The Sacred Hunt Duology

by Michelle West

  “I don’t care what its normal use is; we need it now.”

  The golden-haired shadow that lay writhing across the floor stopped suddenly. In a movement so quick it was hard to follow, he was on his feet by the window. Light streamed in, making of him a white, deathly wraith; light flickered off his hand. Something shone there, against his finger, nestled tight; something glinted and flashed in his palm as he traced a small arc in the air.

  Beside him, and beneath the window’s lip, was a long, flat table. On it, rolled and spun, were strips of loose cotton in narrow, even rows. And seconds ago, beside those strips, had been a thin and narrow set of shears. Kallandras had found his weapon.

  Brushing the wet curls from his face, he became a study in concentration; he stared, calming as he did, into the room’s center. He mouthed a single word. Evayne. For a moment his face was so peaceful it seemed at odds with the shears in his hand.

  And then the peace was gone; his teeth clenched, blocking but not silencing the scream behind them. His body spasmed twice, and he folded in the middle—but his grip on the shears did not lessen.

  Stephen heard the sound of keys and a door; he heard the rustle of robes or linen; he heard steps coming up behind him. He held out his hand, watching Kallandras, and Lorrison placed a stoppered ceramic container into his outstretched palm.

  But before he could take a step, the door to the healerie flew open and smashed into the far wall. Kallandras heard the noise from wherever it was his mind had gone; he blinked, looked up, and then moved. He came to rest, back against the wall farthest from the Kings’ Swords that filtered into the hall, weapons readied.

  • • •

  The steel of armor and steel of sword glinted in the daylight, but there were bows as well, longbows, strung and readied. Stephen saw a sea of helmed faces above shields and weapons; he glimpsed surcoats of royal blue and white, bearing the crest of the Crowns bounded on either side by a long sword.

  At the head of the Kings’ Swords was Miri.

  She was armed with a drawn sword, and her easy, cautious stance made it clear that she knew how to wield it to good effect. Gone was her dress; in its place a tunic and something that looked almost like practical breeches. Her hair was bound tight in a pearled net and pulled fully from her face; it made her seem more severe, but no less striking.

  Dantallon and Meralonne made to bow, and she shook her head, forestalling them. “What has happened here?”

  Her voice was not the voice that Stephen remembered; there was a coolness to it, a harshness, that made it seem quite remote.

  Dantallon pointed to the back of the room. “It’s the bard, Kallandras,” he said softly. “He is in delirium, and we fear that he may harm himself.”

  “Harm himself?” Her eyes darkened as she narrowed them and stared at the bard. He was breathing heavily and loudly, and his face was obviously gleaming with sweat; his lips were a thin, white line. “I see. And this required the presence of Master APhaniel?”

  “No, ACormaris.”

  “Good.” Turning, she faced the Swords. “Fan out, be ready, do nothing without my leave.” The man at their head nodded and rapped his chest with his mailed fist. The surcoat muffled the impact.

  “And you,” she continued, turning to the pale-haired mage, “will also follow those orders. Or you will leave.”

  “I will, of course, abide by the orders of one—”

  “Good.” She left them behind and walked silently across the tiled floor. Stopped in front of Stephen and met his gaze for a moment, searching for something. She found it—or she didn’t—for her face softened and he saw the hint of a rueful smile. Just the hint, though.

  “We need to give him this,” Stephen said, although she’d asked nothing. He held out the stoppered container, and she examined it. “Niscea,” he added.

  Her eyes widened as she stared at the flask without touching it. “Is this true?” she asked loudly enough to demand the healer’s attention.

  “Yes, ACormaris.”

  She swore softly under her breath in a language that Stephen could not quite understand, although its cadence felt familiar. “Very well.” She lifted her hand and motioned; six men stood forward at once, although three had to step around Gilliam to do so. “Catch him and hold him down. Don’t injure him.”

  “ACormaris,” Meralonne said, and again, although the word was not shouted, his voice filled the room. “I do not believe that to be the wise course of action.”

