Jewel had never thought to meet one mage-born.
When the ground peeled away from her feet, she was so shocked not even a squeak came out of her mouth. Like a drunken bird attempting to wing its way to the safety of a familiar perch, she lurched in the air, spinning slightly as she tried to get a grasp on the events beneath her feet.
At your command, the voice said.
Silence was her best weapon, and she kept it—but she promised herself that Morretz was going to get an earful when this was settled, one way or the other.
• • •
Stephen had never loved the dogs, not the way Gilliam had. It wouldn’t have been possible, and besides, it was not one of his duties. But he did love Gilliam, and he knew that the dogs—those that remained alive—were the vessels that carried Gilliam’s heart. Such as it was.
Although he knew it was foolish—knew that to approach a hound in pain was the act of a madman, or a Hunter—he grabbed Connel’s small body, taking care to catch his head and confine his jaws. Connel twisted and whined, and then, miraculously, became still.
Ah. Gilliam.
Keep him quiet, Gil, he thought, as he handed the dog to Evayne. She blanched and stumbled a bit, but righted herself, carrying the injured alaunt like the burden he was.
“What are you—”
“Take him. Leave. Now.”
“What about—”
“If I’ve earned the right to ask any boon of you, let it be this. Take the dog to the healerie.”
He turned, hoping she was safe.
The great beast was upon them.
• • •
The dagger began to glow. At first, Jewel thought it was reflected lamplight, but as she lurched and spun—held by some invisible string, rather than magically steady hands—it became clear that the fire was coming from within. The dagger was golden, and as she moved it seemed to drink light from the air, capturing it for its own use.
She prayed, as she flew—if flight it was—although she did not know the words or the ceremony that the dagger demanded. Beneath her hand were the joined symbols of the trinity; the dagger had been blessed at the highest altars of each of the three Churches in the Holy Isle. But the man who had accepted their blessing had also partaken of the sacraments of the three. She hadn’t. Prayer would have to do, and if fervor counted in the fields above, the Gods would have no choice but to listen and acknowledge.
She positioned the dagger carefully, gripping its hilt tightly with both hands; no other choice of movement was given to her. Morretz was the fighter here; he made all decisions except the thrust of the dagger itself. She wondered, briefly, why she hadn’t thought to give him the knife—but as the strings were suddenly cut, as weight returned to her body, dragging it downward in a rush of air, she knew why.
The man that was, and was not, her friend, turned at the last moment, crying out in a language that she didn’t understand—and, judging from the tone, just as well. He had time to react, he was so damned fast. His palm sprouted a blade of flame, and he slashed out at her.
No, not at her—at the dagger.
The heat of the flames seared her skin, singed her clothing—but the blade continued to fall, untouched by the magical attack. The pain was enough to jar her, but not enough to force her to forget what the purpose of her attack—not Morretz’—was.
Jewel’s teeth pierced the skin of her lower lip—when the Hells had she started biting it?—as the dagger plunged into Torvan’s left shoulder, slicing through chainlink and underpadding into the flesh below. Blood weltered up—blood and blackness, crimson and night.
She heard two things simultaneously: a grunt of pain and a scream of agony. Torvan stumbled and doubled over, scratching at his shoulder in a frenzy. More blood, and more shadow. But the blood that reached the ground beneath his metal-jointed knees remained as it was, wet and sticky; the shadow began to smoke.
“Chosen, in the name of The Terafin, stay your ground! Hold your arms!” Morretz’ voice.
Pulling the blade back, Jewel crouched over Torvan’s bent body, staring wide-eyed at the Chosen who were, once again, still and watchful. The dagger was no longer glowing; its fire was quenched in the cold darkness. They had, she thought, consumed each other.
“Jewel—what has happened?” It was Arrendas. Torvan’s friend. White face framed by dark beard and halved by a thin, red line an inch below his eyes, he watched her warily.
