The Hallowed Hunt

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE TEMPLE SQUARE WAS ALREADY CROWDED WITH COURTLY and would-be-courtly mourners when Ingrey arrived there in the midmorning. His eye picked out a few of Gesca's men at the outer edges of the mob, indicating that Lord Hetwar was already within. Ingrey lengthened his stride and shouldered through the press. Those who recognized him gave way at once.

The sky was a bright autumn blue, and he shrugged in relief as he stepped out of the sun into the shade of the portico. His best court dress was heavy and a trifle hot, the somber sleeveless coat swirling about his ankles and tending to tangle with his sword. The sunbeams shone down also into the open central court, where the holy fire burned high on its plinth, and he blinked at the adjustment from light to dark to light. He spotted Lady Hetwar, attended by Gesca and Hetwar's oldest son, made his way to her side, and bowed. She gave him an acknowledging nod, her glance approving his garb, and shifted a little to make him space to loom in proper retainer's style beside Gesca at her back. Gesca gave him a nervy sideways stare, but by no other sign revealed any aftereffects of their last tense encounter, and Ingrey began to hope Gesca had kept the eerie incident to himself. Beyond the plinth, Ingrey also noted Rider Ulkra and some of Prince Boleso's higher servants; good, the exiled household had arrived in Easthome as instructed. Ulkra cast him a polite nod of greeting, though most of the retainers who had ridden escort to Boleso's wagon with him avoided his eyes-whether conscious of his contempt or simply unnerved by him, Ingrey could not tell.

Boleso's body was tightly wrapped in layers of herbs beneath his perfumed princely robes, Ingrey guessed, though his swollen face was exposed. The delay in his burial pushed the limits of a decomposition that would necessitate a closed coffin. But the death of one so highborn demanded witnesses, the more the better, to prevent later imposters and pretenders from troubling the realm.

The principal mourners followed next. Prince-marshal Biast, resplendent of dress and weary of face, was attended by Symark, holding the prince-marshal's standard with its pennant wrapped and bound to its staff as a sign of grief. Behind them, Earl Horseriver supported his wife, Princess Fara. Her dark garb was plain to severity, her brown hair drawn back and without jewels or ribbons, and her face deathly white by contrast. She had not her brothers' height, and the long Stagthorne jaw was softened in her; she was not a beauty, but she was a princess, and her proud carriage and presence normally made up for any shortfall. Today she just looked haggard and ill.

Horseriver's spirit horse seemed stopped down so tight as to be mistakable for a mere blackness of mood. I must find out from Wencel how he does that. Ingrey began to see how Wencel might long evade the lesser among the Sighted, but he wondered at the cost.

Ingrey was relieved to see that the hallow king had not been dragged from his sickbed and propped in some sedan chair or litter to attend his son's funeral. It would have been too much like one bier following another.

A rustling sounded from the central court as the crowd parted to allow the procession of the sacred animals to pass. Three of the stiff-looking groom-acolytes who led them were not the ones Ingrey had seen the other day. Fafa the impressive ice bear had been replaced by a notably small long-haired white cat curled tamely in the arms of a new woman groom in the Bastard's whites. The boy who led the copper colt was the same as before, though; while he kept his attention on his animal and the archdivine, his glance did cross Ingrey's once, above Lady Hetwar's head, and his eyes widened in alarmed recognition.

With extreme circumspection, each animal was led to the bier to sign the acceptance, if any, of Boleso's soul by its god. No one much expected a blessing from the Daughter of Spring's blue hen nor the Mother of Summer's green bird, but nerves stretched as the copper colt was led forth. The horse's response was ambiguous to nonexistent, as were those of the gray dog and the white cat. The grooms looked worried. Biast appeared grim indeed, and Fara seemed ready to faint.

Was Boleso's soul sundered and damned, then, rejected by the Son of Autumn Who was his best hope, unclaimed even by the Bastard, doomed to drift as a fading ghost? Or defiled by the spirits of the animals he had sacrificed and consumed, caught between the world of matter and the world of spirit in chill and perpetual torment, as Ingrey had once envisioned to Ijada?

The heat and the tension were suddenly too much for Ingrey. The chamber wavered and lurched before his eyes. His right hand throbbed. As quietly as he could, he stepped back to the wall to brace his shoulders against the cool stone. It wasn't enough. As the copper colt clopped forth once more, his eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the pavement in a boneless heap, the only sound a faint clank from his scabbard.

AND THEN, ABRUPTLY, HE WAS STANDING IN THAT OTHER PLACE, that unbounded space he had entered once before to do battle. Only it seemed not to be a battle to which he was called now. He still wore his court garb, his jaw was still human…

Out of an avenue of autumn-scented trees a red-haired young man appeared. He was tall, clothed as for a hunt in leggings and leathers, his bow and quiver strapped across his back. His eyes were bright, sparkling like a woodland stream; freckles dusted across his nose, and his generous mouth laughed. His head was crowned with autumn leaves, brown oak, red maple, yellow birch, and his stride was wide. He pursed his lips and whistled, and the sharp sweet sound pierced Ingrey's spirit like an arrow.

Bounding out of the mists, a great dark wolf with silver-tipped fur ran to the youth's side, jaws agape, tongue lolling foolishly; the huge beast crouched at his feet, licked his leg, rolled to one side and let the red-haired youth crouch and thump and rub its belly. A collar of autumn leaves much like the youth's crown circled the thick fur of its neck. The wolf seemed to laugh, too, as the youth stood once more, legs braced.

