The Sacred Hunt Duology (51 page)

If you ever need to leave me a message, girl, leave it here.
He'd very carefully removed the knob at the right side of the headboard of his bed, and retrieved a furled paper from the hollowed-out post.
It'll catch my attention, and I'll know it's important.

She nodded, and he added,
I'll do the same for you. You can check it from time to time if you think it's necessary.
He trusted her intuition, although he'd only ever asked about it once.
Better not to know too much. But you understand that.

The knob came off the post; she set it gently on the pillow, smoothing out the wrinkles left by its weight. Pausing to listen for signs of movement in the hall outside, she held her breath. When she was certain that Duster and Carver were still occupied, she reached in and pulled out a flattened, curled up set of papers. These she put on the bed as if they were too heavy to hold; she brushed the rounded surface of the post-knob and then replaced it carefully. There was something here. He'd left her words. Her hands shook as she started to unwind the string that held them together.

“Jay?” Duster's voice nearly sent her through the roof; it was tense and strained. She shoved the papers up her loosely fitted sleeve, straightened her vest, and headed for the door. “What's the problem?” It was open.

“I was hoping you could answer that,” Old Rath said, as he stepped lightly into the room, one hand on Duster's shoulder, the other on Carver's arm. “What are you doing in my place?”

Jewel had never seen his eyes so dark or heard his voice so cold. She blinked, and his expression softened somewhat; the anger looked a little less icy.

“Came to talk to you,” Jewel said, crossing her arms carefully.

“And it was so important that you had to pick the lock instead of waiting?”

She shrugged and then hung her head a bit. “Yeah.”

His fingers were white against the dark clothing Duster and Carver wore. “And these two?”

“Look, you know the situation with the maze. I had to come here
on foot.
I don't do the thirty-fifth on my own. No one smart does.” Their eyes locked; it was Jewel who, in the end, was forced to look away.

Having won the quiet contest, Rath relaxed. “What was so important?”

“Lander's gone as well.”

Old Rath's lids were heavy as he narrowed his eyes. “When?”

“Yesterday. Early evening.”

“And?”

“We—we think he was followed into the maze. Carmenta's gang.”

“I see.” Pause. “Were you there?”

“No. Carver was.”

Rath looked down at Carver, and then at his hands. With a shrug, and a none too gentle shove, he released both of his captives to the care of their leader. “Carmenta's den is?”

“Twenty-sixth. They nest above Melissa's place, near the Corkscrew.”

“There's no maze-door near the Corkscrew.”

“You'd know,” Jewel replied. “But it doesn't matter. If they know about the maze, they'll be in it like a pack of rats. We'll lose our advantage. And you know Carmenta. Word of the maze'll hit the streets like rain in a sea storm.”

“I see.” Rath was silent for a long time.

“Rath?”

“Go home, Jewel.” She saw the smooth surface of his lids as he grimaced and closed his eyes for the briefest of moments. “I've kept out of the maze for long enough now. I'll find Lander for you. If he's injured somewhere in the maze, he'll have left some sort of trail. If there's something there . . .” He turned a dark eye on Carver. “Where did you say you entered the tunnels?”

“Fennel's old space. At the edge of the holding.”

“The warehouse?”

“Whatever. It's not used for much right now.”

“Good.” Rath stepped into the hall, and very pointedly held the door to his room open. “Ladies, gentleman. If you'd care to depart?”

“What?” Duster said, but it was barely more than a whisper.

Rath still had keen ears. He turned his head slowly, pivoting it on a perfectly still neck.
“Get lost.”

They didn't have to be told twice, and if they didn't mob the door, it was only because there were three of them, and three made a poor mob.

“Where are you going?”

“You told us to get lost,” Duster replied, hand on the knob of the closed door.

Rath sighed, and it was a weary, irritable sound. “Use the underground.”

No one moved.

“Well?”

Duster and Carver cast surreptitious glances at Jewel. It was the only time they really looked their age. Jewel, on the other hand, who mentally squared her shoulders, seemed truly adult.

“We don't use the maze,” Jewel said quietly. She couldn't have raised her voice if she'd wanted to.

“I'm not telling you to go very deeply into the maze. Jewel, don't let the events of the last two weeks turn you into a frightened child. The tunnels are the safest way through the holding. Use them.”

“No.” Very slowly, she let her arms unfold to hang loosely at her sides. “Carmenta's gang is probably wandering around all through it. I won't risk it. And I won't risk any more of my den-kin to it either.”

“Carmenta's gang doesn't know the maze.”

“They don't have to to get lucky.” Her voice was very, very bitter. “Seems like they already have.”

He stared at her for a long time, and then nodded tersely. “I'll meet you back at your den, either with Lander, or with news of him. Don't get yourself killed on the way back.”

“Thanks, Rath,” she said softly.