“It’s not his fault,” she replied evenly, waving a dagger that wasn’t even much of a dagger, it was so unbalanced and ornate. “You sent him to get the mage alone—and he did—but he was—”
“The shadows were waiting.” It was Torvan’s voice. Cracked and dry, as if he’d spent the last hour screaming as loudly as a throat could allow. “Arrendas, The Terafin—”
Avayna pushed Arrendas aside and knelt beside the body of her Lord. Silence, terrible with its weight, the uncertainty behind it. She did not raise her heavy head, but said only, “I don’t know. Call Alowan, now.”
“We’ve—we’ve got him,” said a voice that Jewel recognized too well. Finch, followed by Alowan and Teller, appeared from the north. Her hand was firmly entwined in the wrinkled grip of the older healer, whether for her comfort or his, she wasn’t certain. Finch always looked young because she was small; she even looked helpless most of the time. Jewel smiled a little. Wasn’t what she’d ordered, but it’d been the smart thing to do.
They’d answer for it later.
“Alowan—The Terafin—”
But the old healer had already firmly taken Avayna by the shoulders and pushed her aside as if hers was the lesser weight and the weaker body. He knelt, touching The Terafin’s throat; bowed his white head, closing his eyes. All around him, silence—and beyond that the growling of dogs, the roar of the beast.
“Let’s move her,” Avayna said, looking over her shoulder. “We’re about to lose the line.”
But Alowan, eyes still shut, said softly, “She cannot be moved. Do not interrupt me. Do not allow anything to separate us.”
With a renewed energy, the Chosen turned to face the Hunter’s Death.
• • •
All but two.
“Go to the north. You’re injured, you can’t fight here.”
“I cannot leave. If not for me—” Torvan retrieved his sword without really seeing it; he had eyes for the vanishing darkness and the beast, wild and furious, that had destroyed it. “If not for me—” He stumbled. Stared long at the two men and one woman who, with nothing but dogs for comrades, held the beast at bay. The young girl in the dark robes hung back, cradling what he assumed to be a dog’s corpse. All around them, like the refuse that they were, the Allasakari lay. “Arrendas.”
“I won’t do it. I’ll ready my weapon for battle, but not murder.”
“Is it murder?” He turned to look at Jewel, and was surprised at the way she stared back; her eyes were round and shining; he could see the tears more clearly than he could see the color of her eyes. Why didn’t you just finish it? “You should have . . .” but he could not say it, not to her. And it wasn’t to her that it needed to be said. “We swore our oaths, Arrendas ATerafin. We are the Chosen. We pay the penalty for dishonoring her choice.”
“And she decides whether or not that penalty is to be paid. It is not up to you—or me—to decide that for her.”
Their jaws were clenched in anger, and their words forced and heated, but as they turned to see her body laid out like death’s handmaiden against the floor, they fell silent. Bristling, Torvan stepped out, into the front of the line. Around him, the Chosen murmured, but they did not deny him. Still, he flinched.
Then, there was no time for flinching. The beast roared and charged.
• • •
Perhaps he knew his own flesh, his earthly blood. Perhaps he did not wish to harm her, although there
was no recognition in the glint of his eyes. But the beast leaped over Espere. The ground shook with his landing, and the Terafin’s Chosen were once again under attack.
But the Allasakari had been human—imbued with darkness, driven by shadows that Stephen did not understand, but human nonetheless. The great beast was not. Someone vanished under the weight of its claws; silver and steel snapped between its jaws. There was a scream, high and terrible—but it was not uttered by the dying.
Only the living had anything to fear.
Transfixed, Stephen watched the carnage, thinking, knowing, that this was his death. The hall’s light was oddly colored; he thought he saw the ripple of windblown leaves in the shadows above, but there was only torchlight across barren stone. This was not the right place, not the right time.
Gilliam cried out a warning; Stephen felt it, but did not hear it. His world was a place of the dying and the newly dead. Leaping lightly over slick stones to join that vision was Espere, hair flying wildly behind her. She wore the shreds of clothing and even these seemed out of place; she was the wilderness, as the beast was the Hunt.
Impact.
Gilliam screamed.
