The Sacred Hunt Duology (98 page)

Jewel
, The Terafin thought, as Morretz dropped to one knee and raised the sword like a priest offering the sacraments,
let your sight be true; I am committed.
She lifted the sheath, and with deliberate care, girded it fast. There it shone like a promise; it was the soul of Terafin, and she, as The Terafin, was given the right and the privilege of wielding it. But never in vain, and never with vanity.

The hilt of the sword was remarkably cool beneath her steady palm. “It is time. Let us repair below.”

• • •

Alowan hated the night, although he would never have thought it could be so in his youth. The night held stars and the hidden wonders of love and desire; it held the stillness of the sea, the voices of the insects, the silence of a city that was always too noisy, too busy. But it was never for these that he was awakened, and never for these that he held the vigil of the healer in the tense silence of the healerie.

No; if anyone had the temerity to waken him in the dead of night—with no patient that needed immediate attention—it was The Terafin, and it was not her intent that he witness the beauty of the shadows. It was the carnage that she asked him to wait upon. There was battle in the air.

Who is it?
he thought, momentarily angered.
The House wars ended a decade ago; who dares to renew them?

The physicians were also awake, and they busied themselves with the beds in the alcoves, adding stretchers and floormats where there was space for them; it destroyed the carefully designed illusion of privacy and quiet, but Alowan was enough of a healer not to resent their eminently practical choice. His personal assistants were laying out bandages and shears as well as the herbal remedies that would kill the infections that started in gut wounds. No one spoke, and he hated the silence.

Who dares
, he thought again,
to attack the House itself?
For of a certainty, the Kings would notice—could not help but notice—and where there was such a war, they could
not
turn a blind eye and leave the Houses to deal with their own. Oh, it would damage Terafin, there was no question of it.

But he didn't give a damn about the House and its politics. It was the ravaged flesh of the individuals that worried him, and that would do more than that by the dawn.

• • •

Claris, bruised but otherwise whole, was shifting his weight from left to right foot so rapidly it seemed a sort of dance. His red hair was cropped short and all except a shock of curl was hidden by the helm that he clearly didn't like. That helm topped Arann by a good six inches, and Arann had never been small.

“What do you think's going to happen?” Claris whispered. “Why do you think all the guard's been mobilized?”

Arann shrugged, wishing that Claris could shut up for five minutes in a row. Holloran, the sergeant on duty, glowered in their direction; he was not with them, but rather, with one of the Chosen. Receiving orders, no doubt.

“It's got to be something big,” Claris continued, as Arann tried to shrink into the fancy boots that went with his armor and his uniform. Holloran was well-named, and Arann was afraid that they were both going to get the lash of Holloran's careful scorn. Again.

He was almost right. Holloran crossed the tiled floors, his step firm and completely regular. He stopped five feet from Arann's chest as both he and Claris attempted to look reasonably watchful. They weren't very good at it, especially when compared to their eight companions, who fell into the attentive pose immediately, and awaited the word of their commanding officer.

“Cartan, Morris,” Holloran said, looking distinctly un-amused, “I'm this close to suspending you for the action. You are here to
watch
and
listen
—and if necessary, to fight—not to jabber like dress-servants off-duty. Is that understood?”

“Sir!”

“Good.” But the answer didn't appear to entirely satisfy him; he stared for a long, uncomfortable moment at Arann before he spoke again. “Cartan.”

“Sir?”

“You didn't come to Terafin on your own, did you?”

A brief hesitation.

“Just answer the question; when I want you to think, I'll tell you.”

“No, sir.”

“I see. And the person or persons that you traveled with also remain within the grounds of Terafin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What can you tell me about your . . . leader?”

He felt ten pairs of eyes on his face, burning a deep blush into the sides of either cheek. The silence stretched out, and this time Holloran didn't deny him the time. “What—what do you want to know?”

But Holloran shook his head in mild disapproval. “You've told me most of what the guard needs to know,” he said, the words sounding very like a threat—although almost every word he spoke did. “Tell me this, then. Can we trust her?”

