The Hallowed Hunt

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

HORSERIVER FELL BACK A PACE. HALF HIS FACES SEEMED contorted in rage. Others registered ironic resignation, disgust and self-disgust, and one sad visage an ageless, dignified endurance. His hands dropped to his sides, and the current between him and Ingrey faded away like sparks burning out in the dark. The unspeakably agonized eyes stared across at Ingrey, and almost all of his expressions melted into a bitter pity.

Ingrey found himself clinging to Ijada's banner pole lest he fall down. The immense flaring pressure of Horseriver's kingship was not gone, exactly, but it seemed to become dispersed, as if pouring in from all sides and not just from the one quarter. And then there came a moment of stillness, hushed hesitation, and the inward flow of the kingly current seemed to turn, becoming an outward urgency. And with that came a diffuse dread unlike any other he had experienced in these long hours filled with fierce shocks.

Though Horseriver did not move from his burial mound, he grew distanced, silenced at last, like a corpse seen underwater. Stripped of both his yoked powers-his great horse and his hallow kingship-he was reduced to one revenant among the many, except for his dire multiplicity, an extra denseness that lingered about him. Yes, thought Ingrey, he, too, is a ghost of Bloodfield, who died on this sacred and accursed ground; he is no longer more, but he cannot become less.

But what have I become?

He could feel the mystical kingship settle into place upon him, in him, through him. It did not make him feel as though he'd been stuffed with pride and power, replete and overflowing. It made him feel as though all his blood was being drawn out of him.

Ijada and Fara both, he realized, were staring at him with that same openmouthed awe tinged with physical desire that Horseriver had inspired. Such stares ought to make any man preen, surely. Instead, he felt as though they contemplated eating him alive.

No, not Ijada and Fara-well, yes, them, too-it was the ghosts that alarmed him now. They crowded up closer as if fascinated, reaching for him, touching him in chill liquid strokes that stole the warmth from his skin. They were growing unruly in their urgency, shouldering past and even climbing over one another, thicker and thicker about him. Famished beggars.

Nothing of spirit can exist in the world of matter without a being of matter to support it. The old catechism rang through his spinning head. Four thousand still-accursed spirits swarmed upon the ground of Bloodfield, upon it but no longer sustained by it. Instead, they were all now connected to…

“Ijada…” His voice came out a wail. “I cannot maintain them all, I cannot hold!”

He was growing colder and colder as the ghosts pawed him. He grabbed for Ijada's outstretched hand like a drowning man, and for a moment live warmth, her warmth, flooded him. But she gasped as she, too, felt the unholy pull of the ghosts' insatiable hunger. They will pull us both to shreds, drain us dry. And when there was no more warmth left to give, his and Ijada's frozen corpses would be left upon the ground, fog steaming off them in the night air. And all trapped here would dwindle to oblivion in a last, starveling cry of abandonment, betrayal, and despair.

“Ijada…! Let go!” He tried to draw his hand back from hers.

“No!” She gripped him tighter.

“You must let go! Take Fara and run, out of here, back through the marsh, quickly! The revenants will consume us both if you do not!”

“No, Ingrey! That's not what is meant! You must cleanse them as you cleansed Boleso, so that they may go to the gods! You can, that's what you were made for, I swear it!”

“I cannot! There are too many, I cannot hold, and there are no gods here!”

“They wait at the gate!”

“What?”

“They wait at the gate of thorns! For the master of the realm to admit them. Audar cursed and sealed this ground, and Horseriver held it against the gods ever after in his rage and black despair, but the old kings are gone, and the new king is acclaimed.”

“I am only a king of ghosts and shadows, a king of the dead.”

Soon to join my subjects. “Open your realm to the Five. Five mortals will bear Them across the ground, but you must admit Them-invite Them in.” Shivering now almost as badly as he was, she eyed the thronging ghosts, and her voice went quavering up: “Ingrrreyyy, hurry!”

Outside the gate he'd made, a multiple Presence waited, impatiently as supplicants on a king's feast day. How did one admit Them? It seemed to call for hymns and hosannas, chants and invocations of great beauty and complexity, poets and musicians and scholars and soldiers and divines. Instead, They must make do with me. So be it.

