The Hallowed Hunt (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Ingrey hardly knew what to reply to that, although the term interregnum seemed to rumble in his mind, fraught with elusive weight. Through the mellow glow of his embezzled fealty, he gleaned his wits, and asked, “What was the stag for?”

  “What, hadn’t you guessed?”

  “I thought you meant to invest it in Fara, to make her a spirit warrior, or to carry something away from her father. But then you chose the mare.”

  “When playing against the gods, sudden unexpected ploys sometimes work better than deep-laid plans. Even They cannot block every chance. The stag was a great beast in the making; four stag-lives it has accumulated since I began it. But the hallow king’s death fell before the stag was ready. I don’t know if They hastened the one or delayed the other.”

  “You meant to make a shaman of…of Fara? Or someone?”

  “Someone. I had not yet decided whom. Were it not for securing you instead, I would have had to chance the unripe beast. Your wolf is surer, despite being less, ah, tame. Stronger. Better.”

  Ingrey declined to wag his tail at this pat, though it took effort. Better for whom? His exhausted mind struggled to put the pieces together. A shaman, a banner-carrier, a hallow king, and the sacred ground of Holytree. And blood, no doubt. There had to be blood in there somewhere. Assemble them and achieve…what? No mere material purpose, surely. What was Wencel about, that the gods themselves should struggle to invade the world of matter to oppose it? What could Wencel aspire to beyond his bedazzling kingship?

  What was greater than a king? Had Wencel’s aspirations outgrown matter altogether? Four had become Five once, in the legendary past; could Five become Six?

  “What do you plan to make of yourself, then? A god, or demigod?”

  Wencel choked on his wine. “Ah, youth! So ambitious! And you yourself have seen a god, you claim. Go to bed, Ingrey. You’re driveling.”

  “What, then?” Ingrey asked stubbornly, although he did press himself to his feet.

  “I told you what I wanted. You have forgotten.”

  I want my world back, Wencel had cried in fierce despair into Ingrey’s face. He had not forgotten, and wasn’t sure he could if he tried. “No. But it cannot be had.”

  “Just so. Go to bed. We ride at midmorning.”

  Ingrey staggered into the farmhouse to find the cot that had been prepared for him, then lay staring upward in the dark despite his weariness. Surely his thrall to Horseriver was not absolute, or it would not chafe him so. Wencel’s glamour sat ill upon his crooked shoulders, like a king’s gilded armor, made in the flush of his youth, put upon a wizened old man. A dissonance between the man and his kingship that even Ingrey could sense whispered through the fissures.

  Even in its mis-fit, though, Ingrey felt the power of the thing like heat from a furnace on his face. On an Old Weald warrior of even ordinary merit, the kingship must have fallen like a mantle of light. Then he wondered what it had been like when it chanced to fall upon a man of extraordinary character: when soul melded to sacred trust in one continuous arc like a perfect bell casting. Such a Voice might make the mountains march. His mind shied from the vision.

  His own present duties, to penetrate Horseriver’s secrets and to defend Fara, both glued him to Horseriver’s side perforce. Perhaps an effort to escape was premature. Better to lull his captor, watch, and wait his chance? Trust in the pursuit that his reason and private knowledge told him must follow? Pray?

  He hadn’t prayed before bed in his adult life. But sleep gave dreams and in dreams, gods sometimes walked. And talked. His dreams were no garden for Them to stroll in, as Hallana’s were said to be, but in this remnant of night he prayed to be possessed.

  BUT WHATEVER INGREY DREAMED VANISHED UPON AWAKENING. He shot up with a start when the groom shook his shoulder. Washbasin, food, and drink were thrust at him; Wencel had them on the road again within half the turning of a glass.

  The rising land grew ever more rural and remote. There were other people and beasts on the road now in the broad day: farm wagons, pack trains, slower riders, sheep, cows, pigs. Wencel’s gallop of last night gave way to a less conspicuous canter, alternated with trotting and walking where the road grew steep or, increasingly, bad. Nonetheless it was apparent that the pace was finely calculated to wring the maximum distance from their mounts in the minimum time. An hour after noon, another aging farmhouse yielded up another meal and change of horses.

