“What can we do for him?”
“We’ve got something that’ll dull the senses some—but we don’t usually give it unless someone’s in great pain.”
“He is,” she said softly. “Go ahead.”
He shrugged. Hallorn was not a physician who liked to overuse the herbalists, and she could hear his reluctance in every word that he spoke. That was right, and as it should be in a man of Hallorn’s care and fastidiousness. She, on the other hand, felt no reluctance whatsoever. “How long?”
“How long until what?”
“Until it starts to have an effect?”
“It depends on the person,” he said, and then, seeing her face darken, added, “probably an hour. Maybe half that.”
“Good.” She pulled up a chair—one of two, and at that, a rather rickety one—and took a seat beside the door. “I’ll wait.”
“So I gathered.”
• • •
“Kallandras.”
He opened his eyes. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, but the voices were almost a whisper. If he tried, he could ignore them. He wanted to try, but it was too much of a betrayal. There were straps around his arms, his chest, and his thighs. He raised his head and saw his body as if it were someone else’s.
“Kallandras, be still.”
He nodded, groggy, and sank back into the pallet. There was something running through his system, some hint of heaviness or wrongness.
“We’ve given you seablossom,” Sioban said, as if reading his thoughts. “You’ve been delirious, but it’s not something Hallorn recognized. There isn’t,” she added, “much that Hallorn doesn’t recognize.”
Seablossom. Niscea. “Can I sit up?”
She watched his face for a moment, as if waiting for something to happen; when it didn’t, she nodded and began to unbuckle the straps that Hallorn had, with such difficulty, put in place.
He sat, hating the sense of fuzziness, of heaviness—of otherness—but knowing that it was the seablossom that kept the pain at bay. Wary, he watched her as she watched him, aware that his facial expressions were on the outer edge of his control.
“What’s wrong?” It was a question, but there was a demand in it.
Kallandras knew that she could hear the lie in his words, and without the screaming, without the viscerality of fear and the blind need to find and aid the helpless, he could think clearly enough that he had no desire to make the attempt. He said nothing.
Sioban waited. And waited. And waited. Finally she spoke. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what the problem is.”
“I know.”
“This has something to do with your past, doesn’t it?”
He did not reply.
“Kallandras, you—”
“Bardmaster?”
Sioban turned toward the door; it was ajar, and the head of a young applicant peered around its edge. “Yes?” she said, in a tone that made it clear that she did not appreciate the interruption.
“There’s someone here to see Kallandras.”
“Oh?”
“Y-yes, Bardmaster.”
“Kallandras is indisposed at the moment; I don’t believe he’s expecting visitors.”
The young face paled but nodded and disappeared. The door closed quickly in its wake. “Good. Now we—” She stopped speaking as the door opened again. “Courtney,” she said, in as severe a tone as she ever used.
“I’m afraid he’s gone back to his tasks,” was the reply.
Sioban turned at the sound of a stranger’s voice, and saw a woman in long, midnight-blue robes. Her face was hidden, but her hands were not; they were smooth but strong; the hands of a woman in her prime, not her youth.
Kallandras smiled, but the smile was peculiarly bitter. “Hello, Evayne,” he said softly.
• • •
“I cannot stay,” she said at once, as she pulled the hood from her face, ignoring the bardmaster. She was thirty-five, he thought, or maybe a little older; her forehead already had soft lines, and her cheeks seemed hollow or shadowed. Her violet eyes were darkened. “I heard that you were unwell.”
He said nothing, his lips turning down in the subtle scowl with which she—at any age—was familiar. She turned to the silent older woman who sat by Kallandras’ side.
“Bardmaster, I believe?”
“Sioban Glassen,” the bardmaster replied, speaking through slightly clenched teeth.
“We must speak alone for a moment, Kallandras and I.”
Sioban glanced at Kallandras, surprised at the expression on his face; his lip was curled slightly, and his eyes narrowed enough it seemed his lashes might touch. In anyone else, the expression might be one of irritation, or even momentary anger—but coming from Kallandras, Sioban knew it for the open hostility that it was. Certainly very little provoked that reaction from him; she could not, offhand, recall a single other occasion. There was a song here, but it was probably an evening’s work, and at that, one which required multiple voices.
“Kallandras?” Sioban said, although she thought she knew his answer.
“I’ll speak with her,” he said at last.
Sioban nodded curtly. She wanted to warn Evayne not to exhaust him or otherwise cause his condition to worsen, but she didn’t want to reveal something that Kallandras might consider personal or private. Instead, she stopped in front of the shorter woman and met her gaze, brown eyes against violet. She took her measure in that glance and was unsettled, although she couldn’t have said why.
But she left them alone.
• • •
“Why are you here, Evayne?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, coming to sit by his side in the chair that the bardmaster had vacated. Her robes eddied and then settled into perfect folds in her lap. “But Stephen of Elseth is now in Averalaan. The year is 410. Kallandras, do you have the spear?”
