The Hallowed Hunt

There had not been two hallow kings in this room; there had been two partial kings, mutually crippled, each holding hostage the other’s fulfillment. Now there was one, whole again. Ingrey shivered under the terrible weight of his sovereign smile.

'First things first,' breathed Wencel, licked his thumb, and touched it to Ingrey’s forehead. Ingrey jerked back, too late. He felt the snap of his connection with Ijada part like a physical thing, and he almost cried out in loss and outrage. Before he finished inhaling, the connection seated itself again, and instead of Ijada, he found himself mortally conscious of Horseriver. The kingly will mounted Ingrey’s rising panic like an expert rider atop a green colt. The sensation nearly overwhelmed him, darkening his sight, unlocking his knees. Horseriver, brows pinching in, searched his face then nodded in satisfaction. 'Yes... ' The word floated out on a sigh. 'That will do.'

Fara turned to glance at her husband: her eyes widened and her breath drew in. If she saw one-tenth the towering glamour with her ordinary eyes that Ingrey sensed with his shaman’s sight, he could not wonder at her sudden awe. Horseriver licked his thumb again and touched her brow, then moved to embrace her, leaning their foreheads together in a gesture one might mistake for comfort or blessing. Fara’s eyes, when he drew back, were glazed and staring. Ingrey wondered if his own eyes looked just like that.

His arm around his wife’s waist as if to support her, the earl turned to the Father’s divine. 'Tell my brother-in-law, when he arrives, that I have taken the princess home to lie down. All of this has brought on one of her debilitating headaches, I’m afraid.'

The divine, suddenly very attentive to the earl, nodded eager understanding. 'Of course, my lord. I am so sorry for your loss, my lady. But your father’s soul is born now into a better world.'

Horseriver’s lips twisted. 'Indeed, all men are born pregnant with their own deaths. The experienced eye can watch it quicken within them day by day.'

The divine flinched at this disturbing metaphor, but plowed on sturdily. 'I’m not sure that—'

Horseriver held up a restraining hand, and the man fell silent at once. 'Peace. Tell the prince-marshal that we will meet with him in the morning. Late morning, probably. He may begin the arrangements as he wills.'

'Yes, my lord.' The divine bobbed a bow; on the other side of the bed, so did the physician.

'Ingrey... ' Horseriver turned to his retainer, and his lips drew back on the most disquieting smile yet. His voice dropped to an eerie low register that vibrated through Ingrey’s bones. 'Heel.'

Furious, fascinated, and frantic, Ingrey bowed and followed his master out.

HORSERIVER HUSTLED HIS WIFE AND INGREY SWIFTLY AND ALONE through the darkened corridors of the hallow king’s hall. Another murmur of Peace had the gate guards saluting them through without hindrance or question. They turned into the night streets, the air growing misty in the gathering chill. As they rounded the first corner, Ingrey looked back over his shoulder and saw a procession of swinging lanterns. Voices carried through the fog: Biast and a noble company hurrying back to his father’s deathbed. Too late. Ingrey’s ear picked out Hetwar’s voice, replying to the prince-marshal. He wondered if Hetwar carried the hallow king’s seal that was his charge in its oak box, together with the silver hammer to break it at the bedside.

Horseriver’s party was lightless, black-cloaked, stepping softly; Ingrey doubted anyone from the prince- marshal’s retinue saw them at all. They started down the hill. A few streets farther on, they did not turn aside to Horseriver’s mansion as Ingrey expected, but continued till the stable mews loomed out of the darkness. The doors were open wide, and a few lanterns, hung from the rafters, burned softly within the redolent space.

A groom scrambled up from the bench by the outer wall and bowed fearfully as the earl approached. 'All is ready, my lord. The clothes are in the tack room.'

'Good. Stay a moment.'

Horseriver ushered Fara and Ingrey ahead of him. Ingrey saw in the passing shadows of the box stalls on his left that Horseriver’s big chestnut and the dappled gray named Wolf were saddled and bridled, with saddlebags tied on behind. A bay mare in a straight stall across from them was similarly accoutered. As they passed the box with the stag, it snorted and shook its antlers, sharp hooves thumping nervously in the thick straw.