“Come in,” Ingrey whispered, his voice cracking, and then, I can do better than that, “Come in!”

The reverberation seemed to split the night in half, and a shiver of anticipation ran through the four thousand like a great wave crashing upon a disintegrating shore. Ingrey set himself again to endure, for all that he felt his strength pouring out in a cataract. The ghostly jostling settled, no less starveling, but with its desperation stemmed by astonished new hope.

IT SEEMED FOREVER BEFORE A HUMAN SOUND PENETRATED THE dark woods, and a faint orange light drew near. A crackle and crash of brush; a thump and a muttered oath; some rolling argument cut short by Learned Hallana's crisp cry: “There, over there! Oswin, go left!”

What was to Ingrey's eye the most unexpected cavalcade imaginable blundered into the clearing. Learned Oswin rode a stumbling horse, with his wife riding pillion, clutching him around the waist with one arm and waving directions with the other. Prince Biast, a staggered look upon his face as he gawked at the milling ghosts, rode behind on another worn horse, and Learned Lewko and Prince Jokol brought up the rear on foot, Jokol holding a torch aloft. Lewko's once-white robes were mired to the thigh on one side, and all were sweat-stained, disheveled, and peppered with road dirt.

“You were expecting them?” Ingrey asked her.

“We all came together, pell-mell down the road for the past two days. Five gods, what a journey. The prince-marshal commanded everything. I galloped ahead at the last-my heart was calling me to hasten, and I was desperately afraid.”

Learned Lewko limped up to Ingrey and signed a hasty blessing. Jokol trod behind with the sort of breathless, maniacal grin upon his face that Ingrey imagined he'd have worn while facing a storm at sea, his boat climbing mountainous waves while all the sane men clung to the ropes and screamed.

“Ho! Ingorry!” he cried happily, saluting ghostly warriors right and left as though they were long-lost cousins. “This night will make some song!”

“Are you the mortal vessels for the gods, then?” Ingrey asked Lewko. “Are you all made saints?”

“I have been a saint,” wheezed Lewko, “and it isn't this. If I had to guess…” His glare around the densely haunted clearing ended on a narrow-eyed look at Ingrey.

Oswin and Hallana abandoned their blown mount and came up, clutching each other by the arm over the uneven ground, staring at the ghostly warriors in wonder tinged with trepidation and, Ingrey would swear, a blazing scholarly curiosity not far removed, in its own way, from Jokol's appalling enthusiasm. “If I had to guess, Oswin,” Lewko continued to his colleague-Ingrey sensed the tail of a hot debate-“I think we are all made sacred funeral animals.”

“Ingrey must cleanse my ghosts,” Ijada said firmly. “I told you it would be so.”

Two days of debate, Ingrey guessed, but in a company, however odd, fearsomely well equipped for it. The gods have no hands in this world but ours. Hand to hand to hand…

Biast spied his sister, now sitting slumped on the long mound not far from Wencel's body, and hurried to her, going to his knees and gathering her in his arms. Their heads bent together; they spoke hastily in low tones. He held her as she shuddered. She did not, yet, weep.

“Ijada,” murmured Ingrey, “I don't think we had best delay, if this is to work.” He looked around at the revenants, who had stopped milling and jostling and now stared back at him in yearning silence. As if I were their last hope of heaven. “How do I…what do I…” What do I do?

She grasped the wolf's head standard in both hands and set her shoulders. “You're the shaman-king. Do what seems right to you, and it will be.” Beside her, the gold-belted marshal made a gesture of assent.

Four thousand, so many! It matters less where I begin, as that I begin.

Ingrey turned slowly around and caught sight of the tall warrior with the wolf cloak he'd seen earlier. He motioned the revenant forward and stared into his pale features. The ghost smiled and nodded kindly, as if to reassure him, fell to one knee before Ingrey, captured his left hand, and bowed his head. Fascinated, Ingrey extended his right index finger, down which a trickle of blood flowed from the soaked rag wrapping his reopened wound, and smeared a drop across the warrior's forehead. It disturbed Ingrey more than a little that the ghost felt solid to him now, not liquid as before, and he wondered what it bespoke of his own changed state.