“Yes.”

“You have no doubt?”

“None, sir. If she—if she's the one that says something's happening, then that's the way it is.”

“Good. Because it doesn't appear that we have any choice.” He turned to his small troop. “Deploy,” he said softly. “Sound the alarm at the first sign of any unusual movement.” He stepped back, lowered his arm, and watched as his men—eight of them, at any rate—smoothly shifted position.

• • •

Battle was in the air, carried by the sea wind and the ghosts of old memories; a hint of Southern fires, a hint of the Western borders. The Terafin made her way down the staircase of the giants, leading her Chosen. She was diminutive in her armor, but the shield and the sword that she bore were unmistakable, and even the servants, rushing in haste and fear from one corridor to another, stopped to gape as she passed them, the very ire of a grand House made real.

She made her way through the ivory hall into the grand foyer, and there she stopped, waiting. She did not wait for long.

Alayra, wearing steel and sweat in what seemed equal quantities, brushed her chest plate with her fist and then lifted her chin. “Terafin.”

“Report.”

“There are men in the west garden, near the House shrine.”

“Ours?”

“No,” was the grave reply.

“And?”

“And down the road, perhaps half a mile, there's a large procession moving toward us. It may be coincidence, but they carry torches and not lamps, and the light cast is glinting off steel.”

• • •

The great hall was on fire, had been on fire; unnatural flames had cracked the stone floors as if they were timber, leaving splinters for the unwary foot. He was bleeding; the flying shards had struck his forehead, his arms, his hands.

His hands.

He looked down, and he saw that beneath the sticky film of drying blood, they were wrong; they were a boy's hands, a youth's hands. The hands, he thought, of an oathsworn huntbrother untested by the King's Forest. The Sacred Hunt.

He knew who he was.

Stephen of Elseth.

And tomorrow, tomorrow was the first of Veral.

Tomorrow, the drummers would beat their steady rhythm against the skins of previous years' kills. Tomorrow, the King would take to the forest's edge, divesting himself of all rank but the one that the Hunter knew: Master of the Game. Tomorrow, the Ladies would gather, in their brilliant dresses, their perfect sashes, paying obeisance to their Queen—and to the men who fulfilled their oaths.

The Hunter's Death was waiting.

He heard the screaming; the splintering of wood—or stone—the cries cut short, and worse, the cries that lingered. They were coming. They always came.

Shadows flooded the great hall; the wall shattered. In the ragged hole that broken stone and mortar made, she stood. Hair of midnight, eyes darker, bruised lips. At her back were men, women—Priests of the God that no one gave name to.

Allasakar.

He ran.

Three times he had made this trek. This fourth time, he thought it should somehow be different. But the narrow, perfect halls became shadow forms at his back; fire brushed his ankles as he turned corners; lamps doused themselves in the wake of his passing. Pain became his only companion; his side cramped, and he clutched it, knowing there would be no relief. How could he stop?

She laughed. Her voice was velvet, desire, death. He thought, a moment, that he might stop and just accept the death that she offered—the fear was that strong, and the weariness. But his oaths were his oaths. His feet beat a path across the cold stone while his mind numbed.

He knew the way, although the building itself was less than a memory to the Breodani. Had there been no torchlight, no blue light, had there been shadows and darkness not just at his back, but all around, he would still have known how to reach it.

The Hunter's Haven.

There, the door; light gleaming beneath it. He reached for the curved handle, but before he could touch it, the hinges creaked. The door swung open.

There, spear in hand, dog at his side, was Gilliam. But not Gilliam the page; it was Gilliam the Hunter.

“Stephen!” he said, his face folding into familiar lines of both danger and relief. “You made it! Get behind me. We'll take care of her.”

