The Sacred Hunt Duology (86 page)

“And that has something to do with you?” Lady Faergif's question was sharp.

“Oh, indeed,” the bard said, gravity coming suddenly to his features. “For it was at the Sacred Hunt that I first met Lord Elseth and Stephen; I joined the drummers for the Hunt's start, and I sang the Hunt's close.” He bowed then, very low, to Lord Elseth, and Gilliam, stony-faced, returned the bow.

“You sang the Hunt's—” Her words trailed off, for she knew which Hunt it was, then, and what the significance was to both Lord Elseth and his huntbrother. For it was not a custom of the Breodani to have bardic song at any time during the Sacred Hunt, and on only one occasion could Lady Faergif remember reports of such an occurrence. A young bard, of Senniel College no less, sang the death lay of Averalaan for a fallen Hunter. Kallandras. She rose stiffly.

“Lord Elseth, Stephen.” She bowed. “We hope that you will be able to attend court again before the day of your departure.”

“As do we,” Stephen replied. He frowned slightly. “But that must be before the half-month of Corvil, if we are to return to the King's City for the Hunt.”

“We will look for you, and we will keep our ears open. What we hear, we will pass on. We expect,” she added severely, “that you will do no less.”

“Lady,” Stephen said, nodding. He bowed once more, and she accepted it with
good grace and a touch of melancholy. And then, Lady Faergif and Lady Morganson departed the garden; Stephen, Gilliam, and Espere turned to face Kallandras.

It was silent. The strains of calm and quiet music disappeared as the bard's long fingers came to rest against the strings.

Only then did Stephen realize how pale he was, how fatigued; his eyes were lined and darkened, and his shoulders slightly bent. All youth fled, running down his face as if it were water. What remained was haggard and almost fearful. He took a step, and then another. The ledge of the fountain provided support as he gently set his lute in his lap.

“Hello, wild one,” he said, and although his voice was quiet, there was an intensity to his gaze that was more frightening than any shout or cry would have been. “I have need of your aid.”

Gilliam was at her side, and slightly forward, before the last words had died into stillness. His hackles were up, and his teeth on edge; his whole body was taut. “What do you mean?” he asked softly, his words no less intense than the bard's.

The bard's pale brow rose as he glanced from the wild girl—the dressed and combed and bathed wild girl—to Gilliam. His own gaze was cold and measured; there was no violence in it, but there was no fear at all of any violence that Gilliam might offer. “I have met the wild one before,” was his grave reply. “We traveled together for a short while.”

The answer seemed to dull the edge of Gilliam's ire, but Stephen knew that that was not the case. Gilliam felt threatened by a past that he did not know of and did not understand. Because, of course, he owned Espere, even if that was not a word he would acknowledge.

“I have need of her company again,” Kallandras continued, when Gilliam said nothing. “I need her to lead me to the darkness.”

D
ARKNESS.

The word hit Stephen like a long, thin needle; he was unaware of how much it bothered him until the damage it caused welled up in the silence and began to spread. This Kallandras was not the Kallandras that he had met in his youth, or rather, he was not the bard. He was the man, glimpsed only for a second, who had forced Stephen to run from the sight of a would-be assassin with a voice that could not be denied.

“Did she send you?” The words sounded tinny as he spoke them.

“Yes.” A long pause, as if the word had been weighed and found wanting. “And no.” He lifted his lute and began to strum it absently. His fingers slowly relaxed against the strings, playing a tune as if the act of playing, and not the music that came from it, was necessary. “We cannot speak here.”

“No.” Stephen cleared his throat. “But we cannot leave.” He felt Gilliam like a pressure at the back of his thoughts. Sighed. “Kallandras, where did you meet the wild girl? Why do you think she can—she can lead you to what you seek?”

“Where?” The bard's eyes were distant, almost colorless. “I met her in Averalaan.
She
brought her to me, or brought me to her. It was long ago, and not far enough away.” Then he shook himself, and seemed, for an instant, to have his old edge, his old clarity. “Lord Elseth, your pardon. I was given something that I have kept for some years; it is yours, although I did not know it until a few days ago.”

“What?” The word was curt and short.

Kallandras continued to play, filling the silence with peace rather than responding to Gilliam's one-sided rivalry. But he did not answer directly. Instead, as any Breodanir Lady would do in the face of such poor behavior, he turned to the huntbrother, showing no signs of concern or even irritation at Gilliam's brusqueness.

“I would like to speak with you at the earliest hour of your convenience. If you will permit, I will visit you in your quarters.”

The hair on Stephen's arms stood on end; he felt the lightning before its strike, although the occasional clouds tossed briskly above were not storm carriers. He
wanted to speak with Kallandras, for the bard knew much, and Stephen's curiosity was keen, almost painful. But at the same moment, he wanted to shy away, to somehow avoid the conversation to come. He glanced at the wild girl, and she at Kallandras; there was a tension in the air, and they were the four corners of it, pulling at each other invisibly with their desires and their fears.