The bard started and then relaxed. “Yes. She brought it to me. The wild one.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“I believe—although I am not certain—that you will have to deliver that spear to either Stephen or his Hunter Lord Gilliam.”
“Stephen is the boy you sent me to protect.”
“He is no more a boy,” she replied gravely, “than you.”
He nodded and then closed his eyes; his equilibrium had been damaged by the mixture that Hallorn had given him.
“Kallandras?”
“I am well,” he replied, without opening his eyes. “Where is Stephen?”
“I believe he is at the court of the Twin Kings.”
Kallandras gagged and then forced his body to bend to his control as it almost always did. He was fighting the effects of the brew, or rather, his body was; his mind knew that without it, he might not be able to function.
What happens to the rest of my brothers? he thought. What happens to those who are already on the Lady’s mission? The answer was horrible to contemplate, but the Kovaschaii did not flinch from horror. Or at least, Kallandras reflected bitterly, he did not.
If he could find them . . . if he could simply see . . .
He opened his eyes suddenly and met Evayne’s. They were guarded, as they always were in his presence. He started to speak and then fell silent; three times he opened his lips, and three times, the words would not come.
The screams, dim and distant, came instead. And, as before when he hovered on the brink of the choice that she had given him, he could not simply listen passively; he could not let his brothers suffer and die, even if to save them was to betray their edicts. He stared at her; she was perhaps ten years older than he at the moment, and more peaceful for the years.
I left my brothers for you, he thought bitterly. What is one more betrayal?
“Evayne, I have given you obedience, and I
have served you in all things as you have requested since you first found me.”
She nodded, waiting. Unlike Sioban, her wait was not in vain.
“I have asked you for nothing; I have done what must be done, measure for measure. If you walk your road alone, you have condemned me to walk mine in loneliness.”
She nodded again.
“But now, I wish a return for my efforts. I wish you to tender a service to me.”
She was tense, as he spoke, and that tension seemed to tighten her and hold her in place. “What would that be?”
“I need the aid of the vision that you were born to.”
“Why?” One of the things he most hated about Evayne was the neutrality of her voice. Only young, with anger and pain, was it easy to read what she felt in her tone.
He swallowed.
He was surprised when she met him halfway. She reached into her robes; they parted for her, showing him a glimpse of silvered shadow. The light came out of shadow into her hands, turning into crystal-encased mist—the seer’s crystal. With care, she settled the ball between her cupped palms and waited; her robes settled back into the folds that gravity—and not magic—decreed.
“Two of my brothers have been killed.” He spoke quickly and then looked away. She had always been an ally, but a hated one, someone whose presence he bore out of necessity and a greater sense of duty. He, who needed no one but the Kovaschaii, had asked for aid from no one when his brothers had been forever denied him. Until now. “I wish you to find their bodies.”
“I am not certain,” she said, in an even tone, “that it is possible for me to do what you ask. My—my vision does not work on demand, Kallandras; what the crystal reveals is, in a way, part of me.”
He was bitterly disappointed, and turned from her; he did not doubt her words, for he had never known her to lie to him.
“Wait,” she said, and touched his shoulder with the curve of the glass. She flinched as he did; for a moment, they were almost reflections of each other. “If you—if you will tell me more, if you will touch the ball—if you will take the risk that I will see too much of you—” She pulled the crystal’s surface away, and Kallandras was surprised at how cool the air against his skin was in its absence.
“And how much,” he asked her bitterly, “will I see of you?”
“More than you ever wanted, if you choose to look.” She held up the ball, and her eyes were very dark as she looked above its perfect surface to meet his.
He was not—had never been—stupid; he understood then that the risk she took was in some ways greater than his own—for he was cruel, and knew it. His cruelty, subtle and quiet, had only been reined in because he did not know how to hurt her. Did not know if he could ever hurt her as she had hurt him by forcing him to help her in her fight against the unnamed.
She waited, neutral and impassive, the sphere between her hands.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked at last, as he placed both hands across the warmth of the crystal. The sensation was profoundly disturbing; it was as if, for a moment, he had reached not crystal but something that existed beneath skin and bone and flesh. A heart. It pulsed in his hands.
“I am doing this,” she replied, “because you asked. You only ever had to ask.”
“Not true.”
Her smile was a rare and genuine one. “No, then—I was young and far more angry, I think, than you know. But save for that first year it has been true.”
“Do you know why I hate you?”
“I know.” He watched the muscles in her forearms cord as she forced her hands to hold the crystal sphere where he could reach it. “But speak not of hate if you wish to aid your brothers. Tell me, Kallandras. Tell me of the Kovaschaii.”
Silence then. The sound of three hearts; hers, his, and the sphere that lay between them, a bridge across the abyss. He did not want to tell her what she needed to know.
