Hunter's Oath

by Glynn Stewart

  “So be it,” Andrews replied. “Shaughnessy, do it.”

  The woman stepped up to Andrell’s body and removed the iron mask from his face. She carefully laid it aside, the cold iron almost certainly painful in her hands. As the glamor collapsed to reveal Andrell’s body, even I winced.

  It was going to be a closed-casket funeral. I’d put ten bullets through his torso and made a complete wreck of his chest, and the entirety of one of his forearms was nothing but charred ash and blood where there should have been skin.

  Shaughnessy, however, seemed unbothered as he stepped over to the second corpse and removed the mask from Gráinne. She’d basically pulled a suicide-by-cop, and the flame strike I’d killed her with had left a surprisingly neat hole through her torso and neck.

  “The same power,” Ankaris observed softly. “I smell the magic on them both; they both fell to the same warrior. And…” He trailed off and shook his head.

  “Lord Andrews,” he said formally, “I do not think there is much question before us. Andrell was a Masked Lord, a member of the rebels that rode against us. Guilty of treason and betrayal, the fate he suffered was what I would have brought down on him.”

  Ankaris sighed.

  “More merciful, even. You know what the Covenants require for their crimes.”

  The room was silent.

  “Shawnee, Shaughnessy,” Andrews said sharply. “You watched the duel.” It wasn’t a question.

  “What happened?”

  “Kilkenny came to arrest the Pouka Noble Chernenkov, as per the High Court’s proscription,” Shaughnessy told her master. “He fought her, pinned her shadow with cold iron. Before he could capture her, however, Lord Andrell interfered.

  “When Kilkenny challenged him with Gráinne’s allegiances, he revealed his own Mask and attacked the Vassal. His death was self-defense.”

  “Self-defense,” Andrews half-whispered. He turned to study me for the first time. He didn’t approach, but I felt him measure me with his gaze.

  “And you, Kilkenny, what have you to say?”

  I couldn’t even rise.

  “Andrell fought me for love,” I told him. “I do not know what he has done in the past or how involved he was in Chernenkov and Gráinne’s plan to destroy Oberis’s Court. He fought me when Chernenkov was in danger.

  “She was his wife.”

  The Lord of the Unseelie snorted.

  “Shawnee? Shaughnessy?”

  “That is what Andrell said, yes,” Shaughnessy said carefully. “He also claimed to have been in the battle at Tír na nÓg and to have struck down gods with his own hands. My Lord…by his own words he was condemned.

  “Master Kilkenny merely saved the High Court time…and his own life.”

  “Very well.” Andrews straightened. “I want Chernenkov,” he told Mabona. “I’ll spare your Vassal, I’ll even accept he did what must be done, and let this Court return to Oberis—but I want Chernenkov.

  “She will tell me how deep this rot goes.”

  “Done,” the Queen confirmed. “I trust you, Jon, to see this through. We both know that there are Seelie among the Masked Lords as well as Unseelie. Yank the string and see what unravels.”

  “I swear it shall be done.”

  “That may be harder than I think any of us would wish,” Eric interjected. I couldn’t see him, but from Andrews’ expression as he turned to face the Keeper, I doubted it was a pleasant view.

  “One of Chernenkov’s guards is dead,” Eric continued. “Milligan here will live if someone can heal him shortly, and Kenner is just unconscious. The Pouka’s gone. Long gone.”

  Shaughnessy winced.

  “Three Gentry should have…”

  “She was a Noble of the Pouka,” Eric snapped. “Even spiked by iron, no mere Gentry could hold her. She didn’t even need to harm them. She did that because she could.”

  “She’ll be far and away by now,” Andrews said grimly. “But she is not beyond our reach.” He turned to Ankaris.

  “Lord Ankaris, may I borrow your Hunters? It seems I have work to do tonight.”

