The Sacred Hunt Duology (101 page)

“Who else?”

He seemed nonplussed. “Who else?”

“Besides this demon of whom you speak. Who else follows her?”

His brow furrowed, fair and gleaming; at last he looked back to his very young, and until now silent, companion.

“The—I think—the Allasakari,” the young woman in the dark robes said softly.

“You think?”

She swallowed, and then caught the breath that Stephen of Elseth was struggling with. Although her movements were still tentative, she had decided something, for she thrust her hands nervously into the depths of her robes, and from them pulled out a single, large glass sphere.

Except that it was not glass, and within it, trapped as if alive, were roiling mists and the ghosts of swirling images. The Terafin's eyes widened in genuine surprise. The young girl's eyes, luminous and violet, held a hint of smugness as she met The Terafin's. Then it was gone, as the silver mists demanded—commanded—her attention.

There were so many questions that Amarais wanted to ask, for she had only read tales about the seer's crystal, and in her adulthood, discounted the veracity of them. Until now. For the girl's robes rose about her with a magic of their own; there were shadows that had nothing to do with the darkness and everything to do with the hidden depths of a young woman's private tragedy that gathered in the grim lines of her face, her carriage; she had seen much, and at The Terafin's unknowing request, was willing to see more.

Amarais knew that the nature of the seeing would not be pleasant.

“Allasakari,” the girl said, speaking without inflection. “They wear the pendants; they bear the scars.” She took a breath, her eyes narrowing so much they appeared almost to close. “They carry the darkness, Terafin; they barely contain it, and it will consume them if it does not find release.”

The Terafin could hear the drawn breath of her Chosen; the rising tension. “Numbers?” she demanded, her voice cool.

“Thirty. Maybe a few more or less. There is one other mage with them and his signature is powerful.”

She cursed, but silently. “Put it away, child,” she said, turning. “We have no more need of your sight now.”

It was true. Shadows burst out of the southern hall like black fire gone wild, lapping at light as if it were mystical kindling.

• • •

“Stand back!” Evayne cried, as she realized that the men of Terafin intended to stay their ground. “Get out of its way—it's deadly to you unless you're shielded!”

But they listened as if they were deaf—which is to say, they moved not at all. Only The Terafin could command them, and she chose to hold her place as foolishly as they.

“Evayne,” someone said, and she turned to see Stephen's pale face. “The Terafin is no fool. Trust her.”

“She doesn't know—no one does—”

“Trust her,” he said again, catching her trembling shoulders and stilling them. But he watched the growing shadows with the same dread fascination that she did, wondering the same thing.

The mistress of the darkness, limned in ebony that somehow glittered and shone, stood out like the jewel at the peak of a crown. If there were Allasakari at her back, they were momentarily forgotten; she was the obvious power,' and she was due the full force of Terafin's attention.

Her hair was a dark fine glory that lay in a barely concealing web across her body; she was fair, and her lips were very, very red. The pursuit had not ruffled her, or even tired her; she paused to look at the Chosen of Terafin before her lips turned up in genuine pleasure.

“This is almost a worthy welcome,” she said, her voice so perfect it was hard to listen without being stirred. “A fitting beginning for what is to follow.

“Lay down your arms, turn over to me those three who are my rightful quarry, and you will come to me in peace. Fight me, and you will come in pain.”

• • •

“That is not,” a new voice said—a voice that seemed as strong as hers was warm, with tones as pure and as demanding of attention, “much of a choice.”

Sor na Shannen's expression shifted as she stared into—and past—the Chosen as if they were suddenly so much chaff. “What is this?” she questioned softly.

A man strode across the foyer, coming from the northern halls. His hair was loose and long, as hers; it shifted in a breeze that touched no other man in the room. Where Sor na Shannen was the velvet of endless darkness, the promise of pleasure and pain in the shadows, he was not day—but starlight shone about him like raiment, the bright face of the night.

The Terafin drew breath; held it. The sword, which she had seen for the first time this evening, was more easily recognized than the mage who wielded it. But if she stared long at the clarity of his features, the intensity of his expression, she could see enough of the familiar—barely—to recognize Meralonne APhaniel.

There were others there who should have but could not; Evayne a'Nolan, young and terrified, who stood this eve on the edge of magics which would form the whole of her life. She watched, lips parted slightly, as this tall man—this slender giant—strode past her with purpose. He turned, once, to see her youthful face, and she blushed, although she wouldn't later remember why; his gaze was cool and saw much in the second he spared before he turned his full attention upon the only other creature in the room who equaled him. Sor na Shannen.

He raised his sword and swung it in a wide, whistling arc; light lanced out from its edge, cutting the fingers of shadow that clung to every crevice in the foyer.

Dark eyes widened; she raised both of her arms, lifting them in either command or supplication. Shadow surged forward, but slowly. “I do not know how you come to be here,” she hissed, the velvet of her glamour cast aside like refuse. “But this is not your battle. I have chosen these as my own. Remember it, and you may walk from the field.”

“It is not for one such as you,” he replied, “to choose my battles for me. And as for these—surely they will decide their own fate.” He laughed then, and the laughter was wild and not a little bitter.

“Very well,” she said softly. Her left hand fell like the sudden stroke of an
executioner's deft blade. The shadows parted, and a man unmarked by the worship of the Allasakari stood at her left side. He was taller than she, and older; his face was framed by streaked dark hair and a dark beard. He wore robes, simple and light in color, a contrast to the shadows that surrounded him; there were no obvious weapons at his side.

She turned to this new companion. “Kill him.”

He nodded, and then raised his head, seeing the enemy against whom he was to be set. “Well met, Member APhaniel,” he said, his voice just shy of contemptuous.