  She lifted her hand again, so sharply and precisely that Stephen thought her sword superfluous. Her eyes were glinting as she stared ahead, at Kallandras, crouched low against the wall. But she did not demand further explanation from the mage; nor did she even bristle slightly at his interruption.

  “Stand back,” she told the six. And then, to Stephen, “Give me the flask.”

  He looked at it, at its unadorned simplicity, its stone stopper. He looked at the smooth and slender hand in front of him, and then let his eyes focus beyond that, to Kallandras. Something shifted in the bard’s expression, hardening like water turned suddenly to ice.

  Without thought, Stephen pushed Miri to safety—and nearly fell as he discovered that she was no longer standing by his side. Kallandras was, but briefly; the shears in his hands struck cloth and split skin.

  • • •

  Gilliam cried out in shock and surprise—both his own and Stephen’s—as Kallandras attacked the bronze-haired woman who was obviously not the servant they had assumed her to be. He started forward, hand on hilt, and was immediately apprehended by Kings’ Swords—two on either side.

  “What are you doing?” Gilliam took another step forward and four more men closed off his path; he could no more enter the fray than walk to the room’s center. “Have you lost your sense? The Lady needs—”

  A mailed hand covered his sword arm and then withdrew. “The Lady needs obedience, no more, no less.” The man who spoke was grim and slightly pale; he was perhaps four years Gilliam’s senior. A helm obscured the color of his hair and he wore no beard, but his shoulders were broad and he was tall. He had seen at least one combat; that showed across his forehead and the upper bridge of his long, fine nose. “She’s given us no word; we’re to wait.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Lord Elseth; you are not under her dominion, but I must ask that you follow her counsel.”

  Gilliam could smell the fear that lay behind the man’s perfectly composed face. But he was not afraid of the Hunter Lord—that sort of viscerality, Gilliam could not have mistaken. No; he was afraid of—or for—the bronze-haired woman.

  What was her name?

  Looking to the side, and then to his back, Gilliam could see that all of the men in the room were watching; they breathed across the edge of their teeth, and their hands were slowly curling into metal-jointed fists.

  Not one of them broke ranks. Not one raised a bow or nocked an arrow. They were crazy, these foreigners. They were just going to sit and watch. And he was going to stand and join them. Because he could feel Stephen press against his anger and his concern, trying to shape it or calm it. Stephen did not want him to interfere.

  He called Espere to heel, pulling her in and trying to douse the fury that made him want the fight the Swords would offer. “She’s not even armored,” Gilliam began again.

  “Neither is the bard, sir,” was the even response. “And I’d put her sword against his scissors any day.” He met Gilliam’s eyes—or tried to; the Hunter Lord was staring first at Kallandras and the bronze-haired acrobat, and then at his huntbrother, who stood isolated and immobile in the room’s center, palms cradling a ceramic flask.

  Espere whined softly, and he caught her shoulders and pulled her close, touching the top of her wild thatch of hair with the tip of his chin.

  • • •

  She was bleeding; Stephen saw the bright gash appear across her torso, made w
ider as cloth absorbed blood. It wasn’t a deep wound, and he thanked the Mother for it; he’d seen torso wounds in the Hunt before, and they were almost always fatal—worse, the fatality was lingering, fever-ridden and painful.

  She jumped again, followed by Kallandras; she seemed a leaf to his gale, but she moved ahead of him, in silence, always landing close enough for his strike or his swing, and always—save for that single first blow—being a hair’s breadth ahead of it. He was pale, and his face was awash with the sweat of his efforts; his breath, heavy and labored, belied the agility and the grace, the ease and the accuracy, of his movements.

  But he stopped almost in mid-stride, the guards now along each of the four walls, and he and Miri doing their dance of death in the center of the healerie. There were beds to either side of him, flat on the floor; facing him, the window. Miri was a yard away, knees bent and lips slightly parted. She, too, was sweating, but her cheeks were flushed with effort, where his were pale.

  He held the shears in a tightening grip as he slid floor-ward, drawn as if by web and force, and not by weakness. By slow degree, he curled in on himself, writhing, his face taut and terrible with pain. The shears, like an afterthought, fell, but only when his hands shook too much to bear them.