  “Oisin,” Ankaris snapped, and a tall Hunter I’d seen before stepped forward. “Take your troop with Lord Andrews. I would see this affair done tonight—and if the Wild Hunt can’t bring Chernenkov down, well…”

  “We shall see it done,” the Hunter replied. “Hunters of the Blackened Shield! To me!”

  Sixteen of the Hunters coalesced around Andrews as he stalked from the Court.

  Ankaris watched them go and then turned his gaze on me. He met my eyes, but his words were for Mabona.

  “And now that business is done, I believe you and I must speak about this child, my Queen.”

  35

  “Did you think I could be in the same room as him and not realize who he was?” Ankaris demanded. “Did you think I could look at his face and not know who he was? Not understand at last what you’d done?”

  “I did what I swore I would do,” Mabona snapped. “What gives you the right to judge me?”

  “The Covenants of the Hunt,” Ankaris said. “I have too damned few Hunters as it is. I don’t care if they’re changelings; if they can walk Between, I need them. And the Covenants say that they are to be at least reported to me.”

  “He is my Vassal and I am your Queen,” she retorted. “This conversation is over.”

  “Would someone care to explain just what is going on?” I asked carefully.

  Ankaris and Mabona both looked back at me, then at each other.

  “Not here,” she said.

  “Why not?” he demanded. “Or are there more lies you want to try and cover up?”

  “There are truths that should not be spoken where others can hear,” she told him. “A Court on the edge of being shuttered and a room full of bodies aren’t the place for this conversation.”

  “Again, I’m feeling lost here,” I noted. “And I can’t help but feel I should be part of this.”

  “He needs to leave here with me,” Ankaris told my Queen, as if I wasn’t even speaking.

  “He is my Vassal,” she hissed. “He is mine and he stays where he wills. Do not challenge me, Ankaris.”

  “Perhaps,” he conceded. “But he deserves to know the truth about how you’ve lied to him.”

  For the first time since she’d arrived, Mabona’s Power suddenly filled the entire empty space of the massive Court. Shadows and fluttering wings echoed across my vision and hearing alike as the Queen of the Fae reached the end of her patience.

  “I have never lied to him,” she hissed, each word hitting the air like falling tombstones as her Power bound the attention of everyone around here. “And I will NOT permit you to.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Eric and Inga both crumple to their knees. The remaining Hunters followed, our Queen’s Power sweeping over the Court as she unleashed her will.

  Even Ankaris seemed cowed, but he faced her anyway.

  “Mabona…he is my cousin,” he finally said, something in the Power in the room carrying his words only to me and her. “If you have never lied to him, then tell him the truth now. Let him understand why he is the Hunt’s.”

  “I. Will. Not. Lose. Him.”

  The words were ground out, each one a body blow to the entire room.

  “Then tell him everything,” Ankaris told her.

  Shadows swirled in upon us and the Court was suddenly gone. Mabona’s Power swept us through Between faster than I could ever move, and then the three of us were suddenly outside. A wind swept over us, and I didn’t recognize the hill for a moment.

  Then I saw the lights of downtown Calgary to the south of us and realized she’d transported us to Nose Hill Park, the closest thing Calgary had to a moor. Her Power still surrounded us, shielding us from outside view as I stood between the two members of the High Court.

  It took me a moment to even realize I was standing. In the same moment she’d teleported us several dozen kilometers, Mabona had healed my spine and
arm. I still wore my weapons and the new suit she’d fitted on me.

  She was suddenly clad in a long, flowing black dress, very different from the pantsuit she’d arrived in. Ankaris had shifted too. Now he was clad in emerald-green armor and antlers framed his head, the Horned King challenging his mistress for honor and truth.

  “We will not be heard or seen here. This truth will bring the Masks upon us,” Mabona said quietly. “Upon you, Jason.”

  “They’ll work it out,” Ankaris replied. “They’ll realize once they know a changeling killed Andrell.”

  She sighed.

  “You asked me once who your father was, Jason,” she reminded me. “Would you know now?”

  “I get the feeling I need to know now,” I said. “Andrell said he knew who I was. That he’d killed my father.”

