to catch his attention. “I need your help!”

  Up ahead, the clanging of swords answered her. She shuddered because she knew that Torvan no longer carried one.

  We don’t have a choice. We have to kill him.

  “We have a choice, curse it—get me to him!” The words had barely left her lips before she remembered the old Valley proverb that her mother’s mother had often quoted after the end of her long and magical tales. But be warned that you’ll get what you ask for if you ask it of a mage—and it won’t be what you expected, because the mage-born are like that.