The Sacred Hunt Duology

by Michelle West

  “The stablehands are readying them—but you may have to go to the stables yourself to see Thunder armored.”

  “Very well.”

  “Miri—”

  “I think,” she said, adjusting the sword slightly, “that you already know what we intend. It has been two weeks, and Averalaan is filled with dark murmurings and the screams of the dying. We have held up little against them; but it is to the Exalted—or to the Crowns—that the people will turn for comfort and for succor.”

  “And when you can’t provide it?”

  She was silent. “There is a risk,” she said at last, her voice quite cool. “But I believe that if we go now, and in haste, if we make our rounds, and touch the earth of Averalaan instead of hiding in the relative safety of Averalaan Aramarelas, we can turn this from a terrible unknown evil, into a terrible, known war—a war between the triumvirate and the Darkness.

  “And we can make clear that to fight is to remain calm; to win is to show the enemy that we cannot be broken by this—this magical illusion.” She pulled her sword, and the sound of steel against steel silenced the hall. “It is Henden, Verrus Sivari. The month of great darkness, during which Veralaan and the Mother’s Children stood alone against the assemblage of the Baronial Wizards and their followers. Our people were slaughtered, whether for magical power or as examples. Our children were starved. Our lands were fired.”

  Verrus Sivari fell, slowly, to one knee.

  “They knew that if they could break the spirit of the people, there would never be war; Veralaan would be married and then murdered, a footnote to her father’s history. Remember the Six Dark Days.”

  He bowed his head. She spoke of the history of the Empire, and its founding. “ACormaris,” he said at last. “I remember. And I remember what followed: Veralaan’s return with the Twin Kings.”

  “You are not the only one who will remember it,” she said softly. “They will. But they will only remember it clearly and sharply if we ride.”

  He brought his hands across his eyes, as if to clear them of webs.

  “Against this, we measure the risk as small. If we can reach our people, they will listen.” She looked up at the approaching Kings’ Swords, and nodded sharply. “Sentrus, escort the Queen to the courtyard; I will join the stable detail and meet you there.” Barely noticing the sharp salute, she turned once again to the Verrus. “I hope you understand why we will not be deterred.”

  He raised his arm across his chest in a sharp, perfect salute. “If you would accept it, I would be honored to serve beside you.”

  “And not under?” She smiled. “I would accept it in a minute, if only to convince the Lord of the Compact that we will be duly and appropriately guarded.”

  • • •

  The Queen rode, and the Princess at her side; behind them, in the regalia that spoke of the games of the summer quarter was Verrus Sivari: Kings’ Champion of a bygone season. Everyone knew what the wreathed leaves of gold meant as they adorned his brow and caught the light in liquid reflection; in his prime, he was the best combatant in the arena of the summer games. Better than any of the Annagarians; better than any of the free towners; better than any of the Westerners from their tiny, isolated Kingdoms. And he had met and matched them all.

  Vanity was such a terrible thing, but he gave in to it a moment as they crossed the bridge that led to the city around the bay, leaving the Holy Isle behind. Salt-laden wind touched his face, pushing his cape back over the ornate shoulder joints of the Champion’s ceremonial armor. The sun was shining, high and bright; the nightmare seemed a passing conceit.

  But the moment passed; the horses made their way into the wide, flat streets of the city. They shied back, as if the bridge were a safe haven, and the road before them fraught with peril—but they were animals trained for war, and after a moment, they were forced forward.

  “Can you feel it?” The ACormaris asked him quietly.

  He nodded.

  “It gets worse.”

  He didn’t ask her how she knew it—although it was clear by her tone that she spoke from experience—because he didn’t want to know. What he didn’t know, the Lord of the Compact could not find out.

  The standard of the Queen uncurled with a bang.

  “This is war. Sound it. Make our intent known.” Mirialyn gestured, and the horns began their lowing across the open bay. He listened to the notes, long and lingering, as if they spoke truth in a language that he had been born knowing.

