The Sacred Hunt Duology (47 page)

Evayne watched him go.

Why
, she thought to herself, for she was very, very weary,
can you never choose someone I can hate?

There was no answer, of course, and she expected none as she followed Stephen's awkward gait. But she prayed as she walked, that he would be the last.

She knew that this, too, would not be answered.

E
VAYNE DID NOT DISAPPEAR
with the troubled dreams of the short night. By the time that dawn had cleared the remnants of darkness from the sky, she was awake and waiting.

Or so it appeared to Stephen of Elseth, as he entered the long hall that served as both study and library to the wing of the building that only the mages were called to. He saw her by the large arch of a window, as the sun streamed in through pale yellow panes of thick, perfect glass. She stood, facing out into the gardens, positioned beneath the peak of the window's height. The sun cast her shadow in a thin dark line against the empty tables at her back.

“That's her?” Gilliam said quietly, catching Stephen's attention.

“Yes.”

“She doesn't look the same as she did when she saved us from the demon-kin.”

“No,” Stephen replied, as he began to move again. Still, it comforted him to hear it—because until Gilliam had spoken those words, in this place, he had not remembered it. A shadow lifted, perhaps a hint of the doubt that Stephen had not even felt strongly enough to place into words. “Sit still, Gil.”

But Gilliam, not used to this odd contraption of a chair and wheels, could not. The girl who walked on his other side suddenly reached down and butted her head into his shoulder playfully.

“And keep your arms away from your sides.”

“Yes, Priestess,” Gilliam replied smartly. He cursed when Stephen whacked him suddenly on the top of the head. “Stephen,” he began, as he grabbed the girl's arm before she could retaliate on his behalf.

“Gilliam,” his huntbrother countered. “This is not the time or place. We've come to speak with—”

“Me.” And the dark-robed figure at the windows turned.

She was hard to look at; the sun at her back made a shadow of her, a figure of darkness. Stephen could make out the outline of her chin and brow; he could see the light pass through stray strands of her hair, so he knew her hood was back and at her shoulders. But her hands were at her sides, and she was so perfectly still she
could almost have been a dark statue, an ornament in a library for scholars and students, to be remarked upon and then forgotten as part of the daily surroundings.

“I am here,” she said quietly, “and I have much to tell you both.” She stepped into the room, away from the frame of blinding light that kept her obscured. “Shall we start?” She lifted a hand and curved her fingers gently in summons.

“We should wait for Lady Elseth and Zareth Kahn,” Stephen replied, rolling Gilliam, with a grunt, over the edge of the carpet. “The Priestess will be here, too, I think. She's been tending Gilliam, but says she hasn't recovered enough to finish until this eve.”

Evayne continued to walk toward them, and as Stephen's eyes grew used to the normal light of the room, he froze. For although her face was familiar, she was not the same woman who he had tried to comfort the evening before.

No, her chin was harsher, more defined, and her brow was lined; her eyes, although still violet, were lined as well. She walked, and carried herself, as Lady Elseth did, and would do in the future—as a woman who wears age and wisdom as tokens of power.

He recovered quickly, although the words did not return as easily as they might have. Instead, he busied himself, arranging Gilliam's chair at Evayne's dark side.

“None of your companions will arrive,” this Evayne replied, with just a hint of bitter amusement to turn her lips at the corners.

“None?” It was said quickly; harshly. Stephen frowned as he met Evayne's eyes directly for the first time that day.

“No, Stephen of Elseth,” she said, dropping her smile and her voice, “but not because I have magicked them or caused them any harm.”

He had the grace to blush, and she, to look away.

“Go,” she said, “and look outside for only a moment. You will understand, then, as much as I can explain to you. Do not ask me questions about what you see, Stephen. Even if I wished it, I could not answer them.”

Reluctantly, he let go of Gilliam's strange chair and turned to the window that towered above him, stretching for the ceiling and the sky. The girl, as ever, stayed at Gilliam's side; Stephen might not have left his Lord otherwise. But whatever it was that Evayne thought he might see escaped his notice, and he almost turned away in disappointment.