“I am of the Kovaschaii.” He spoke without inflection, as if the words were too brittle to contain real emotion. “I was raised by them. I grew up in the labyrinths of Melesnea, learning the rituals of the naming, the killing, and the dance.” He had desired little else for almost ten years, but to speak of it openly was wrong; he lifted his hands and his fingers fluttered a moment, like trapped butterflies, before he once again touched the crystal.
“I was bard-born, although they did not know it immediately. I came to the talent late in my training; I was small and grew slowly for my age.
“I learned to kill. Is that what you want to know? I learned how to kill quickly, and how to kill slowly, and how to kill secretly.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her face; it was still and perfectly composed. He wondered if she was listening, and it stung although he could not say why. But he continued to speak. “We did not practice on our kin, or even upon the unchosen; the blooding and the death are sacred to our Lady, and all death is upon her altar.
“What life did you lead, Evayne? For I led the life of a brother. We ate together and drank together and practiced our rituals in the secrecy of the world that we created. While others were dreaming of love and work and a home, I was dreaming of the dance and the death, of the approbation of the Kovaschaii.” He dreamed of it still, and once again his fingers convulsed as if they had a life of their own. Are you listening, my brothers? Can you hear the wrong I do?
“We are the servants of the Lady. We do not kill unless she blesses the killing: she chooses those deaths that she will accept.” He closed his eyes and he did pull away, covering his face. “She chose yours.”
“And perhaps one day you will give it to her.”
He laughed bitterly, aware that in doing so he told her more than he usually did. “I will not kill you, Evayne; the time has passed.” Swallowing, he forced himself to touch and speak again.
“We join the brotherhood when we complete our first mission in the Lady’s name. She accepts us and anoints us, and we are suddenly linked or bound or woven into the very heart of the Kovaschaii; it is as if we become part of a single spirit. We know who our brothers are; we know them by more than sight.
“I’m sorry. What was I saying? Ah. That the Lady accepts us and anoints us and binds us. But the bonds are stronger than life or death, and when our bodies fail, or if we are killed on her mission, our souls do not leave.
“The threads she has woven with, only she can break. We know when a brother dies. We feel it, or see it, if we are close enough. And we go to the fallen, and about the fallen we perform her rituals.
“And then we dance the death. And when we dance it well enough, the Lady hears us and she comes. Only when she comes is the brother finally free.”
For the first time since he had started his halting speech, Evayne spoke. “And you are still a part of the Kovaschaii.”
“Yes.”
“And when you die?”
He did not answer, but it was answer enough.
She stared at him, and her eyes were slightly rounded; she was shocked or surprised; he had achieved at least that much.
But it was not to do either that he had asked for her aid. He swallowed. “I can hear them, Evayne; I do not know how long it has been since their fall—but I did not feel the death. They have been trapped, and isolated; they are not part of us, but not free. They have been betrayed by the Kovaschaii—and that is not possible.”
“You said you can hear them?”
“I—can.”
“Then listen to them, Kallandras; listen, but do not lift your hands.”
He did as she asked; he found it almost easy to follow orders. It was the drug, he told himself. But the crystal was warm beneath his hands, and as he opened himself up to the cries of the betrayed, he held the round surface as if he had never known warmth until he touched it.
They were crying now, with the wild anger that comes only from the deepest of wounds. He listened,
trying to reach them; trying to find a voice with which to make himself heard. Where are you? Where are you, my brothers? We are coming! We are searching!
He opened his eyes and the light streamed in, hurting him. Tears ran down his cheeks as he stared at the seeress. She stared back, and he saw his own tears shining along her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Kallandras,” she said, and her voice was shaky. “But I—I cannot see them.”
The hope fled; his mouth became suddenly dry. “What do you mean?”
“ I—I don’t understand it. I should be able to find something—the connection between you is strong—but there’s only darkness. There’s nothing at all that I can see.”
She rose and pulled the ball back to her chest as if to absorb it. Her face was pale. The neutrality was gone, and in its wake were guilt and confusion. She smoothed these from her expression, but it took time, and Kallandras still saw the traces of it in her eyes.
And then he, too, rose. Nausea pulled him floorward, but he held himself steady, fighting it. When the sensation had dimmed, Evayne was gone.
He did not know how he felt, and that was curious. A day ago, he would have been happy, because he knew that she was suffering for her failure.
And he knew that she had not failed. He wondered if he would have explained it had she lingered—if he would have attempted to ease her of her guilt. He did not wonder long. Instead, he began to make plans; he had to visit the court of the Twin Kings and seek out Lord Elseth and his huntbrother.
Which was the only thing that would be easy; his services had already been requested by the younger of the Queens—Queen Siodonay the Fair—at any time of his convenience; she was a bright and sunny woman with a hint of the bardic about her, and he was one of the few youthful things with which she surrounded herself.
Hands shaking, he rose; if he wished to attend court, he must send word, for even if one was favored, one did not presume overmuch upon the grace of a monarch.
The Sacred Hunt Duology Page 71