The Sacred Hunt Duology

by Michelle West

  Elsabet put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, saying nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Elsa. I’ve—I know you lost your brother. You must know what it’s like. But I—the Hunter God has passed over my family until now.” She struggled with words, lost them for a moment, and then lifted her chin. “I hate Him,” she whispered, her eyes wide and red. “And I see all the people gathered here, all the villagers, my farmers—and I hate them, too.”

  Again, Elsabet said nothing. The words, she knew, were like water in a vessel that had fallen. They needed to run their course.

  “Bryan died for them. And I don’t know if William will recover.” She shivered, and turned her gaze upon her companion. “He won’t see the Priestess of the Mother, and I know he was injured. He doesn’t want to live.”

  Quietly, Elsabet prayed that neither of her two would ever know a day such as this one. Prayed that she would not be there to see it, if they did.

  “He was young. He was . . . he had so much to offer us. And it’s gone now. So that we can eat.

  “He won’t eat, Elsa.”

  She waited with Corwinna, offering her silence and the strength of her presence when both could never be enough.

  • • •

  In the morning, the rites were called. Three Hunter Lords and their Ladies joined the procession to the green. Elseth was there, as was Samarin and Cormarin. The sun cut between the henges to shine its light upon the altar that would not remain empty for long.

  Everyone wore black, except for the Hunter Priest; he wore his colors and his crest grimly as he said the final words above the stone.

  The circle of villagers, dark and still, had no children within it. There was no laughter, no anticipation, no joy—and not many eyes remained dry. They had come to witness, these people; to see the cost of their lands and lives in the blood that was paid to keep it. To honor, one last time, the sacrifice. It was hardest for the older people; each of them had also witnessed the ceremony that had joined Bryan and William to the mysteries of the Hunt.

  Stephen and Gilliam were not the only young Hunters present, and like the others, they stood to the side of Lord Elseth, waiting and watching. They did not yet know what to expect; neither Soredon nor Norn would speak of it.

  They had not yet reached their full height, so they did not see William until he was already within the confines of the circle. At first, they did not recognize him; he wore only black, and no horn or sword adorned his robes. His hood covered his fair hair, and his head was bent so that cloth hid his face. But two dogs followed behind him, and they knew him then.

  Beside William walked another man; one old, judging by the length of his beard and the stoop of his shoulders. He also wore black, but not comfortably, and he did not bother to hide his face with a hood. Although it wasn’t hot, he was sweating.

  “Stephen, there.” Gil pointed, even though it wasn’t necessary; Stephen knew at once what held his Hunter’s attention.

  Five feet from the old man, suspended in midair at shoulder height, lay Bryan of Valentin. He was gray and stiff, wrapped round in a long, white cloth that was his only accoutrement in his final journey home. No hands touched him at all; the old man was one of the mage-born. How long he had held Bryan thus suspended no one knew, but all understood the strain he showed; Bryan had not been a small man.

  The Priest, aware of this, moved immediately from his place by the altar, bowing low to Lord William. The mage-born stopped at center circle, and managed a bow of almost equal grace. From here on, Lord William, Cadfel, and Sorrel would walk by Bryan’s side alone, as they had often done while he lived.

  William stepped into place and held out his arms, bracing his legs against the ground. Bryan’s body floated toward him, untouched by breeze, and was lowered slowly and carefully into the two arms that awaited his burden. The Hunter staggered under the sudden weight as the mage released his care. The body went slack.

  William drew strength from the Hunter’s trance, and the trembling of his arms left as he cradled Bryan’s head against his chest. His hood dipped, brushing what remained of Bryan’s cheek. For a moment, he gripped the body tightly to his chest, and all watching wondered if he would have the strength to let go. No one moved.

  “Hunter William,” the Priest said softly, “it is time for his rest. Come.”

  Still William hesitated, and his grip grew even tighter. The Hunter Lords, almost as one, turned away; they did not need to see his face to know what was writ large upon it. Lady Valentin started forward, and her husband’s huntbrother, Michaele, caught her shoulder firmly, shaking his head.