The youth gestured; Ingrey's and Ijada's heads turned.

Prince Boleso stood before them in an agonized paralysis. He, too, wore what he'd been found in the night he'd died: a short coat and daubs of paint and powder across his waxy skin. The muted colors made Ingrey's head ache; they clashed, not rightly composed. They reminded Ingrey of an ignorant man, hearing another language, responding with mouthed gibberish, or of a child, not yet able to write, scribbling eager senseless scrawls across a page in imitation of an older brother's hand.

Boleso's skin seemed translucent to Ingrey's eyes. Beneath his ribs, a swirling darkness barked and yammered, grunted and whined. Boar there was, and dog, wolf, stag, badger, fox, hawk, even a terrified housecat. An early experiment? Power there was, yes; but chaos even greater, an unholy din. He remembered Ijada's description: His very mind seemed a menagerie, howling.

The god said softly, “He cannot enter My gates bearing these.”

Ijada stepped forward, her hands held out in tentative supplication. “What would You have of us, my lord?” The god's eye took in them both. “Free him, if it be your will, that he may enter in.”

The Son of Autumn tilted his wreathed head a trifle. “You chose for him once, did you not?”

Her lips parted, closed, set a little, in fear or awe.

He ought to feel that awe, too, Ingrey supposed. Ought to be falling to his knees. Instead he was dizzy and angry. With a piercing regret, he envied Ijada her exaltation even as he resented it. As though Ingrey saw the sun through a pinhole in a piece of canvas, while Ijada saw the orb entire. But if my eyes were wider, would this Light blind me?

“You would-you would take him into Your heaven, my lord?” asked Ingrey in astonishment and outrage. “He slew, not in defense of his own life, but in malice and madness. He tried to steal powers not rightly given to him. If I guess right, he plotted the death of his own brother. He would have raped Ijada, if he could, and killed again for his sport!”

The Son held up his hands. Luminescent, they seemed, as if dappled by autumn sun reflecting off a stream into shade. “My grace flows from these as a river, wolf-lord. Would you have me dole it out in the exact measure that men earn, as from an apothecary's dropper? Would you stand in pure water to your waist, and administer it by the scant spoon to men dying of thirst on a parched shore?”

Ingrey stood silent, abashed, but Ijada lifted her face, and said steadily, “No, my lord, for my part. Give him to the river. Tumble him down in the thunder of Your cataract. His loss is no gain of mine, nor his dark deserving any joy to me.”

The god smiled brilliantly at her. Tears slid down her face like silver threads: like benedictions.

“It is unjust,” whispered Ingrey. “Unfair to all who-who would try to do rightly….”

Ingrey swallowed nervously, not at all sure the question was rhetorical, or what might happen if he said yes. “Let Ijada's be the choosing, then. I will abide.”

“Alas, more shall be required of you than to stand aside and act not, wolf-lord.” The god gestured to Boleso. “He cannot enter in my gates so burdened with these mutilated spirits. This is not their proper door. Hunt them from him, Ingrey.”

Ingrey stared through the bars of Boleso's ribs. “Clean this cage?”

“If you prefer that metaphor, yes.” The god's copper eyebrows twitched, but his eyes, beneath them, glinted with a certain dark humor. Wolf and leopard now sat on their haunches on either side of those slim booted legs, staring silently at Ingrey with deep, unblinking eyes.

Ingrey swallowed. “How?”

“Call them forth.”

“I…do not understand.”

“Do as your ancestors did for each other, in the purifying last rites of the Old Weald. Did you not know? Even as they washed and wrapped each body for burial, the kin shamans looked after the souls of their own. Each helped his comrade, whether simple spirit warrior or great mage, through Our gates, at the end of their lives, and looked to be helped so in turn. A chain of hand to hand, of voice to voice, cleansed souls flowing in an unending stream.” The god's voice softened. “Call my unhappy creatures out, Ingrey kin Wolfcliff. Sing them to their rest.”

Ingrey stood facing Boleso. The prince's eyes were wide and pleading. I imagine Ijada's eyes were wide and pleading that night, too. What mercy did she get from you, my graceless prince? Besides, I cannot sing worth a damn.

I have no mercy in me, lady. So I shall borrow some from you.

He took a breath, and reached down into himself farther than he'd yet done before. Keep it simple. Picked out one swirl by eye, held out his hand, and commanded, “Come.”

The first beast's spirit spun out through his fingers, wild and distraught, and fled away. He glanced at the god. “Where-?”

A wave of those radiant fingers reassured him. “It is well. Go on.”

“Come…”

One by one, the dark streams flowed out of Boleso and melted into the night. Morning. Whatever this was. They all floated in a now somewhere outside of time, Ingrey thought. At last Boleso stood before him, still silent, but freed of the dark smears.

The red-haired god appeared riding the copper colt, and extended a hand to the prince. Boleso flinched, staring up in doubt and fear, and Ijada's breath caught. But then he climbed quietly up behind. His face held much wonder, if little joy.

“I think he is still soul-wounded, my lord,” said Ingrey, watching in bare comprehension.

“Ah, but I know an excellent Physician for him, where we are going.” The god laughed, dazzlingly.

“My lord-” Ingrey began, as the god made to turn the unbridled horse.

“Yes?”

“If each kin shaman delivered the next, and him the next…” He swallowed harder. “What happens to the last shaman left?” The Lord of Autumn stared enigmatically down at him. He extended one lucent finger, stopping just short of brushing Ingrey's forehead. For a moment, Ingrey thought he was not going to answer at all, but then he murmured, “We shall have to find out.”

