torches to guide them when a distant glow on the road resolved into a string of bobbing lanterns. A few minutes later, an anxious
Reedmere was no hamlet, but a town of several thousand souls, and the local center of Temple administration. Its temple on the town square, though large, was still very much in the old rural style: a five-sided wooden hall decorated outside and in with elaborate twining carvings of plants and beasts and scenes from saints’ tales. The roof was wood shingle, doubtless lately replacing rustic thatch. In any case, it made a fit enough barn to store Boleso’s coffin for the night. Reedmere’s anxious ruling lord-divine, assisted by most of the lay stewards of his civic council, hastened to oversee the prince’s placement therein and intone prayers. A gaggle of curious townsfolk had dressed up and assembled into a passable choir. More superior citizens mustered to make loyal obeisance at the bier; Ingrey sensed a slight disappointment that the coffin was closed. Ingrey let his bandages excuse him from the ceremonies.
The temple’s outbuildings seemed mostly to consist of nearby houses recommissioned to new duties. The divine’s residence was in a building with the Temple notary’s office; the library and scriptorium shared quarters with the Daughter of Spring’s Lady-school for the town’s children; the Temple infirmary, dedicated to the Mother of Summer, occupied the back rooms of the local apothecary’s shop. Ingrey saw his prisoner turned over to some stern-looking female Temple servants, gave a few coins to the wheelwright for his time, made sure the horses were stabled and his men housed, paid off the yeoman-teamster and his wife and found them and their horses lodgings in the town for the night, and, finally, reported to the infirmary to have his head stitched.
To his relief, Ingrey found that the Mother’s practitioner here was more than just a local seamstress or midwife; she wore the braid of a school dedicat on the shoulder of her green robe. With briskly efficient hands she lit wax candles, washed his head with strong soap, and sutured his scalp.
Sitting on her bench staring at his knees and trying not to wince at every needle poke or tug of the threads, he inquired, 'Tell me, does Reedmere harbor any Temple sorcerers? Or saints? Or petty saints? Or... or even scholars?'
She laughed. 'Oh, not here, my lord! Three years ago, a Temple inquirer from the Father’s Order brought a sorcerer with him to investigate a charge of demon magic against a local woman, but nothing was found. The inquirer gave her accusers a pretty scorching lecture, after, and they were fined his travel costs. I must say, the sorcerer was not what I expected—sour old fellow in Bastard’s whites, not much amused, I gathered, to be dragged out onto the roads in winter. There was a petty saint of the Mother at my old school'—she sighed in memory—'I wished I’d had the half of his plain ordinary skill, as well as his holy sight and touch. As for scholars, Maraya who runs the Lady-school is about the best we can do, apart from the lord-divine himself.'
Ingrey was disappointed, but not surprised. But sorcerer or saint or
'There,' added the dedicat in satisfaction, giving a tug to her last knot. Ingrey turned a small yelp into a grunt. A snip of scissors told him this little ordeal was over, and, with difficulty, he straightened up again.
Voices and footsteps sounded at the back door of the shop, and the Mother’s dedicat looked around. The pair of female Temple servants, one of the lay stewards, Lady Ijada, and Rider Gesca trooped in. The servants were carrying piles of bedding.
'What’s this?' said the dedicat, with a suspicious glance at Lady Ijada.
'By your leave, Dedicat,' said the steward, 'this woman will be housed here tonight, as there are no sick in your chambers. Her attendants will sleep in the room with her, and I will sleep outside the door. This man'—he nodded toward Ingrey’s lieutenant—'will post a night sentry to check from time to time.'
The dedicat looked anything but pleased with this prospect; the women servants were downright grim.
Ingrey glanced around. The place was clean enough, certainly, but... 'Here?'
Lady Ijada favored him with an ironical lift of her eyebrows. 'By your order, I am not to be housed in the town lockup, for which I thank you. The divine’s spare room is reserved for you. The inn is full of your men, and the temple hall is full of Boleso’s retainers. More sleeping their vigil than standing it, I suppose, though some are drinking it. For some reason, no goodwife of Reedmere has volunteered to invite me into her home. So I am fallen back on the goddess’s hospitality.' Her smile was rigid.
'Oh,' said Ingrey after a moment. 'I see.'
To people who knew Boleso only as a rumor of a golden prince, she must appear... well, scarcely a heroine. Not merely a dangerous murderess in herself, but leaking a taint of treason on any who might be seen to aid her.
'Off to sleep with you, now, my lord,' the dedicat went on, standing on tiptoe to take one last look at her work and recovering her cheer. 'With that knock to the head, you should stay in bed for a day or two.'
'My duties will not permit, alas.' He gave her a stiff bow, and went off across the square to fill at least the first half of her prescription.
The divine, finished with praying over Boleso, was waiting up for him. The man wanted to talk of further ceremonies, and after that, hear news from the capital. He was anxious for the hallow king’s failing health; Ingrey, himself four days out of touch, elected to be reassuringly vague. Ingrey judged the Reedmere man an unlordly lord-divine, a sincere soul-shepherd, backbone of the rural Temple, but neither learned nor subtle. Not a man in whom to confide Lady Ijada’s current spiritual situation.
It was a small but blessedly private room on the second floor. Ingrey opened its window onto the night chill only long enough to glance at the feeble oil lamps on an iron stand in the black square below, and at the stars burning more brightly above, then crawled into one of the divine’s nightshirts laid out for him. He lowered his head gingerly to his pillow. For all his pains and churning worries, he did not lie awake long.
INGREY DREAMED OF WOLVES...
He would have thought black midnight to be the time for the rite, but his father summoned him to the castle hall in the middle of the afternoon. A cool shadowless light penetrated from the window slits that overlooked the gurgling Birchbeck sixty feet below. Good beeswax candles burned in sconces on the walls, their warm honeyed flicker mixing with the grayness.
Lord Ingalef kin Wolfcliff appeared calm, if grave with the strain that had ridden him of late, and he greeted his son with a reassuring nod and a brief, rare smile. Young Ingrey’s throat was tight with nervous excitement and fear. The Temple sorcerer, Cumril, made known to Ingrey only the night before, stood at the ready, naked but for a breechcloth, bare skin daubed about with archaic signs. The sorcerer had looked old to Ingrey then, but through his dream-eyes he saw that Cumril had actually been a young man. With the foresight of his nightmare state, Ingrey searched Cumril’s face for some intimation or mark—did he plot the betrayal to come? Or was he just in over his head—not in control, unlucky, incompetent? The worry in his shifting eyes could have betokened either—or, indeed, all.
Then young Ingrey’s gaze locked upon the animals, the beautiful, dangerous animals, and he could scarcely thereafter look away. The grizzled huntsman who handled them would die of rabies three days before Ingrey’s father.
The old wolf was huge, savage, and powerful. Muscles rippled beneath its thick gray pelt, marred with old scars and new cuts. The fur was crusted with blood in a few places. The animal was restless, whining, resistant to the huntsman’s leash. Feverish, though no one here knew that. In a few days, the foaming would have begun, revealing its sickness, but now it merely tried to lick itself in its discomfort, impeded by the leather straps muzzling