  “If he was at the Battle of Tír na nÓg…then yes, he did,” Mabona confirmed. “He was one of many, but his hands would have killed your father.”

  “You’re stalling,” the Horned King said. “Tell him.”

  Mabona sighed.

  “Your name…is incomplete,” she told me. “Mellie knew the whole thing. She would never have told you it. It was part of what we did to protect you.” Mabona shook her head. “I hated your mother, Jason, but I owed your father everything.

  “Your name is Jason Alexander Odysseus Kilkenny Calebrantson,” she said flatly, the extra names ringing like the tones of a massive bell and feeling right in a way I could never describe.

  “Your father was Calebrant, Lord of the Wild Hunt, bound by oath and Covenant never to sire a child with a mortal or changeling,” she continued. “The blood that flows in your veins is that of a Power, of a Horned King.”

  “Of my uncle,” Ankaris told me, and I understood why he looked so familiar. The features that looked familiar on the master of the Wild Hunt were the same features that looked back at me from the mirror every morning.

  “Covenants say that the Powers of the High Court shall have no children,” he continued. “That allows the extra Gifts they possess to be willed to their successors. The edge that would have made me a Power like your father runs in your veins.”

  That was impossible. I was just a changeling…and yet somehow, I knew they spoke the truth.

  “I loved your father,” Mabona admitted. “More than life itself…but when he became Lord of the Wild Hunt, he told me we could never be together. I…tried to impose on his Vassalhood. He defied me…and then spent a century avoiding me.”

  “That’s why the Hunt wasn’t there when the Masked Lords starting murdering members of the High Court,” Ankaris told me. “We learned too late, only when his half-forgotten Vassal connection to Mabona warned us she was injured.”

  “He saved my life—by taking the blow meant for me,” my Queen told me. “It killed him. He killed them as well, but they broke the will and the life of a Power.

  “And he told me that he’d made a mistake while he was dying. That Melissa Kilkenny was pregnant with his child. And he demanded that I swear to protect both her and the babe, that I shield them from his enemies and mine.”

  “So, you told no one,” Ankaris concluded. “You should have told me.”

  “Honestly? For the first decade or so, I thought you knew,” she admitted. “If Calebrant would have told anyone, it would have been you.”

  “I didn’t know,” he told her. “Obviously. Or I would have seen him guarded his entire life, Hunters and Valkyries at every corner.”

  “I think he’s better off for that.”

  “Do I get a say in this?” I asked snidely. They kept talking past me like I didn’t exist.

  “Plenty,” Mabona snapped. “You are my Vassal…but I have other Vassals among the Hunt. More, I owe you a boon. I swore I would release you from service to honor—and you have served beyond any reasonable demand tonight.”

  “And the Wild Hunt needs you,” Ankaris told me. “You are the son of my uncle—you are my cousin, and the blood of the Horned King runs in your veins. To the Seelie and Unseelie, rules and blood define everything.

  “Among the Courts, you are and will only ever be a changeling, but that is not your birthright. That is not your place. By blood, by gift, by right, by Covenant—you are a Noble of the Wild Hunt and your place is by my side!”

  36

  I stood between two gods on a windswept moor, and I had no idea how to process what they’d just told me.

  My father was a Power, the Horned King. That made me…what? Still a changeling…but also apparently a Noble of the Wild Hunt.

  One of the gods standing around me had been my father’s lover. The other was my cousin. And it seemed that I was being asked to choose.

  “What…” I swallowed. “What happens now?”

  “That’s up to you,” Mabona told me. “If you would serve me still, you can remain here. You can also serve me in the Wild Hunt. I will not deny you, wherever you go…but if you would be released from my service, I owe you that.”

  “It…is up to you,” Ankaris agreed. “Your place is by my side, but I will not demand anything. You must know what you are…and know that what you are makes you a target.”

  “A target?” I asked carefully.

  “The Masked Lords were defeated by Calebrant,” the Lord of the Wild Hunt told me. “He did…something I don’t understand. He broke the spell they used to strike him down.”