“Oh,” said Oswin, and his voice shook, tears starting in his eyes. “Oh, Hallana, I did not know…”

“Shh,” she said. “It will be very well now, I think.” She moistened her lips and gazed at Ingrey as though he were a cross between some famous work of Temple art she'd traveled days to see, and her favorite child.

Ingrey glanced around again, his eyes crammed with choices, and motioned another warrior to him. The man knelt and awkwardly, hopefully, presented his head held up between his two hands. Ingrey repeated the crimson unction upon the forehead, for whatever this last libation from the world of matter was worth, and released a dark hawk-spirit to fly into the night and vanish. The warrior reached for Oswin again, and this time Ingrey could see, just before he melted away, that the man was made whole. The Father speed you on your journey, then.

A woman revenant came forward, young-looking, carrying a banner that unfolded to display the ancient spitting-cat sigil of the Lynxlakes, a kin that had dwindled to extinction in the male line two centuries past. When Ingrey took her hand, he was startled to feel two other tattered souls clinging to her through her banner. Her lynx was sad and shabby, and the other two creatures so ragged as to be unidentifiable, in passing away. He signed her forehead in three parallel carmine strokes, which seemed to suffice, for she rose and strode to Jokol, who brightened and stood very straight, taking her hand to kiss it and murmuring something in her ear before she vanished. Ingrey swore he heard a faint low laugh, suddenly merry, linger for a moment in the air behind her. Jokol for the Daughter, aye. The Lady of Spring gives notoriously abundant blessings.

“Prince Biast,” called Ingrey softly. “I'm afraid I need you here.”

Biast for the Son. Of course.

“I suspect I will be least used, this night,” murmured Hallana. She cast a shrewd glance toward the mound. “I will sit with poor Fara till you need me. I would guess she's had a time of it.”

“Thank you, Learned, yes,” said Ingrey. “She was treated most miserably from first to last. But in the end she remembered she was a princess.”

Biast came forward to Ingrey's side, studying him warily. The entranced expression upon his face when he looked at Ingrey was laced with a thread of defiance. In an attempt at irony that faltered, he murmured, “Should I call you sire, here?”

“You need not call me anything, so long as you turn your hand to the task. Will Fara be all right?” Ingrey nodded across the clearing to where the princess sat huddled, watching grimly, as Hallana lowered herself beside her.

“I offered to take her to where Symark and the divines' servants wait, but she refused. She says she wants to bear witness.”

“She has earned that.” And it would make her the one person besides Ingrey who had seen all of Horseriver's actions from her father's death to…whatever the end of this night brought. If he survived, that could be important. And if I don't survive, it could be even more important.

“The most here will be yours, I suspect,” Ingrey told Biast. “The old kings had two tasks: to lead their men to battle and to lead them home again. Horseriver lost sight of the second, I think, in his black madness and despair. These warriors of the Old Weald-their duty to their king is done; there remains only their king's duty to them. It's going to be”-Ingrey sighed-“a long night.”

Ingrey looked around at the apprehensive revenants, pressing close again, and raised his voice, though he was not sure he needed to; within the bounds of Bloodfield, his voice carried. “Fear no stinting, kinsmen! I will not end my watch till your long watch is done.”

A blond-bearded young man knelt, first of a long string of such youths, many desperately mutilated. Ingrey released creature after creature: boar and bear, horse and wolf, stag and lynx, hawk and badger. Biast studied each man, as they passed through his hands, as though looking in some disquieting mirror.

It had taken a cadre of Audar's troops two days to slay all these here; Ingrey did not see how he was to release them all in a night, but something odd seemed to be happening to time in this woods. He was not sure if it was a variant upon what happened to his flow of perception in his battle madness-a shaman skill-or if the gods had lent some element of Their god-time, by which They attended to all souls in the world both simultaneously and equally. Ingrey only knew that each warrior was owed a moment at least of his hallow king's full regard; and if the debt had not been Ingrey's to contract, it had still fallen to him to pay. Heir indeed.

Then he wondered which he would come to the end of first, his warriors or himself. Perhaps they would end together, in perfect balance.