  Ingrey studied Fara. The past day that she had endured, beginning with the inquest, going on to her father’s deathbed, then this forced flight, would have devastated any woman and most men. Her spirit animal, he suspected, was lending her a physical strength as surprising to her as it was to him. Other sorts of strength…she had, perhaps, not lacked in her own right.

  Given the effect that Wencel’s kingship had on him, it occurred to Ingrey to wonder what it would do to women. He watched Fara’s response to Wencel, seeking his female mirror. She was dazzled, even astonished, when her eyes rested on her transformed husband, her lips parting in unconscious desire. But not happy. She already possessed what other women might vainly aspire to, and yet…not. Wencel’s gaze in return offered nothing but cool evaluation, as though she were a mount of dubious soundness somehow foisted upon him, and she flinched under the disdain. Fara might not be brilliant or brave, but neither was she safe to betray. She had resisted Wencel’s perceived infidelity before, if to disastrous consequence. Was she as entirely his chattel as he seemed to think?

  Was Ingrey? Ingrey sought inward. His wolf and he were no longer divisible in this life, but it seemed to him that the uncanny part of himself was more fully and fawningly under Horseriver’s spell than the rational. The part of him that thought in words remained more free. He had chained his wolf once, when he’d been younger and more frightened and bewildered than this. If the hallow king had leashed his wolf, did he truly control all there was of Ingrey?

  He seeks speed. To resist, I should seek delay.

  Horseriver slowed them to a walk again, looking leftward. At length, he turned toward the river upon a lesser road, and the horses slithered down a long bank through a thin screen of pine trees. Dirt gave way to stones; they faced not a rickety rural bridge, but a ford across the upper Stork. The Raven Range gave forth steady and abundant springs. The water here was not in so muddy a spate as the ford at which Boleso’s cortege had so nearly come to grief, but the river was wide and deep despite the recent drought in this region that put a dusty autumn haze in the blue air.

  The earl pushed his horse ahead, finding the way through the shallower sections. Fara followed obediently. If I do not pause to think—Ingrey pressed his horse upstream of Fara’s, watched till the water came up to the beasts’ bellies and half lifted them off their hooves, then spurred and jerked his mount sideways into hers.

  Both horses stumbled, and Fara’s went down. Ingrey had already kicked his feet free of his stirrups. He lunged out of his saddle, slid over the flanks of her plunging horse, and made a valiant grab for the princess.

  She’d kept a grasp on one stirrup. Her wallowing mount might well have towed her to the far bank, but Ingrey’s grip and weight yanked her away. She gave a brief cry ending in a gurgle as her head went under. Horseriver whipped around in time to see Ingrey trying to pull her back to the surface as they both were swept downstream.

  “Stay!” the earl cried. Ingrey jerked in response, but though that uncanny voice might command man or beast, it had no effect on the heavy current. The water was chill but not bitterly so, and this time, Ingrey managed to avoid clouting his head on a boulder. But this time, he also discovered immediately, his partner could in truth not swim. He renewed his grip on the flailing woman and gasped as he in turn went under, and his struggle for breath grew as unfeigned as hers.

  He still managed to push them back into the swiftest current three times, as his longer legs dragged the gravel, until at last the stream broadened and slowed in a pool so shallow that even Fara’s feet could touch bottom
. Sliding and floundering, they waded to shore.

  Ingrey scanned the bank. They had passed some mighty tangles of brush, a stretch of high and rocky overhangs that had constricted the waters into a frighteningly speedy chute, and now, a clot of young willows growing thickly along the farther shore. Wencel, especially if he’d stopped to secure their abandoned mounts, would not soon catch up with them. Ingrey had a very clear idea of just how much delay such a sopping mishap might cause, and hoped to extend it even further.

  Fara coughed. Her face was milk-colored with the cold, and she trembled in Ingrey’s firm grip. She was, he thought, owed some tears by now, but to his intense secret relief she did not at once burst into a weeping fit. “You saved me!” she gasped.

  It was not in Ingrey’s present interests to clarify this. “My duty, my lady. And my fault—my horse stumbled into yours.”

  “I thought I—I thought we were both going to drown.”

  So did I. “No, my lady.”

