The Sacred Hunt Duology

by Michelle West

  Upon that roof, the oldest parts of the city of Averalaan rested. And within them, the heart of the city: its people. Meralonne spoke urgently of them. And then his lips turned up in a bitter smile as the gale grew; who was he to speak of the sanctity of life to one whose life had been dedicated to ending it?

  He cursed Myrddion in the silence of thought and will, gesturing himself onto the banks of the wind as if they were solid steps, feeling air trace his ankles, his soles, his thighs. Oh, it would be good to feel the open plain again—to see it as it was truly meant to be, windswept and empty.

  But it would not be windswept and empty; it would be littered with refuse—tracked stone, splintered timbers, broken bodies. Again he spoke, and again there was no answer, although it was clear to him that the bard heard his words.

  You cannot reach him, he thought, steeling hands into fists. His sword came as he called it for the final time in this battle. The ground beneath his feet was already a swirl of dirt and debris; if he listened hard, if he directed the course of the wind’s passage, he could hear the wailing of the Kings’ men, the cursing of his brethren.

  And louder than that, carried by nothing but the force of its own wildness, another sound: the triumphant howling of the beast.

  • • •

  Until he heard the roar, Gilliam had been afraid that he would somehow miss his moment; that the Lord of the Hunt’s victory cry, obscured by unnatural storm and the cries of the men of Averalaan, would never reach his ears. An odd confidence buoyed him. He was Hunter-born. The God was his God, in all its primal fury. They were linked; they understood each other in some measure.

  Breodanir, Lord of the Hunt, had been called to the Sacred Hunt by the Master of the Game and his peers; to the Hunt he now came in frenzy.

  • • •

  The Terafin’s manse.

  The gardens, green and still, as if the air itself had been robbed of the movement of breath. No one spoke; prayer, if there was prayer, was silent.

  But Jewel ATerafin’s dark eyes widened and she raised a hand. “Wait,” she said softly, gazing into the darkness that seemed to claim the bay. “Look.”

  There, in the cloud cover above, a glimmer of sunlight.

  Meralonne’s hair streamed out behind him like shining, white liquid; his eyes were shining silver as he held the flat of his blade against his palm. He wore no cape, no armor, bore no shield; he was not broad of chest or large in build. But majesty was there for those who cared to see it. Or those who could.

  They met in air, the bard and the mage.

  Kallandras offered no resistance as Meralonne brought his weapon to bear; indeed, he hardly seemed aware of the mage at all. The sword rose, and it fell, but it fell slowly and without striking.

  For Kallandras was not merely a vessel, although a vessel he had indeed become; he was not slave, if he was not master. His arms were lifted to either side, and his clothing billowed like raised sails, but the song he was singing was his own. For the moment.

  It should not have been possible, but Myrddion’s rings were crafted by a man with a talent and a glimmer of madness; who among even the Wise could predict the full force of their effect? There, upon the binding finger of Kallandras’ left hand, the ring glowed a brilliant white; it was hard to look upon.

  “Kallandras!” he cried.

  There was no answer. The air shook with a voice that was neither bard’s song nor mage’s cry; Bredan’s frenzy. Meralonne clutched the haft of his sword tightly, deciding. He brought it up, and as he did, it dissipated. Quietly, he reached out to touch Kallandras’ outstretched hand—the right one; the one which bore no ring.

  There were spells of elemental force, and spells of vision; spells for gathering ancient lore and spells for travel; there were the forbidden arts, whose scions—kin and corpse—they had fought this very day, and there were spells of illusion, of misdirection, of negation.

  But there were other magics, deeply personal, prying, intrusive; they were arts that touched a soul the way a thief’s fingers pry into pockets, lifting bits and pieces of things valued but not tied down. There were edicts against the use of such spells, and the penalties for breaking these edicts harsher than any offered save those for murder by magic.

  Meralonne APhaniel was one of the wise, the most learned of their number. He hesitated, but only a moment, before he began to speak the binding words. He touched Kallandras’ life, and he was not gentle—but he was not thorough either; he had not the time for it, even if he had the curiosity.