The sky was blue and lightly clouded. The grass was perfectly cut, and rolled into distinct, velvet flatness—even around the base of the trees that topped the building's height by many, many feet. Flowers, in precise rows, grew against the base of the walls, gates, and walkways. Small animals, with more temerity than wit, ran across the green, and birds of all sizes cut across the air between ground, tree, and fountain.

And then he knew what the subtle strangeness was; knew why Evayne thought that none, after he and Gilliam, would arrive. One of those birds was frozen in the air, iridescent wings stretched wide, feet forming an outward strut inches away from the nearest fountain's ledge. It did not land; it did not move. As he shifted his focus, he saw that nothing did.

Not even breeze disturbed the Order's garden.

He turned slowly to face her and noted that she did not squint into the sunlight. But her face, with sun to light it, was still as pale as it had been last night, her eyes still as brilliant.

“I . . . understand.” He bowed.

“Good. Explain it to me,” Gilliam said. He shifted in the chair, winced, and settled back into his former position.

“I think—I think that time doesn't turn outside.”

“Very good, Stephen. But within this room, it does, and we have little of it. This is costly, even if necessary, and I cannot hold it long; the world here is already too hectic and too busy.”

He wanted to ask her why she needed to perform this magic, if magic it was, at all. Why not just speak with Zareth Kahn and Lady Elseth and the Mother's Priestess? He did not ask; her glance strayed.

“Hello, wild one,” Evayne said quietly. She held out one hand, and after a moment, the wild girl—Gilliam's only packmate in residence—stepped forward almost timidly. “You found them, I see.” Although the girl wore a simple shift—one loose enough not to be immediately discarded—she was hardly decent. Evayne, if she noted this at all, did not remark upon it.

The girl opened her mouth in a whine and bark.

“You are well. Don't worry; we will not fail.”

“You—you know her?”

Evayne nodded. “I do now.” She turned away from the girl. “And I know you, Stephen, quite well. I apologize if I confused you last night. It was—the first time I'd met you, and I am not good at first meetings, even though many years have passed.” She raised a hand, looked at it carefully, and then let it drop.

“Years?”

“It hasn't been years yet, has it?” she said, almost to herself. “No, never mind it. As I said, I cannot hold us above Time forever; already I tire.”

“Who are you?” Stephen asked softly.

“Evayne.”

Exasperated, he opened his mouth; she raised a hand and gently swatted his words away, as if they were insects.

“You said, last night, that you would answer our questions,” he said, undeterred by her cool gesture. His arms, clothed in the velvet that told his station, he crossed against his chest. Gilliam recognized the look on Stephen's face.

“I was young then, Stephen. If you prefer to think so, call me liar. But I am not what I was, and I cannot answer the questions that I know you will ask.”

“Time?” he asked, but it was almost a sneer, he was so frustrated.

Her face lost the last of its warmth, and there had been little enough of it. “Would you become as I, Stephen of Elseth?” Her shoulders fell back, and her chin, proud and harsh, came up. “Would you walk a separate path, a separate time, from any other?”

He didn't understand the question.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “you will wake and your Hunter will wake; you will go and breakfast and speak of the things that concern you, the worries you share.

“Next year, you will marry the woman you choose—should you choose—and you will eventually father children. You will watch them grow, and you will love them as you are able, regardless of how they change. You will understand them because you will have had the time to share, the time to form the bond.

“Tomorrow,” her voice grew cooler, but softer, and her eyes became eerie in their remoteness, “I will wake to the clamor of war on a distant plain. People that I have not yet met will die there—and perhaps ten years from now I will have seen enough of them to mourn their passing in some human fashion.

“For I have walked away from Time's path, and forged a path of my own. None can walk it, Stephen; none can follow it with me.

“If you ask me questions, perhaps I will prove too weak to turn them aside, and you may find yourself above Time's path—and quite alone.”

He did not doubt the threat, but doubted the weakness; in her voice there was ice, and that ice was not brittle.

“I'm sorry,” she said suddenly, although she did not sound at all contrite. “There is no time. Let me tell you what I must. Come, child, sit—either at my feet or at your master's. Do not distract him until I have finished.”

