“Forgive me,” he said, speaking out of turn and with a shaking voice. “I am Parsus ADarias.” He bowed.
It was The Morriset, eyes gleaming, who raised his chin and brow at the same time. “ADarias?”
“The Council of Darias has sent me to take the seat of Darias at this time. Were circumstances different, the seat would be left vacant.”
“What game are you playing?”
He turned to face The Terafin, and his cheeks were slightly pinker, although he would not meet her eyes. “Terafin,” he said, bowing very low indeed. “We play no game. The nature of your accusation was made clear to us after the Council of The Ten met yesterday.” He raised a hand, forestalling her speech—which was dangerous in and of itself. “We do not doubt your word. What you state must have happened the way you stated it did; you are The Terafin—you know the cost better than any of The Ten and you would not have brought news of this House altercation into royal play were the threat not so great.
“There is no defense that Archon ADarias can make for his actions.”
There was a shocked hush in the room.
“Yes,” the man said, although he did not look around to see the faces of The Ten. “Archon ADarias resigned in disgrace from the title of Darias, and the seat.” He lifted his face then, and it was clear to all who saw it that the speaker felt the loss keenly. “His wishes for the disposition of his lands and his title have been set aside; there is no longer an heir to the seat, and until such a time as one can be chosen, I will rule as regent.”
“And the—and Archon ADarias?”
“The First Day rites have been observed by the Priests of the House chapel.” Parsus ADarias seemed to curl in on himself, losing the height that he’d momentarily gained. “Terafin, the assessment of your claim against Archon ADarias is under review. The House will reach its decision shortly.”
14th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Cordufar Estates
“ATerafin?”
Devon looked up from his earthen perch, and set his handglass aside. Jewel Markess stood quietly before him, waiting for his attention. How long she’d stood, he didn’t know; she was not usually given to being so quiet.
He well understood why, however.
Cordufar was a gutted ruin. What had once been among the finest of the city estates was gone to blackened wood, stone, and ash; twisted strips of lead and shards of crystal from the towering windows of the great hall had been flung as far as the ring of trees that marked the midpoint between the front gates and the manor itself.
Jewel stood outside of that ring, her hands behind her back. Crossing the gated threshold onto Cordufar lands had quieted her in a way that he did not like, but knew better than to ask about.
Still, quiet or no, she was company of a sort that he rarely had; companionship was not a part of the nature of his calling. At the gates, the Kings’ Swords were gathered in a thin line; gawking spectators were politely ushered about their daily duties as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the citizens of Averalaan had much to stop and gawk at; such a ruin, in so short a time, without the fires and their attendant warning plumes of smoke, was a thing of wonder, no matter how ugly.
“What have you found?” he asked calmly, rising from his crouch at the base of an old ash tree.
“You’d better look yourself,” she said, her eyes wide and unblinking. Then, as if to prepare him for what he might find, she added a single word. “Bodies.”
“Show me,” he told her, hastily wrapping the shards of glass that he’d cut free of the bark and sliding them into his shoulder sling. Silent, she nodded and led the way, treading carefully and quietly across the short grass. He watched her back, as he watched the ground, the walls, and the shadows at play, thinking her too quiet.
I shouldn’t have brought you here. He was surprised at the thought, and then wry: it made him realize the difference between their ages. Jewel had proved herself more than a worthy ally; she was necessary. While he was deliberate, analytical, and deductive, she was more often the successful one when it came to unraveling mystery. She could stumble across things of great import while daydreaming.
No, that was unkind.
She could—
He stopped as she slid into the wreckage of what appeared to be a large closet at the base of the stairs. A servants’ supply of some sort, wooden, shattered by the fall of the ceiling above. “What are you doing?”
“There are stairs,” she said softly.
Stairs. He wanted to ask her how she had chosen this, of all the piles of debris to search, but forbore. He knew her well enough to know she had no answer. But if there were stairs here, they were not a part of the plans that the Lord Cordufar had registered with the city officials.