  Beneath him, Warfoal relaxed—because it was a language that he, too, understood.

  • • •

  And all across the Holy Isle, the preparations for festivity, for the rites of Return were taken up at the call of Queen Siodonay the Fair. Hesitantly, timorously, the nobles and their servants brought the shrouds and pennants out from their stores, and began to prepare for the Six Dark Days.

  They sang their songs of freedom and of fear, of courage and of loss, and in the singing—with the bard-born scattered among them like anchors—brought themselves a measure of peace: These were days of darkness, and Averalaan had survived the darkness before.

  But on the mainland, the fight was harder, and where the wreaths were laid, they were laid over a fear so deep it could be tasted. But they were laid, and they were more of a weapon than a dagger or a sword in the shadows.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  28th of Henden, 410 A.A.

  The Sanctum of Moorelas

  AN HOUR OFF MIDNIGHT; the twenty-third hour. Moonlight, lambent glow beneath the wispy cover of night clouds. The cries of the dying, ghostlike yet visceral, drowning in the slap of high waves against the seawalls that dotted the bay. Towering above in darkness, the statue of Moorelas, grim-faced and determined as he must have been before his final ride. Beneath him, octagonal, carved reliefs of ancient history—Moorelas’ history.

  Starlight reigned; the little lights of the city were doused as was the custom for the Six Dark Days. Six days, each named for one of the Barons who ruled before the Kings. The Terafin bowed her head in silent prayer, feeling the wind’s sharp sting across neck and cheek. She drew her cloak in around her shoulders, tightening it; it didn’t help. The chill she felt had little to do with the weather.

  Beside her, Jewel shivered.

  “You feel it,” The Terafin said quietly.

  Jewel nodded. “When I was little—when my parents were alive—we followed the Six Day rites. I know the prayers.” She shivered again. “Makes me feel old, to need them.”

  A dark brow arched in response. “When my grandfather was alive,” The Terafin said at last, “I hated the Six Days. I hated reciting the names of the Blood Barons; I hated giving up almost all food in favor of scraps that not even our servants were forced to suffer through during the rest of the year. I hated the lack of lights, I hated the sobriety—” She laughed ruefully. “I was a child.

  “But he explained that these days were our history, and that we must suffer through them as our ancestors did to understand all that Essalieyan means now. Because, he said, if we did not learn to understand what the Empire is, we would be doomed to lose it.” She did not smile as she spoke, although there was a thread of affection in the whole of the picture she wove. “As I got older, and I better understood the custom of the Kings and their birthing, I realized that he was wrong—that we could not so easily lose the kingdom that the Kings had founded. We argued.”

  She bowed her head again, her fingers sliding over the smooth, carved surface of opal prayer stones. “If he has not returned from the Hall of Mandaros—if he still watches us now—I hope he knows that I understand, in every way, what he meant.”

  Beside her, Morretz stirred; she turned her head and met his eyes before they flickered back to the Exalted. I rarely speak so, do I? she thought, although she did not feel the need to say it. But these are the Dark Days, Morretz. And my grandf
ather also said—and I didn’t appreciate it either—that in the days of darkness, in our horrible desperation, we sought solace in each other and we accepted that that solace was for, and of the moment.

  Jewel stared up at Moorelas’ graven face. “Your grandfather was worse than my mother,” she said at last. “My mother used to tell my father that even in the darkness, children were loved, and mothers still did what they could to comfort and protect them.” Jewel paused as her gaze was once again drawn groundward, to the Exalted. “My Mother was Annagarian. From the Valleys,” she added in defensive haste. “My father felt that she never understood the customs of Averalaan.”

  “No. But she wasn’t wrong; it’s why the birthdays of children under the age of four are still celebrated when no other festivities are allowed. Because even in the darkness, we celebrated life.”

  “Especially in the darkness,” Morretz said. It was the first time that he had spoken. He was not used to being away from the manse; indeed, The Terafin had all but forbidden him to accompany her to this tomblike place. But he would not be left behind, and in truth, it made her feel more steady to have his quiet, obdurate presence at her back.