The wild girl tilted a head until her ear was almost level with her shoulder. Then she nodded, which looked even more peculiar, and folded up into a quiet little ball at Gilliam's feet.

Without further preamble, Evayne said, “You must leave Breodanir and travel to Essalieyan.”

Gilliam's eyes narrowed.

“Essalieyan is the heart of the world,” Evayne continued, serene now. “In it, there is much knowledge, much that is old, much that is wise or powerful. It is there you must find what you seek.”

“What do we ‘seek'? Why in the Hells would we travel to Essalieyan?” To say that Gilliam growled would have been inaccurate, but he did convey the sense of a growl by the curl of his lip and the lowering of his head.

“Because in Essalieyan, Lord Elseth, you will find a cure for the ailments of your companion.”

Involuntarily, Gilliam looked down at the brown—and for the moment, untangled—hair of the wild girl. He had not yet named her, and although he felt, no, knew her to be of his pack, he could not bring himself to do so. He reached down and stroked her fine hair. Answers. Essalieyan.

Prejudice—for no one from Breodanir could ever forget the damage done by foreign nonbelievers—hope, and fear struggled within him. It was Stephen who spoke next, and he spoke to break the silence, after contemplating her directive.

“Lady, you ask much without explanation.”

“Yes,” she said, bowing her head. Her brow wrinkled; she massaged it gently with her fingertips. “Stephen, you will be free from your wyrd only in Essalieyan. The demon-kin will hunt you, and only in Essalieyan is there any hope of refuge.”

“Why will they hunt me? What do they seek?”

Silence answered him, silence and the remote chill of her expression. She watched his face; he felt her eyes, unblinking, scrape across his brow. His skin tingled as if he had endured a great cold before entering warmth.
Essalieyan.
It was a whisper of a word, a youthful dream, a story. He looked down and met Gilliam's eyes. Gilliam nodded. “Evayne, Lady, what you offer us, we accept. We will travel, if possible, to Essalieyan. Shall we venture to the capital, Averalaan?”

“Yes,” she answered softly. Then, her eyes narrowed as if the light from the window had grown too intense. “But you must leave at once.”

“At once? Impossible.”

“Is it so?”

Stephen looked away. He had known, somehow, that she would ask them to leave immediately; he had his answer prepared. “We cannot make the trek and be guaranteed to return in time for the Sacred Hunt; it's a journey of two or three months. We will have to wait until the Hunt is called before we take our leave, or we lose our lands, our titles, and our people.”

“If you wait for the Hunt,” Evayne said, turning her back upon him, “you doom Breodanir.”

Silence reigned in the wake of her words. The words themselves seemed to reverberate with a life of their own; they had a truth to them that Evayne was conduit for, no more.

“Will you go? I cannot travel with you,” she added, a little bitterly, “but I will see you on the road, and in the city itself.”

Stephen looked back at his Hunter.

Gilliam was silent, almost brooding. For it was Gilliam who held the title and the lands that were forfeit if they did not return in time to Hunt at the King's—and the God's—call. “Could we make it?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

“If traveling conditions are good; if there are no bandits and no problems in the free towns; if the mountain pass is not heavy with snow—don't forget, it's late enough in the season. That would leave us with scant weeks, maybe two in total,
in the city of the Twin Kings before we had to retreat. And once again, we depend on perfect conditions of travel if we are to return to the King's City and the Sacred Hunt.”

“And how long will this thing take?” Gilliam said speaking directly to Evayne's dark back. She turned slowly, glancing over her shoulder, showing the perfect profile of her face.

“I do not know.”

“And what exactly must we do?” Gilliam said, bringing his hands down hard on the armrests of his chair.

“I am not certain; I can't see it clearly.”

“That's what I thought.” He was silent again. Almost brooding. Stephen felt his Hunter's anger and his fear, his hope and his unease, as they braided themselves around the bond that he and Gilliam shared. And then, almost at once, they went slack as Gil raised his head, and his voice, again.

“Evayne.”

“Yes?”

“What is her name?”

The question was unexpected, even to Evayne, who stared a moment in confusion before she realized who Gilliam was speaking of. Then a smile shadowed her face for the briefest of instants. “Her name is Espere.”