The Darthacan archers came forward midway through the night. Ingrey puzzled mightily over them, for they bore no spirit beasts for him to release. In what backwash of the uncanny their souls had been caught up, by what concatenation of disrupted magic, god-gift, night battle and bloody sacrifice they had been imprisoned here, he could not imagine. He signed them in his blood all the same, they thanked him with their eyes all the same, and he handed them off to their waiting gods, all the same. The Wolfcliff woman with the gold wolf's head arm rings gave him a kiss upon the brow in return for his blessing of blood, then, apparently in a moment of pure self-indulgence, a kiss upon the lips, before she turned to Hallana. His lips stiffened with the chill of her mouth, but her lips warmed to a faint color, like a memory of happiness, so he thought it a fair trade.

Ingrey turned to Oswin. “Learned, what shall I do with these?” He gestured to the revenants: unable to flee him, unwilling to come to him.

Oswin took a deep breath and said reluctantly, as if reciting an old lesson, “Heaven weeps, but free will is sacred. The meaning of yes is created by the ability to say no. As a forced marriage is no marriage, but instead the crime of rape. The gods either will not or cannot rape our souls; in any case, They do not. To my knowledge,” the meticulous scholar in him added.

These, too, died at Bloodfield; my duty to them does not change. All the same. Ingrey unlocked his voice and ordered each dark despairing revenant forward, and gave them their little gift of blood, and freed their spirit beasts. And let them go. Most unraveled, fading into utter nothingness, before they even reached the trees.

Two left now: the marshal-warrior, who had stood all night with Ijada and the royal Wolfcliff banner; and the being beside whom-for whom-he had once died at Bloodfield. It took most of Ingrey's remaining strength to compel Horseriver forward to face him; they both ended on their knees.

This one is not the same. Horseriver's spirit horse was gone, his kingship rescinded, but the concatenation of souls remained, generations of Horserivers still churning through his anguished form. Tentatively, Ingrey reached for the shreds of Wencel in the mass, and whispered, “Come.” And, louder, “Come!” A shudder ran through the being in front of him, but no individual soul peeled out. Ingrey wondered if he'd made a tactical mistake; if he had attempted Horseriver first, before he'd been exhausted by this night, could he have taken apart what Horseriver's long curse had welded together? Or was this simply not within his earthly powers? He was almost certain it was not. Almost.

“What is your whole desire?” Ingrey asked it. “Lost centuries are not within my gift. The revenge of sundering these other souls from the gods I have denied you, for that was not the right of your hallow kingship, but its betrayal. What then is left? I would give you mercy if you would take it.” The gods would give you rivers of it.

“Mercy,” whispered some of the voices of Horseriver, looking to the gates, and “Mercy,” whispered the rest, looking away. One word, encompassing opposite and exclusive boons. Could Ingrey, by any physical or magical strength, wrestle this divided being to any altar? Should he try?

Time had lingered for Ingrey this night, but time was running out. If dawn came without a decision, what would happen? And if he waited for dawn to carry the choice away from him, was that not itself the same decision? If Ingrey fell into his judgment out of sheer weariness, well, he would not be the first man or king to do so. He had thought leading men into battle against impossible odds to be the most fearsome task of a king, but this new impossibility enlightened him vastly. He stared at Horseriver and thought, He must have been a great-souled man, once, for the gods to desire him still, here in his uttermost ruin.

He looked around at the witnesses: three Temple divines, two princes, a princess, and the two royal banner-carriers, the quick and the dead. Biast's earlier little flash of princely jealousy was entirely drained from his face now. Not even he wanted the hallow kingship in this moment. The marshal-warrior's watching face was without expression.

Slowly, like thick smoke rising up from a pyre, Horseriver dissipated, until soul-haze could not be told from the hanging fog. The marshal-warrior's dead eyes closed, for a moment, as if it would spare him the knowledge with the sight. Of all here, he was the only one Ingrey was sure understood the choice. All the choices. The clearing was very silent.

Ingrey tried to stand up, failed, and tried again. He stood a moment with his hands on his knees, dizzy and faint. He did not think he had lost enough blood this night to kill him, but the amount strewn about on the ground and down his leathers was impressive nonetheless. It always looks like more when it's spread around like that. Finally, he straightened his back and looked at the last revenant, and at Ijada, still holding up the wolf's head standard. High upon its steel point, a shadow-heart still pulsed.