  Then Cadfel, the leader of William’s pack, darted forward with open jaws. His teeth snapped at air and the hem of the rustling black robe that William wore. William jerked his leg back, lifting his head. His face was pale and gaunt, too empty even for tears.

  No one heard the words that he sent to Cadfel, but all knew, from the dog’s sudden growling, that there was to be a testing here. Cadfel’s hackles rose, and his throat rumbled in growling. Sorrel, the pack’s bitch, suddenly lunged for William’s other leg, catching the robe between her teeth. She began to back up, her growl higher than Cadfel’s, but no less defiant, as she sought to drag William forward.

  The villagers were surprised. They murmured indistinctly among themselves. The Hunter Lords were worried. In silence, they lent their strength to the dogs. The dogs who, in their animal way, understood a truth that only Hunters knew: William walked too close to Bryan, and his voice would be lost to them all if he could not be called back to life.

  William’s foot came up, connected with Sorrel’s side, and then found the ground again as he staggered. His white cheeks took on flags of color; his eyebrows, fair though they were, could be seen to rise into the folds of cowl that framed his face.

  Sorrel yelped, let go, and then started anew.

  “Cadfel, Sorrel, go!”

  Cadfel backed up a step, and then growled, hesitating. Sorrel grabbed wet robe in her jaws and started to tug again.

  “Leave us alone!” William’s face was suffused with red now—the most color that he had shown since the end of the Sacred Hunt. He kicked out, harder this time, and Cadfel caught the blow on the length of his face. He rolled, whining, to start at his master anew.

  “What is this?” William shouted. His face had lost the peculiar tension of the Hunter’s trance. “I am your Hunter. Do as I order!”

  The dogs did not listen.

  Stunned, William stared down at them as they worked at his feet. And then his eyes narrowed, and when he spoke his voice was low, deep-throated; his eyes were flashing. “And will you leave my command? Will you forsake your Hunter?” He bent all of his will outward, throwing it against the dogs’ testing. “What was Bryan to you, but another commoner? You will not take him from me. Let go!”

  This time, the dogs did as bid, growling all the while. They stopped when they touched the first of the gathered crowd. Stopped at Stephen’s feet. He stepped back even as the growls changed, becoming the whining and whimpering that the pack offered only to its Hunter.

  “And will you leave them?” The Priest asked softly, his voice breaking the silence. He did not move as William turned to face him. “They are yours as much as Bryan was. Must they pay the price of his loss too?”

  William’s eyes widened again. He stumbled and dropped to one knee, still clutching Bryan to his chest. Aware now.

  “William, you have committed no crime. Your huntbrother made his oath at his own choice, or it would not have been accepted. Remember the King’s folly. Remember what has always been the Hunter’s Price.”

  “It should have been me,” William said.

  “The Hunter God did not choose, this year, to take your life—although you may well have your wish in another Sacred Hunt. You live. This is what your brother would have wanted. Bryan was no child. He
knew the Price.”

  William closed his eyes and nodded, but bitterly, bitterly. He tried to rise and staggered again, but would not let Bryan touch the ground. No one moved to help him; they could not. Bryan was his huntbrother and his friend; to him fell the last task of rest. He was aware of it, even as he struggled; his pride, his duty, would not let him ask for any aid.

  What aid, after all, had Bryan had, facing the Hunter’s Death?

  He rose and walked the last few feet to the altar. Then, very carefully, he laid his burden down. He started to stand once, but his arms would not release Bryan’s body to the stone.

  Now the Priest came. Now it was allowed. He gently but firmly caught William’s shoulders and pulled him away.

  William’s eyes flared again, but he nodded and stepped back. He fell to one knee in front of the altar and bowed his head into his hands. Then he raised it, seeing the gray of sky and the sun. Silent, he called for the one thing that remained.

