The Hallowed Hunt

apprehensively to the princess and her husband. The sentries seemed faintly mortified by how useless all their pikes and blades were to protect their lord from what stalked him tonight. As distant as they still were from the king’s bedchamber, the servants’ voices were hushed and tremulous as they escorted the party along the dim and musty halls.

Ahead, lamplight spilled into the corridor and reflected off the polished floorboards. Ingrey took a steeling breath and turned to follow the earl and the princess within.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE HALLOW KING’S BEDCHAMBER WAS LESS CROWDED THAN Ingrey had imagined it. One green-robed physician and his acolyte sat near the head of the canopied bed with an air of depressed quietude that acknowledged all their medical efforts now vain. A divine in the gray garb of the Father’s Order waited also, in an inverse mood of stretched readiness not yet called upon. In a room beyond an antechamber, out of sight and, thankfully, muffled by the intervening walls, a five-voice chorus of Temple singers started a hymn. The quintet sounded hoarse and tired; perhaps they would take a rest soon.

Ingrey studied the king in the bed. He was not weighted by such dark intrusions as Ingrey’s or Wencel’s, not shaman, nor sorcerer, nor saint; he was but a man, if a riveting one even in this last hour. He was a long way now from the Stagthorne scion Hetwar nostalgically spoke of from his childhood, who had taken the prince- marshal’s banner from his own father’s kingly hand to earn early victory and reputation in a now half-forgotten border clash with Darthaca. When Ingrey had first returned to the Weald in Hetwar’s train, the king had been hale and vigorous despite his graying head and all the sorrows of his life. The past months of creeping illness had aged him speedily, as if to make up for lost time.

Now his final sleep was upon him. Ingrey hoped Fara had exchanged whatever last words she wanted with her father earlier, for there would be no more tonight. The thin, spotted skin, an ugly yellow shade, indeed bore that waxy sheen Horseriver had named the harbinger of finality. More: the king’s breathing was harsh and hesitant, each breath drawn in and released, followed by a pause that drew all eyes, until the chest heaved again, and the gazes dropped away.

Fara’s face was ashy but composed; she signed the Five, placed a formal kiss on the king’s slick brow, and stood back. The Father’s divine dared to place a consoling hand upon her shoulder, and murmur, 'He had a good life, my lady. Be not afraid.'

The glance Fara cast him was equally devoid of both fear and consolation, or indeed, much expression at all. Ingrey was impressed that she did not snarl in return; if offered such a platitude in such a moment, he would have been tempted to draw steel and run the divine through. She merely murmured, 'Where is my brother Biast? He should be here. And the archdivine.'

'He was here earlier, my lady, for a good long time, and will return shortly. I expect the archdivine and my lord Hetwar will be accompanying him.'

She nodded once and shrugged away from him. His hand hesitated in air, as if to offer another consolatory pawing, but fortunately he thought better of it, stepping away to leave the princess in her stolid sorrow.

Horseriver stood watching all this with his feet braced a little apart, the picture of a supporting spouse and lord. His face seemed no more stern than the occasion demanded. It was only to Ingrey’s eye that he seemed crouched like a cat at a mousehole. What more was about to happen in this room than the long-expected death of an aged man, even if aged king? Horseriver had been hovering in Easthome for weeks. What did he await, besides the end of this vigil? And if his presence here was so vital to his schemes, how much had it maddened him to have to break away and tend to the untimely intrusion of Boleso’s funeral?

There are two hallow kings in this room. How can there be two?

The question Ingrey had asked in Hetwar’s chambers, to which he’d received no satisfactory reply, came back to him now. What made the hallow kingship hallowed? Ingrey could barely guess. Horseriver, he suspected, knew.

He became abruptly aware that Horseriver’s spirit horse was no longer stopped down to a tight knot, but seemed flooded throughout his body, riding the river of his blood. It was quiescent—no—poised. Both Horseriver’s tension and his patience seemed quite literally superhuman, in this moment.

Ingrey felt his own blood pulsing through his veins. He would have thought the piling up of his wolf’s wolf- lives, and of Horseriver’s stallion’s horse-lives, would have made each more quintessentially wolf or horse, but it seemed not; it was as though all such wisdom-creatures converged on some common center, the denser and deeper they grew. They are both a lot like each other, Ijada had said. Indeed.

The hymn singers came to the end of their piece, and stopped; a faint shuffling suggested a recess. The Mother’s acolyte had been dispatched down the corridor to watch out for Prince-marshal Biast. The divine had walked to the other side of the chamber and was helping himself to a glass of water. From the bed came a labored breath that was not followed by another.

Fara’s face went stiffer, her eyes glassy with moisture that did not fall. Horseriver stepped briefly forward only to hand her a lace handkerchief, which she clutched with a spasm of her hand, then stepped back. The earl did not say anything foolish. He did not say anything at all.

He did shift back a pace, then rose almost on his toes, stretching his arms out like a falconer calling his bird to him.

Ingrey boiled up to full alertness, craning his neck and straining his senses. Ingrey could not see souls, as saints were reputed to do. He discerned the departing essence only because something unwound from it in its passing, spooling off like some heady perfume spiraling through the air. Gods, he had more than felt before; only by that experience could he identify the vast Presence that raised his hackles like a breath in the dark. But this One was not to his address, and was gone with its prize before his pupils could widen in a futile effort to take it in.

The mysterious scent remained behind, cool and complex like a forest in spring: water, pine, musk, wet earth, sunlight—was laughter an odor? It roused and aroused him both, setting him all on edge, and his head lifted to it, eyes and nostrils widening in vain. He inhaled in utter bewilderment. What was he supposed to do? Knock Fara aside? Tackle Horseriver? He could not take his sword to the scent of a forest, carving the air like a madman. There seemed no evil in it: danger, yes, power, yes. Glory. Yes.

Ingrey caught the moment when Horseriver’s head jerked back and breathed the kingship in. The earl staggered a little, as though a great eagle had landed upon those outstretched falconer’s arms. His eyes squeezed shut, he folded his arms around himself, and he breathed out in a satisfied huff. When his eyes snapped open again, they blazed.

Holy fire, thought Ingrey. And, So fast! What just happened? Surely Horseriver had not—no, he had not waylaid the hallow king’s departing soul and taken it in like another spirit animal atop the dark, distorted hoard he held already. And his spell for deathlessness captured body and soul both, leaving his own corpse behind like an emptied husk. Ingrey whispered in mystification to Wencel, 'Have you stolen a blessing from the gods... ?'

Horseriver’s faint mirth nearly melted his heart. 'This'—the earl gestured down himself, barely breathing the words—'was never the gods’. We made it ourselves. It belongs here. It was wrenched from me two and a half centuries ago. Now it returns. For a little time.'

The Father’s divine, oblivious to all this, had hurried to the hallow king’s bedside, where the physician was bent over making his final examination. They murmured together in grave consultation. The divine signed the corpse and himself, and began intoning a short prayer.

So. Wencel was revealed in another lie, or half-truth; Ingrey could not summon the least surprise anymore.