He bowed to the marshal-warrior. “I would ask one gift of you in return, my lord bannerman. One moment more of your time.”

The marshal-warrior opened a hand in curious permission. All my time now is your gift, sire, his eyes seemed to say.

Ingrey stepped forward and closed his hand around Ijada's shoulder; she smiled wearily at him, her face pale and dirt-streaked and luminous. Ingrey looked over the five of the sacred band. Yes …“Learned Oswin, Learned Hallana, would you come here a moment?”

They glanced at each other and trod near. “Yes, Ingrey?” said Hallana. “Would you each take one end of this, and hold it level. Not too high.”

Ingrey turned to Ijada. “Take my hand.”

She touched his right hand uncertainly, careful of the damp red mess, but he squeezed her fingers in return, and then she gripped more tightly. He turned them both to face the horizontal staff.

“Jump over with me,” he said, “if we shall be allies in such nights as this and lovers in all nights hereafter.”

“Ingrey…” She peered doubtfully at him, sideways through escaped strands of hanging hair. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

More or less, he started to say, and thought the better of it. It was only more. “Yes. You should marry a king. This is your great chance.” He looked around; Oswin's sober face had lightened in comprehension, and Hallana's had broken into a broad grin. “The company of witnesses could not be improved: three Temple divines of good character, two princes-one a poet who will doubtless immortalize this moment before we've made it halfway back to Easthome-”

Jokol, who had loomed closer to see and hear, nodded delightedly. “Ah, Ingorry, good work! Yes, jump, jump, Ijada! My beautiful Breiga would like this one, yes!”

“A princess…” Ingrey cast a half bow somewhat uncertainly at Fara, now sitting up somberly on the edge of the mound; she returned him a grave but not disapproving jerk of her chin. “And one other.” Ingrey nodded to the marshal-warrior; Ingrey had not known ghosts could be bemused, but this one's surprised smile blessed him in advance for this unexpected last use of his long-defended emblem. “You can have other ceremonies later, if you like,” Ingrey added to Ijada. “With better clothes or whatever. As many as you want. As long as they're with me,” he added prudently. “One or two is the usual limit,” Oswin rumbled from his end of the pole, starting to smile.

Looking at each other, Ingrey and Ijada held hands and jumped.

Ingrey stumbled a little on the landing, as his head was swimming, but Ijada steadied him. They exchanged one kiss, which Ingrey began to make swift and promissory; Ijada captured his face between her hands and made it more thorough. Yes, Ingrey thought, pausing to feel the softness, the warmth, the faint hint of her teeth. This is the only living Now.

They parted, trading pensive smiles, and Ingrey retrieved the standard. The pulsing heart had vanished from the spearpoint. But which of us received back which half? He wasn't sure he knew.

The marshal-warrior knelt on one knee, undid his graying braids from his gold belt, and held his head up before him. Ingrey knelt, too, and shook down one last generous splash of blood to smear across the furrowed brow. The old spirit stallion he released was very worn, but Ingrey thought it must have been a fine fast beast in its time, for this night it flew.

The marshal-warrior rose whole: he rolled his shoulders as if in relief and nodded solemnly at Ingrey. He then turned and reached for Learned Oswin's hand, and, not looking back again, was gone.

The real darkness flowed in across Ingrey's eyes for the first time that night; only then did he become truly aware that he had been seeing, with unnatural clarity, by ghost-light for most of the hours past. Jokol grunted and hurried to stir up a small fire, unnoticed by Ingrey, that he had evidently built to warm Fara sometime during the night while waiting for devotees of his Lady to present themselves. The orange light licked up to gild the tired faces that now huddled around it.

What, indeed? He straightened up and stared at it, discomfited. It felt as solid under his hand as the Horseriver staff Fara had broken, but it had not come from the outer world, and Ingrey doubted he could carry it back there, beyond the borders of the Wounded Woods. He was equally doubtful that it would survive the dawn, presaged by a faint gray tinge in the mists that drifted through the gnarled trees. Ingrey's hallow kingship was more bounded by space and time and need than Biast perhaps realized, or the prince-marshal would not look so uneasily at him, Ingrey thought.