  Cadfel and Sorrel bounded up to stand at his side. He reached out with a shaking hand to touch Cadfel’s neck. Cadfel turned to lick his master’s face. The bond between Hunter and dogs, tested so harshly, had not, and would not, be broken.

  The ceremony started. The Priest spoke. And William, dogs at his side, paid his respects to his huntbrother, offering at last to share the emptiness and loss with the one who could never answer it, or comfort it, again.

  Thus it was that Gilliam and Stephen first understood that the Hunter’s Oath had two edges. They stopped by the body to pay their respects and looked long at the damage that the Hunter God had done; it had been no easy death, and not a painless one.

  Stephen lingered longest, looking at the ruins of what had been a strong face. He touched the white cloth with one small, shaking hand. Death was no stranger to him—but this death . . . it was his. He felt certain of it.

  Gilliam, who had almost left, came back to him. In silence, in awe of a loss he was old enough to fear, he put an arm around his huntbrother’s shoulder and pulled him away. He knew what Stephen felt; he couldn’t help but know.

  “I won’t let this happen to us,” he whispered. “I’ll protect you.”

  But Lord William could have meant to do no less, and even now he stood by the stone’s side, the dead’s side, a grim shadow of death and empty longing.

  Chapter Four

  EVAYNE A’NOLAN WAS a young woman in search of truth in the libraries of House Terafin. Her hair was a perfect black sheen, her eyes were a pale, cool violet, and her clothing, if somewhat provincial, suited her perfectly.

  She had been escorted into the grand array of domed rooms by The Terafin herself, and given leave to peruse any of the volumes that the librarian guarded so jealously.

  “This is the first time you’ve met me,” The Terafin said quietly. “But it isn’t the first time I’ve met you. You saved my life, Evayne of no House.”

  Evayne was surprised, but she nodded gracefully and allowed herself to be led by the powerful, older woman. She could not imagine that a woman in her prime, with so much power and such a force of personality, could need help.

  “Did I tell you about myself?”

  “Yes,” the older woman replied. “But I would have guessed. It isn’t often that a woman’s age changes so drastically in the space of two days. Even I could hardly fail to notice it.”

  “She must have trusted you,” Evayne replied.

  “She?”

  “I.”

  “Perhaps she did. Perhaps she still does. I confess that I do not understand how you walk your path. But come. The libraries are yours.”

  The doors opened, and Evayne saw, for the first time, the vaulted ceilings and multiple catwalks that were the pride of The Terafin. Books, many of them older than either of the women who stood before them, lined the walls in perfect rows.

  “I hope you find what you seek.”

  Evayne bowed low.

  And then she began her search into the rites of old Weston. Three days later—she was almost never in one time for three days—she found what she sought, and to the librarian’s rage and sorrow, borrowed a volume bound in midnight blue with gold trefoil stamping for the next twenty years.

  By the time she had finished reading it a third time, she met a man who could give her the truths of the knowledge that time had buried.

  Had buried for everyone but Evayne.

  • • •

  On the tenth day of Fabril, the second month, Gilliam of Elseth entered his fourteenth year.

  The Hunter’s green became a place where festive poles and decorations, and pitched, painted tents in the Elseth pavilion, proclaimed the day a celebration. It was still cool, and the rains fell frequently, but the green showed the color of the new year well. Musicians of varying quality brought out harp and fiddle, and impromptu dances sprang up like wildflowers as the sun began to wend its way to its rightful place of rest.

  Stephen’s birthday was also celebrated on the tenth of Fabril because he told Lady Elseth that he didn’t know when his real birthday was. He lied; he remembered well the frugal celebrations he had had with his mother when he was five and six on the fifth of Lattan, when there was no cursed snow.

  Here, while the shadows lengthened across the faces of slowly tiring celebrants, he remembered his mother’s long, gaunt face, her dark-ringed eyes, her shaking hands. She’d been two-thirds the age Lady Elseth was now when she died, but to his mind she seemed twice as old, her face sagging into tired lines. He wanted to remember loving her, but he felt nothing at all except unease and a little pity. She had been—they had been—very poor.

