The Hallowed Hunt

studied Ingrey through narrowed eyes.

'Hetwar released you most promptly,' Wencel observed.

'Did Gesca tell you why?'

'Oh, aye.'

'Biast is most concerned for his sister. Fara dreams of saving you, I believe. How you came to deserve your wife’s love, I cannot guess.'

'Nor can I.' Horseriver grimaced and spun one graying-blond ringlet, strayed to overhang his face, in his fingers in a gesture almost nervous. 'I suspect her governesses allowed too much court poetry to rot her brain, before marriage. I have buried over a score of wives; I do not allow myself to become fond, these days. I can hardly explain what these women look like to me now. It is one of the subtler horrors of my present existence.'

'Like kissing a corpse?'

'Like being the corpse so kissed.'

'She seems not to know this.'

The earl shrugged. 'For some notion now discarded—habit—I began this union intending to engender one more son, and for that, the body must be aroused somehow. Fortunately, this one is still young, and simple Wencel would have been quite pleased with his princess, I think.'

Did Horseriver allow that half-digested soul to surface, when feigning to make love to his bride? And how appallingly confusing for Fara, when the eager lost boy of the night gave way to the glacial stranger at breakfast... Could Horseriver call other faces to the fore, when dealing with other tasks? The princess might well spin herself dizzy, trying to follow such a progression of moods in her spouse.

Wencel had fallen into one of his forthcoming humors again, for whatever purpose. Ingrey decided to pursue the opportunity. 'Why did you bring Lady Ijada into your household? Considering the consequences, that would seem to have been a mistake.'

Wencel grimaced. 'Perhaps. In hindsight.'

'Fara thought her intended for your new Horseriver broodmare.'

The scowl deepened. 'So it seems. I did say Fara was a romantic.'

'If not that, then... for the Wounded Woods? And not merely Ijada’s inheritance of the tract.' It went against Ingrey’s habits to give away information, but in this case, it might prime the pump. 'She told me of her dream of it.'

'Ah, yes,' said Wencel grimly. 'So you do know about that, now. I wondered.'

'Did she tell you of it, too?'

'No. But I dreamed it with her, if from another angle of view. Since it was more than dream: it was event. Even acting as the gods’ cat’s-paw, she could not very well trouble my own waters without the ripples reaching me.' Wencel sighed. 'She created me a very great puzzle thereby. I brought her into my household to observe her, but I could discover nothing unusual. If the gods intended her for bait, I declined to bite. She had undoubtedly become bound into the spell during her night camping at Holytree, but she remained as sightless and powerless as any other ignorant girl.'

'Until Boar’s Head.'

'Indeed.'

'Did the gods intend all of this? Boleso’s death as well?'

Wencel drew a long, thoughtful inhalation. 'Resisting the gods somewhat resembles playing a game of castles and riders with an opponent who can always see several moves ahead of you. But even the gods cannot see infinitely far ahead. Our free wills cloud Their vision, even though Their eyes are more piercing than ours. The gods do not plan, so much as take advantage.'

'Why then did you send me to kill her? Mere prudence?' Ingrey kept his tone casual, as if the answer were of only scholarly interest to him.

'Hardly mere. Once she had slain Boleso, she was most assuredly bound for the gallows. If there is a more perfect symbolic representation of an Old Weald courier sacrifice than to hang an innocent virgin by a sacred cord from a tree, with divines singing blessings about her, I cannot think of it. Death opens a gate to the gods. Her death in that mode would have opened Holytree wide, barricaded against Them as it has been these four centuries.'

'And her murder would not? What’s the difference?'

Wencel merely shrugged, and made to slip off his perch and turn away.

'Unless'—Ingrey’s mind leapt ahead—'there was more to that geas than murder.'

Wencel turned back. His face bore that deeply ironic look that masked irritation, which Ingrey took as a sign that his digging was striking something worthwhile. 'It would have bound her murdered soul to yours in a haunting, until it faded into nothingness. Keeping her, and her link to Holytree, beyond the reach of the gods. It was a variant of an old, old spell, and I spent far too much blood on it; but I was hurried.'

'Charming.' Ingrey failed to keep the snarl out of his voice now. 'Murder and sundering both.'

Wencel turned his palms out in a What would you? gesture. 'Worse: a redundancy. For her leopard spirit would have done the same. If I had known of it. That move, I must concede to my Opponents. I still do not know if we were counterblocking each other to stalemate, or were all victims of Boleso’s idiocy, or if more lies hidden beyond.' He hesitated. 'For the haunting to be effected without the murder first was not in my plans. But it happened. Didn’t it.' Wencel’s eyes were cool upon Ingrey now, and it came to him that he was not the only man digging, here. Wait, was Horseriver saying that the current of awareness between Ingrey and Ijada was his doing?

At Ingrey’s sudden silence, he added kindly, 'Did you imagine you had fallen in love with her, cousin? Or she with you? Alas that I must shatter that idyllic illusion. Truly, I would have thought you—though perhaps not her—harder-headed.'

Ingrey almost rose to this bait. Aye, all the way out of the water, trailing foam. But he remembered how Wencel’s soft persuasions had almost had him cutting his own throat, not long back. The man scarcely needs magic to wind me into knots. The peculiar link between Ingrey and Ijada might indeed be a side effect of Wencel’s defeated geas, but Wencel did not control it any longer. And he does not like what he does not control, not when it lies so close to the heart of his matter. Whatever that matter was. And there is more between Ijada and me now than whatever you put there, Wencel. Ingrey managed a gesture of dry dismissal. 'Howsoever. Now I am in your service, what duties would you have of me, my lord?'

Wencel did not look entirely convinced of Ingrey’s placidity, in the face of this, but he did not pursue the issue. 'In truth, I have scarcely had time to consider the possibilities.'

'Inventing as you go, are you?'

'Yes, I am quite godlike in that way, if no other. Perhaps I shall give you a horse.'

'Hetwar spared me that expense. I rode his nags at need, and he fed them whether they were needed or not.'

'Oh, the beast would be stabled at my expense. It would uphold the distinction of my house to mount you properly.'

Ingrey was put instantly in mind of Horseriver’s last wife-mother’s death in her so-called riding accident, but he said merely, 'Thank you, then, my lord.'

'Be at your leisure this morning. Plan to attend on me when I go out, later.'

'I am at your disposal, cousin.'

Wencel’s mouth quirked in mockery. 'I trust so.'

Ingrey took this for a sufficient dismissal and retreated from the study.

Whatever Wencel was about, he was not making all of it up as he went. He had some fixed goal in sight. And if it was the hallow kingship, as Hetwar feared, it was not for any reason that Hetwar could imagine.

Nor I. Yet. Ingrey shook his head. He had much to think upon, in the next hours.