He was disinclined to hand his standard humbly to Biast, politically prudent as that might seem. It was Wolfcliff not Stagthorne, it was a thing of the night not the day, and anyway, anyway…Let him earn his own.

“In the Old Weald,” said Ingrey, “the royal banner-carrier guarded the standard from the death of the old king to the investment of the new.” And now I know why. “Then it was broken, and the pieces burned on the pyre of the dead king, if events made such ceremony possible.” And if not, he began to suspect, someone had made it up as best he could out of inspiration, urgency, and whatever came to hand. He looked around a little vaguely. “Ijada, we must cleanse this ground as well, before we leave this place. With fire, I think. And we must go soon.”

“Before the sun rises?” she asked.

“That feels right.”

“You should know.”

“I do.”

She followed his gaze around. “My stepfather's forester said these trees were diseased. He wanted to fire the woods then, but I wouldn't let him.”

“It is your realm.”

“Only till dawn. Tomorrow it is yours again.” He glanced aside at Biast, to see if he took the hint.

“Perhaps it is as well,” sighed Ijada. “Perhaps it is necessary. Perhaps it is…time. What, um,” she moistened her lips, “what of Wencel's body?”

Learned Lewko said uneasily, “I don't think we can carry it out with us now. Our beasts were used hard yesterday, and will have burden enough getting us back to the main roads. Someone will have to be sent back for it. Should we build a little cairn, to protect it from the wild beasts and birds till then?”

“The last Horseriver king never had his warrior's pyre,” Ingrey said. “No one here did, except for a few trapped in burning huts that night, I suppose. I don't know if burying them all in pits was a theological act of Audar's, or part of his magic and curse, or just military efficiency. The more I learn of Bloodfield, the more I think no one really knew, even at the time. It is late; it is the last hour. We will fire the woods.” For Wencel. For all of them.

Ijada moistened a cautious finger and held it in the air. “The wind's a little in the east, such as it is. It should do even if the rain doesn't come on.”

Ingrey nodded. “Biast, gentlemen, can you help Fara get out? Can someone collect the horses?”

“I can do that!” said Hallana brightly, and took everyone but Oswin aback by stepping up onto the mound, turning to the four quarters, and calling loudly and rather maternally through her cupped hands, “Horses! Horses!”

Oswin looked a trifle pained, but appeared not in the least surprised when after a few minutes a crashing and crunching through the undergrowth announced the arrival of their several abandoned mounts, trailing reins and snorting anxiously. Jokol and Lewko, at Ingrey's nod, had quietly collected more dry deadfall from the margins of the clearing and discreetly piled it around Wencel's body. Lewko took charge of Wencel's purse, rings, and other items of interest to his future heirs at law. Ijada tucked the broken pieces of the Horseriver banner atop the pile. Hallana helped the widowed princess mount her horse. The company straggled into the foggy shadows in the direction of the marsh. Fara never looked back.

“Yes,” said Ingrey. “Make for the gate of thorns. We will catch you up.”

Gravely, Ijada took the standard, backed a few paces, and held the black-and-red banner in the fire till it caught alight. She handed the staff to Ingrey. Ingrey gripped it tightly in both hands, closed his eyes, and heaved it skyward. He opened his eyes again, grabbed Ijada's hand, and prepared to dodge whatever fell back. If anything.

Instead, the staff spun up and burst into a hundred burning shards, which rained down all around.

“Oh,” said Ijada in a tone of surprise. “I thought we would have to walk through the woods with torches for a while, finding dry brush piles…”

“I think not,” said Ingrey, and began to tow her toward Biast, who was staring back wide-eyed in the growing yellow light. “But it's time to go. Yes, definitely.” Somewhere in the woods behind them, something very, very dry went up with a roar and a fountain of sparks. “Briskly, even.”

Biast's horse jittered despite its weariness, but the prince-marshal kept pace with them as they wound through the misshapen trees back toward the marsh. He eyed Ingrey and Ijada as if trying to decide which of them to pull up behind him on his horse and gallop for it, if the wind shifted. Happily, in Ingrey's view, because he did not have the energy for another argument tonight, the faint breeze didn't shift, and the ring of fire crept out from its center at no more than a walking pace. They reached the edge of the woods if not well in advance of the flames' steady destruction, sufficiently so.