  “It’s a complex ritual that uses an old power focus, one there’s no way they can duplicate,” Mabona explained. “He blood-bound it. He was a Power.”

  “Blood-bound?” I asked. I could guess…I realized what they meant.

  “They have Esras,” Mabona continued. “The Spear of Lugh, the first Horned King, before there even was a High Court. Forged in the fire and blood of another time, the hands of a dozen Powers have wielded it. Such things become greater than any hands could ever make.

  “And they forged their ritual around it. With Esras and their ritual and twenty-one Lords and Nobles, they can strike down the Powers. But Calebrant stole Esras from them. They may hold it, they may conceal it…”

  “But without a warrior of Calebrant’s blood, they can’t wield it,” Ankaris finished for her. “While I was the only one left, we weren’t overly worried. They’d need Esras to defeat me. But you…”

  “Wouldn’t they need me to wield it for them?” I asked. “I can’t see that happening.”

  “The spell can also be broken with blood,” my Queen admitted. “They don’t even need to take you alive, Jason. If they have enough Lords to repeat the ritual to use the spear, they have enough Lords to complete a ritual to use your blood to unlock it.”

  “So, once they realize I exist…”

  “They will hunt you to the ends of the Earth. Nowhere you go will be safe. Anyone who stands with you joins a war that we’d hoped was over.”

  “But your very existence gives them the possibility of unleashing that stolen weapon,” Mabona told me. “You are the key to their revolution ever succeeding.”

  “So, if I stay here, continue as I am, they’ll come for me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Your protection was keeping you secret, but they’ll work it out when they realized a Hunter’s changeling fought and killed a Fae Lord.”

  I couldn’t leave. I had friends, almost family, here. I couldn’t leave Mary behind.

  “But if we’re going to end this, we have to fight them,” I said levelly. “We need to let them come to us. So long as they hide, they can try and find something else to use for their spell. They can seek me, seek Ankaris…or they can seek another focus.

  “We need them to come for me,” I realized aloud. “We need to use me as bait…and if I’m going to be bait, it will be here.”

  I gestured at the city around me.

  “Here I have friends, allies, tools,” I told them. “A Wizard who owes me a boon. A woman who loves me.

  “You want to make me a Noble of the Hunt? To stay a Vassal of
the Queen? Then I say you need to come here,” I told them. “We let them know I’m here. We let them come.

  “And I will face them. As a Noble, as a Vassal, as my father’s son…but I’ll do it with my friends and my love at my side.”

  Ankaris laughed and gestured. A silver-hilted sword materialized in his hand and he offered it to me.

  “So be it, then. Take the sword, Jason Kilkenny. You are a Rider of the Hunt, a Noble of the Wilds. If you would fight our enemies here, then we will fight them here.”

  I took the sword. I had no damn idea how to use it—I was more comfortable with the whip handle MacDonald had given me—but I understood what it was.

  A symbol. Of who I was. Of who I had always been.

  “My Queen?” I asked quietly.

  “You are mine, Jason Alexander Odysseus Kilkenny Calebrantson,” she told me. “Whether you are my Vassal or not, you are the child of the only man I ever loved. The Masked Lords must be defeated…and I swore an oath to protect you.”

  “Then let the bastards come,” I told them. “We will fight them—with fae, with shifters, with a Wizard and the Powers of the High Court. If they want to burn the High Court down, then let them come.”

  About the Author

  Glynn Stewart is the author of Starship’s Mage, a bestselling science fiction and fantasy series where faster-than-light travel is possible–but only because of magic. His other works include science fiction series Duchy of Terra, Castle Federation and Vigilante, as well as the urban fantasy series ONSET and Changeling Blood.

  Writing managed to liberate Glynn from a bleak future as an accountant. With his personality and hope for a high-tech future intact, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario with his wife, their cats, and an unstoppable writing habit.

  Other books by Glynn Stewart

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