INGREY BLINKED.

He was lying on hard pavement, his body half-straightened, staring up at the curve of the dome of the Son's court. Staring up at a ring of startled faces staring down at him: Gesca, a concerned Lady Hetwar, a couple of men he did not know.

“What happened?” whispered Ingrey.

“You fainted,” said Gesca, frowning.

“No-what happened at the bier? Just now?”

“The Lord of Autumn took Prince Boleso,” said Lady Hetwar, glancing over her shoulder. “That pretty red colt nuzzled him all over-it was very clear. To everyone's relief.”

“Yes. Half the men I know were betting he'd go to the Bastard.” A twisted grin flitted over Gesca's face.

Lady Hetwar cast him a quelling frown. “That is not a fit subject for wagering, Gesca.”

“No, my lady,” Gesca agreed, dutifully erasing his smirk.

Ingrey hitched up to sit leaning against the wall. The motion made the chamber spin in slow jerks, and he squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. He had felt numb and bodiless during his vision, but now he was shuddering in waves radiating out from the pit of his belly, though he did not feel cold. As though his body had experienced some shock that his mind was denied.

Lady Hetwar leaned forward and pressed a stern maternal hand to his damp brow. “Are you ill, Lord Ingrey? You do feel rather warm.”

“I…” He was about to firmly deny any such weakness, then thought better of it. He wanted nothing more passionately than to remove himself from this fraught scene at once. “…fear so, my lady. Pray excuse me, and excuse me to your lord husband.” I must find Ijada. He clambered to his feet and began to feel his way along the wall. “I would rather not pitch up my breakfast on the temple floor in the middle of all this.”

Over by the altar, the choir was again singing, forming up to lead the procession out, and people were beginning to shuffle themselves back into their positions. Ingrey was grateful for the covering noise. Across the crowd, he thought he saw Learned Lewko crane his neck toward his disruption, but he did not meet the divine's eyes. Keeping to the walls, half for support and half to skim around the throng, he made his escape. By the time they exited the portico, he was towing Gesca.

“Leave me,” he gasped, shaking off Gesca's hand.

“But Ingrey, Lady Hetwar said-”

He didn't even need the weirding voice; Gesca recoiled at his glower alone. He stood staring in bewilderment as Ingrey weaved away through the crowded square.

By the time Ingrey reached the stairway down to Kingstown, he was nearly running. He bolted down the endless steps two and three at a time, at risk of tumbling head over tail. By the time he passed over the covered creek, he was running, his long coat flapping around his boot heels. By the time he pounded on the door of the narrow house, and stood a moment with his hands on his knees, wheezing for breath, he had nearly made his lie to Lady Hetwar true; his stomach was heaving almost as much as his lungs. He fell through the door as the astonished porter opened it.

“Lady Ijada-where is she?”

Before the porter could speak, a thumping on the stairs answered his question. Ijada flew down them, the warden in her train crying, “Lady, you should not, come back and lie down again-”

“I saw-”

“Come!” He yanked her into the parlor. “Leave us!” he shouted back over his shoulder. Porter, porter's boy, warden, and housemaid all blew back like leaves in a storm gust. Ingrey slammed the door upon them.

The handgrip turned into a shaken embrace, having in it very little romance but a great deal of terror. Ingrey was not sure which of them was trembling more. “What did you see?”

“I saw Him, Ingrey, I heard Him. Not a dream this time, not a fragrance in the dark-a daylight vision, clear.” She pushed him back to stare into his face. “And I saw you.” Her look turned to disbelief, though not, apparently, of her vision. “You stood face-to-face with a god, and you could find nothing better to do than to argue with Him!” She gripped and shook his shoulders. “Ingrey!”

“He took Boleso-”

“I saw! Oh, grace of the Son, my transgression was lifted from me.” Tears were running down her real face, as they had her dream face. “By your grace, too, oh, Ingrey, such a deed…” She was kissing his face, cool lips slipping across hot sweat on his brow, his eyelids, his cheeks.

He fell back a little, and said through gritted teeth, “I don't do this sort of thing. These things do not happen to me.”

She stared. “They happen to you rather a lot, I'd say.”

“No! Yes…Gods! I feel as though I've become some unholy lightning rod in the middle of a thunderstorm. Miracles, I have to stay away from funeral miracles, they dodge aside from their targets and come at me. I don't, I can't…”

Her left hand squeezed his right. She looked down. “Oh!” The wretched bandage was soaked again. Wordlessly, she turned to the sideboard, rooted briefly in a drawer, and found a length of linen. “Here, sit.” She drew him to the table, stripped off the red rag, and wrapped his hand more tightly. Their mutual wheezing was dying down at last. She had not run across half of Easthome, but he did not question her breathlessness.

“I won't say you're mistaken.”

She leaned forward and pushed a lock of sweat-dampened hair off his forehead. Her gaze searched his face, for what he did not know. Her expression softened. “I may have murdered Boleso-”

“No, only killed.”

“But thanks to you I did not encompass his sundering from the gods. It's something. No small thing.”

“Aye. If you say so.” For her, then. If his actions had pleased Ijada, perhaps they were worthwhile. Ijada and the Son. “That was it, then. That was what we were chivvied here for. Boleso's undeserved redemption. We have accomplished the god's will, and now it's over, and we are discarded to our fates.”

Her lips curved up. “That's very Ingrey of you, Ingrey. Always look on the dark side.”