  Beneath the song and the yearning it held, burning like a beacon that the wind could not—quite—douse, was a single word that held all hope and all desire. Releasing his hand as if it burned, Meralonne trod back on air, eyes slightly wide, lips pale.

  And then he lifted his head, his expression unreadable. Twice he started to speak, and twice he stopped, but the third time he spoke a single word.

  “BROTHER!”

  Kallandras turned his pale face.

  • • •

  Gilliam was not closest to the beast when it turned from its task; the kin were. Thankful for it, grateful for it, Gilliam bowed his head into wind and began to struggle against it. The Lord of the Hunt, he thought, would need no such effort. His hands shook, part gale, part excitement, and part tension; he was Hunter-born, the trance was on him—he felt no fear. Either he would kill here, or be killed. That was the rule of the Hunt, and no coward, no man afraid of either the first or the second, became a Breodani Lord.

  His only regret was that his pack was not at his side. It had been wrong to attempt to protect them by leaving them behind; wrong to deny them their chase and their hunt—to deny them the law that creatures who hunt live by: kill or be killed. He vowed as he struggled that he would not make that mistake again; the sentiment had been Stephen’s, the fear a weakness brought on by the madness of the Hunter’s loss.

  Something struck him in the forearm; he grunted as the blunt curve of a metal helmet disappeared into the storm.

  • • •

  Meralonne knew that the word would draw Kallandras’ attention; he did not know what his reaction would be when he realized who—or more importantly, who had not—called. Lifting his arms, he mirrored Kallandras’ stance; the wind sung through his hair, his robes.

  The bard’s eyes were blue-white, a frosted, unnatural color. His lips were turning in wonderment, in joy; they froze as his face became still.

  A wise man, Meralonne thought, as he waited in a silence that rose above roaring wind and primal growling, would not tempt the pain of an assassin. Yet he felt no fear; for the first time since he had passed through the chambers of the Sleepers, he was calm. “Kallandras,” he said, neither raising his voice nor muting it.

  • • •

  The golden-haired man did not reply, but he lifted a hand in denial of the words that Meralonne might speak. His flickering eyelids closed, his lashes forming crescents against his white, white face. And then, of all things, he smiled, and if the smile was bitter, if it was embroidered with loss and longing and hunger, it held joy in part, no matter how fragile.

  The mage was no member of the brotherhood, to call him or to hold his attention; he knew it almost before he turned, but he could not ignore such a cry, in such a tone. The wind song died on his lips, although around him the gale grew stronger.

  As the Lady commanded, he had done: the Allasakari were dead and scattered about the grand cavern for carrion. But their names had not been spoken, and only in the speaking would the Kovaschaii know. How could he have forgotten? Why had he delayed? They would know that he served, that he served still.

  The ground was far beneath his feet; the bodies of the dead were not in sight. He listened, but the wind carried no sound to him; looked, but the dirt and pebbles, the fine dust of stone and broken wood, were a swirling, dancing veil. He could not pierce it.


  What had happened?

  “Kallandras!”

  It was not Meralonne’s voice that he wished to hear, but it was the only one that carried; he opened his eyes to meet the gaunt, gray gaze of the mage.

  “Call the wind back! Call it, or you will do the work of the kin!”

  The kin were no part of his song, and no part of his desire. They were—but, yes, they were a part of this, for they served side by side with the dead, the Allasakari who were the Lady’s show of mercy. And he had fought against the Allasakari—he fought—

  Eyes wide, he looked at the ring upon his finger, at its brilliance, at the vortex that spun in its center. Curling that hand into a fist, he met Meralonne’s gaze across the divide. His nod, slight but distinct, was his salute.

  • • •

  He watched as Kallandras closed his eyes, planting his feet apart in the wind’s hollows as if he were standing upon firm ground. Air was not his element, but no more was earth, water, or fire; he was a creature of light and shadow, touched on all sides by the weakest of wildness and its stirrings.