  “Did we…” she hesitated, turning her dark eyes up at him. “Did we escape?”

  Ingrey took a long breath, and let it out slowly. Distance from the hallow king was, as he’d hoped, sobering—but not enough. The unwanted sense of Wencel that had replaced his link with Ijada was still present, body deep. The earl was urgent, somewhere upstream. But not panicked. “I don’t think so. But we may be able to delay.”

  “To what end?”

  “We must be followed. You must be followed. Maybe more quickly than Wencel thinks. Biast will be frantic on your behalf.” The earl might have pictured them not being missed till the next day, but Ijada would have known instantly. Would she have thought him killed? Would she have been able to communicate with anyone? Lewko, Hallana? Would Gesca have listened to her pleas to seek them, late last night? Once faintly guilty for intimidating Gesca on her behalf, Ingrey was now sorry he had not terrorized the lieutenant more. Five gods help her. And us.

  And if They are as interested as They seemed, where are They now, curse Them?

  Fara stood shivering in a patch of sunlight, her heavy sodden garments clinging to her solid form, hair knocked loose from its braiding tailing in wet, miserable strands down her face. Ingrey was in little better case, wet leathers squeaking irritatingly as he moved. He stepped apart, drew his blades, and made a futile effort to wipe them dry.

  “Where is Wencel taking me?” she demanded, her voice quavering. “Do you know?”

  “Holytree, that was. Bloodfield. The Wounded Woods that are.”

  “Ijada’s woods? Her dower land?” She stared in astonishment. “Is this for her, somehow?”

  “The other way around. It is the Woods that Wencel desires, not their heiress. They are old, old and accursed.”

  Fara’s face pinched in, half-reassured, half–more alarmed. “Why? Why did he drag me from Papa’s deathbed, what evil thing does he intend? Why did he defile me with this, this…” She turned in a circle, clawing at her breast as if she could so dig out her unwanted haunt.

  Ingrey caught her clay-cold hands and held them. “Stop, lady. I do not know why you are wanted. Ijada thought I was destined to cleanse the ghosts of the Woods of their spirit animals, as I did for Prince Boleso. If this is what Wencel wants of me, I don’t know why he doesn’t just say so; it seems no improper charge.”

  She looked up at him eagerly. “Can you take this horrible animal thing out of me, as well? As you did for my brother? Now?”

  “Not while you live. The Old Weald shamans cleansed their comrades’ souls only after death, it appears.”

  “Then you had best outlive me,” she said slowly.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen.”

  Her face grew stonier. She grated, “I could make certain of it.”

  “No, lady!” His grip tightened. “We are not in such dire straits yet, though I will swear to you if you wish that I will try, if our deaths fall out that way.”

  She gripped him back, looking disturbingly possessive for an instant. “Perhaps. Perhaps.” She released him and wrapped her arms around her torso, shoulders hunching.

  It occurred to Ingrey that his conviction that Fara was disqualified as a courier sacrifice was more doubtful than he’d first thought, if he could indeed cleanse her soul after death as he had her brother’s. Was that the use Wencel had dragged him along for? Did it make sense? Not much, but then, little about this did to him just now.

  “Then you could not cleanse Wencel, alive, either,” she continued, brows pinching in worry.

  “Wencel, well, Wencel is not just infested with a simple spirit horse like yours. He is…possessed, I suppose is as good a word as any, by a spirit, a soul, a concatenation…he claims, anyway, to be the sundered ghost of the last hallow king of the Old Weald.” More than claims. “Kept alive whether he will or nil by a great spell based in Bloodfield.”

  Her voice went hushed. “Do you think he has gone mad?”

  “Yes.” He added reluctantly, “But he’s not lying. Not about that.”

  Fara stared at him for a long, long moment. He almost expected her to ask, Do you think you have gone mad? to which Ingrey did not know the answer, but instead she said, “I felt it when he changed. He changed last night, when Papa died.”

  “Yes. He reclaimed his kingship, or some missing part of it. Now he is…well, I’m not sure what he is. But he races time.”

  She shook her head. “Wencel always ignored time. He was maddening, that way.”

  “This thing in Wencel’s body isn’t really Wencel. I have to keep remembering that.”