“Someone has to be realistic, in the midst of this madness!”

Now her brows rose, too. She was laughing at him. “Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too. It was my undeserved redemption as well.”

He ought to feel offended. Not buoyed up by her laughter as if floating in some bubbling hot spring.

She took a breath. “Ingrey! If one soul trapped in the world by an anchor of animals is such an agony to the gods that they make miracles out of, of such unlikely helpers as us, what must four thousand such souls be?”

“I don't think we're done. I don't think we're even started yet!”

Ingrey moistened his lips. He followed her jump of inspiration, yes. He wished it wasn't so easy to do. If freeing one such soul had been an experience of muted terror to him…“Nor shall we be, if I am burned and you are hanged. I do not say you are wrong, but first things first.”

She shook her head in passionate denial. “I still do not understand what is wanted of me. But I saw what is wanted of you. If your great-wolf has made you a true shaman of the Weald, the very last-and the god's own Voice said it was so-then you are their last hope indeed. A purification-the men who fell at Bloodfield were never purified, never released. We need to go there.” She jerked in her seat as if ready to leap up and run out the door at once and down the morning road on foot.

His hands tightened on hers, as much to hold her in place as anything. “I would point out, we have a few hindrances here. You are arrested and bound for trial, and I am your arresting officer.”

“You offered to smuggle me away once before. Now I know where! Don't you see?” Her eyes were afire.

“And then what? We would be pursued and dragged back, perhaps even before we could do anything, and your case would be worse than before, and I would be wrenched from you. Let us solve this problem in Easthome first, then go. That is the logical order of things. If your men have waited four hundred years for you, they can surely wait a little longer.”

“Can they?” Her brows drew down in a deep frown. “Do you know this? How?”

“We must concentrate on one problem at a time, the most urgent first.”

Her right hand touched her heart. “This feels most urgent to me.” Ingrey's jaw set. Just because she was passionate and loving and beautiful and god-touched didn't mean she was right in all things.

But only redeemed in her soul and sin. Her body and crime were still hostage to the world of matter and Easthome politics. Whatever he was called to, it was not to follow her into plain folly.

He drew breath. “I did not dream your dream of the Woods. I have only your-admittedly vivid-description to go on. Ghosts fade, starved of nourishment from their former bodies. Why have not these? Do you imagine they've been stuck in the blasted trees for four centuries?”

He'd meant it for half a joke, but she took it wholly seriously. “I think so. Or something of a sort. Something alive must be sustaining them in the world of matter. Remember what Wencel said, about the great rite that Audar interrupted?”

“I don't trust anything Wencel says.”

She regarded him doubtfully. “He's your cousin.”

Ingrey couldn't decide if she meant that as an argument for or against the earl.

“I do not understand Wencel,” Ijada continued, “but that rang true to me, it rang in my bones. A great rite that bound the spirit warriors to the Weald itself for their sustenance, until their victory was achieved.” A most unsettled, and unsettling, look stole over her face. “But they never achieved victory, did they? And the Weald that came back, in the end, was not what they'd lost, but something new. Wencel says it was a betrayal, though I do not see it. It was not their world to choose, anymore.”

A knock sounded on the street door of the narrow house, making Ingrey flinch in surprise. The porter's shuffle and low voice sounded through the walls, the words blurred but the tone protesting. Ingrey's teeth clamped in irritation at the untimely interruption. Now what?

Ingrey's teeth clamped in irritation at the untimely interruption. Now what? N

A PERFUNCTORY RAP SHIVERED THE PARLOR DOOR, AND IT swung inward. The porter's voice carried from the hall, “…no, Learned, you daren't go in there! The wolf-lord ordered us not-”

Learned Lewko stepped around the frame and closed the door firmly on the porter's panicked babble. He was dressed as Ingrey had glimpsed him earlier that morning, in the white robes of his order, cleaner and newer than what he'd worn in his dusty office but still unmarked with any rank. Unobtrusive: against the busy background of Templetown, surely nearly invisible. He was not exactly wheezing, but his face was flushed, as if he'd been walking quickly in the noon sun. He paused to reorder his robes and his breathing, his gaze on Ingrey and Ijada penetrating and disturbed.

“I am only a petty saint,” he said at last, signing himself, his touch lingering on his heart, “but that was unmistakable.”

Ingrey moistened his lips. “How many others there saw, do you know?”

“As far as I know, I was the only Sighted one present.” He tilted his head. “Do you know any differently?”

Wencel. If there had been signs apparent to Lewko, Ingrey rather thought Wencel could not have been unaware. “I'm not sure.”

Lewko wrinkled his nose in suspicion.

Ijada said tentatively, “Ingrey…?”

“Ah.” Ingrey jumped to his feet to perform introductions, grateful to take refuge for a moment in formality. “Lady Ijada, this is Learned Lewko. I have, um…told you each something of the other. Learned, will you sit…?” He offered the third chair. “We expected you.”

“I fear I cannot say the same of you.” Lewko sighed and sank down, flapping one hand briefly to cool his face. “In fact, you become more unexpected by the hour.”

Lewko drew breath. “When the animals were first presented at the prince's bier, I feared an ambiguous outcome. We do try to avoid those; they are most distressing to the relatives. Disastrous, in this case. The groom-acolytes are normally under instruction to, ah, amplify their creature's signs, for clarity. Amplify, mind you, not substitute or alter. I fear that this habit became misleading to some, and led to that attempt at fraud the day before yesterday. Or so our later inquiries revealed. None of the orders was pleased to learn that this was not the first time recently that some of our people let themselves be tempted by worldly bribes or threats. Such corruption feeds on its own success when it meets no correction.”