  “Shhh. They resume.”

  • • •

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Finch, struggling with a wreath made of white blossoms, pale orchids, and tiny thorns, cut across the open doorway, scowling slightly at Teller. Wasn’t like him to ask stupid questions. But it had gotten bad, these last few days.

  Her hands were shaking. If she listened—and not very hard—she could hear the dim cries carried by wind across the bay. It made her wonder what people were doing in the twenty-fifth.

  Lefty and Fisher. Lander. Duster. They were the edge of the storm—and who would remember them, when all this was over? Would there be anyone alive to remember them at all?

  Teller fell into step beside her; the wreath was large and yet delicate. “It’s early,” he said at last.

  “Yeah.” She knew it, too. The wreaths didn’t go out until dawn. If. Jay told them that it was tonight, or never. She stopped. Started. Stopped. “Teller?”

  He stopped and stood beside her, waiting for her to gather her words.

  “I want to go to the bridge. The twenty-fifth is—” Finch swallowed and shrugged. “I don’t miss it,” she told him softly, “but it’s still home somehow. I can’t ask Carver or Angel, and Arann’s busy with the guards.” Pause. “Jester’s coming.”

  He didn’t ask her why she couldn’t ask Carver or Angel; he didn’t have to. They’d laugh. “Can I follow?”

  “Yeah, sure. But help me with this—I’m cutting my hands ragged on the stupid thorns.”

  • • •

  The Exalted stood around the monument with the Sacred of the Churches of Mandaros and Cartanis. A member of the Order of Knowledge, golden-eyed and aged in appearance, was also part of the circle—he represented the interests of Teos, Lord of Knowledge. Both of the Kings stood with them, arrayed in full armor, their swords sheathed and girded round. Together, the eight began their supplication, joining hands to close the circle, filling the air with their plea.

  But they spoke no words that those without god-blood recognized, and as their chant grew longer, it also grew more complex. They had been thus joined for all but five minutes of each of the last twelve hours; the next would tell all.

  • • •

  Kallandras stood by the edge of the retaining wall, leaning against its upper edge for support. It was cool against his forearms, and he concentrated on that sensation a moment, as if surprised he could feel it.

  “Kallandras?”

  He glanced to the side, the wildness in his eyes the motion of water beneath the stillness of gentle waves. Sioban was staring at him with open concern. He hated it. But the drug’s sway was waning; he could hear the voices of the dead more clearly than the song of the Exalted, the Kings, and the Priests. Mixed with their despair, the despair of the dying beneath the earth.

  And to lay either to rest, the way had to be opened.

  “I’m fine,” he told her curtly.

  She shrugged, withdrawing the unspoken offer as she shouldered her lute.

  Her lute. His was safe in his small, cramped quarters in Senniel College. He almost never traveled without Salla, but tonight, with darkness all around, was the first time he truly missed her.

  • • •

  Gilliam of Elseth stood by himself, keeping his own space as well as his own counsel. With him were Ashfel, Connel, and Salas; they were edgy, but the cries of the humans in the ground beneath their feet had become, over the days, simple background noise like any other. Now, they started at the sound of silence—for the creatures underground would stop an hour here or there, to give the city a hope it could then dash when the cries began again.

  He watched, impassive, as the circle of eight began to chant anew; they were a tool, but they were not, in and of themselves, compelling to him. No, the only figure of so-called power here that drew his attention—and his admiration—was Queen Siodonay the Fair. The streets were alive with whisper and song as they spoke of her passage through them; she was the bright and shining moment that had kept the worst of her people’s fear at bay. Such a Queen could stand in the same hall as the Great Queens of the Breodani.

  He wore a sword, but aside from a supple leather shirt, no armor to speak of; he expected the Hunt to be a long one, and the weight of armor would significantly cut the length of time that he could maintain the Hunter’s trance.