  Stephen did not wait for Miri’s command; he darted forward immediately. Someone shouted a warning at his back; later, he would realize that it was Meralonne, and that the warning was, word for word, the warning he had offered Miri—and she had heeded.

  But he needed no warning; he knelt before the writhing bard, one hand cupped round the bottom of the warming flask, and the other palm out and empty. Many, many times on hunts too numerous to count, Stephen had seen dogs injured. When in pain, the alaunts and mastiffs were most vicious, and often least aware of their surroundings. They could be approached with safety by their Hunters—but if the Hunter was injured—and this, too, happened—the huntbrother was often left with the task of tending to the wounded beast.

  He’s not a running hound, Stephen thought as his hands shook. He’s a man.

  Gilliam was in his mind, calming and steadying him; there were Kings’ Swords to either side of the Hunter Lord, and they refused him passage. He was not so much the young Hunter that he challenged them, but his fury was obvious.

  Thanks, Gil, he thought, and very slowly, very quietly, began to speak with the bard. His words were simple and short; he said them over and over, in a tone just above a whisper.

  Kallandras’ head snapped up; his eyes were wide and pale; tears streamed down the side of his face. Stephen flinched. Tears, he saw often, and he was not a Breodanir Lady to disavow them or find them upsetting—but he had never seen them from Kallandras, and he knew, without knowing why, that he never should have. Biting his lip, he unstoppered the flask quickly.

  “Drink,” he said, his voice calm and quiet. “Drink, Kallandras.”

  The flask disappeared; Kallandras had reached out and taken it before Stephen could begin to react. The Breodanir huntbrother tensed, prepared to leap left or right should it be necessary.

  But Kallandras knelt instead, staring through Stephen, and then, by dint of will, at him.

  “Niscea,” Stephen whispered, as if the word were a benediction. “Drink, Kallandras. Drink.”

  “Evayne?”

  “She is not here. She cannot harm you.”

  At that, Kallandras laughed, and the laugh was wild and loud and angry. But even as he cut it off and brought it under control, Stephen could see the bard’s sharp eyes staring out at him clearly as a glint of sun through roiling clouds. His tears were gone, but their tracks remained.

  Shoulders hunching inward, Kallandras pulled the flask to his lips and tilted it up. He drank soundlessly but quickly and then set the small, pale ceramic bottle aside. It was done; there was little but waiting left before the potion took hold. Stephen came in quickly and kicked the shears aside; they went skittering loudly across the floor to where Miri stood. The bard said nothing; did not move to react to the intrusion or the possible danger. His fine jaw clenched and his hands slowly crept up his face, but he did not speak and he made no move to attack.

  “Leave me,” he whispered, although his lips hardly moved.

  Stephen nodded, his fair face pale as he stood and began to edge, cautiously and deliberately, away. His movements were sure and slow, and he made no sound that was not soothing, even, quiet.

  “Stephen of Elseth,” Miri said, voice cold as steel in winter. “Stand by your Hunter and do not interfere again.”

  Stephen bowed, his stiffness his only display of irritation. He took his place beside Gilliam, and the Kings’ Swords closed in around him like a wall.

  They waited, watching Kallandras carefully and neutrally. Stephen was reminded of those days in his youth, when the storm clouds were almost black in their density, and he stood, with Gilliam, beneath the cover of the kennel’s outroof, watching in silence and awe as the rain came thundering down.

  Miri’s tunic clung to her back, but her hair was still secure. Squaring her shoulders, she sheathed her unblooded sword, and walked toward Kallandras, taking measured, cautious steps. He made no move toward her; indeed his head remained so bowed that the edge of his hair touched the floor.

  She did not speak, but rather, at a yard from his crouched body, knelt herself, resting her elbows across her knees. Kallandras stiffened; his neck jerked up, but his hair hid his face from all but Miri’s view, and what she saw she did not speak of.