“Did they not fear their gods' wrath?” asked Ijada.

“Even the wrath of the gods requires some human opportunity by which to manifest itself.” Lewko's eye gauged Ingrey. “As the wrath of the gods goes, your performance the other day was remarkably effective, Lord Ingrey. Never have I seen a conspiracy unravel itself and scramble to confession with such alacrity.”

“So happy to be of service,” Ingrey growled. He hesitated. “This morning was the second time. The second god I've…crossed, in three days. The ice bear now seems a prelude-your god was there, within the accursed creature.”

“So He should be, for a funeral miracle, if it be a true one.”

“I heard a voice in my mind when I faced the bear.”

Lewko stiffened. “What did it say? Can you remember exactly?”

“I can scarcely forget. I see my Brother's pup is in better pelt, now. Good. Pray continue. And then the voice laughed.” Ingrey added irritably, “It did not seem very helpful.” And more quietly, “It frightened me. I now think I was not frightened enough.”

“Was it your god, in the bear? Do you think?” Ingrey prodded.

“Oh”-Lewko waved his hands-“to be sure. Signs of the Bastard's holy presence tend to be unmistakable, to those who know Him. The screaming, the altercations, the people running in circles-all that was lacking was something bursting into flame, and I was not entirely sure for a moment you weren't going to provide that, as well.” He added consolingly, “The acolyte's scorches should heal in a few days, though. He does not dare complain of his punishment.”

Ijada raised her brows.

Ingrey cleared his throat. “It was not your god this morning, though.”

“No. Perhaps fortunately. Was it the Son of Autumn? I saw only a little stir by the wall when you collapsed, a felt Presence, and a flare like orange fire as the colt signed the body at last. Not,” he added, “seen with my eyes, you know.”

“I know now,” sighed Ingrey. “Ijada was there. In my vision.”

Lewko's head whipped around.

“Let her tell of it,” Ingrey continued. “It was her…it was her miracle, I think.” Not mine.

“You two shared this vision?” said Lewko in astonishment. “Tell me!”

She nodded, stared a moment at Lewko as if determining to trust him, glanced again at Ingrey, and began: “It came upon me by surprise. I was in my room upstairs, here. I felt odd and hot, and I felt myself sink to the floor. My warden thought I had fainted, and lifted me to my bed. The other time, at Red Dike, I was more aware of my body's true surroundings, but this time…I was wholly in the vision. The first thing I saw was Ingrey, in his court dress-what he wears now, but I had never seen it before.” She paused, eyeing his garb as if about to add some other comment, but then shook her head and went on. “His wolf ran at his heels. Great and dark, but so handsome! I was leashed by a chain of flowers to my leopard, and it pulled me forward. And then the god came from the trees…”

Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes as she finished, “…and Ingrey asked him what happens to the last shaman left, if there are none to deliver him, but the god did not say. It almost seemed as if He did not know.” She swallowed.

Lewko leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Complications,” he muttered, not approvingly. “Now I remember why I fear to open letters from Hallana.”

Ingrey asked, “Could this affect Ijada's case, do you think? If it should be brought to testimony? How goes the preparation for her case? I think-I am guessing-you hear all such news early.” If Lewko's subtle resemblances to Hetwar extended beyond age and style, that is.

“Oh, aye. Temple gossip is worse than court gossip, I swear.” Lewko sucked on his lower lip. “I believe the Father's Order has empaneled five judges for the pretrial inquiry.”

That in itself was news of significance; minor cases, or cases that were to be treated as minor, would only get three such judges, or one, or if the accused was especially unlucky, a junior acolyte just learning his trade. “Do you know anything of their characters?” Or against them?

Lewko raised a brow at that question. “Highborn men, experienced in capital cases. Serious-minded. They will probably begin to question witnesses as early as tomorrow.”

“As you were not there at the time of the prince's death, perhaps not. Do you wish to speak?”

“Perhaps…not. I'm not sure. How experienced are these serious men in matters of the uncanny?”

Lewko grunted and sat back. “Now, that's always a problem.”

Ijada was following this with a frown. “Why?”

He cast her a measuring glance. “So much of the uncanny-or the holy, for that matter-is inward experience. As such, testimony about it tends to be tainted. People lie. People delude themselves, or others. People are swayed or frightened or convinced they have seen things they have not. People are, frankly, sometimes simply mad. Every young judge of the Father's Order soon learns that if he were to dismiss all such testimony at the first, he would not only save endless time and aggravation, he would be right nine times out of ten, or better. So the conditions for acceptance of such claims in law have become strict. As a rule, three Temple sensitives of good reputation must vouch for each other and the testimony.”

“You are a Temple sensitive, are you not?” she said.

“I am only one such.”

“There are three in this room!”

“Mm, sensitive perhaps, but somewhat lacking the further qualifications of Temple and good reputation, I fear.” His dry glance fell as much on Ingrey as Ijada.

Hallana, it occurred to Ingrey, might be another valid witness. But difficult at present to call upon. Although if he wanted a delaying tactic, sending all the way to Suttleaf for her would be one, to be sure. He filed the thought away.

Lewko's lips compressed. “Yes. Yes, I do, Bastard help me. But belief enough for private action, and evidence sufficient for a court of law, are two separate things.”

“Private action?” said Ingrey. “Do you not speak for the Temple, Learned?”

