The Hallowed Hunt

even in those first confused moments, he had not mistaken it for mere physical beauty.

Her face grew suddenly fierce; she said through her teeth, 'It didn’t come to me, it came to the accursed cat. I wept for it to come to me. But it did not.' Her voice slowed. 'Perhaps it could not. I am no saint, fit to have a god inhabit me.'

Ingrey grubbed in the moss with nervous fingers. His split scalp had stopped dripping blood into his eyebrows, finally. 'It was also said—though not by the Quintarian divines—that the Old Wealdings used animal spirits to commune with the gods.'

Her lovely jaw clenched; her eyes turned a ferocious light upon him, so that he nearly recoiled. Only then, and only for that brief instant, did he see how much seething terror she concealed—had from the first been concealing—beneath her composed surface. 'Ingrey, curse you, you have to tell me, you must talk, or I shall go mad in truth—how did you come by your wolf? '

Hers was not some idle curiosity, spurred by gossip. It was a most desperate need to know. And how much would he, in his first confusion so long ago, have given for some experienced mentor to tell him how to go on? Or even for a companion as confused as he, but sharing his experience, matching his confidences instead of denying them and naming him demented, defiled, and damned? And all the things he could never have explained even to a sympathetic ear, she had just experienced.

It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands. He gritted his teeth; began.

'I was but fourteen. It all came upon me without warning. I was brought to the ceremony uninstructed. My father had been for some days—or weeks—distraught about something that he would confide to no one. He suborned a Temple sorcerer to accomplish the rite. I do not know who caught the wolves, or how. The sorcerer disappeared immediately after—whether in fear of having botched the rite, or because he had deliberately betrayed us, I never found out. I was not fit to inquire, just then.'

'A sorcerer?' she echoed, leaning against a tree bole. 'I saw no sorcerer with Boleso. Unless he had one hidden in disguise. If Boleso himself was demon-ridden, I saw no sign, not that I would. Well, you can’t, unless you are god-sighted or a sorcerer yourself.'

'No, the Temple would have... ' Ingrey hesitated. 'In Easthome, some sensitive from the Temple must have detected it, if Boleso had caught a demon. If he’d caught it more recently, since his exile... he might not have encountered anyone with the gift to discern it.' But whatever had been wrong with Boleso had surely been going on since before he’d slain his manservant.

'I cannot guess what powers his menagerie might have given him,' said Ijada. 'I know things now that I do not see with my eyes. The leopard seems to give me a kind of knowledge or perception, but'—her hand clenched in frustration—'not in words. Why doesn’t your wolf help you so?'

Because I have worked for a decade and more to cripple it, bind it down tight. And I thought I was safe, and now your questions frighten me worse than the wolf-within. 'You said there was a thing, another... smell, not me or my wolf. A third thing.'

She stared at him unhappily, her brows drawing in, as though she grappled for a description of something that had no relation to language. 'It is as if I can smell souls. Or the leopard does, and leaks it to me in patches. I can smell Ulkra, and know he is not to fear. Another few men in the retinue—I know to stay out of their reach. Your soul seems doubled: you, and something underneath, something dark and old and musty. It does not stir.'

'My wolf?' But his wolf had been a young one.

'I... maybe. But there is a third smell. It is wound about you like some parasitic vine, pulsing with blood, that has put tendrils and roots into your spirit to maintain itself. It whispers. I think it is some spell or geas.'

Ingrey was silent for a long moment, staring down at himself. How could she guess which was which? His wolf spirit was surely a kind of parasite. 'Is it still there?'

'Yes.'

His voice tightened. 'Then in my next inattentive moment, I might try to kill you again.'

'Perhaps.' Her eyes narrowed and nostrils flared, as if seeking a sensation that had nothing to do with the senses of the body. As futile as trying to see with her hands, or taste with her ears. 'Till it is rooted out.'

His voice went smaller still. 'Why don’t you run away? You should run away.'

'Don’t you see? I must get to the Temple at Easthome. I must find help. And you are taking me there as fast as may be.'

'The divines were never much help to me,' he said bitterly. 'Or I would not still be afflicted. I tried for years—consulting theologians, sorcerers, even saints. I traveled all the way to Darthaca to find a saint of the Bastard who was reputed to banish demons from men’s souls, to destroy illicit sorcerers. Even he could not disentangle my wolf spirit. Because, he told me, it was of this world, not of the other; even the Bastard, who commands a legion of demons of disorder and can summon or dismiss them at His will, had no power over it. If even saints cannot help, the ordinary Temple authorities will be useless. Worse than useless—a danger. In Easthome, the Temple is the tool of the powerful, and it seems you have offended the powerful.'

Her gaze sharpened. 'Who put the geas on you? Must it have been someone powerful?'

His lips parted, closed again. 'I am not sure. I cannot say. It all slips away from me. Unless I am reminded, I don’t even remember, between one time and the next, trying to kill you. A moment’s distraction on my part could be deadly to you!'

'Then I will undertake to remind you,' she said. 'It should be easier, now that we both know.'

As he opened his mouth to protest, he heard a distant crashing in the woods. A man called, 'Lord Ingrey?' and another, 'I heard voices toward the river—over that way... !'

'They’re coming!' He struggled to his feet, swaying dizzily, his hands extending to her in pleading. 'Before they find us. Flee!'

'Like this?' she said indignantly, sweeping a hand down her damp costume, her bare feet. 'Soaking wet, no money, no weapons, no help, I am to run off into the woods and—what? Be eaten by bears?' Her jaw set. 'No. Boleso came from Easthome. Your geas came from Easthome. It is there that the source of this evil must be stalked. I will not be diverted.'

'Someone there would kill you to keep you silent. They’ve already tried. They might kill me.'

'Then you’d better not babble about this to anyone.'

'I don’t babble—' he began in outrage, but then their rescuers were upon them, two of Ingrey’s men on horseback hacking through the undergrowth. Now he wanted to talk to her, and could not.

'My lord!' cried Rider Gesca in gladness. 'You have saved her!'

Since Ijada did not correct this misperception, neither did Ingrey. Evading her gaze, he climbed to his feet.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE WAGON WAITING ON THE far bank, the sun had slipped behind the treetops. A level orange glint shone through the tangled branches by the time Ingrey and his prisoner had traded off for dry clothes and mounted their recaptured horses. Ingrey’s head, wrapped in a makeshift strip of cloth, was pounding, and his shoulder was stiffening, but he refused even to contemplate the idea of sitting in the wagon atop Boleso’s box. The cortege clambered out of the wooded valley and on into the gathering twilight.

A chill mist began to arise from the ditches and fields. Ingrey was just about to order his lead riders to light