He was so exhausted. So relieved. The giddiness made his last steps light as he crossed the threshold and stood behind the man that he had followed for almost all his life. He felt liquid coursing down his cheeks; he thought, in confusion, that the wound across his brow had opened up again. But no. Tears fell, the first of the tears he had yet cried in this history, this dream, this place.

He stepped back as the darkness reached the mouth of the Hunter's Haven. His back hit something; he turned, and saw the Hunter's relics laid out as they had always been laid out; but they were all gray and lifeless. Save one. The Hunter's Horn was a soft, warm ivory, with a simple mouthpiece. Carved in a continuous turning line, the symbol of a vow that not even death could end.

No. He would not take it. He would not take it here.

He looked at the reassuring sight of his Hunter's back.
Felt
, for the first time in this terrible, Wyrd-ridden place, the bond between them. Looked down at his
hands, and saw that they were the hands of his adulthood, and not the hands of his youth.

And then he looked at the dog, wondering; it wasn't Ashfel, but it was familiar somehow. The proud alaunt turned, swiveling its black-masked face toward him. He lost breath then, and heart.

Corwel.

• • •

“Stephen.”

The voice carried darkness, was part of the darkness; there were no lights in the room that he could see by. No, not no light; there was a silver glow, fainter than distant starlight, that took form and shape as his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom—a glow around the form of a young woman.

Evayne.

The cry died in his throat as he glanced wildly about the room's darkened walls. The dream was gone. But she was here. She
was
here.

Stephen sat up in bed, tossing aside both sleep and blankets that were there more for comfort than warmth. He had guttered the lamp's flame, and there was no fire in the hearth; still he squinted into shadows, trying to discern her age. Her breath was rough and heavy, as if some physical exertion had only just ended. Running, perhaps.

“Stephen?” That she called a second time told him she was younger.

“Evayne,” he said softly.

He heard her sigh of relief; it was loud. “You've got to get up,” she said, the words beginning a headlong rush out of her mouth. “You've got to wake Gilliam.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they're coming for you.”

He stood, and after a moment, there was light in the room, harsh compared to shadow, but weak compared to day. Stephen lifted the lamp aloft to better see Evayne's expression. Midnight blue framed her face; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wider than they'd ever been. And there was no line or wrinkle at all across the smoothness of her skin; she was fair and pale, and her hair was perfect darkness. Only her eyes themselves—not the lids of the skin around them—were unchanged by her youth.

The door opened; Espere crossed the threshold. She saw Evayne, and came up short. The younger woman smiled, but fleetingly. “Wild one,” she said softly. “I think it time to rouse your master. We must flee.”

Stephen touched her shoulder gently, where he might have grabbed the arm of any other speaker. “Evayne,
who
is coming for us?” He asked because he did not want to know, to acknowledge the fact that he
did
know.

“I—I don't know,” she whispered. “I don't know who they are. But they're
coming to Terafin; I heard them speak. They're looking for you here.” She turned fully to face him. “Stephen, please. Trust me.”

She was young, was Evayne. Her lip trembled as she made her plea. The older woman would never descend to such behavior—because the older woman had lost all sense of vulnerability in her isolation. “We'll trust you,” he heard himself saying as he left his room to rouse the Hunter who was already waking. “You haven't led us poorly yet.”

• • •

She watched him leave, taking light and warmth with him as he sought to rouse his Hunter Lord. Lord Elseth was already awake—she had looked into the night that contained the sleeping city, and found them both. She drew the crystal, rounded and yet imperfect as any life was, and ran her fingers across the stability of its cool surface.

Images flickered in the silver mists, silent and distant, yet also distinct. There were tales in the ball's depth; whispers of other times and other places imposed one on top of each other like layers of ghosts—or perhaps, more practically, onion. What lay at the heart? Was it the final step on this thrice-cursed path?

Stephen did not understand all of Evayne's life, yet he knew the cause she pursued was a just one, at this age or any other. What he did not know—and what she, at this age, would not tell him—was that the path took her places without direction or directive; that she had to guess, from her time and her surroundings, what her purpose was to be.