Lewko helped Ingrey down from Biast's horse. Ingrey was shivering badly now, in the dawn cold. Seeing Lewko draw Ingrey's arm over his shoulders to escort him to the campfire, Hallana abandoned Fara, who was being hovered over by Hergi as well, and hurried to them. Ingrey found her low mutter of Dratsab! more alarming than his own weakness.

She frowned medically. “Get him hot drinks and hot food, swiftly,” she ordered Bernan and Oswin. “And whatever blankets and cloaks we have.”

Ingrey sank down on a saddle pad, because standing was no longer quite feasible.

“Has he spent too much blood?” Ijada asked her in worry.

Hallana replied, a little too indirectly, “He'll be all right if we can get him warmed up and fed.”

Hergi appeared with her leather case, and Ingrey endured yet another washing and rebandaging of his crusted right hand, though the wound was closed-again-and the bruises green and fading. Others bustled about with what seemed to him needless excitement, scavenging food and blankets and building up the fire. Ingrey was tired, breathless, and dizzy, and his chilled shaking threatened to spill the odd-tasting herb tea from his cup before he could get it to his numb lips, but Ijada plied him repeatedly with refills and what bits of fare the camp could supply. Better still, she huddled under his blankets with him to share the warmth of her own body, warming his hands with hers. Eventually the shudders stopped, and then he was merely very, very tired.

“I had escorted Hallana to interrogate Ijada that night. We were talking together when Ijada became most upset, insisting something dire must have just befallen you.”

“I could not feel you anymore,” Ijada put in. “I feared you had been killed.” She would have inched closer, but they were out of inches already; her arm around him tightened instead.

“Horseriver stole our bond.”

“Ah!” she breathed.

Lewko raised a curious eyebrow at this, but elected to go on with his narrative. “Lady Ijada insisted we go investigate. Hallana agreed. I…decided not to argue. Your Rider Gesca also decided not to argue, at least not with Hallana, though he followed along for the sake of his warden's duty. We all four walked up to Horseriver's palace, where they told us you had gone to the hallow king's bedside. Then up to the hallow king's hall, where we found Biast at his father's deathbed saying you had all gone back to the earl's. We knew we had not missed you in the dark. Hallana got, well, the way she gets sometimes, and led us to the earl's stables.”

“That must have been quite a scene,” Ingrey remarked.

“To say the least. Biast had been unconvinced of anything untoward beyond his sister's usual illness, till then. From that point on, no one could have been more urgent in pursuit. Hallana hurried off to fetch Oswin and Bernan and their wagon, and found Prince Jokol talking to Oswin-he still wants a divine to carry back to his island-and she brought everyone. I was uncertain about taking this unruly mob upon the road, but, well, I can count to five. At least”-Lewko sighed-“Jokol didn't bring his ice bear.”

“Yes,” said Ijada. “But I talked him out of it. He is a very sweet man.”

Ingrey chose to let that pass without remark.

Lewko continued, “That was the point at which I decided the gods must be on our side-how does one say five gods help Them when it is the gods?-just imagine this same jaunt with the ice bear.” He shuddered. “Fafa would have had to ride in the wagon, I suppose, although the beast is big enough to ride.” He blinked for a moment, looking reflective. “I wonder…do you suppose this whole quest for a divine was a ploy on the beautiful Breiga's part to get rid of the bear before it ended up sleeping at the foot of her marriage bed?”

Ijada's eyes lit, and she giggled. “Or worse, on it. Possibly. She sounds a determined lady. For pity's sake, don't suggest that in Jokol's hearing.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.” Lewko rubbed the grin from his mouth and continued, “Biast thrust everything in Easthome onto Hetwar's shoulders, which I think are sturdy enough to hold them. We were on the river road pelting north not four hours after you three had left Easthome. After that it was all commandeering Temple courier horses and royal mail station remounts, and taking turns resting in the wagon, all the way to Badgerbridge.”

“You took the main road straight there?” said Ingrey, considering a mental map. “That would have saved some time. We took a lesser track when we turned west, for secrecy I think.”

