The Hallowed Hunt

animals disturb him?'

Ingrey’s lips twitched up in a brief, unfelt smile. 'Perhaps a little. But I think mostly he’s wondering if I mean to use my new influence at court to take back his patrimony.' Islin was only a little older than Ingrey, and had inherited his seat from Ingrey’s uncle some three years past.

'Would you wish to?' Ijada asked curiously.

Ingrey’s brows bent. 'No. Too many bad memories haunt this place; they overtop my good ones and sink them. I would rather leave them all behind. Save for one.'

Ijada nodded to Lewko. 'So, saint. What does your holy sight reveal? Is Islin right? Are there no ghosts here?'

Lewko, who had been doing his accustomed imitation of a simple, humble, and nearly invisible ordinary divine since they’d arrived that afternoon, shook his head and smiled. 'In an edifice this old, large, and long occupied, it would be more a wonder if there were not a few. What do your shaman senses tell you, Ingrey?'

Ingrey lifted his head, closed his eyes, and sniffed. 'From time to time, it seems I smell an odd little dankness in the air. But at this time of year, that’s no surprise.' He opened his eyes again. 'Ijada?'

'I am too untutored to be certain, I’m afraid. Learned?'

Lewko shrugged. 'If the god will touch me tonight, any ghosts nearby will be attracted to the aura. Not by any spell of mine, you understand; it just happens. I will pray for my second sight to be shared. The gods are in your debt, Ingrey, Ijada; if only you can receive, I think They will give. Compose yourselves to quietude, and we shall see.' Lewko signed himself, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands loosely before him. He seemed to settle into himself; his lips moved, barely, on his silent prayer.

Ingrey did his best to quell all desire, will, and fear in his own mind; he wondered if just being very, very tired would be enough, instead.

At length Lewko opened his eyes again, stepped forward, and wordlessly kissed first Ijada, then Ingrey on their foreheads. His lips were cool, but Ingrey felt a strange welcome warmth flush through him. He blinked.

'Oh!' said Ijada, looking with interest around the chamber. 'Learned, is that one?' She pointed; Ingrey saw a faint pale blob floating past, circling in toward Lewko, scarcely more substantial than a puff of breath in frosty moonlight.

'Aye,' said Lewko, following her gaze. 'There is nothing to fear, mind you, though much to pity. That soul is long sundered, fading and powerless.'

To imply that Ijada, who had shared the terror and triumph at Bloodfield, might fear a ghost seemed absurd to Ingrey. His own fears lay on another level. 'Learned, could it be my father?'

'Do you sense his wolf, as you sensed the spirit animals within the others?'

'No,' Ingrey admitted.

'Then it is some other, long lost. Dying beyond death.' Lewko signed the Five at it, and it drifted back into the walls.

'Why would the god lend us this sight, if there was nothing to see?' said Ingrey. 'It makes no sense. There must be more.'

Lewko looked around the now-empty chamber. 'Let us make a little patrol around the castle, then, and see what turns up. But Ingrey—don’t hope too hard. The ghosts of Bloodfield had great spells and all the life of that dire ground to sustain them beyond their time. Lord Ingalef, I fear, had none of that.'

'He had his wolf,' said Ingrey stubbornly. 'It might have made some difference.' At his tone, Ijada’s hand found his, and squeezed; they left the chamber arm in arm, and took the opposite direction in the corridor from Lewko, the better to quarter the castle while this gift of second sight lasted.

In the bleak winter darkness the castle was cold and dank even without ghosts, but Ingrey found his night sight keener than heretofore. They paced the corridors and chambers, Ijada trailing her hand over the walls. Exiting the main keep, they circled the buildings along the inner bailey wall; in the shadows of the stable, warm with the breath and bodies of the horses, Ijada whispered, 'Look, another!'

The pale mist circled them both as if in anxiety, but then faded again.

'Was it... ?' asked Ijada.

'I think not. It was simple like the first. Let us go on.'

As they trod across the snow in the narrow courtyard, Ingrey muttered, 'I am too late. I should have come earlier.'

Ijada’s hand, gripping his forearm, gave it a little shake. 'None of that, now. You did not know. And even if you’d known, you had not yet come to your powers.'

'But it rides me to know that there might have once been a time for rescue, and it slipped through my hands. I scarcely know whether to blame myself, or my uncle, or the Temple, or the gods... '

'Blame none, then. My mother and father both died before their times. Yes, they went to their gods, which was some consolation to me, but—not enough. Never enough. Death is not a performance to rate ourselves upon, or berate ourselves upon either.'

He squeezed her hand in return and bent to kiss her hair in the moonlight.

They made their way up the inner steps of the wall and along the sentry walk to the battlement’s highest point, above the river, and paused to look out across the steep valley of the Birchbeck. The water of the stream rippled like black silk between the steel sheen of the spreading ice along its banks. The snow cover on the slopes caught the light of the westering moon in a pale blue glow, webbed with the bare tree branches like charcoal strokes, save where stands of black fir marked the rises, or clusters of holly made mystery in the dells. The bare boles of the birches blended with the snow and shadows, eluding the eye.

They stood for a time, gazing out. Ijada shivered despite her woolens, and Ingrey wrapped himself around her like a cloak. She smiled gratefully over her shoulder. You warm me just as much as I warm you, love...

For once, Ingrey sensed the revenant before Ijada, although she felt him stiffen and instantly turned her head to follow his glance. A few paces away floated a shape like mist in the moonlight, denser than the others had been, elongated, almost a man length. Within it, another shadow lurked, like smoke shrouded by fog.

Ingrey’s arms spasmed around Ijada, then released her. 'Fetch Learned Lewko, hurry!'

She nodded and sped away.

Ingrey stood silent, scarcely daring to breathe, lest this image fade or flee like the others. A head end it seemed to have, and feet, but he could not discern any features. His imagination tried to paint it with his father’s face, but a chilled realization came over him that he no longer remembered exactly what Lord Ingalef had looked like. His father’s appearance had never greatly mattered to Ingrey; it was his solid presence that had warmed, and his rumbling voice, resonating in a chest to which a child-ear pressed, that had promised safety.

The illusion of safety. I might now become a father in my turn, and I cannot give such perfect safety. It was always an illusion. Will my own children forgive me, when they find out?

Rapid footsteps scrunching through the snow and heavy breathing heralded the return of Ijada with the divine, making their way up the steep steps to this high point. Lewko paused at the top, gazing past Ingrey at the smoky revenant. 'Ingrey, is it... ?

'I... ' Ingrey started to say, I think so, but changed it to, 'Yes. I am sure of it. Learned, what should I do? I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but it has no mouth. I don’t think it can speak. I don’t even know if it can hear me.'

'I believe you’re right. The time for questions and answers seems past. You can only cleanse it, and release it. That is what a shaman does, it seems.'

'And when he’s cleansed and released, will the Father of Winter take him up? Or is he sundered beyond recall? Are there no rites you can offer to help him?'

'He had his funeral rites long ago, Ingrey. You can do what you can do, which is cleanse him; I can pray. But if it has been too long, there will not be enough of him left to assent to the god, and then not even the god can do more. It may be that all you can do is release him from this thrall.'

'To nothingness.'

'Aye.'

'Like Horseriver.' Horseriver’s hatred of irrevocable time made more sense to Ingrey now.

'Somewhat.'

'What is the use of me, if I can send four thousand stranger-souls to their proper gods, but not the four-