Without another word, he began to lift wooden planks and slats; she was smaller than he and better able to slide into nooks and crannies. At last, the darkness opened up before him, alleviated only by the flicker of a small torch.
“Get a lamp,” he told her as he looked at the steep angle of the very narrow flight of stairs.
“You won’t need it,” she replied.
“Jay.”
But she shook her head, and even in the poor light she looked pale. “I’ll get the mage to meet you.”
“I don’t want the mage yet. Get me a lamp and follow.” She hung back, and after a moment, he realized that she had no intention of obeying his order.
Not even in the subbasement of the market authority had she hesitated, and she had had a clearer idea of what they faced there than he. “All right,” he said quietly. “Get Member APhaniel.” He took the torch and made the descent into darkness, the rough texture of hewn stone against the palm of his left hand. Halfway down that narrow flight, he stopped.
Bodies, she had said, in a peculiar, subdued voice. The stench of the unburied came up from the hidden ground with a force that stopped movement and even breathing for a moment. These were not newly dead, these bodies. He turned to look up the stairs, but she was already gone.
14th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Lady Leof of Faergif was in her element, thanks to the quiet intervention of the Princess Mirialyn ACormaris, and in her heart of hearts, she cursed the younger woman for bringing the duty to her—and for being three full days late in her report.
She knew why, of course; Mirialyn carried word privately and personally, and trusted it with no messenger; she had been abed after the mysterious battle near the Hall of Wise Counsel; she spoke against the wishes of the Astari, which was never wise; and she demanded secrecy and silence until the Crowns themselves agreed that the information—any of it—was safe to convey. But three days were three days. And in that time, no proper respect had been paid, by the Breodani to the Breodani, for the death of Stephen of Elseth.
Stephen of Elseth.
Her hands were clenched and whitened; she opened them slowly and watched as they shook. It was not the first of Veral; the year—and the Hunt—had not been called. But the sketchy report that the Princess had, in her concern, delivered was every mother’s nightmare. Every Breodani mother. The Hunter’s Death had been in the Terafin manse.
Finding a dress of the appropriate color had been very, very difficult—for the Essalieyanese did not wear mourning in the fashion of the Breodanir, and black was considered too dour for anything but the most sophisticated of events. And today, although it was after the fact, she was Breodani; nothing—no physical distance, no passage of time with its gentling of memory—separated her from the home of her youthful dreams. Her broken dreams.
There were some wounds that never healed; they became scabrous, but they bled. How, she thought, as she girded her shoulders with the black, plain wrap that she had ordered made—and quickly—had it come to this, here?
There was a knock at her doors. She looked up, and then rose; she had sent her servants away for the day because she could not be
ar to have them at her side, with their stiffness and their perfect manners and their complete lack of understanding, no matter how well-intentioned they were.
Lady Helene of Morganson stood in the open door. She, too, wore black, but her eyes were red in the pale stillness of a slightly puffy face, where Leof’s eyes were dry.
You’ve had enough of my tears, she thought, the anger waking slowly.
“Here,” Helene said softly, holding out a long length of black lace. A veil.
Leof shook her head.
Helene smiled for the first time that day; it was a joyless expression of strength. She herself had chosen to openly give God her tears as the accusation that they were.
“How could this happen?” Helene said softly, in the quiet of a room they hallowed with their grief.
But Leof shook her head. “The carriage is waiting,” she told her compatriot. “Or it had better be.”
• • •
They were expected, of course; Lady Faergif understood the social necessity of appointment. She also understood that, as a foreign dignitary, she was granted leeway in her demands, be they reasonable or no. The right-kin of Terafin had been reluctant to have visitors so soon; the Lady Leof of Faergif had been most insistent.
In the end, The Terafin herself had intervened—although why, and why in favor of the Breodani over her right-kin, Leof did not know.