Duster opened the door, and she and Carver walked into the street. Only when they had crossed the threshold did Jewel follow; old habit.

She stopped with her back to the closed door for a moment, and then started walking with a crisp, measured step. Her head bobbed slightly as she nodded Duster forward.

“What was that about?” Duster said quietly, pitching her voice low, but keeping the sibilance of whisper out of it. “Carmenta hasn't come anywhere near the maze.”

Jewel nodded with a half-smile that wouldn't have fooled a madness-taken simpleton. “Carver, are we being followed?”

He shrugged. They continued to walk out of the thirty-fifth holding, and three blocks from the east border, Carver's slanted hair bobbed up and down in time to his step.

“Who?”

The tone of voice that answered said clearly,
You aren't going to believe this.
“Old Rath.”

“Kalliaris,” Jewel murmured. “Smile. Smile on us, Lady.” She continued to walk. “Duster, go home. Now. Take a route so twisted even your shadow couldn't follow you.” Duster started to speak, and Jewel motioned with the flat of her hand. “Get everyone out.”

“But—”

“
Don't argue with me.
Get everyone out! Take the iron box, and leave
everything
else. Find a place out of the holding to hunker down, and then send a message to us.
Send
it. Don't come yourself.” She met Duster's brown eyes with her own, and Duster suddenly saw that Jewel's face, so well-controlled in expression, was ashen. The den leader turned away and began to walk again. Duster followed, her step easy and confident, her expression pale as light on water.

“Where?”

“The trough. If we're not there, or you don't hear from us again, the den is yours—and it's your responsibility to keep it safe. Stay out of the maze;
never
use it again.”

“This have something to do with Old Rath?”

Jewel swallowed and nodded. “Yeah.” She bit her lip, as if biting it could hold back her words. Then she bowed her head and stared at the cobbled stone as it passed beneath her moving feet. “I don't know who it was back there, but I do know that it wasn't Rath.”

“What?”

“Rath's dead.” Her voice caught on the last word. If not for fear, she might have cried, but she had no time for sorrow. “Now go on, Duster—or we'll all end up that way as well.”

“This the Feeling?”

“Never stronger.”

Duster veered to the right and was quickly lost to sight.

“Carver?”

Carver nodded again, his jaunty, cocky movements a stark contrast to his expression. Minutes passed; Jewel almost forgot how to breathe.

Then, “He's following us.”

Kalliaris, please, smile on us. Mother, protect your children. Reymaris, give me the strength to make them pay for the loss of my kin.
She smiled and began to walk in a direction that was almost, but not quite, in the opposite direction from home.

21st Scaral, 410 A.A.

Breodanir

“W
HY DO YOU ALWAYS
come when it's dark?” Stephen held the lamp aloft; it further shadowed a face hidden by a midnight-blue hood. He spoke softly although there was no chance whatever that Gilliam would be wakened by his speech; Gil was not a light sleeper, and only when there was obvious danger—or when Stephen felt threatened—could he be roused once sleep had taken him. This was not one of those times, strange though the hour was.

“I don't know,” his visitor replied, standing in the frame of the door as if anchored there. She never crossed the threshold without permission; like some wild wood-spirit, she lingered, waiting upon an invitation to enter as if it were the incantation that would free her.

The moon was at nadir; the lamplight seemed stronger for it. Stephen let her words linger in the air a moment, trying to get a feel for her voice. Was she old, this time? Was she young? Was she a woman in her prime, with a hint of mystery and veiled power cast round her like a shield that protected her from all questions?

“Come in,” he said at last, lowering the lamp. He stepped back, granting her passage into a room that would have been silent if not for Gil's snoring.

Shadows flickered as the lamp bobbed up and down; Stephen very carefully moved two chairs closer to the fire. Wood was provided with the room, as was a servant to tend it; Stephen woke the drowsing boy and sent him on his way as kindly as possible. What the boy thought of the nocturnal visitor he was wise enough to keep to himself, but his regret at the loss of the fire's warmth was written clear across his features. It was cold, this eve; the winter had been unpleasantly chill.

She waited until the boy left, and then carefully took a seat. He watched her. Her shoulders were slightly hunched toward the floor; she placed her hands carefully in her lap, but they were stiff. He doubted it was with cold.

“Evayne?”

“I don't know,” she said again, but each word was slower and clearer. “I don't know why the others come at night.”

“And you?”

“Because that's when the mage sleeps.”

“Truly?”

She didn't reply. But she raised her hands to the edge of her hood and carefully pulled it back. In the orange light and shadow, he could see her smooth, pale skin. Her hair, raven black, was pulled away from her face and hung at her back in a knot. At least, he guessed it did; she never showed him her back. Tonight, she was young.

