The Hallowed Hunt

'Don’t!' said Ingrey, panicked.

'Lady, ought you... ?' murmured the maid, her face crimped with alarm. 'Now?'

Hallana’s lips moved on what might have been, Dratsab, dratsab, dratsab. 'Let us think.'

A knock sounded at the door; the warden had returned, flanked by some inn servants with trays and the man Hallana had called Bernan, who lugged a large chest. He was a wiry, middle-aged fellow with an alert eye; his green-leather jerkin was spattered with old burn spots, like a smith’s. He inhaled with deep appreciation as the trays were borne past him. The delectable odors of vinegared beef and onions seeping from under the crockery covers forcibly reminded Ingrey that he was both ravenous and exhausted.

Hallana brightened. 'Better still, let us eat, then think.'

The inn servants set the table in the little parlor, but after that the sorceress sent them away, saying she preferred to be served by her own folk. She whispered aside to Ingrey, 'Actually, I make such a mess, just now, I don’t dare eat in public.' Ingrey, warily circumspect, sent the warden downstairs to eat in the common room and tarry there until called for. She cast a curious look back as she reluctantly withdrew.

The manservant Bernan reported Hallana’s horses safely stabled at the local temple’s mews, the wagon wheel repaired, and arrangements made for her night’s rest with a certain Mother’s physician in Red Dike, who was evidently a former Suttleaf student. Ingrey found himself, without having intended any such thing, joining the two women for a meal at the small table. The manservant presented the basin for hand washing, and the double-divine intoned a perfunctory blessing.

Hergi whipped a napkin the size of a tablecloth around her mistress and helped her to her food, deftly catching tilting glasses, skidding jugs, and sliding stew, often before they spilled, but sometimes not. 'Drink up your wine,' the sorceress recommended. 'It will go sour in half an hour. I should take myself off before the innkeeper discovers the trouble with his beer. Well, his store of fleas, lice, and bedbugs will not survive me, either, so I hope it is a fair exchange. If I linger, I may have to start in on the mice, poor things.'

Lady Ijada seemed as famished as Ingrey, and the conversation waned for a time. Hallana reopened it with a blunt inquiry of the origin of Ingrey’s wolf-affliction. His stomach knotted despite his hunger, but he mumbled through an explanation rather fuller than he had yet confided to Ijada, as well as he could remember the confusing old events. Both women listened raptly. Ingrey was uneasily aware that Bernan, who had taken his plate to a seat on his wooden chest, and Hergi, who snitched bites standing between mopping up after her mistress, were listening, too. But a Temple sorceress’s servants must surely be among the most discreet.

'Had your father had a previous interest in the animal magic of our Old Wealding forebears?' Hallana inquired, when he had finished describing the rite.

'None known to me,' Ingrey said. 'It all seemed very sudden.'

'Why attempt such a thing then?' said Ijada.

Ingrey shrugged. 'All who knew died or fled. There were none left to tell by the time I recovered enough to ask.' His mind shrank from the fragmented memories of those dark, bewildered weeks. Some things were better forgotten.

Hallana chewed, swallowed, and asked, 'How came you to learn to bind your wolf?'

Things like that, for example. Ingrey rubbed his tense neck, without relief. 'Audar’s ancient law, that those defiled by animal ghosts should be burned alive, had not been carried out within living memory at Birchbeck. Our local divine, who had known me all my life, was anxious that it not be invoked. As it turned out, the Temple inquirer sent to examine the case ruled that since the crime was not of my making, but imposed upon me by persons whose authority I was bound to obey, it would be tantamount to cutting off a man’s hand for being robbed. So I was formally pardoned, my life spared.'

Ijada looked up with keen attention at the news of this precedent, her lips parting as if to speak, but then just shook her head.

Ingrey gave her an acknowledging nod, and continued, 'Still I could not be left to wander freely. Sometimes I was lucid, you see, but sometimes... I could not well remember the other times. So our divine set about trying to cure me.'

'How?' asked the sorceress.

'Prayer first, of course. Then rituals, what old ones he could find. Some I think he made up new out of bits. None worked. Then he tried exhortations, lectures and sermons, he and his acolytes taking turns for days together. That was the most wearisome part. Then we tried to drive it out by force.'

'We?' Hallana cocked an eyebrow.

'It was not... not done against my will. I was desperate by then.'

'Mm. Yes, I can... ' She pressed her lips together for a long moment, then said, 'What form did these wolf-wardings take?'

'We tried everything we could think of that wouldn’t outright cripple me. Starvation, beatings, fire and threats of fire, water. It did not drive out the wolf, but at least I learned to gain ascendance, and my periods of confusion grew shorter.'

'Under those conditions, I should imagine you learned rather quickly.'

He glanced up defensively at her dry tone. 'It was clearly working. Anyway, better to be shoved under the Birchbeck till my lungs burst than listen to more sermons all day and night. Our divine held everyone steadfast through the task, though it was hard. It was the last thing he could do for my father, whom he felt he had failed.'

Ingrey took a swallow of wine. 'After some months, I was pronounced well enough to be let out. Castle Birchgrove had been settled on my uncle by then. I was sent on pilgrimage, in hopes of finding some more permanent cure. I was glad enough to go; though as hope failed, and I grew to man size and shed my keepers, my search turned into mere wanderings. When I ran out of money, I’d take what odd tasks came to hand.' Anything had seemed better than turning his steps toward home. And then... one day, it hadn’t, anymore.

'I met Lord Hetwar when he was on an embassy to the king of Darthaca.' His desperate contrivances to win access to the sealmaster, he didn’t think worth recounting. 'He was curious how a Wealding kinsman should be serving strangers so far from home, so I told him my tale. He was not daunted by my wolf and gave me a place in his guard that I might work my way back to my own country. I made myself useful during some incidents on the road, and he was pleased to make my place permanent. I rose in his household thereafter.' Ingrey’s mouth firmed in tight pride. 'By my merits.'

He applied himself to his spiced meat, sopping up the last of its gingery gravy with the inn’s good bread. Ijada had stopped eating a little while ago and sat solemn with thought, running her finger around the rim of her empty wine beaker. When she looked up and caught his eye, she managed a wan smile. Hallana waved away her maid’s attempt to feed her a second apple tart, and Hergi rolled up the stained napkin and bundled it away.

The sorceress eyed Ingrey. 'Feeling better now?'

'Yes,' he admitted reluctantly.

'Do you have any idea who laid this bridle on you?'

'No. It’s hard to think about it. It almost bothers me more that I cannot feel it, between fits. I begin to mistrust everything in my mind. As if straining to see the insides of my own eyeballs.' He hesitated, marshaled his nerve. 'Can you take it off me, Learned?'

She huffed uncertainly, while the manservant, behind her, made an urgent negative gesture to Ingrey, and Hergi squeaked protest.

'The one thing I might safely do right now,' said Hallana, 'is add to the disorder in your spirit. Whether this would break or disrupt the hold of this strange thing Ijada smells upon you, I do not know. I dare attempt nothing more complex. If I were not pregnant, I might try—well, never mind. Yes, yes, I see you, Bernan, please refrain from bursting,' she added to the agitated manservant. 'If I do not vent disorder into Lord Ingrey, here, I shall just have to kill some mice, and I like mice.'

Ingrey rubbed his tired face. 'I am willing to have you try, but... fetter me, first.'

Her brows climbed. 'You think it necessary?'

'Prudent.'

The sorceress’s servants, at least, seemed greatly in favor of prudence in any form. While Ingrey laid his sword and belt knife against the wall by the door, Bernan opened what proved to be a well-stocked toolbox and