The Hallowed Hunt

ascending, seemingly pumped from his heart up into his reeling brain. The noise in the court became a distant rumble. His sword in his hand felt weightless; the tip rose, then began to curve away in a glittering back-swing. His mind sketched the plunge of the steel, into the bear’s heart and out again before it could even begin to react, caught as it was in that other, more sluggish stream of time.

It was then that he felt, more than saw, the faint god light sputtering from the bear like sparks off a cat petted in the winter dark. The light’s beauty confounded him, burning into his eyes. His heightened perceptions reached for it in a desperate grasping after the fading god, and suddenly, his mind was in the bear’s.

He saw himself, foreshortened: a doubled image of leather-clad man and moving blade, and a vast, dark, dense wolf with glowing silver-tipped fur spewing light in an aureole all around him. As his heart reached after the god light, so the bear’s astounded senses reached toward him, and for an instant, a three-way circle completed itself.

A laughing Voice murmured in his mind, but not in his ear: 'I see my Brother’s pup is in better pelt, now. Good. Pray continue... ' Ingrey’s mind seemed to explode with the weight and pressure of that utterance.

For a moment, the bear’s dazed and wordless memories became his. The recent procession into the Father’s court, with the other animals all about. The distraction of the groom, the stink of his fear, but the reassurance of the familiar one, his smell and his voice, providing a link to calm in this disordered stone world. Voices droning, on and on. A dim comprehension of movement, positioning, yes, there had been food not long ago, when he did this, and let them lead him over there... And then his bear-heart swelled and burst with the overwhelming arrival of the god, followed by the happy certainty of a rocking amble toward the bier. Then confusion and pain; the small man hooked on the end of his chain was pulling back, yanking, punishing him for doing this thing, frustrating his happiness. He lunged forward in an attempt to complete his god-given task. More of these puny creatures ran about getting in his way. A red rage rose in his brain like a tide, and he grabbed that cold odd- smelling lump of meat and lumbered off with it toward the laughing light Who called him, Who was, confusingly, everywhere and yet nowhere...

The monstrous creature gave a snarl of pain and wrath, towering like a fur avalanche above Ingrey’s head.

Ingrey seemed to reach deep into his chest, his belly, his bowels, and brought out one word: 'Down!' The command flew through the air with the weight of a stone from a catapult.

His sword tip circled once, then fell in a silver arc to the pavement before his feet. The bear’s snout tracked it, following it down, and down, until the great beast was crouched before Ingrey’s boots, pressing its jaw to the tiles, its paws drawn in close to its head, its massive haunches bunching up behind. The yellow eyes looked up at him in bear-bewilderment, and awe.

Ingrey glowered around to find the groom-acolyte scrabbling away on hands and knees nearby, white robes bloodied, eyes now more huge on Ingrey than they’d been on the ice bear. The claws had merely grazed his ribs, else he might have been disemboweled. The bear’s rage still boiled up in Ingrey’s brain. Letting his sword fall with a clang, he advanced upon the man. He scooped him up by the front of his robes, jamming him against the plinth of the holy fire. The man was as tall as Ingrey, and broader in the beam, but he seemed to float in Ingrey’s grasp. Ingrey bent him backward over the licking heat. The groom’s flailing feet sought the floor, without success, and his squeaking strained up beyond sound into silence.

'What did they pay you, to thwart the god’s blessing? Who dared this execration?' Ingrey snarled into the groom’s contorted face. His voice, pitched low and vibrating, snaked all around the stone walls like a rustle of velvet, and back into his own ears like a purr.

'I—I—I—I’m sorry!' squealed the groom. 'Arpan said, Arpan said, it would do no harm... '

'He lies!' yelped the groom in the Father’s livery, dragging his frightened gray dog on its lead, circling wide around the still-crouching bear.

The white-clad groom’s eyes focused on Ingrey’s, inches from his face, and he inhaled deeply and screamed, 'I confess! Don’t, don’t, don’t... '

Don’t what? With difficulty, Ingrey straightened, opened his hands, and let the man fall back to his feet. He kept on going down, however, knees crumpling, till he was curled up in a bleeding ball at the base of the plinth, sniveling.

'Nij, you fool!' screamed the Father’s groom. 'Shut up!'

'I couldn’t help it!' cried the Bastard’s groom, cowering from Ingrey. 'His eyes shone silver, and his voice had a terrible weirding on it!'

'Then you’d best listen, hadn’t you,' said an unsympathetic voice at Ingrey’s elbow.

Ingrey jerked away to find Learned Lewko, out of breath, exasperation manifest in the set of his teeth, standing looking over the chaotic scene.

Ingrey inhaled deeply, desperately trying to slow his heart, will time to its normal flow, calm his exacerbated senses. Light, shade, color, sound, all seemed to strike at him like ax blades, and the people all around him burned like fires. It was gradually borne in upon him how many people were staring at him now, mouths agape: some thirty or so mourners, the divine conducting the ceremony, all five groom- acolytes, Prince Jokol and his dumbfounded friend, and now, Learned Lewko. Who was not looking at all dumbfounded.

I have let my wolf ascend, Ingrey reflected in a dizzied delirium. In front of forty witnesses. In the middle of the main temple court of Easthome.

At least I seem to have amused the white god...

'Learned, Learned, help me, mercy... ' mumbled the injured groom, crawling to Lewko’s feet and grabbing the hem of his robe. Lewko’s look of exasperation deepened.

A dozen people now seemed to be arguing at once, accusations and counteraccusations of both bribes and threats, as the mourners fell apart into two camps. An inheritance seemed to be at stake, from the fragments of speech that reached Ingrey’s ears, although the thread of this instantly tangled with other old grudges, slights, and resentments. The hapless divine who had been conducting the funeral ceremony made a few feeble attempts to restore order among his flock while simultaneously threatening discipline upon his grooms, then, thwarted in both tasks, turned instead to an easier target.

He whirled to Prince Jokol, and pointed a shaking hand at the bear. 'Take that thing back,' he snarled. 'Get it out of this temple at once! Never return!'

The towering red-haired man seemed nearly in tears. 'But I was promised a divine! I must have one! If I do not bring one back to my island, my beautiful Breiga will not marry me!'

Ingrey stepped forward, chin up, and put all the authority of Sealmaster Hetwar’s most dangerous sword hand into his voice. And perhaps... something extra. 'The Temple of Easthome will give you a missioner in exchange for your silver ingots, Prince. Or perhaps I missed the offer to return them?' He let his eye fall stonily on the harassed divine.

Learned Lewko, in a tone seeming singularly calm compared to everyone else’s, soothed, 'The Temple will make all right, Prince, once we have ironed out this regrettable internal fault. It seems that your fine bear was the victim of an impious machination. For now, will you please take Fafa back to your boat for safekeeping?'

He added out of the corner of his mouth to Ingrey, 'And you, my lord, would oblige me vastly if you would go with them, and see that they both get there without eating any small children on the way.'

Ingrey melted with relief at the thought of escape. 'Certainly, Learned.'

Lewko’s eyelids flicked down; he added, 'And take care of that.'

Ingrey followed his glance. New blood was leaking in a dark trickle down his fingers from beneath the soiled bandage on his right hand. Something half-healed had burst during his manhandling of the guilty groom, presumably. He’d felt nothing.