Stephen wanted to shout out a warning, but he had no voice for it. His Hunter raced deftly past the fallen Chosen, the standing Chosen. He had, in his hand, his boar-spear, although when he had loosed it, Stephen could not remember. During the fight with the Allasakari?
Gilliam!
The wild girl reeled back, bleeding; the bone of her forearm had been laid bare, and the skin across her collarbone was missing. She stumbled, gained her feet, and then froze as Gilliam bid her stay with such force that Stephen could hear it although no words had been spoken aloud.
The beast reared up, coat rippling with scales and fur and a sheen of otherworld magic. Gilliam braced himself and the spear, waiting for the attack. Was there fear there? Oh, yes.
Stephen swallowed voicelessly; his breath was short and shallow and harsh. Gilliam was afraid that they would die: the wild one, the dogs, Stephen. His own death stared him in the face, roaring, jaws ever-widening in the crest of its face, and he had no fear for it.
“Stephen!” he cried. “Take them to safety, now!”
Almost gladly, Stephen obeyed. He pushed Espere to the north, grabbed Ashfel and Salas, and began to herd them between the base of the stairs and the Chosen who gathered there.
And then he froze as he heard the jaws snap. Turned, his legs moving of their own accord, his eyes unblinking. The snout of the beast was closed, but Gilliam was not trapped between the sharp rows of teeth.
He’d thought he could do it. He really had.
“Evayne,” his voice was shaky.
“What?”
“Take care of them.”
“What?”
“Take care of Gilliam and Espere and his stupid dogs.” He turned back to her, and she wavered in his eyes as he realized how close to tears he’d come. “Promise it. Promise that you’ll watch them no matter what age you travel in.”
“But I—”
“Promise it.”
“I—I promise, Stephen. But—”
“Swear it by Bredan. Swear it in his name.”
“I—” she swallowed. “I so swear. But—”
He ran, then. But not to the north. The south, with its crumbled walls, shattered crystal and guttered torches was the only safe place to retreat to. His conditioning was good; he could, for brief bursts, maintain the speed and the pace of a Hunter in trance. He called on that skill now, although it was hard to breathe, hard.
Breath was required. His hands, nerveless, gripped the Horn as he reached the theater of his choice; he dropped it once, and forced himself to right it. The beast, snapping and growling, had not yet killed his Hunter. He could see Gilliam, darting back and forth. A crimson slash spread itself across his chest, but he was whole; he didn’t seem to notice the wound.
Gil, he thought, I love you. And then, because he knew that Gilliam couldn’t hear the words, and wouldn’t make sense of the emotion in the complex thrill of the trance, he shouted it, that the world might hear. And remember.
The mouth of the Horn in his trembling lips was cold. But he blew it, somehow. And this time, there were nine notes; two long, two short, two long, and three of a length that only the huntbrothers used, and only during the Sacred Hunt.
And the beast wavered, stiffening suddenly as it caught the scent of its quarry. Stephen dropped the Horn because his hands hadn’t the strength to bear it. Dressed in Hunter green, in the rank that he had sworn his service to, Stephen of Elseth fulfilled the Hunter’s—the huntbrother’s—Oath, and alone, faced the Hunter’s Death.
It came, bearing down too swiftly for flight. He had time to swallow, time to inhale, time to scream once—and he had time to bind himself so tightly that the pain and the horror could spill out without driving Gilliam mad. It was his last gift.
• • •
Gilliam of Elseth screamed. The Chosen surrounded him as the world slid out from beneath the sureness of the Hunter’s trance. He saw weapons—theirs—and knew, for a few seconds, that they were trying in some way to protect him.
He said something, or maybe just roared. But the roar that left his lips was a thin, terrible sound. He could make no denial.
He knew.
Silence reigned. Where a moment before, the beast’s voice had filled the hall, there was stillness now. The Hunter’s Death had chosen among His people, and having satiated the desire to hunt—and to kill—it honored its victim.