  And he sought to deny what he had unleashed.

  Beauty was found in such unusual places; not for the canvas or the sculpture, the song or the poem, was such a moment. This, this was why wars were fought, and had been fought, for as long as he could remember. Close to death, life yielded its finest moments, its best.

  Meralonne flinched as Kallandras cried out in pain, breaking the delicate image. The Kovaschaii were trained to silence; it was either the bard who spoke—or the intensity of the pain. The ring was pulsing as the gale grew; the wind’s voice was now like the God’s.

  Storm-called, ring-wielded, the elemental air was in its glory; Meralonne smiled grimly and bitterly as he, too, bent his strength—what little remained of it—to the bard’s aid. And what way, what other way, was there to fight?

  Opening more than his arms, Meralonne let the wildness in.

  • • •

  Struggling through a forest made of moving wind and debris, Gilliam listened for the roar that moved counter to the wind. The Lord of the Hunt was not canny; He made no attempt to hide His presence from His follower. Gilliam’s smile was grim. Why should He? For years upon end, this was His day; He was not victim but victor, not hunted, but Hunter.

  At his side, a man struggled through the gale toward him, speaking—shouting—in Essalieyanese. It was the court tongue, but not the Hunter’s tongue, and Gilliam almost brushed him off in anger. But he did not, and because he did not, the man drew close enough that Gilliam might recognize him. Devon ATerafin.

  His face was bloodied by a grazed forehead; the set of his jaw was grim, and his pallor was gray. He was a court noble, but he offered no finery and no fine words, and in his expression, Gilliam saw the hunted.

  “Lord Elseth! Lord Elseth!”

  The Hunter roared.

  “What?”

  “The beast is at our flank.” He opened his mouth to say more, but the words fell away as Gilliam’s expression made his understanding clear.

  “Get out,” he shouted. “All of you, get out!”

  “We can’t,” the ATerafin shouted back. “The wind blocks the exits—we’ve lost four mages against it.”

  “Then stop the wind!”

  Devon’s brow furrowed in confusion and then grim understanding. He offered a ragged bow as Gilliam waved him back and struggled forward again.

  • • •

  He was empty, empty, empty.

  His brothers were lost.

  The Lady was a glimmer of past power and undying anger. An oath had been given, and an oath broken; the life that he had built had been shattered against it, and no service, no act of contrition, would build it anew.

  Essalieyan was his home, and within it, Averalaan. He had grown accustomed to the foibles of the men and women whose company he could not avoid, and over time, he had grown fond of them in his fashion. The ache and the anger had dulled; he had been lulled into a false sense of self, an uneasy compromise between the past and the present.

  Evayne’s coming had broken that, rupturing the mask of self-deception he had placed across his drama. Even that he could bear. But his shield was riven, and to remake it was the work of decades; without its protection he was vulnerable in ways that no other mage could comprehend.

  And without it, he faced the wild winds, hollowing himself into a tempting vessel, whispering the promises of open sky and ancient sacrifice. The smell of singed flesh swirled briefly past his upturned face.

  He opened his eyes, wondering when he had closed them; Kallandras was yards away, his curled hand the only difference between their stances. The fight will kill him, he thought dispassionately. It didn’t matter.

  No?

  Then why was he drifting forward, why was he extending himself, daring the storm and the wind’s rage? Bitterly he realized that his facade was not entirely self-deception; in inhospitable soil, the mask had grown roots.

  Brother, he said again. But this time he listened to his own voice and understood why Kallandras had turned, blindly, toward it. Knew, uttering it this second time, that Kallandras would not ignore it. Lifting a fine-boned, empty hand, Meralonne reached out.

  Kallandras mirrored his movement, lifting his left hand, his curled, burned, ring hand, toward the mage. He tried to open his fist; the fingers shuddered, but would not unlock. Meralonne could see the blistered, reddened skin before he reached out to cover the knuckles with the palm of his hand.