  Fifteen minutes passed, and then, at last, he slowly raised his face. He rose, as if movement were unnatural, and waited until Miri also gained her feet. Then he bowed.

  “ACormaris,” he said softly. “I beg your forgiveness for my intrusion upon the peace of Avantari.” His eyes narrowed, and then widened, as his glance strayed to the reddened edges of a tunic that was no longer white.

  “Kallandras of Senniel,” she replied. “The Queen Marieyan an’Cormalyn conveys both her concern and her wish for your speedy recovery.”

  He looked down at the empty flask in his hands; they were steady now, the hands of a bard and not the hands of a madman. “Where is she?”

  “I believe,” Miri replied gravely, understanding him at once, where Stephen did not, “that she is in the keeping of the healer. Dantallon?”

  At the sound of the name, motion returned to the room, lending it the color of surcoat, the sound of speech and question. The healer appeared immediately, his robes brushing the ground as he approached Kallandras. The bard suffered his attention in silence, and almost, it seemed, in shame.

  Cadrey handed Miri an old, perfectly waxed and polished lute. Across a perfect bridge, strings were tautly pulled; as his sleeve brushed them, they sang. Miri took the lute quietly, and held it as if it were a newborn babe.

  “Dantallon?”

  “As before,” the healer replied quietly. “Kallandras, these fits—this episode—when did they start?”

  “Three days ago. Four. I’m not certain.”

  “Who prescribed niscea?”

  “Hallorn, the physician at Senniel.” The bard’s blue eyes vanished beneath the heavy, gray pallor of his lids. At once, Cadrey and Lorrison were at his side, following Dantallon’s silent directive to lower him into a bed. This time, however, the healer did not bother with restraining straps.

  “I know of the danger,” Kallandras continued, without opening his eyes. Cadrey jumped back, like a startled child. “But niscea has properties which make it valuable to my current state.” He swallowed. “The bardmaster of the college has requested aid from the Order, but it is not yet forthcoming.”

  “From the Order?” It was Meralonne APhaniel who spoke. Miri raised a hand, silencing him. The gesture did not appear to surprise him.

  “I—I am not used to dealing with such potions. I did not realize that I had not taken the appropriate dosage.”

&
nbsp; Dantallon shook his head. “You probably had—but it was the right dosage for four days ago. How much have you consumed, and how often do you require it?”

  Kallandras, eyes still closed, sank further into the mattress beneath his back. He seemed heavier, and without the animation of motion, almost cadaverlike. “Less than the contents of the flask that you gave me.”

  “How much less?”

  “I do not know the full measure.”

  “How often?”

  “Three times a day. Maybe four, if I am not to sleep.”

  “Miara’s curse,” Dantallon whispered. “And how often did you intend to continue with this?” A high note had crept into his otherwise calm voice.

  “I do not know,” Kallandras replied, his words faint. It was almost as if the bard-born voice had deserted him utterly, and he was just another exhausted man, with no strength, no talent, and no hope. It was wrong.

  Stephen started to speak, but his words were lost as the door to the healerie burst open.

  • • •

  The Kings’ Swords turned almost as a man as the doors swung wide. Two more of the Kings’ Swords stood abreast in the doorway; they stared straight ahead, and entered the room without once looking to either side. Behind them was a man in slightly different dress; he wore the markings of the guards, but not their surcoats. A sword, sheathed, hung by his side, but he wore no helm, no gauntlets, no real armor. Instead, he wore a deep blue jacket, with the crest of the Kings’ Swords emblazoned over his left breast. There were markings above and beneath it: four golden quarter circles, lined up across invisible diagonals.

  He was tall, this man, and older; streaks of gray mingled with his brown-black hair. That hair was long, although exactly how long was hard to say; it was pulled tightly back, and twisted in a single knot before it spilled down the folds of the cape he also wore. He was beardless; indeed, he was unadorned by any marking, scar or otherwise. He had the bearing of a man who was accustomed to power.

  The healerie was filled with the sudden, single noise of two actions repeated by thirty men at once: mailed hands striking mailed breasts, and soles of heavy feet being planted an exact distance apart.