  She rubbed her temples.

  “Is your head bothering you?” Ingrey asked cautiously.

  “No. It’s very strange.”

  How should they delay further? Split up, so as to take longer to find? A clever notion; he could get back in the water, which was immune to the hallow king’s glamour, and let it carry him downstream for miles until Wencel overtook him. Ingrey tried to remember if they’d passed any waterfalls coming up. But no. He could not leave this woman alone, shivering in the wilderness, waiting for the uncanny chimera she’d married to find her. “Prince-marshal Biast commanded me to guard you. We cannot separate.”

  She nodded gratefully. “Please not, my lord!”

  “Wencel will search first along the banks. Let us at least go a little more into the woods.”

  It would not be enough to elude Horseriver altogether; he could already feel the tug of their tie, growing tighter. But truth to tell, he was becoming wildly curious about Bloodfield. He wanted to see it, needed to see it. And the straightest way was to let Horseriver take him there. But not too swiftly. Wencel might have had all he required in Ingrey and Fara, but Ingrey didn’t think he had all he needed. I need Ijada. I’m sure of it. Did Horseriver know it, to separate them so? Trust in the gods, They will supply? Hardly. He wondered suddenly if it was as hard for the gods to have faith in Ingrey as it was for him to have faith in Them, and a weird wild urge to show Them how it should be done swept him for a moment.

  Whatever fey look had possessed him made Fara step back. “I will follow you,” she said faintly.

  They turned to scramble into the brush. Over rotting logs, up past the high-water mark of a second stony bank, into deeper shade. Out across a sunny meadow high with purple thistles and prickling weeds that laid a dotted trail of burrs on their damp clothes. Through scratching brambles into more shade, laced with fine spiderwebs that caught across their mouths. The hike did some good, he thought, if only to render them drier by the exercise.

  But the crashing of a large animal sounded through the woods soon enough. There was nothing in this waste more dangerous than what sought them already, but it need not be more dangerous to be dangerous enough. Ingrey froze, hand on his hilt, and Fara cowered near him, until Horseriver’s mount emerged from the blinking shadows, snorting displeasure at the clutching undergrowth that scraped its hide.

  Wencel, sighting them in turn, breathed a long sigh seeming half a
nger and half relief. All desire to flee faded from Ingrey’s heart, melting away in the heat of the king’s proximity. He saluted courteously.

  “Thank you, Lord Ingrey,” Wencel said, riding up.

  “Sire.”

  “My horse stumbled,” said Fara, unasked. “I almost drowned. Lord Ingrey held me up.”

  Ingrey did not bother correcting that to I clambered on top of Lord Ingrey. A matter of viewpoint, he decided. His had been largely underwater.

  “Aye, I saw,” said Wencel

  Not all, or you wouldn’t be thanking me so sincerely. Wencel’s look at Ingrey was searching but not unduly suspicious.

  “Get her up,” said Wencel, holding out his hand, and Ingrey cupped his hands for the princess’s muddy foot and boosted her up behind her husband. He took up station after the horse, to let it trample down the trail and rake off the spiderwebs, and followed Wencel wearily back upstream.

  It took upwards of an hour for them to find the road again, and then they turned back eastward for more than half a mile to the river where Wencel had left their horses tied. There, to Ingrey’s silent satisfaction, they found that Fara’s horse had strained a tendon in its fall. Wencel pulled its tack off and turned it loose, had Ingrey lash the spare gear behind his own mount’s saddle, heaved Fara up behind him once more, and led off west at a much slower pace.

  Four hours lost at least, perhaps more by the time they dragged in to their next stop. Not enough. It’s a start.

  Ingrey had added another two hours to his tally by the time they turned off the back road to a grubby and impoverished little settlement scarcely meriting the name of hamlet. A rotting timber palisade provided bare defense from wild beasts and none from evil men. The sun was setting; Horseriver frowned at its yellow glint through the trees.

  “We cannot go farther tonight. There will be no moon till midnight.” His teeth set in a brief grimace. “And for the same reason, we will not be able to depart from the next change till the dawn after, if we are not to be then benighted in the trackless mountains. We are set back a full day. Well, take your rest. You’ll need it.”