But she understood why Gabriel ATerafin had been, in his quiet and determined way, so complete in his desire to avoid the company of diplomats. The front gates were in disarray, and although there were men and women who toiled upon the grounds removing timber and stone and glass, one wing of the manse looked as if it had been crushed by a God’s mace.
And the God, their God, did not wield a mace.
She frowned. “Helene?”
“I don’t know what damage He might do to such a place,” Lady Morganson replied softly. “When has the Hunter ever left his forest?” But she stared at the gates and the broken walls a long moment before shaking her head. “Fire,” she said, pointing.
“I saw it,” Leof replied. “I think it unlikely that it is His work.” In spite of herself, she felt curiosity come, keen and unlooked for. The rumors at court were fierce.
But Helene saved her by catching her arm and walking them both toward the guards at the gate. They were stopped—given the state of the manse itself, it was not unreasonable—but when they gave their names, the guard bowed quite formally.
“I am Arrendas ATerafin,” he said gravely. One of The Terafin’s Chosen. “We were expecting you. If you would follow me?”
The Chosen rarely acted as guides or escorts for visitors of little import. Leof and Helene exchanged glances and then nodded quickly. He led them through the main doors into a foyer that stretched to a height that was uncomfortable to look at—and undignified, which neither Lady could be said to be. But they were not, as they had been on previous occasions, left to wait in the sitting rooms to the east or west of the foyer; they were taken into the manse itself.
They thought little of it; the foyer was obviously being rebuilt from the ground up, and it was no place to leave the men and women who had power enough to request, and receive, an audience. But as they passed door after door, following a long hall; as they passed mirror and fountain and open sky; as they stopped at checkpoint after checkpoint for a cursory inspection, they realized that they were not being taken to wait.
Ah, Leof thought, and the thought was bitter. You are cruel, Hunter Lord.
Because she knew, the moment before six of the Chosen moved into two small rows of three guards each before a closed door, that she was on the verge of realizing a long-held goal: She was about to meet The Terafin for a personal audience. And this one day, this one occasion, neither she nor Helene could do anything political or financial at the behest of the Breodani.
• • •
The Terafin was a younger woman than either Leof or Helene—but she was used to wielding power; more power, financially, than the entire Kingdom of Breodanir. Yet she was standing as they entered the room, and she nodded quietly, holding her head down a moment in respect.
“Lady Faergif. Lady Morganson.”
“Terafin.”
“Please, be seated. I know that you have come to attend Lord Elseth, and I do not wish to keep you longer than I must.”
They sat; what else could they do? But Leof of Faergif felt a chill that the ruins of the manse and grounds had not put there. The silence was profound and awkward.
“I have always found the women of Breodanir to be perceptive, perhaps because Breodanir only chooses to send its best,” The Terafin said at last. “How much do you know of what has occurred upon these grounds?”
The two women, Helene and Leof, glanced at each other out of long habit; it was Leof who replied. “Why?”
“I have been studying what little we know of Breodanir,” was The Terafin’s quiet reply. “Lord Elseth will not speak to anyone, and although he has been seen on the grounds, he leaves his dogs. He will take his meals, but he eats poorly.”
The glance that Helene and Leof exchanged was longer and more painful. “That is . . . as it often is.”
“Always is,” Leof said.
The Terafin nodded. “So we understand. But I owe Lord Elseth—and his huntbrother—a great debt. I cannot repay Stephen of Elseth; we do not even have his body.” She rose, turning to stare at a painting that was windswept sky and open plain without the clutter of any moving life; there were no windows in this room. “And I confess, Lady Morganson, Lady Faergif, that by my understanding of the law of the Breodanir, I will owe Lord Elseth and his family far more than I can ever repay them. We all will.”
Silence.
Then Lady Faergif spoke, her voice a hush of cool, cool words. “You do not intend to allow him to return.” It was not a question.