He made an equivocal gesture. “I both stand within and administer Temple disciplines. I am also barely god-touched, though enough to know better than to wish for more. I am never sure if my erratic abilities are my failure to receive, or His failure to give.” He sighed. “Your master Hetwar has always resisted understanding this. He plagues me for aid with unsuitable tasks and dislikes my telling him no. My order's sorcerers are at his disposal; the gods are not.”

“Do you tell him no?” asked Ingrey, impressed.

“Frequently.” Lewko grimaced. “As for great saints-no one commands them. The wise Temple-man just follows them around and waits to see what will happen.”

Lewko looked briefly introspective: Ingrey wondered what experiences he might have had in this regard. Something both rare and searing, at a guess. Ingrey said, “I am no saint of any kind.”

“Nor I,” said Ijada fervently. “And yet…”

Lewko glanced up at them both. “You say true. And yet. You have both been more god-touched than anyone in the strength of such wills ought to be. It is the abnegation of self-will that gives room for the gods to enter the world through saints. The rumors of their spirit animals making the Old Weald warriors more open to their gods, mediating grace as the sacred funeral beasts do for us, have suddenly grown more convincing to me.”

So is my dispensation as much in danger as Wencel asserts?

Ingrey decided to probe the question more obliquely. “Ijada is no more responsible for receiving the spirit of her leopard than I was my wolf's. Others imposed it upon her. Cannot she be granted a dispensation like mine? It makes no sense to save her from one capital charge only to lose her to another.”

“I have not mentioned the leopard to Lord Hetwar yet.”

Lewko's brows went up.

“He does not like complications,” Ingrey said weakly.

“What are you playing at, Lord Ingrey?”

“I would not have mentioned it to you, except Hallana's letter forced my hand.”

“You might have undertaken to lose that missive on the way,” Lewko pointed out mildly. Wistfully?

“I thought of that,” Ingrey confessed. “It seemed but a temporary expedient.” He added, “I could ask the same question of you. Pardon, Learned, but it seems to me your allegiance to the rules flexes oddly.”

Lewko held up his outspread hand and wriggled it. “It is murmured that the thumb is sacred to the Bastard because it is the part He puts upon the scales of justice to tip them His way. There is more truth than humor in this joke. Yet almost every rule is invented out of some prior disaster. My order has an arsenal of rules accumulated so, Lord Ingrey. We arm ourselves as needed.”

Making Lewko equally unpredictable as ally or enemy, Ingrey realized unhappily.

Ijada looked up as another knock sounded at the street door. Ingrey's breath stopped at the sudden fear it might be Wencel, following up this morning's events as swiftly as Lewko, but judging from the muffled arguing in the porter's voice, it could not be the earl. At length, the door swung inward, and the porter warily announced, “Messenger for Learned Lewko, m'lord.”

A man dressed in the tabard of Prince Boleso's household shouldered past him; a servant, judging by the rest of his clothes, his lack of a sword, and his irresolute air. Middle-aged, a little stooped, with a scraggly beard framing his face. “Your pardon, Learned, it is urgent that I speak-” His eye fell on Ingrey, and widened with apparent recognition; his voice ran down abruptly. “Oh.”

Ingrey's return stare was blank, at first. His blood seemed to boil up in his head, and he realized that he smelled a demon, that distinctive rain-and-lightning odor, spinning tightly within this man. One of Lewko's sorcerers in disguise, reporting Temple business to his master? No, for Lewko's expression was as devoid of recognition as Ingrey's, though his body had stiffened. He smells the demon, too, or senses it somehow.

It was the voice more than the appearance that did it. Ingrey's mind's eye scraped away the beard and eleven years from the servant's face. “You!”

The servant choked.

Ingrey stood up so fast his chair fell over and banged on the floor. The servant, already backing up, shrieked, whirled, and fled back out the door, slamming it behind him.

“Ingrey, what-?” Ijada began.

“It's Cumril!” Ingrey flung over his shoulder at her, and gave chase.

By the time Ingrey wrenched open both doors and stood in the street, the man had disappeared around the curve, but the echo of running footsteps and a passerby's astonished stare told Ingrey the direction. He flung back his coat, put his hand on his sword, and dashed after, rounding the houses just in time to see Cumril cast a frightened look back and duck into a side street. Ingrey swung after him, his stride lengthening. Could youth and fury outrun middle age and terror?

Cumril was gasping and whimpering: “No, no, help…!”

“So enspell me, why don't you?” Ingrey snarled. Sorcerers and shamans, Wencel had said, were old rivals for power. With the dizzied remains of his reason, Ingrey wondered which was the stronger, and if he was about to test the question.

“I dare not! It will ascend, and enslave me again!”

This response was peculiar enough to give Ingrey pause; he let his hand, now clenched on Cumril's throat, ease somewhat. “What?”

“The demon will t-take me again, if I try to call on it,” Cumril stammered. “You need, need, need have no fear of me, Lord Ingrey.”

“By my father's agony, the reverse is not true.”

Cumril swallowed, looking away. “I know.”

Ingrey's grip eased yet more. “Why are you here?”

“I followed the divine. From the temple. I saw him in the crowd. I want to, I was going to try to, I meant to surrender myself to him. I wasn't expecting you.”

Ingrey stood back, his brows climbing toward his hairline. “Well, I have no objection to that. Come along, then.”