Beneath the cracked facade of the southern arch, surrounded by the broken, shadowless bodies of the Allasakari, the great beast began to unmake the body in the way that the wild beasts do. And then, as the Hunter Lords did upon the completion of the Sacred Hunt, it began to feed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
LIGHTNING STRUCK THE FEEDING BEAST.
Sizzling against iridescent scales, sparking off claw and fang, it began an intricate, complex dance along the length of its body. Fire flared, surrounding the beast with a heat so sudden it was almost white. It joined lightning sparks, melting the fur and the skin of the creature. Light came next, and with it the shaking of earth, the falling of water; all things happened at once, joining in a dance that seemed to sculpt the very flesh.
Slowly, the beast lifted its head; slowly, that head began to shrink in on itself, warping and twisting beneath a multitude of lights and seasons.
The hall was silent as the mystery unfolded within it.
Only two in the foyer were not surprised by what they saw; the wild girl who did not speak, and the Lord that she followed, who could not.
The hall had been blackened by fire and lightning, drenched by elemental rains; blood darkened the floors; shards of crystal and twisted gold carpeted body and marble alike beneath the feet of the Hunter Lord.
Gilliam had thought He might come in Hunter green with spear and arrow, sword and shield. He thought that dogs should attend him, that birds of the sky-hunt should perch upon his wrist, that the pelt of the offered kill should ride upon his shoulders in a place of honor.
There were none of these things.
And yet this was the very Hunter God; Gilliam knew him by the tines that forked from his pale and perfect brow, rising into the air like a stag’s in season. No blood stained his hands, his lips, his chest; no wound marred his features. His eyes, as they scanned the silent, gathered crowd, could not be met and held for long—there were sights reflected in them that mortal eyes could not see, nor should.
He stepped forward, and simple white robes gathered like cloud out of air around him. At his back, there was darkness and death. Stephen lay there, unmoving.
“Hunter,” the God said, and his voice was the voice of the multitude.
Pale and grim, Gilliam stood forward. It wasn’t necessary; the Hunter Lord kn
ew well that only one of his followers was in the great hall. He watched, unblinking and silent in his regard as Gilliam of Elseth dropped to one knee and lowered his forehead.
Carver fell to his knees at once, glancing with comfort at the broken and trammeled bodies on the floor—at anything but the God; Angel dropped to one knee. Finch, Jester, and Teller reached the floor, staying behind the stiff knees of the Chosen of Terafin. But Jewel did not bow. She bit her lip, kneading it between her teeth; she paled as she inclined her chin, but she did not—would not—bow.
Evayne held her ground. Hands covering her mouth as if to keep the breath in her body, she stared beyond the Hunter’s shoulder. She knew what he was, and knew who—better than anyone else in the foyer except perhaps Espere.
The Chosen of Terafin did not bend or bow—but they stood in that formal rigidity of posture that spoke of respect as they formed an outward-facing circle around Alowan and The Terafin. Alowan alone did not pay heed to the God’s visit.
Espere never left Gilliam’s side. As he stepped forward, so, too, did she; but when he knelt, she stood proudly by him. Her eyes were golden, although it was hard to tell if it were color or the reflected light of the God in the tears she shed. They were Gilliam’s tears; Gilliam’s loss; he was so empty of purpose that he hadn’t the strength to shed them.
The Hunter Lord stared for a long time into the silence of anger and pain. Of a sudden, he raised both arms skyward, his hands clenched in fists. The mists rolled in around them, becoming a thick, heavy wall. When they stopped, Evayne, Espere, and Gilliam stood within them; without, the rest of Terafin.
“The Breodani were starving.” The Hunter Lord spoke to Gilliam of history, but slowly, as if the passage of time made remembering difficult. “Of all the human tribes, they had chosen to follow my edicts; they are a people of honor, whose word and deed are entwined.
“When first they called, I would not leave my throne to make the journey across the divide; was I not the keeper of the Covenant? Was it not my rule and my binding that kept the Gods from journeying back to the mortal fold? In the half-world, we met; my silence was my answer.
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