The Hallowed Hunt

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HE WAS HALFWAY TO HETWAR’S WHEN THE REACTION SET IN, turning his knees to tallow. A low abutment along a house wall flanking the street made a good enough bench, and he sank down upon it, bracing his hands on his thighs and his back against the day-warmed stone. He blinked and breathed deeply against his dizziness. It felt peculiarly like the aftermath of one of his wolf-fits, tumbling back into a stream of time he had temporarily exited; like falling back to earth after a dream of flight. Except that it was his mind, and not his body this time, that had ascended into that state where response flowed without thinking in some desperate dance for survival.

A passing matron paused and stared at him as he wrapped his arms around himself and rocked but, perhaps taking in his sex, age, and cutlery, passed on without daring to inquire into his well-being. In time, the trembling in his body ran its course, and his mind began to move again.

That was real, Wencel’s tale. Five gods.

Horseriver’s tale, he amended this thought. How much of Wencel lived on in that slight and crooked body was hard to say.

His second thought was a flash of envy. To live forever! How could a man not achieve happiness, with so many chances to flee old errors, to make it right? To build up wealth and power and knowledge? The envy faded upon reflection. Horseriver had paid for his many lives with many deaths, it seemed, and the spell gave him no respite from any horror entailed. Burning is a painful death. I do not recommend it, Wencel had once remarked, and Ingrey had thought him joking. In retrospect, the tone seemed more the judgment of a connoisseur.

Would surety of his own survival make a man more brave in battle? It was true that many of Wencel’s ancestors... rephrase, that Earl Horseriver had many times died not-peacefully. Or would the knowing of how much pain a death could inflict make one more afraid? Two of the most grotesque endings, Ingrey had just relived body and mind along with Horseriver, and the mere memories shook him near to vomiting. More ghostly suggestions of other such fates spun outward in repetition like a man’s image caught between two mirrors, and the thought of them going on past counting made his stomach clench again.

Realization of the other cost came to him then, not one Horseriver had held up before his mind’s eye, but still leaking in around all of the searing visions. Ingrey had no child, had scarcely considered the possibility, but the dream of a son inspired in him a fierce vague sense of protectiveness nonetheless. Rooted, perhaps, in his own child-mind’s hunger for a father’s regard, bolstered by his happier memories of Lord Ingalef, Ingrey at least had some notion of what a father ought to be.

What must it have been like for Horseriver, watching son after son grow, knowing their fates? Making them, knowing? Did he warn them of what was to befall them, as he had just warned Ingrey? Or did he take them by ambush? Some of each? At what ages? What differences to Horseriver, to his heirs, between taking a bewildered child, a frightened youth, or an outraged mind come to full maturity, with a life, choices, perhaps a bride and children of his own? Whatever the differences, Horseriver had had time to cycle through them all.

And not just bodies and wives. Where did the souls go of all those spell-seized sons? Bound into the whole, digested but not wholly destroyed... it seemed the spell stole not only lives, but eternities. Carrying them along in broken pieces to the next generation, the next century, a jumbled, melting accumulation. Had Horseriver—the thought gave Ingrey more pause than all that had gone before—had Horseriver himself ever slain an especially beloved child before his own foreseen death, to spare that soul before it could be bound into this horror?

I think that may have happened a time or two, as well. In four centuries of lives frequently shortened by violence, there had surely been opportunity for every variation on the theme.

Dangerous, powerful, magical, immortal... and mad. Or nearly so. Wencel’s brittle glibness took on a new tone, in retrospect. His baffling actions, wrenching back and forth between spurts of energy and withdrawal, still bewildered Ingrey, but Ingrey no longer reached for the reasons of ordinary men to explain them. He still did not understand Wencel, but the depth of his own misapprehension was at least revealed to him. Look to souls, Ingrey, Ijada had said. Indeed.

How many more iterations before Wencel lost even his present fragile function, and became so deranged as no longer to pass as lucid at all? As the spell spun on, it might look to the outside eye perhaps like some family disease, one blood relative after another struck down by dementia in youth, or middle age.

One more iteration, I think. The next transfer was going to be different, if Ingrey lived to receive it. His wolf would make it so. Different, but not, necessarily, good.

No. Not good.

Save for when he had received his wolf, this day was shaping up to be the most devastating Ingrey had ever experienced, beginning with looking a god in the eye and ending with Wencel’s terrifying visions. He wanted nothing more now than to stagger home to clutch Ijada and howl the news into her ear. Home? The narrow house was surely no home to him. But wheresoever she is, there is my place. In the chaos and confusion of a battlefield, the standard held up above the swirl was the meeting point for the battered and lost, the place to regroup, find a trusted comrade against whom to place one’s own bleeding back, and face outward again.

And she must be warned of this threatened transformation. It was disturbing beyond measure to realize that Wencel’s fearsome heritage had been hanging over his head for years, and he had never known it. The timing of his body’s capture was wholly in Wencel’s power. The earl could have taken a knife to his own throat at any time and effected his preternatural transfer at will. Although... upon reflection, Ijada was perhaps the only person in the Weald who might be able to perceive his soul’s adulteration upon sight. Perceive, but not necessarily understand; and Wencel’s lies, coming out of Ingrey’s mouth in Ingrey’s voice, would surely be artful and practiced.

He forced himself back to his feet and started down the street again, trying not to weave like a drunken man. The motion helped settle his stomach and mind a little. He found himself passing the yellow stone front of Hetwar’s palace, home of sorts for the past four years, and hesitated, reminded of his first panicked impulse to run to his patron. He was suddenly entirely unsure of what he wanted to tell Hetwar about Horseriver now, but the sealmaster had instructed Ingrey to see him earlier; at least he should discover if new orders awaited. He turned in.

The porter warned him, 'My lord is in council.'

Ingrey nearly decamped, but said instead prudently, 'Tell him I wait, and ask his pleasure of me.'

The porter dispatched a page, who returned shortly. 'My lord bids you attend upon him in his study, Lord Ingrey.'

Ingrey nodded, made his way up the wide stairs, and turned down the familiar corridor. He weaved around a servant lighting wall sconces against the gathering twilight. A rap on the study door elicited Hetwar’s voice: 'Enter.'

He turned the latch and slipped within, then controlled a recoil against the closing door. Grouped around Hetwar’s writing table were Prince-marshal Biast, Learned Lewko, and the archdivineordainer of Easthome himself, Fritine kin Boarford. Gesca stood against a wall in a strained posture that hinted of a man making difficult reports to his superiors. The whole array of eyes turned upon Ingrey.

'Good,' said Hetwar. 'We were just discussing you, Ingrey. Are you recovered from your morning’s indisposition?'