Keeping a grip on Cumril's arm just in case, Ingrey led him back to the narrow house. Cumril was pale and trembling, but as he recovered his breath, his initial shock seemed to pass off. By the time Ingrey pushed him through the door of the parlor and closed it again behind them, Cumril had revived enough to shoot him a look of resentment before he straightened his tabard and stood before Lewko. “Learned. Blessed One. I, I, I…”

“Yes, Learned.” Cumril sank down. Ijada returned to her own seat; Ingrey folded his arms and leaned against the nearby wall.

Lewko pressed his palm to Cumril's forehead. Ingrey was not at all sure what passed between the two, but Cumril eased back yet more, and the demon-scent grew weaker. His panting slackened, and his gaze, wandering to some middle distance, bespoke the lifting of an invisible burden.

“Are you truly of Prince Boleso's household?” Ingrey asked, nodding to the tabard.

Cumril's eyes refocused on Ingrey. “Yes. Or I was. He, he, he passed me off as his body servant.”

“So, you were the illicit sorcerer who aided him in his forbidden rites. I…it was guessed one must exist. But I never saw you at Boar's Head.”

“No, I made very sure you, you, you did not.” Cumril gulped. “Rider Ulkra and the household arrived here late last night. I had no other way to get back to Easthome except with them. I, I could not come sooner.” This last seemed to be addressed to Lewko.

“Did anyone else of Boleso's household know what you really were?” Ingrey pressed.

“No, only the prince. I-my demon-insisted upon secrecy. One of the few times its will overrode Boleso's.”

“Perhaps,” Lewko interrupted gently, “you should begin at the beginning, Cumril.”

Cumril hunched. “Which beginning?”

“The burning of a certain confession might do.”

Cumril's gaze shot up. “How did you know about that?” “I reassembled it for the inquiry. With great difficulty.”

Lewko held up a restraining finger. “It was my guess that the destruction of that document marked the loss of your control over your power.”

Cumril ducked his head in a nod. “It was so, Blessed One. And the beginning of my, my, my slavery.”

“Ah.” A brief smile of satisfaction tugged Lewko's lips at this confirmation of his theory.

“I will not say the beginning of my nightmare,” Cumril continued, “for it was blackest nightmare before. But in my despair after the disasters at Birchgrove, my demon ascended and took control of my body and mind. I, we, it fled with my body, which it was overjoyed to possess, and we began a strange existence. Exile. Always, its first concern was to keep out of sight of the Temple, and then, on to whatever erratic pleasures in matter the thing desired. Which were not always what I would call pleasures. The months it decided to experiment with pain were the worst”-Cumril shuddered in memory-“but that pass, pass, passed off like every other passion. Fortunately. I swear it had the mindfulness of a mayfly. When Boleso found…us…and pressed us into his service, it became quite rebellious in its boredom, but it dared not thwart him. He had ways of asserting his will.”

Lewko moistened his lips and leaned forward. “How did you regain control? For that is a very rare thing to happen, after a sorcerer's demon has turned upon him.”

Cumril nodded, and glanced somewhat fearfully at Ijada. “It was her.”

Ijada looked astonished. “What?”

“The night Boleso died, I was in the next chamber. To assist him in enspelling the leopard. There was a knothole in the wall, from which we could remove the knot and look and listen through.”

Cumril bore up under their speculative glowers, and continued, “Boleso believed that the animal spirits he took in would allow him to bind each kin to himself. He had a, a, theory that the leopard was your kin animal, Lady Ijada, by reason of your father's Chalionese bloodlines. He meant to use it to bind your mind and will to his, to make you his perfect paramour. Partly, partly for lust, partly to test his powers before he took them into the arena of politics, partly because he was half-mad with suspicion of everyone by this time and only by such iron control dared to have any woman so close to his person.”

“No wonder,” said Ijada, her voice shaking a little, “he took no trouble to court me.”

Lewko said quietly, “That was grave sin and blasphemy indeed, to attempt to seize another's will. Free will is sacred even to the gods.”

“Was the leopard spirit meant to go into Ijada, then?” asked Ingrey, puzzled. “Did you put it there?” As you once gave me my wolf?

“No!” Cumril fell silent a moment, then gathered himself again. “Boleso took it, had just taken it, when the lady fought free from under him. And then…something happened that no one controlled. I know not by what courage she seized the war hammer and struck him, but death, death opens the world to the gods. It all happened at once, in a moment. I was still working upon the leopard as Boleso's soul was torn from his body, and the god…the shock…my demon…Boleso's soul struggled wildly, but could not get free of its defilements either to advance or retreat from the Presence.

“The leopard, so barely anchored, was torn from him, and fell into…no, was called into the lady. I heard a music like hunting horns in a distant dawn, and my heart seemed to burst with the sound. And my demon fell screaming in terror from it, and released its hold upon my mind, and fled in the only direction it could, inward and inward into a tight knot. It cowers there still”-he touched his chest-“but I do not know for how long.” He added after a moment, “Then I ran away and hid in my room. I wept so hard I could not breathe, for a time.” He was weeping again now, a quiet sniveling, rocking in his chair.

From his place by the wall, Ingrey growled, “I would know of an earlier beginning, Cumril.”

Cumril looked, if possible, more fearful, but he ducked his head in acquiescence.

Ingrey breathed exhilaration and dread. Finally, some truths. He contemplated the miserable sorcerer. Maybe some truths. “How came you to my father? Or did he come to you?”

“Lord Ingalef came to me, my lord.”

Ingrey frowned; Lewko nodded.