And then Stephen realized that the bard was singing, and he knew why he thought of storms; Kallandras' words were like thunder over the chords of the lute, for all that his voice was soft and well-modulated.

“
Before the wars that won the land
,

before the time that birth renewed
,

before the measure of the Twins was taken and found true,

There rose above the dark'ning sky,

a spire grim and glorious high,

that many saw and many fled and those survived were few.

The Shining Lords, they called themselves

And light was on their comely brows,

Who lived within the darken shroud that lay upon the land

And in the name of light unholy

Serving Lords of evil glory

The Shining City lit a pyre 'pon which the very Gods might stand.
”

There was no sound in the small garden, if it was not Kallandras' voice.

“You are bold as always, Kallandras.”

“And you are stealthy,” the bard replied as the song left his lips. “Master APhaniel.”

“Why sing you so dark a lay?” The mage-born master was tall and slender, and Stephen saw him as if he had never seen him before. There was a shadow about him, and a silence that held the hush before an ambush. He wore his usual robes, and they glittered in the hide-and-seek of sun and cloud. He carried his pipe, and its smoke wended its way into the garden's air, scenting it with a mildly bitter, burning herb. His hair was long and drawn back in a braid that nearly reached his feet; his free hand, fine and slender, was clenched, fistlike, against his chest.

“Dark?” Kallandras replied, and his fingers touched strings again, quickly and lightly filling the air with melody and counterpoint. “Your pardon. It is an old lay, and only the very young or the very old require it of us. It is merely myth and legend, Master APhaniel.”

The mage's smile was grim indeed as he bowed his head. “Mere, is it?” he said softly, as his slate-gray eyes met Kallandras'. “But then again, who among us would not lend credence to the most scurrilous of lies if it were carried by your voice?”

Even his voice sounded strange to Stephen's ears, richer and deeper than it
usually did; not a match for Kallandras' bard-born tones, but a counterpoint to it, with a strength of its own. One of the most powerful of the mage-born members of the Order seemed suddenly out of place in this court of the highest nobility in Essalieyan.

And where was his place? The small, isolated tower room of the Order of Knowledge? The crowded, argumentative gathering hall of the Council of the Magi? As if he could hear Stephen's musings, Meralonne turned his head slowly, leveling his eyes as if they were readied weapons.

Espere growled, and Gilliam came to stand at Stephen's side; Stephen wasn't even certain if Gilliam's maneuvering was conscious. There was something between Kallandras and the mage, and something about Kallandras and the mage, that set them apart from not only the court, the city and the land, but from her people.

At last, Meralonne turned to Kallandras. “You are a fine bard, but still a young one. Be careful of what you invoke.” He lifted his pipe.

Kallandras smiled, and the smile was flawless, but it did not touch his eyes. He swept into a low—an exaggerated—bow and then began to sing again.

“Earth and air; fire and water

long before the Mother's daughter

graced the land with turning season

gave to us the Gods of reason

Wild the ways, and wild the wise

before the dawn of mortal's rise

Who could hold the captive spark

of four, interred, against the dark?

'Twas Myrddion of fatal flower

working to the foreseen hour

Who captured each in stone and ring

Who forced the elements to bring

Their power and their ancient guise

To fools, heroes, and the wise

And then in darkness sowed the seed

in blood and death, for greatest need

But whose the hand that taught the mage?

Which the wise and wildcraft sage

steeped in lore of ancient choice;

the light and dark and First-born voice?”

“More of your children's lyrics? Kallandras, if you continue, you will bore us all.” Meralonne blew rings of smoke into the air. Watching him, Stephen was
reminded of his own childhood stories. And in them, boredom was not the threatened end.

“Perhaps,” was the quiet reply. “And perhaps not. Shall I continue, Master APhaniel?”

The sage was quiet. “Continue?”

“Ah. Yes, continue.” He turned to Stephen and Gilliam, speaking to them, and yet pitching his words so that the mage might clearly hear them. “You see, what I have sung so far is what the children sing in their drawing of the quarters in the streets of the city. It is a game they play, and if they cross the lines that they have quartered—or rather, touch them—they must ‘dare or die.'

“But they know only a fragment, and at that, a small one. Do you have the time to listen? For I am certain—”

“Enough, Kallandras.”

Kallandras smiled, and the smile itself was fey and troubled. “Enough? But I—” He stumbled suddenly; his hands gripped the lute and pulled it close to protect it. The fabric of vest and shirt stilled the song and silenced it as the bard slid to the ground.

Stephen was at his side in an instant. “Gill—go at once—send for a healer.”