  Contact.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  THE KINGS’ MEN WERE DYING. Against the gale, they had some protection, but against the beast, none. Gilliam of Elseth cursed the wind, the dirt, and the dead; he cursed the kin. He could not reach the Hunter in time to stop the slaughter—the Hunter Lord was hungry, and in hunger, merciless.

  It should not have been his concern, but it was; Stephen’s ghost rode him harder in these few moments than he had at any time other than his dying. Was he never to be free of the conscience, the responsibility, the distraction? Was the full depth of the Hunt never to be his again?

  Calm returned to him, and a sadness.

  He would never be the same again, because to be the same was to deny Stephen of Elseth—the best huntbrother that Breodanir had ever known—his due. No one would grant it, if Gilliam did not.

  Stephen of Elseth was responsibility personified. Stephen of Elseth was willing—had—given his life to the only death that he had truly feared, so that these strangers, these foreign nobles and their kin, might live. No, he thought, grimacing; it was not so that they could live.

  I would not have taken your oath. I would not have accepted your death in my stead. But I am alive, Stephen—and I promise your death will mean something.

  He knew, then, what he must do. Wondered why he hadn’t thought of it earlier, and knew at the same time.

  Gilliam stopped his struggle against the wind. As Stephen had done, he stood his ground, although he overcame no terror to do so. Holding the Spear upright with his left hand, he reached into his vest with the right. Cold and smooth, the Hunter’s Horn came to his hand.

  They practiced their calls together. All huntbrothers did. Although the calls for the huntbrother were different than those the Hunter employed, no Hunter escaped his early training without learning both. Tilting the Horn to his lips as if it were a flask, he raised it, inhaled, and blew the three notes; they were as wild, as raw, as the voice of the beast.

  Would He come? Would the call of the Hunter, and not the brother, invoke the ancient oaths?

  • • •

  They could not be together, but having joined hands, they could not be separated; they were not brothers, but they were more than comrades.

  “Its voice—” Kallandras said, his own a croak.

  “I know,” the mage replied gravely. “Ho
ld tight, little brother. Hold long. The wind is about to realize that it is angry.”

  “Meralonne,” Kallandras continued, swinging his uninjured right hand over Meralonne’s and holding there, “I don’t know how to let it go—I don’t want to lose it—” Because I did not miss them. I did not remember.

  False words came to the mage, and false words died before they left his lips. “I know,” he said. “But we are fated to have and to lose, you and I. Walk the path bravely.” He brought his left hand to Kallandras’ right, bracing the arm with what remained of his mage-power. It hurt, but there was worse pain. There had always been worse.

  Together, they began to call back the gale.

  But the wild wind was not a mage’s breeze, to be called and lightly dismissed; it had a will of its own, and in a fashion, a mind; the skirmish that had begun with Myrddion’s ring became a battle. Meralonne brought the wildness home, containing it as he could; he spoke its name with a voice that no one—not even the bard—could hear. The breeze that had been warm and soft was chill and biting in its fury, for it knew betrayal.

  Accuse me, Meralonne snarled into the wind. Accuse me—you will not be the first. But Kallandras cried out in denial, wordless; he offered no anger, and the wind struggled harder for the lack, seeking purchase in guilt and pain that anger did not allow.

  As if they were two points on a wheel whose center was their joined hands, Meralonne and Kallandras began to spin. The earth rose to greet them in a deadly rush, peeling away at the last moment as the mage brought his will to bear. His grip on Kallandras tightened; their fingers twined; around their hands grew a halo of sparking light.

  Blood trailed from the bard’s lip up the side of his cheek, tracing his fine features. He was prepared enough for pain that he did not surrender to it. Fingers gripped and knotted his hair, pulling it back; his throat, pale and unadorned, was exposed a moment before he could free himself. Two arm’s lengths away, Meralonne’s eyes widened a moment in surprise as Myrddion’s ring seared his flesh. But he did not release Kallandras.