“His sister Lady Horseriver had fled to him in great fear, begging his aid. She had a frantic tale of her son Wencel having become possessed by an evil spirit of the Old Weald.”

Lewko's head came up. “Wencel!”

Ingrey choked back a curse. In one sentence, a whole handful of new cards was laid upon the table, and in front of Lewko, too. “Wait…this possession occurred before Wencel's mother's death? Not after?”

“Indeed, before. She thought it had happened at the time of his father's death, some four or so months earlier. The boy had changed so strangely then.”

So already Wencel was caught in a lie. Or Cumril was. Or both could be lying, Ingrey reminded himself; but both could not be telling the truth. “Go on.”

“The two concocted a plan for the rescue of her son, they thought. Lady Horseriver feared to go to the Temple openly, in part for terror that they might burn her boy if they could not release him from the possession.” Cumril swallowed. “She meant to fight Old Weald magic with Old Weald magic.”

“I, I, to this day I do not know. The huntsman spoke to me on his deathbed, half-raving by then; he, he, he was not bribed to the deed, of that I am sure. He did not guess his animals were diseased, or I think he would have handled them more carefully himself!”

Ijada asked curiously, “Where was young Wencel when all this was going on at Birchgrove?”

“His mother had left him at Castle Horseriver, I understood. She meant to keep her actions secret from him until she could bring help.”

And the implications of this were…“She feared him? As well as for him?” asked Ingrey.

Cumril hesitated, then ducked his head again. “Aye.”

So…if a geas could be set in a man to make him kill at another's will, as the parasite spell had been set in Ingrey, how much easier would it be to set one in a wolf-or in a horse? Was the death of Lady Horseriver, trampled by her mount, no accident either? What, now you suspect that Wencel killed his own mother? Ingrey's blood was thudding in his head now, but mostly in a sick headache.

But the why of his wolf was answered at last. A lethal mix of family loyalty, good intentions, bad judgment…and secret uncanny malice? Or was that last some lesser intent, gone wrong? Had the unseen foe meant to kill Lord Ingalef, or just his animals? “My wolf-what of my wolf, which arrived so mysteriously?”

Cumril shrugged helplessly. “When its effect on you proved so disastrous, I thought it must have been sent like the rabid ones.”

Lewko was pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut. “Lord Ingrey. Lady Ijada. You have both seen Earl Horseriver lately, and not just with mortal eyes. What do you say of this accusation?”

“You have seen him, too,” said Ingrey cautiously. “What did you sense?”

Lewko glanced up in irritation; Ingrey thought him about to snap, I asked first!, but instead he took a controlling breath, and said, “His spirit seems dark to me, though no more so than many a man who courts death as though to embrace it. It crossed my mind to fear for him, and for those near him, but not like this!”

“Ingrey…?” said Ijada. Her question was clear in her rising tone:

Should we not speak?

Wencel had been right: once the Temple started looking, they must find. And silence was the only sure safety. And it would, indeed, have been prudent to find and question Cumril before the Temple authorities did. Ingrey wondered grimly what else he would discover Wencel to have been right about. “Wencel bears a spirit animal, yes. Its evil or good I cannot judge. I had guessed Cumril must have laid it in him, too, as part of the same dire plot that gave me mine, but now it seems not.”

“No, no,” muttered Cumril, rocking again. “Not me.”

“You did not mention this earlier,” said Lewko to Ingrey, his tone suddenly very flat.

“No. I did not.” He returned the tone precisely.

“Wild accusations,” murmured Lewko, “a questionable source, not a shred of material proof, and the third highest lord in the land. What more joys can this day bring me? No, don't answer that. Please.”

Lewko glowered at her.

Cumril's confessions didn't make sense, in Ingrey's head. Why sacrifice one child to save another? What gain could there be in both heirs being defiled? His thrill at the seeming chance of uncovering old truths faded. “How was making my father and me into spirit warriors supposed to rescue Wencel?”

“Lady Horseriver did not tell me.”

“What, and you did not ask? It seems a blithe disregard for your famous Temple disciplines, oh sorcerer, to kick them all aside at a woman's word.”

Cumril stared at the floor, and muttered with extreme reluctance, “She was god-touched. Most…most grievously.”

A new thought chilled Ingrey. If bearing an animal spirit sundered one from the gods, like Boleso, what had happened to Lord Ingalef's soul? That funeral had long been over before Ingrey had recovered enough to ask about it. None had told him that his father was sundered. None told me otherwise, either. Lord Ingalef had been as well buried in tacit silences as in earth.

He must have been sundered. There was no shaman at Birchgrove to cleanse him.

Oh. Wait. There had been one, hadn't there. Potentially. Ingrey's heart seemed to halt. Might I have saved…?

He gulped back the unbearable realizations and stared at Cumril in a frustrated, hostile silence. Lewko's silence was far less revealing. Their gazes crossed and clashed. Ingrey began to suspect he was not the only man here who preferred to collect the information first and dole it out at his discretion later. The divine rose abruptly to his feet.

“You had best come up with me to the temple now, Cumril, till I can make better arrangements for your safety. We will speak further on these matters.” In private hung unspoken.

He saw shepherd and lost sheep out the front door; Lewko bade him and Ijada farewell with a promise, or threat, to meet again soon. Now that they seemed to have emerged officially from the private conclave, the warden fell upon her charge and hustled her upstairs once more. Ijada, her face set with dark thought, did not resist.

Ingrey took the stairs two at a time to his room, there to shed his court finery for clothing he could better move in, which would not catch his blades. He had a visit to make, and without delay.