The Hallowed Hunt

Fara stood shivering in a patch of sunlight, her heavy sodden garments clinging to her solid form, hair knocked loose from its braiding tailing in wet, miserable strands down her face. Ingrey was in little better case, wet leathers squeaking irritatingly as he moved. He stepped apart, drew his blades, and made a futile effort to wipe them dry.

'Where is Wencel taking me?' she demanded, her voice quavering. 'Do you know?'

'Holytree, that was. Bloodfield. The Wounded Woods that are.'

'Ijada’s woods? Her dower land?' She stared in astonishment. 'Is this for her, somehow?'

'The other way around. It is the Woods that Wencel desires, not their heiress. They are old, old and accursed.'

Fara’s face pinched in, half-reassured, half–more alarmed. 'Why? Why did he drag me from Papa’s deathbed, what evil thing does he intend? Why did he defile me with this, this... ' She turned in a circle, clawing at her breast as if she could so dig out her unwanted haunt.

Ingrey caught her clay-cold hands and held them. 'Stop, lady. I do not know why you are wanted. Ijada thought I was destined to cleanse the ghosts of the Woods of their spirit animals, as I did for Prince Boleso. If this is what Wencel wants of me, I don’t know why he doesn’t just say so; it seems no improper charge.'

She looked up at him eagerly. 'Can you take this horrible animal thing out of me, as well? As you did for my brother? Now?'

'Not while you live. The Old Weald shamans cleansed their comrades’ souls only after death, it appears.'

'Then you had best outlive me,' she said slowly.

'I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen.'

Her face grew stonier. She grated, 'I could make certain of it.'

'No, lady!' His grip tightened. 'We are not in such dire straits yet, though I will swear to you if you wish that I will try, if our deaths fall out that way.'

She gripped him back, looking disturbingly possessive for an instant. 'Perhaps. Perhaps.' She released him and wrapped her arms around her torso, shoulders hunching.

It occurred to Ingrey that his conviction that Fara was disqualified as a courier sacrifice was more doubtful than he’d first thought, if he could indeed cleanse her soul after death as he had her brother’s. Was that the use Wencel had dragged him along for? Did it make sense? Not much, but then, little about this did to him just now.

'Then you could not cleanse Wencel, alive, either,' she continued, brows pinching in worry.

'Wencel, well, Wencel is not just infested with a simple spirit horse like yours. He is... possessed, I suppose is as good a word as any, by a spirit, a soul, a concatenation... he claims, anyway, to be the sundered ghost of the last hallow king of the Old Weald.' More than claims. 'Kept alive whether he will or nil by a great spell based in Bloodfield.'

Her voice went hushed. 'Do you think he has gone mad?'

'Yes.' He added reluctantly, 'But he’s not lying. Not about that.'

Fara stared at him for a long, long moment. He almost expected her to ask, Do you think you have gone mad? to which Ingrey did not know the answer, but instead she said, 'I felt it when he changed. He changed last night, when Papa died.'

'Yes. He reclaimed his kingship, or some missing part of it. Now he is... well, I’m not sure what he is. But he races time.'

She shook her head. 'Wencel always ignored time. He was maddening, that way.'

'This thing in Wencel’s body isn’t really Wencel. I have to keep remembering that.'

She rubbed her temples.

'Is your head bothering you?' Ingrey asked cautiously.

'No. It’s very strange.'

How should they delay further? Split up, so as to take longer to find? A clever notion; he could get back in the water, which was immune to the hallow king’s glamour, and let it carry him downstream for miles until Wencel overtook him. Ingrey tried to remember if they’d passed any waterfalls coming up. But no. He could not leave this woman alone, shivering in the wilderness, waiting for the uncanny chimera she’d married to find her. 'Prince- marshal Biast commanded me to guard you. We cannot separate.'

She nodded gratefully. 'Please not, my lord!'

'Wencel will search first along the banks. Let us at least go a little more into the woods.'

It would not be enough to elude Horseriver altogether; he could already feel the tug of their tie, growing tighter. But truth to tell, he was becoming wildly curious about Bloodfield. He wanted to see it, needed to see it. And the straightest way was to let Horseriver take him there. But not too swiftly. Wencel might have had all he required in Ingrey and Fara, but Ingrey didn’t think he had all he needed. I need Ijada. I’m sure of it. Did Horseriver know it, to separate them so? Trust in the gods, They will supply? Hardly. He wondered suddenly if it was as hard for the gods to have faith in Ingrey as it was for him to have faith in Them, and a weird wild urge to show Them how it should be done swept him for a moment.

Whatever fey look had possessed him made Fara step back. 'I will follow you,' she said faintly.

They turned to scramble into the brush. Over rotting logs, up past the high-water mark of a second stony bank, into deeper shade. Out across a sunny meadow high with purple thistles and prickling weeds that laid a dotted trail of burrs on their damp clothes. Through scratching brambles into more shade, laced with fine spiderwebs that caught across their mouths. The hike did some good, he thought, if only to render them drier by the exercise.

But the crashing of a large animal sounded through the woods soon enough. There was nothing in this waste more dangerous than what sought them already, but it need not be more dangerous to be dangerous enough. Ingrey froze, hand on his hilt, and Fara cowered near him, until Horseriver’s mount emerged from the blinking shadows, snorting displeasure at the clutching undergrowth that scraped its hide.

Wencel, sighting them in turn, breathed a long sigh seeming half anger and half relief. All desire to flee faded from Ingrey’s heart, melting away in the heat of the king’s proximity. He saluted courteously.

'Thank you, Lord Ingrey,' Wencel said, riding up.

'Sire.'

'My horse stumbled,' said Fara, unasked. 'I almost drowned. Lord Ingrey held me up.'

Ingrey did not bother correcting that to I clambered on top of Lord Ingrey. A matter of viewpoint, he decided. His had been largely underwater.

'Aye, I saw,' said Wencel

Not all, or you wouldn’t be thanking me so sincerely. Wencel’s look at Ingrey was searching but not unduly suspicious.

'Get her up,' said Wencel, holding out his hand, and Ingrey cupped his hands for the princess’s muddy foot and boosted her up behind her husband. He took up station after the horse, to let it trample down the trail and rake off the spiderwebs, and followed Wencel wearily back upstream.

It took upwards of an hour for them to find the road again, and then they turned back eastward for more than half a mile to the river where Wencel had left their horses tied. There, to Ingrey’s silent satisfaction, they found that Fara’s horse had strained a tendon in its fall. Wencel pulled its tack off and turned it loose, had Ingrey lash the spare gear behind his own mount’s saddle, heaved Fara up behind him once more, and led off west at a much slower pace.

Four hours lost at least, perhaps more by the time they dragged in to their next stop. Not enough. It’s a start.

Ingrey had added another two hours to his tally by the time they turned off the back road to a grubby and impoverished little settlement scarcely meriting the name of hamlet. A rotting timber palisade provided bare