Time, she had told the more serious and studious of her sons, is everything now. You have two and a half months, Stephen—don’t tarry.
If the Hunter’s Death was a loss that every mother feared, Hunter’s Disgrace was a life that they feared more. The Sacred Hunt would be called, and if her sons failed in their oaths . . . She clutched the locket at her throat as tightly as she dared and exhaled. There was no greater crime in all of Breodanir.
Then, squaring her shoulders and drawing her long, woolen overshawl tightly about her body, Lady Elseth began her short trek back to her rooms in the Order of Knowledge. She would have liked to travel with her sons; she was not certain when she would see them again, or in what circumstances.
But she had much to do; letters to write to Ladies Morganson and Faergif, a Queen to make a plea before, and a number of different Priests to see. She could not travel with her sons, but she could help them best without ever leaving the King’s City.
• • •
Smoke was in the air; there was fire, dust, and the smell of rotting flesh. The sun had come and gone, but there had been too many casualties for the victorious troops to deal with all at once. In the morning, the rest of the bodies would be gathered and buried. Or burned.
Evayne began her quiet search in the darkness. She did not know yet when she was; nor did she know where. She did not know what battle this was, between what armies, over what disagreement. In the shadows and the muted hub of campfires in the distance, the banners hung like slack shadows against their poles, withholding all information. She had hoped, just for a moment, that this would be the end; the point at which, briefly, her path and the path of the rest of the world would finally coincide in a solid way, a meaningful way.
But that was the end of it; she knew it. And this was not the time. There was too much left to do. Who?
She traveled by mage-light and masked her coming, hid the sounds of her retching when the smell or the sight of the not-quite-dead overpowered her. Drawing the folds of her robes well above her knees, she continued to search. Who?
And then she saw the dirty thatch of long blond hair; curls crushed into shoulders and dirt and a tangle of arms. Her breath was sharp; she was never certain—never—that this time would not be the one in which she would find him dead. He alone, of all of her servants—her victims, as she had once called them in her youth—she had no ending for; no death, no finish. She did not understand Time, or his working, and he didn’t understand her motions; they existed, uneasy, as allies of the unnamed God that they both served.
She knelt; felt someone’s chest give beneath her left knee. Shuddering, she brushed the heavy, wet hair away from a face. His face. She looked at the lines of it, thinking, we are almost in the same time. Then, carefully, she dabbed the dried blood at the corners of his mouth.
He stirred. “Is it you?”
“Yes,” she replied, cradling his head against her chest as she summoned her power. “Where are we?”
He shook his head, and struggled to sit up; grimaced in pain, but did not leave off his attempt.
“Kallandras,” she said, more urgently. “Where are we?”
“I will not tell you,” he replied, his breath a wheeze. “It hurts me; it will hurt you, no matter when you come from.” He coughed; she lifted a hand and danced his noise away with her fingers and a little spark of blue-light. “Come, help me away.”
She nodded in the darkness, brushed the top of his head with the tip of her chin. He froze, and she blushed and pulled away. She blushed—at her age, with so much death and darkness behind her.
But he was gentle, at this age, where he had been cruel in his youth; his anger was softened, although his lined eyes spoke of loss and a yearning which nothing could ever fulfill. No, not nothing. She grimaced as she thought of the Kovaschaii. Stiffened.
“Evayne,” he said, and caught her arm. “Not here. I know now that we made the right choice.”
She nodded and drew herself up. “To safety, then. I cannot stay.”
“No,” he whispered. “And I cannot leave.” He caught her hand in his, let her support his weight with her shoulder, and followed her lead from the field of death.
And she remembered the first time she had met him at this age—she had been much, much younger then. And he had been almost kind.
“Where were you?” he asked, after they had passed through a circle of trees and over a wide lake, their feet never touching the ground in the moonlight, their bodies casting no shadows.
“I was with Stephen. Of Elseth.”
“Ah.” He put an arm around her waist, and drew her closer, offering her silence without the pain of words.
• • •
There was no light in this darkness. Even the brightest of magical light guttered like a tired torch when it crossed this threshold. There was shadow, thick and heavy, and then there was a cold, cold night.
But Sor na Shannen needed no pathetic mortal light, magical or no, to see into the depths of this growing chill. She stayed at the edge of the arena, and knelt low, brushing perfect marble with strands of her hair. Her head, she pressed into the floor, as countless numbers of humans had done before her.
But there was no blade above her neck, and no punishment to follow at the hands of a Priest. There was only the demon and the Gate.
She could still see the gilt-edged marble that had, mere months ago, been solid floor. She could read the words and phrases written there by mages who understood only a small portion of their meaning. Such words, the Gods might have spoken when they had dwelled, aeons past, upon the mortal plane. None spoke them now, not even Sor na Shannen.
She waited in the heavy silence before she dared to raise her head.
“My Lord,” she whispered, when she deemed it safe, “your enemies become aware. The daughter of the Unnamed one has entered the field, and I do not believe she will leave it.”