And when she was young, she was easy to startle, easy to upset. Startled or upset, she was like a gorse bush or a brier; painful if not handled with care. He rose, so that she could see his back, and carefully lifted a short log for the fire.

“Do you mistrust Zareth Kahn?”

“Do you mean do I have a reason to distrust him? No. It's not just him, it's any of the mage-born. I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to answer their questions. Especially not when they're members of the Order.”

He spread the leaves of the large cloth fan and began to wake embers. “I see.” He could almost understand it; Zareth Kahn was both curious and deceptively ordinary in appearance. It was easy to relax and speak plainly and companionably with him—too easy, too quickly. “Why have you come?”

Her silences, when she came to him as an older woman, were things of confidence, and of confidences kept to herself. Or so it had first appeared. But a glimpse of her younger self, of this angry, tense, and fearful young woman, made of her silences an inability to communicate, a lack of common ground. Would she speak if she thought he could understand her? He was certain of it.

At last she said, as she often did, “I don't know.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“On the road. To the land of the Twin Kings, the Empire of Essalieyan. To Averalaan, the capital.”

“Well, yes. But do you know where on the road we are?”

She shrugged. “No.” Her voice told him she thought it unimportant.

He knew that she had not always walked this strange road; that she had had a life of her own, in a village somewhere outside of Essalieyan, with friends of a sort. She could read and write, and she had learned much of this at the Mother's temple, aiding the priestess. He knew that her path was a matter of choice, a momentous choice, but a choice nonetheless. More than that—her age, the year that the village existed, the place, be it near or far—she would not tell him.

But he knew young ladies well enough, and he did not seek to fill her silence with words of his own. She wanted to be heard—even more, to be listened to—and she did not have much left over to hear or listen to others with. A half hour passed; the logs cracked and crackled as flames leaped up the grate. They sat together, Gilliam a noisy accompaniment in the background.

At last she asked, “Are you always like this?”

Stephen said nothing.

“I can't even see your face, with your back to the fire. But you might be a demon or a haunting.” She looked down at her hands, and slowly turned them round in her lap; they were bare. She wore no jewelry at all, save for a clasp at her throat, a silver brooch of some sort. As it caught the firelight's glow, it seemed to be a flower of light. “What are they like?”

“They?”

“The others. Me. When I'm older.”

“As different from you,” he replied, “as I am from my eight-year-old self.”

She smiled bitterly. “But you don't meet people who just spoke to your eight-year-old self yesterday.”

“No, I don't.” He turned and put another log very carefully into the fire. “I don't know what they're like, Evayne. If what you're asking me is are they like you, then I can't answer the question. I don't know who you are.”

“You aren't supposed to,” she replied, and again her voice was bitter.

“Oh?” He shifted to face her again. “And who made those rules?”

She was silent, and he waited, hoping that she would draw herself out of the shell of darkness that she sat in. But at length she rose. “I have to go,” she said, but almost without rancor.

He didn't ask her when she'd return; he knew by now that it was a question that she was sensitive to—as she was to all else at this age. Still, he found it disconcerting when she began to shimmer in place. She stared at her feet, at something that he couldn't see, and then she took a single step forward that carried her out of his view.

What
, he thought, as he left the room to search for the hearth boy,
made you choose this life?
He stopped, pressing two fingers to his lips, although he hadn't spoken the question aloud. There were things it was best not to ask because answers often had their price.

A chill crept into the base of his spine as he glanced up and down the narrow hall. He felt certain, quite suddenly, that he would have his answer.

• • •

Why do you always have to talk to her?

What difference does it make? You're busy enough as it is.

What in the hells is that supposed to mean?

Stephen sat on the edge of his bed, gritting his teeth. It had been a bad day, and while a bath and a good, hot meal had gone a long way to grinding down the edges it had produced, they weren't fully smoothed by any means. Gilliam, better than anyone he knew, could get under his skin and stay there.

If it weren't for the presence of Zareth Kahn, the argument would have evolved into something less wordy and more intense. As it was, Stephen's need to present
as decorous a face as possible held his hand, and Gilliam eventually retreated to the company of his dogs and the wild girl.

Where once they had panicked her, their arguments were now a thing of curiosity to the feral child. She would sit and watch, head cocked to one side, black eyes unblinking. It was cold enough that she tolerated some mix of fur and clothing, but even then, she tolerated it poorly, and was likely as not to be seen running exposed at the side of the dogs. Her parentage protected her, one assumed, from the elements.

She was happy to be with Gilliam, and followed his commands—the ones that Stephen could hear—with more grace than the dogs that had been raised to it.

Gilliam.

What is Evayne anyway, a replacement for Cynthia?

Oh, it wasn't finished yet. Evayne at that age was hardly adult—if she was adult—and he wasn't attracted to her. How could he be? He'd started to pull his slippers off his feet when he heard the knock. Tonight, there was something distinctly different about it. He stood, grabbed the lamp, and crossed the room before he drew another breath.