  “Stephen?”

  At fourteen, he was far too old to run into Elsabet’s arms, but he was not so old that he couldn’t, with dignity, allow her to put an arm around his shoulder.

  Stephen? It wasn’t so much his name, as the sense of his name. He looked into the crowd and caught Gilliam’s eyes. His brother’s concern and curiosity comforted him. He leaned back into Elsabet’s arms, thinking only that he wanted no other brother, and no other mother, than these two.

  She said nothing, but although no oath bound them, he felt her concern just as keenly as Gilliam’s. They took a few moments of silence in the midst of the cacophony before duties took them, once again, to the middle of the Hunter’s green.

  It was the one time of year that the Hunter’s altar was not forbidding or foreboding.

  • • •

  Soredon of Elseth was the only principal to escape the festivities almost before they’d begun. He was proud of his son, yes, and proud of his choice of huntbrother; he was proud of his people and the festivities that had been planned, and executed, in his heir’s name. He was proud of Norn, and Norn’s ability to deal with inane chatter. He was even proud of Elsa, although he knew that, come evening, he would feel the sharp barbs of her words for his irresponsibility.

  But his pride in people had never been worth very much to him, and on the eve of Gilliam’s fourteenth year, it was worth less than usual. This year, Gilliam would finally be taught the Hunter’s trance. If he could master it in the next season, he would finally answer the King’s call. That would make him a Hunter proper, a Hunter Lord in his own right. He could choose and bind his own pack, and he could know, fully, the joy of the hunt.

  The sun was indeed low; the foliage bore a faint, pink tint as the rising dew reflected it.

  Corwel, sensing his master’s mood, calmly placed his lower jaw into his Hunter’s outstretched palm. Soredon smiled down at the leader of his pack. He would not be so for much longer.

  The big black and white whined a little and placed a warm, wet nose against weathered skin.

  I can’t even hide that, can I? Not from you, old boy. He tried anyway, allowing the pride he felt in this, the best of his hunting dogs ever, to overwhelm the sorrow he felt at his aging.

  I sho
uldn’t hunt you this season. You’ve become slower while I wasn’t watching. But he knew he would hunt Corwel this year, as he had done the last. And he knew that he would continue to hunt him until he couldn’t track, couldn’t run, or couldn’t catch the running beasts beneath his jaws.

  You’re the best hunter in Breodanir. You’re Bredari-born—you could have run with the first hunter in the first pack at the dawn of the best age. The stub of a tail wagged happily. Soredon rested his left hand against Corwel’s neck.

  This was the hardest part of being a Hunter Lord. Not the risk of your own death, but the certainty of your pack’s. The first pack was special, always special, and rare indeed was the Hunter Lord who didn’t hunt that pack until it was too old and a little sorry. Rarer still was the Lord who didn’t go into nearly open mourning at the death of his first leader.

  One learned better, of course, over the stretch of years. One learned how to say good-bye, to look at the births and deaths of so many friends, so many true companions, as the Hunter’s Way.

  Soredon’s hand tightened briefly as it rested against Corwel. He thought of another time, a different fourteen-year-old boy, a smaller dog. Conner, he thought, with a pained smile. I ran with you until you were what, nine? If there was any justice in the world, Conner was still hunting in the deep, rich forests of the Hunter’s Haven.

  As Corwel would be.

  Again his hand tightened. He could hunt for his people, feed them, protect them, provide for them. But he could do very little for his dogs in the end, and it was their loss that pained him most. They understood him better than any person ever could, with the exception of Norn, and they were loyal to the point of certain death. Only the loss of Norn would inflict a greater injury.

  Out of the merriment of the celebration came a single voice. “Soredon?”

  “I’m all right.” He didn’t look up. He knew Norn’s voice better than he knew his own—he certainly heard more of it.