“Yes. There appeared never to be any doubt about where we were going. Such a deluge of dreams! I did not see why, until…well. I have now seen why. We traded the wagon for fresh mounts and outraced the prince-marshal's escort out of Badgerbridge; they may yet catch us up, if they have not lost themselves in Ijada's forest, here.” Ijada nodded thoughtfully, as she considered this possibility. “The forester is with them; they will find their way eventually, maybe by another pass.” She glanced out over the valley. “The smoke must draw them, if nothing else.”

He unclutched the blanket from around his neck and sat on it, his arms wound about his knees, and stared into the graying gulf of mist and smoke. The earlier hot bright yellow that had seared the dark was dying down to a sullen red ring, black in the growing middle. The bloody light reflected off the undersides of the charcoal-colored clouds; far off, Ingrey heard a faint rumble of thunder reverberate through the serried hills, and the heavy scent of the coming rain mixed in his nostrils with the stink of smoke. He wondered if the morning after the original massacre had looked and smelled like this, and if Audar himself had also paused upon this spot to reflect on what clashing kings had wrought.

Biast strolled over to stand beside him, his arms crossed, staring out likewise, as if sociably. The prince-marshal was a little too drawn to bring off the illusion, but Ingrey spread his hand in invitation nonetheless, and Biast sank down next to him. Biast's tired sigh was not feigned.

“What will you do now?” Biast inquired of him.

“Sleep, I hope. Before we must ride.”

“I meant more generally.”

I know you did. Ingrey sighed, then a small smile turned his mouth. “After that, I shall pursue a courtier's supreme ambition-”

He made the slightest of pauses, to give Biast time to tense.

“-and marry a rich heiress, and retire to a life of ease on her country estates.” He waved about at the enclosing hills.

“Well, she may find a task or two to which to turn my hand.”

“She may,” said Biast, surprised into a chuckle.

“If she is not hanged.”

Biast grimaced and waved away this concern. “That will not happen. Not after this. If you do not trust in me and Hetwar, well, I do think Oswin and Lewko will have a thing or two to say about it. Among such a fellowship, some sensible path to justice must be found. And”-his voice grew hesitant not in doubt, but in a kind of shyness-“mercy.”

“Good,” Ingrey sighed.

“Thank you for saving Fara's life. More than once, if she tells me true. Making you her guard wolf was one of my luckier decisions, if luck it was.”

Ingrey shrugged. “I did no more than my duty to you, nor less than any man's duty to his conscience.”

“Any man could not have done what I saw you do last night.” Biast stared at his feet, not meeting Ingrey's eyes. “If you chose to be more now-to reach for my father's seat-I do not know who could stand against you. Wolf king.” Not I, his bowed shoulders seemed to add.

Now he comes to it. Ingrey pointed outward. “My kingdom measured two miles by four, its population included not one breathing soul, and my whole reign ran from one dusk to one dawn. The dead did but lend my kingship to me, and in the end I handed it back. As any king must do; your father, for one.” Although not Horseriver: one root of the problem had lain in that, to be sure. “You, too, prince, come your turn.”

Upon consideration, Ingrey's geography lacked a dimension, he decided. Eight square miles by four centuries-or more, for all of the history of the Old Weald had surely concentrated itself upon this patch of ground that fatal night, to be so thoroughly dislocated thereafter. Like the abyss beneath the deceptive surface of a lake that this valley floor resembled, time went down unimaginably far beneath this ground- all the way down. My domain is larger than it looks. He decided not to trouble Biast with these reflections, but said only, “If any kingship lingers on me, this little realm will content it.”

“Tell me true, Lord Ingrey,” said Biast suddenly. He turned to look Ingrey full in the face for almost the first time. “What makes the hallow kingship hallowed?”

Ingrey hesitated so long in answering, Biast began to turn away again in disappointment, when Ingrey blurted, “Faith.” And at the puzzled pinch of Biast's brows, clarified: “Keeping it.”

Biast's lips made an unvoiced O, as though something sharp had pierced him through the heart. He sank back wordlessly. He said nothing for a rather long time. They sat together in more companionable silence as the glimmering fires crept across the ground below, in the last deconsecration of Holytree and Bloodfield's belated pyre.