He opened the door, and she stood in its frame.

He knew at once that she was the woman and not the child; the mage, and not the messenger. “Come in,” he said almost meekly.

She stepped across the threshold. Lifted a hand, and sent a shower of gray and white plumes toward the window. The curtains fell with a crash, as if on a play that had come to an abrupt, and unexpected, end.

Stephen stepped back, holding the lamp in front of his chest as his only shield. He heard movement, and knew that Espere was awake; Gilliam, although affecting a snore, had roused the moment the sparks had gone flying to bring the curtains down. He could feel his Hunter's tension through their bond, as his Hunter felt his; their arguments were left to the light of another day.

Evayne turned to the fire and the frightened boy who sat, mouth agape, at its side. Her movement freed him; he grabbed an iron poker and held it like a club, while he braced his back against the wall.
“I mean you no harm,”
she said softly. The light at her hands became white, and whiter still, as the words, soothing and soft, left her lips.
“Sleep in peace; I mean you no harm; nothing will hurt you.”

The boy's lids began to drop as did the iron he held, each covering a gentle arc toward its destination. He slid down, inch by inch, until he sat, legs sprawled, on the floor. His breathing was deep and perfectly even.

Gilliam rose in that instant, but not to attack; he found his clothing in the scant light and began to put it on. “Go join the dogs,” he told the wild girl.

“No.” Evayne raised one slender hand. Command was in the single word, but no magic; Espere halted at the door and looked askance at her master. She was not uncomfortable in the presence of this sorceress; indeed, she seemed to be in high
spirits at the sight of magic, as if magic's use was familiar to her. “I've come to guide you across the river. Send the dogs ahead; no one will stop them if they do not travel with you.”

“I will not leave—”

“I cannot guarantee that any of you will survive the crossing; the dogs will most certainly not if they attempt it with us.” As she spoke, she drew something from out of the folds of her robe; Gilliam caught a glimpse of the darkness within the robe's depths, and it seemed, for a moment, endless. “Do you recognize this? No, let me tell you. It is a seer's ball. Your dogs
will
die if they follow our road.”

Gilliam met her gaze and held it. Then, grudgingly, he nodded. He closed his eyes, not because it was necessary but because it was fastest, and began to speak with his pack. They were already awake; the moment he'd known of danger, they'd felt it as well. Ashfel was standing at the kennel doors, growling quietly. He lifted his head, almost in salute, as Gilliam trance-touched him.

There was a boy asleep in the corner by the fire. Gilliam chose Connel, the smallest of the hounds, with which to approach him. Luckily, they were still in Breodanir, and the villagers that were chosen to tend the Lords' dogs were no ignorant or superstitious free-towners. The boy shook sleep from his eyes and rose as Connel tugged at his sleeve.

Salas, Marrat, Singer, and Corfel lined up by the door in a perfectly still circle. Ashfel, looking regal, growled impatiently.

“Aye, I'm hurrying,” the boy muttered. “It's easy for the lot of you to be awake—you've got the beds.” He hesitated at the kennel doors. “I'm not so sure I should let you out. What if it isn't your Lord a'calling?”

In answer, Ashfel growled again, and the six dogs turned, almost as one creature, to stare out, as if the walls did not exist. The boy shook his head again, said a quick, but very sincere prayer to the Hunter, and then opened the door. The dogs trotted out quietly into the night; Connel stopped to nudge the boy back into the warmth of the building.

Good, Connel
, Gilliam thought, as he eased himself out of his trance. If he had the chance, he would have to talk to the innkeeper about that boy. A remarkable choice of guardian; one of whom Gilliam approved wholeheartedly. “It's done,” he said quietly to the silent room.

The seeress nodded. “You are the pebble that starts the avalanche,” she said softly and with no humor. “Come. The bridge has been burned to ash, and the family that collects its tolls murdered. They are waiting for you to attempt the crossing.”

“Who are
they
?”

“Your enemies,” she replied evenly. “We will travel a different route.”

“We will—”

“Wake the mage.”

“The mage,” a new voice said, “is awake.” Zareth Kahn stood, back to the closed door that adjoined their rooms. “And has been for some minutes.” He stood in his journey robes, his arms across his chest, his gaze intent upon the newcomer. “You are Evayne?”

“We have,” Evayne replied, “no time. We
must
leave, and soon.”

“Evayne—” Stephen began, but the seer raised her hand and cut him off.

“Zareth Kahn,” she said, her voice low and tense, “the date?”

“It's the twentieth day of the tenth month,” he replied crisply.

“No,” she said, “it's now the
twenty-first
day of Scaral.” She watched his face, waiting to see the reaction that she desired. It came, but not quickly and not strongly enough.