Horseriver pointed to a lantern, which Ingrey reached up and retrieved, then led them through the open door of the tack room. Harness glowed on the wall pegs, with leather burnished and brightwork shining. Across some empty saddle racks, three piles of garments waited. Ingrey recognized his own riding leathers, together with his boots standing below. Another was a woman’s riding habit in some wine-dark fabric picked out with gold thread. Horseriver gestured to the piles. 'Clothe yourselves,' he addressed Fara and Ingrey equally, 'and make ready to ride.'

Stone-faced, Fara dropped her voluminous cloak, which whispered to the wooden floor. 'I must have help with the buttons, my lord,' she said levelly.

'Ah, yes.' Horseriver grimaced, and with practiced fingers undid the row of tiny pearl buttons down her back from their velvet loops. Ingrey stripped off court cloak, town shoes, and silver-stitched jerkin and had his leathers hiked up and fastened before Fara’s dress and petticoats fell in a pool at her feet. He did not think either of them was prey to embarrassment at this unexpected intimacy. Exaltation, bewilderment, and terror left no room for lesser emotions. He slipped his boots on and straightened, then cinched up his belt for knife and scabbard. His unholy liege lord was still absorbed in the intricacies of his wife’s garb.

As the earl raised his arms to help Fara into her jacket, Ingrey’s eye caught the gleam of new leather from a knife sheath at his waist. New sheath; new knife? Quietly, he backed out of the tack room into the stable aisle. Could he defy Horseriver’s entrancing will? If he could think resistance, surely he could act it? If he did not think too hard? Ijada, what is happening to you now? He could no longer tell. This moment was clearly well prepared for; with Ingrey securely leashed, had the earl readied some fatal assault on that narrow house, as well?

Still backing, he grabbed and drew the latch to the wise-stag’s stall, dragging the door open. His fingers felt numb. 'Go,' he whispered. The beast bounced twice in place, snorted like the crack of ice breaking, then bolted out past him, its hooves clattering and scraping on the colored pavement. It gathered itself and was gone into the outer darkness of the city in a near-hallucinatory flash of speed. Ingrey froze as Horseriver thrust his head out the tack room door and frowned. 'Stay,' snapped the earl, and Ingrey perforce waited.

He was still standing there struggling... not so much to move, as to want to move, when the earl appeared again, his own town robes exchanged for leathers and boots, escorting Fara firmly with one hand clenched around her upper arm. Horseriver glanced aside at the empty stall and, to Ingrey’s dismay, merely smiled sourly. 'You almost frighten me,' he remarked in passing. 'That was inspired. So nearly right. Perhaps I should muzzle you, as well.'

He said no more, but aimed Fara into the straight stall where Ijada’s chestnut mare shifted uneasily.

'I’m afraid of that horse, my lord,' Fara quavered.

'Not for much longer, I promise you,' he murmured back. Ingrey could not see more over the boards and past the vine-decorated metal bars than the horse’s flickering ears and the tops of Horseriver’s blond and Fara’s dark heads, but he heard a leathery whisper as of a knife being drawn. A low murmur from the earl in words he half recognized made his blood race and raised all the hairs on his arms. Then a meaty thunk, a truncated squeal, a jerk against a head rope that shook the walls—then a thudding of a heavy body collapsing, convulsing, and going still.

The two heads moved back into the aisle. Fara was leaning against Horseriver, shuddering fiercely. If blood spattered her riding costume, it did not show in the dark. 'What have you done to me... ?' she moaned.

Within her, Ingrey’s shaman senses saw, a powerful but frightened shadow plunged and strained.

'Sh,' Horseriver soothed her. He touched her brow with his thumb again, renewing her glassy stare. The horse-shadow, too, quieted, though seeming more benumbed than calmed. 'It will be well. Come along, now.'

The apprehensive groom had reappeared. 'My lord? What was—'

'Fetch the horses.'

The three saddled horses were marshaled in the darkened court before the mews. The groom and Horseriver between them boosted Fara aboard her bay mare; Horseriver himself checked her girths, adjusted her