In the very center of the complicated pattern that was woven out of strands of silver, veins of gold, folds of marble, there was a motion that was barely strong enough to be noticed. But she felt its power as the darkness thickened and grew even more chill.
Demon-kin do not feel the cold, but Sor na Shannen shivered.
“I hear your will,” she answered softly. “The mages who serve us will be summoned to your temple, Lord. We will work more quickly, more urgently. I have my spies in the land of your enemy.”
She rose, her lips thin and taut as she pressed them together. Here, she wore no glamour, and called no power. For although the God was not present—not yet—the portal that had taken over a decade to bring to life served as an adequate conduit for his power.
She had no illusions. She was alive because he needed her to be alive. And she had enough time to prove herself before he arrived to once again walk the world in the fullness of his Night and the glory of his Shadow. Nothing else would go wrong. Nothing else could.
After all, the Horn of the Hunter—and at this, just a hint of delicate fang was shown to air—had not been found, or used, by any of the Hunter’s followers.
“In months, My Lord, the gate will be open. The barriers will be breached. And you will be the only God who may walk upon the face of the world.
“Those who have not chosen, no matter how bright their souls, will be yours.”
Hunter’s Death
This is for Daniel, because as he discovers the world around him, he helps us to rediscover, relearn and remember the world that we grew up in—and because while so doing, we discover for the first time the world that our parents dealt with, day by day—all the visceral fear, the worry, the boundless joy.
Closed circle.
And this is for Daniel, because I am watching him sleep and he is the most beautiful child in the world, and he won’t stay a child forever, except in perfect memory, and this is one.
Chapter One
; 21st Scaral, 410 A.A.
Averalaan, Twenty-fifth Holding
THE SINGLE DOOR TO the apartment opened silently into a darkened room. A small figure slid round the edge of the frame and across the threshold before swinging the door quickly and quietly shut. He stepped over the bedrolls that lay in a more or less orderly row between the hallway and the kitchen, and was only cursed once when he stepped on an outstretched hand.
“Sorry,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. The apology was taken about as well as it was given, and he heard another sleepy curse at his back. He didn’t really care. A lamp burned low in the kitchen, and he knew that Jay would still be at her work, whatever it was.
“Jay?” he whispered, as he pushed the kitchen door ajar and stepped into dim light made stronger by the shadows it cast.
She sat at a long, wide table that had been crammed beneath the window between two blackened walls. Her hair was shoved up and pinned in a messy, hasty brown bunch, and her shoulders were hunched. The lamplight played around her sitting form like a halo.
“Jay?”
“What is it?” The light caught her profile as she turned, sharpening an already slender, almost patrician nose, and a slightly pointed chin. “What is it?” she said again, the voice matching the profile.
As his eyes became accustomed to the light, he could see the dark rings under her eyes. In front of the lamp, just over her shoulder, he could see a slate, and beneath it, parchment. Inks were to the left, chalk to the right. She was practicing her reading and writing.
Jewel was the smartest person Carver had ever met. That was why he followed her and let her tell him what to do—there wasn’t any problem that she couldn’t solve.
Until now.
• • •
Jewel—called Jay by anyone who wanted to live out the week—was tired. The season had been uncommonly cold, and the living to be made off the pockets of the more wealthy—the truly wealthy never made it this far into the city—had been bad. She’d had to rescue Angel not once, but twice when his fingers had been slowed by the cold and his legs hadn’t carried him away from the resulting trouble as fast as they should’ve, and she’d narrowly managed to avoid losing Jester to Carmenta’s gang in the next holding. Which, of course, had cost her a lot of money.
Added to that was the worry of clothing—Arann’s didn’t fit him again, and Angel had lost halves of two sleeves, to name two—food and shelter. She had been taught numbers and rudimentary reading and writing by her father before his death and by Old Rath after it, and she struggled with both in the poor light, trying to figure out the best way to make ends meet. A sense of responsibility had been driven into her so sharply that even lean years living off the streets couldn’t shake it.
Which was why she was the leader of her hand-chosen crew, but wasn’t why she felt twice her fifteen years. Don’t do it, Carver, she thought as she set the chalk aside and sat back an inch or two—just enough to give the lamplight play across Carver’s face. His skin was ruddy with the chill air, and his hair, cut on an angle that leaped from his right cheek to his forehead, hung over his right eye like a black patch. He was thin and scraggly, as most of her boys were—only Arann stood out as the exception—but his cheekbones were high and fine; he looked like the urchin bastard of one of the patriciate’s lords. When he was older—if he survives to be older—he was going to be damned dangerous.
Don’t do this to me.
He couldn’t hear her, of course, and had he been able to, he wouldn’t have listened. It wasn’t his way.
“You were out in the tunnels again, weren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question—more an accusation.
Carver’s head dropped until his chin hit his chest. He swallowed. None of the bravado or the spit-and-fight of his usual expression was anywhere to be seen. He mumbled an apology—a sincere one.