The Terafin’s brows rose a fraction, and then she smiled, the expression at once rueful and mirthless. “I will offer you honesty. If it came to that, no.” She turned her face to the painting again, as if to find some solace in isolation. “But it will not come to that; Lord Elseth knows what is at stake.”
Leof snorted. “He’s a Hunter Lord. He cannot know what is at stake.”
“Leof. He knows—as all Hunters know—that he will lose Elseth if he does not return for the King’s Call at the Sacred Hunt.” The set of Helene’s lips were grim.
“He is,” Leof replied, “wild with grief. He does not see his duty or his responsibility clearly.”
“Leof—”
“No, Lady Morganson. Lady Faergif is correct. He is wild with grief. I think he knows what he will—what he must—lose, but he does not care. I have rarely seen a man so close to his own death before.” The Terafin was silent a moment, and then she said, “At night, he keens like an injured animal. He will not see Alowan, although he was wounded. No one touches him. Even the mute companion—the girl—he shuts out.”
“And you are so concerned with his welfare that you risk exposing secrets to us?”
“Yes,” The Terafin said flatly. “Because I believe that he is necessary. The battle that began here a week past has in no way ended. I am sorry, Lady Faergif. But the risk that we face is graver than you know. You worry about the sorrow of one man; I worry about the lives of the entire city.
“The entire Empire.” She paused. “You sat, each of you, in judgment. You made decisions that profoundly affected the lives of the commoners in your demesnes.” Her voice was softer, but only slightly. “I make no apology to either of you; you know how power cuts.
“But if you, upon that hallowed seat, had the choice between the death of a man and the death of the kingdom, can you tell me, honestly, that you would not choose the man?”
“A child’s question,” Leof replied tersely. “For there is no situation—” She stopped, suddenly.
The Terafin’s eyes were a very dark color, some trick of the light perhaps. Grudgingly, so grudgingly, Leof of Faergif bowed her head. “We do not choose the Death,” she said at last, her voice faint. “The Hunters and their brothers make that choice when they take their oaths.”
“They take their oaths when they are eight,” was The Terafin’s cool reply. “And Lord Elseth is no boy of eight.
“Stephen of Elseth—according to those of my Chosen who were in a position to see it—chose his death.”
“The Hunter chooses,” Helene said, correcting The Terafin gently.
“That is what I read, yes. But Arrendas ATerafin—the man who escorted you to these rooms—says otherwise. The Hunter Lord faced the Death; he ordered his companions to run, and they did. But not for very long, and not very far.
“Stephen of Elseth left his companions, and his Hunter; he traversed the ruins of the foyer, and there set the horn that he carried to his lips. That horn brought the Death; it seemed clear to Arrendas that that horn summoned its attention.
“I do not pretend to understand the bond between a Hunter and his brother. But it is clear to me that Stephen of Elseth died to save his Hunter’s life. It is equally clear to me that the Hunter, thus abandoned, lives only to Hunt his brother’s Death.” She gestured, sudden in the motion, her hand rising and closing at the same time. The painting, wild cloud and windswept grass, began to shift in its simple frame, contorting and changing in a swirl of pale color until it contained a seascape: the mild waves lapping against the walls of the harbor city. And centered there, sword lifted in a salute or gesture of defiance, stood the cenotaph of Moorelas, the last of the heroes of the past age.
Leof and Helene gazed at the picture almost in awe, aware only now that its handiwork was that of an Artisan.
“His enemy,” The Terafin said starkly, staring at Moorelas’ graven visage, “is our enemy.”
They both knew of whom she spoke, and they paled, and they did not demur again. But Leof of Faergif rose. “Terafin,” she said. “We will see Gilliam of Elseth now. I ask that you clear a space on the manor grounds, leaving only the green grass and the tall trees. We are not Priests; the Priests do not travel. But bring an unadorned altar, and leave it where we might approach.”
The Sacred Hunt Duology Page 100