  The spear was a weight in his hands, unexpected in its heaviness. Espere, not ten feet from where he stood, seemed isolated; she fluttered around him in a circle as if the spear prevented her approach. He felt her distress keenly, but also thought he felt a distinct yet subtle satisfaction. Her eyes were drawn to the monument, and then away, to and then away, as if the motion were as necessary as breath.

  This was not the forest of the Sacred Hunt. This was not any land that had ever been Breodani. Smooth, hard ground beneath his feet, the constant smell of salt, the lap of waves longer across than large villages—these were foreign. And on foreign soil, he stood—his lands forfeit, his title disgraced. When the Hunters gathered in the Kings’ City, he would not be counted among them; he would see no ascension, be party to no celebration, test his hunting skill against no other Lord, no peer.

  He knew he should feel something.

  And he did: pride. For even though his peers could not know it, he faced the Hunter’s Death—and he faced it alone, with certain knowledge. This time, this one time, it would be different. The afterward, Stephen would have worried about, but Stephen was not here.

  The waiting was harder than it had ever been.

  • • •

  Meralonne sat in a silent crouch beside Sigurne. She was calm, almost preternaturally so. Of all the Magi—and the Council was, with three exceptions, assembled here—she was the one he least understood. She was slight of build, short, and quiet to the point of being passed over at all but the most crucial of Council decisions; if any were to be left behind, he would have assigned her one of the positions. She had been offered a berth, and she refused it.

  “Cantallos is older than I by thirty years,” she’d said quietly, “and Alene by eighteen or so.”

  “Cantallos,” Cantallos said brittlely, “has at least had the advantage of seeing previous battle.”

  Sigurne made no reply, but the set of her jaw, the slight tensing of her shoulders, made Meralonne wonder if Sigurne, in a past that had not unfolded before him, had not herself seen war. In the end, her power and her quiet argument could not be ignored; she sat before Moorelas’ grim-faced statue looking very much as if she were merely waiting for dinner, and not death.

  Matteos beside her, broad-shouldered and overbearing, glared at any and all who came near; he was her
self-appointed protector. If this annoyed her, she kept her annoyance to herself as she almost always did. Matteos did not take a seat, as most of the Magi did; he stood.

  “Are we ready?”

  At the sound of the voice, Meralonne turned. A young member of the Order—a promising student in the arts of war, and one pledged to the Magisterium after the full course of his studies—waited his response. “No, Torrence,” he replied. “But either we will be in the next half hour, or we will never be.” He nodded toward the circle of eight.

  Torrence Briallon bowed. “We await your order,” he said softly, withdrawing.

  • • •

  Devon ATerafin stood beside the Lord of the Compact, watching the Kings as if his life depended on it. It did.

  But even had it not, he would have watched. The Kings were in their power, if not on their thrones; as they chanted the rites, as they spoke the key not meant for mortal ears to hear or voices to utter, they seemed to grow in stature, in height.

  No food had passed their lips, no water; they did not sit or stretch their limbs or in any way relax—nor had they this eve. Yet they did not seem to flag or suffer for it, and their eyes, when their eyes could be seen, were like the golden moon.

  That moon shifted across the sky; he could mark its position only by the spires of the Churches upon the Holy Isle. Without meaning to, he began a silent prayer, his lips forming words, although to which God, and with what supplication, he did not know. A young girl’s pleading sobs caught his attention, held it, deepened the force of the words that he spoke. What threat could the Sleepers pose, he wondered, that could be worse than this?

  He, who was trained to imagine any possibility, could see none. And so he continued his makeshift, inexperienced prayer.

  • • •

  The moon at its height; the final hour.

  The voices of the eight stopped the interwoven chant that had occupied their energies in turns and cycles for the last several weeks. The harmonies and melodies of their song-speech suddenly converged in a rush, rivers seeking the ocean. The eight most powerful men and women in the Empire spoke with a single voice—a poor imitation of the multitude—the barest hint of what a God’s voice must feel like to mortal listeners.