“Send for a physician,” Meralonne said, overlaying it with the tone of command. “In Averalaan, healer means one healer-born, and there are few of those.” He set his pipe on the stone beside the fountain.

Gilliam hesitated for only a second, and then he was gone—but Espere remained at Stephen's side, growling fiercely.

Stephen raised a hand in warning as the mage approached. “Stay where you are.” He touched Kallandras' pale, sweaty brow—no fever. As he listened, as breath struggled in and out of the bard's slack jaw, a word escaped him, a single word.

“I will not harm him,” Meralonne said, almost wry in his inflection. “It is not due to me that he has fallen.”

Stephen looked up as the mage spoke; he caught the bard's shoulders and pulled him into his lap, raising his head above the flat flagstones. “What is
niscea
?”

Meralonne's eyes narrowed as he studied the lines of Kallandras' still face. At last, after some thought, he spoke, and his words were measured. “
Niscea
, also known as seablossom, is a blend of herbs, mushrooms, and saps. In strong doses, it is death.”

Stephen paled. “Poison,” he said softly.

“In weak doses, it is a fool's pleasure,” the mage continued, his expression remote, almost calculating. “But Kallandras has rarely been called a fool.”

• • •

There were physicians within the court of the Queen, but there was also a healer—in the Essalieyanese use of the word. He was a much younger man than Alowan,
The Terafin's healer, but he had about him a quiet and a calm that was uncannily like the older man's. His hair was pale and long, but it hung at his back in a practical braid that was otherwise not seen at court.

At his insistence, Kallandras was taken to the healerie. Twice, the bard stirred, and twice he struggled; his movements were sharp and hard, even dangerous. The healer had him strapped into a pallet before he was lifted and moved, but even so, he was not easy until Kallandras was safely within the healerie's confines.

And the healerie of the Queen's court was not at all like Alowan's healerie; it was a much more practical place—a long, rectangular room, with beds against the wall that faced the windows and the balcony. The beds themselves were as fine as the one in which Stephen slept, but they were legless and rested against the flat, smooth stone of the floor. There were cupboards and bed boxes which held needed supplies, and there were two young men who served the healer, attending his commands and words.

It was from their gentle and unobtrusive questions that Stephen learned the healer's name: He was Dantallon.

Master APhaniel did not love the healer, or so it seemed; he kept a great distance from the young man at work, although it was clear that that work interested him. But it was the mage who told Dantallon about
niscea.

The word caused the healer's face to cloud. “Are you certain of this?”

“I? No. But the young diplomat may well be; it was he who overheard it. He does not understand its significance.”

At that, the healer turned his intent gaze. “Your pardon,” he said. “But I must ask you to confirm what the member of the Order states.”

Stephen swallowed and nodded, wondering if by doing so he was condemning the bard to whom he owed his life. He started to speak, when Kallandras spoke instead.

The words were not Essalieyanese; nor were they of the Breodani. It was clear that the healer could not understand them either, but he did not need to; the pain in them was obvious, and the wildness beneath them frightening.

One of the restraining buckles snapped as the bard drove his shoulder through it.

“Mother's blood.” The straps were a thick, cured leather, harder than court shoes, softer than armor; they were meant to hold a man twice Kallandras' size and strength during seizures or fits. From the paling of Dantallon's face, Stephen guessed that one had never been broken, until now. They froze, staring at Kallandras until the second strap snapped.

“Cadrey! Lorrison! Grab his legs—I'll take his arms!”

Stephen stepped in to help, as did Gilliam.

“Stop.”
Meralonne's voice was quiet compared to the healer's shouts—but it carried, filling the hollows of the room completely with its command. “Back away. Do not touch him.”

Dantallon gave the mage a withering glare—but to Stephen's surprise, he followed the command; they all did.

Kallandras snapped the last restraint, and rolled out of the bed; his feet touched the floor first, and then the tips of his fingers. His hand touched his thigh, his arm, his waist, and then his eyes narrowed. He looked up. Sweat matted his curls to the side of his face; his eyes were wide.

“Evayne,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He took a step forward, reaching into the folds of his vest. His hand came out empty.

“Cadrey,” Dantallon said softly. “Call the Kings' Swords.”

“Sir,” was Cadrey's taut reply. He was closest to the door, and lingered a moment on the threshold, as if afraid to leave his master behind.

“Cadrey!”

He did not, however, wait to be told a third time. The heavy tread of his steps could be heard rapidly diminishing in the hall. Once he had chosen to move, he moved quickly.

“Dantallon, your leave?”

Dantallon stared intently at his patient. Kallandras took a step forward, his eyes focused on something that no one else in the room could see. The bard pivoted neatly and then cried out in pain, clutching his ears, the side of his face, his hair. His knees folded like stiff cloth as he crumpled to the floor. He should have made noise as he struck the ground, but he was silent.