When she heard it, Jay Markess became quite still in the darkened room. She was bright, all right, and it didn’t take much to put two and two together. “Where’s Lander?” Her voice was much sharper than she’d intended it to be. Worry did that.
Carver shook his dark head from side to side without raising his face.
Jewel was one year Carver’s senior, and three inches shorter, but for sheer speed, no one in the den but Duster matched her. Carver didn’t see her move, and didn’t have a chance to get out of her way, not that he’d’ve been stupid enough to take it.
She caught him by the collar and the mane, and yanked his head up. “What the hells were you doing in the maze?”
“I—”
“Didn’t I give you orders?”
“Yes!”
“Were they too hard to understand?” She shook him, hard. “Kalliaris’ Curse! Why did I ever think you had a brain?” Tears started at the corners of his eyes, and his lip sank slightly in—enough to tell her that he was biting it. The anger left her in a rush, and she felt the chill in the air as if there were no fire in the grate. There wasn’t much of one.
“Blood of the Mother, Carver,” she said, as she released him and turned away. “Was this his idea or yours?” She knew the answer without having to ask the question, but she wanted to hear what he had to say.
There was a long pause before he answered, but he answered. “Mine.”
She nodded as she stared at the tabletop, seeing Lander’s face, and not the slate and chalk, parchment and quill. He was as pale as Carver, but his hair was the usual mousy brown of the street. It was also a good deal shorter, and usually tucked under a thick cap that rested just above the line of his brow. Made it hard to see his eyes.
She was certain that she would never see them again.
“Yours,” she said quietly. Carver was telling the truth. It was the only rule she demanded of her den, that no one lie to her. He said nothing.
“How could you, after Fisher and Lefty?”
“We weren’t even sure they got lost in the labyrinth,” Carver began defensively. Then he saw her face as she spun on the spot. Her glare was enough to silence him. “We were being chased by Carmenta’s gang.”
“So what else is new?”
Carver shook his head, and this time there was a flash of real anger in his eyes. “This time was different—they were waiting for us in our holding. We didn’t have a choice. They had us boxed in at Fennel’s old space.
“Honest, Jay, we were just going to skim the edges of the maze. We weren’t going to go deeper into the tunnels.”
She took a breath, and then forced her lungs to expand around it. Relax. Just relax. Carmenta. Paying him off for Jester’s release had been a risk, and it was clear that this year, at least, that risk had been a bad one if he now felt that he could just harvest the rest of her gang in their own territory. She forced her hands to be steady, but nothing could take the edge out of her voice. “What happened?”
“We got down into the tunnels and we hid close to the surface, but Carmenta’s boys were really close on our heels. I told Lander to be cool—that they couldn’t find us if they didn’t know the way in—but they made a lot of noise, and he bolted.”
Jewel nodded grimly. The streets hadn’t been kind to any of her den—but they’d been damned cruel to Lander. He was an easy one to panic. “He ran in.”
Carver swallowed. “I tried to follow him.”
“And?”
“Nothing. He couldn’t have been more than twenty feet ahead of me.”
“Did you hear anything?”
Carver’s hair swirled across the front of his face as he shook his head.
Jay exhaled.
“What is it, Jay? What’s going on in the tunnels?”
“I don’t know.” She folded her arms tightly across her chest. “But it may be time to find out.”
“What?”
“We’ve lost the maze as an advantage because we don’t dare use it.”
Carver nodded slowly.
“But I’ll be damned if something that’s preying on my den is going to get any use out of it either.” She rolled her lower lip between her teeth and her brows gathered loosely above the bridge of her nose. Carver was familiar with the expression; he saw it often. “But I promise you this. It’s time to get rid of Carmenta.”
• • •
Morning. Sun across the table, through the glass of a lamp long guttered. In the growing light, the tired lines of a young woman’s face, shadowed by fallen strands of hair and little sleep. Jay Markess was weary but too worried to sleep. It happened.
The labyrinths beneath the city of Averalaan were not very complicated once you’d traveled them for a month or two. But for that month or two, you wanted a guide, and a damned good one. There were places where the tunnels were patchy and badly worn—holes suddenly gaped up out of the shadows, and it was easy to break an arm or a leg, or do worse, if you ran into one.
The labyrinth was a dark place, set feet or yards beneath the surface of Averalaan’s busiest—and oldest—streets. Parts of it were carved, smooth stone, and parts of it worm-ridden wood; like a giant web, it sprawled in shadow—and not even Jewel had a clear idea of where its heart lay or what was in it. Neither in nightmare or reality had she ventured that far in.
But she’d been brave enough to dare more than its edges, and she’d discovered that the passages opened up into all sorts of places—abandoned warehouses, yes, but also into the forgotten subbasements of buildings that merchants still used. They opened up into the debris of old alleys and the glittering streets of the merchants’ market; they entered into the darkness beneath the silent crypts of all but the highest of Churches. The church crypts were the safest place to hide because the thought of all the dead didn’t bother Jewel—it was the living she had to worry about.
The Sacred Hunt Duology Page 45