Meralonne APhaniel frowned. “Krysanthos,” he said at last, shifting his stance.

“Indeed.”

“I believe you barely made second circle at the last ordination.”

Unruffled—barely—Krysanthos shrugged. “Should I have revealed more of my powers to the council? It was only barely worth the effort I did put in. But I am curious, APhaniel. Why do you play with the sorry sticks of lesser men when you have the power of the mage-born?”

Meralonne APhaniel stared at him in silence. After a moment had passed, it became clear that he did not intend to dignify the question with an answer.

“Very well. Let's get this over with.” Krysanthos raised his hands in an intricate, almost hypnotic dance; the air responded with the music of flames and the cries of those who stood, suddenly, in its midst.

Challenge offered.

M
ERALONNE APHANIEL SMILED
and nodded almost gently. He was ice and winter; so distant and so removed from the flames of the majestic and sudden summoning that it seemed the fire itself feared him. In a radius of ten feet, it burned nothing, touched nothing, changed nothing.

Called out by the enemy's challenge into a known and despised arena, the mage stepped forth, his light feet crushing the flicker of fire wherever he trod. He carried his sword, flat across his left shoulder, as he approached the waiting shadows.

Krysanthos frowned. The flames leaped and struggled under his dominion, but they did not threaten Meralonne; if they snapped too closely, the silver-haired mage sliced at their odd limbs with his bright and shining sword, and they drew back. His blade was a chill and icy thing.

The fire guttered as Krysanthos turned his effort to a different form of attack.

The earth shuddered beneath the feet of Meralonne; the Chosen of Terafin faltered as their landscape suddenly shifted, breaking away into joists and stone and dirt along the thin, narrow line that Meralonne walked. But his feet did not seem to touch the ground, and what occurred beneath the surface, invisible but sure, that they did touch did not concern him.

Lightning strove groundward, fizzling feet away from Meralonne's unprotected head; blood-rain fell, turning to water as it reached the ground. Krysanthos was a learned and powerful mage, and he had studied the arts of attack well; many were the forms that he tried that had no visible signature—but these were least effective of all. For Meralonne resisted the magical purchase that Krysanthos struggled to gain as if the shadow-sworn mage were no more than a ghostly visitation.

At the last, Krysanthos brought the chandelier that was the pride of the grand foyer down. Meralonne walked, unheeding, toward it. Several voices cried out in warning and in fear—but an inch above his head, gold and crystal flailing, the chandelier stopped its rapid descent. He passed beneath it, touching it gently with the very tip of his fine, sharp blade.

Gingerly and carefully, it lowered itself to the ground at his heels.

Behind the lines of battle, beyond the center of the foyer, Sor na Shannen
waited in repose, her smile couched in velvet silence. There was no fear in her, but her eyes looked almost fevered, and the fire that burned there burned high and bright. “So,” she said, as she noted the pale, sweaty brow of her companion. “Even this is beyond your ken.”

“I would appreciate,” Krysanthos snapped, through lips that barely opened, so rigid were the muscles of his face, “your assistance.”

“You will have it,” was her answer. “And it will cost you.
Never
question me again, little mageling.” She stood, lifting her hands in supplication. To them came two things, out of the folds of dying fire that laced the ground in a magical pattern: a sword, curved, with an edge that bore teeth, and a shield.

Krysanthos did not question her choice of weapons. He stepped back, grim in his fury and his humiliation.

But Meralonne only smiled as he saw her step down from the shadows that held her onto the reality of The Terafin's floor. He snapped his right hand, and to it came a shield, silver and fine and ringed all round with runes that glowed white. She waited as he approached; he neither tarried nor hurried. They did not need to take each other's measure; they knew it.

“This man is mine,” Sor na Shannen said, pitching her voice into the shadows behind her as if they were alive. “But now is the time. Take the others, leaving only the quarry that I demand as my right.”

The shadows surged forward, and the darkness that Meralonne's presence had dispelled grew strong indeed as his attention turned to Sor na Shannen. She leaped up, using the air to turn and angle the sword from a vantage no human could have used unless they were winged.

Meralonne was not there when the sword singed the air.

Challenge met.

• • •

In the wake of the dying fire, the Allasakari came, caught and hidden in the bowels of the shadow until they were almost upon the Chosen of Terafin. The sheath of their blades was darkness; their faces were hidden by shadows so deeply etched that natural light could not disperse them. But worst of all were their eyes; for beneath their lids, and behind them, was a darkness so complete that it showed nothing, reflected nothing.

They crashed into the defensive line of Terafin with a thundering . . . silence.

There was no noise; no clang of steel striking steel, no sound of the impact of bodies as men were driven back several feet, no battle cries.

Let loose, the darkness seemed intent on devouring all. And soundlessly, the Chosen of The Terafin began to die.

• • •

Blood ran.

From the edge of a sword raised and swung wildly, it splattered Stephen's cheek
and chest. He felt it, but there was no
sound
, no comfort of sound. Not ten yards away from where he stood, rooted in marble as if he had grown there, a man in armor was screaming with his last breath—he could
see
it in the contorted lines of the man's unrecognized and unrecognizable face. But he could not
hear
it. The very wrongness of the theft stilled his breathing.

He felt a hand at his elbow and cried out—but the cry was stifled. Turning, he saw Evayne, the folds of her robe raised high over her shoulders like the protective wings of a Guardian. Her eyes were wide; she spoke, but he could not make out, in the semidarkness, the words she meant him to hear. Deaf and mute, he tried to follow her gestures.

Gilliam.

There, in the darkness. He turned, but in turning was already too late. At the feet of his Hunter Lord—at the feet of the man who was brother and more—was the broken body of Singer. Cut nearly in two, his blood seeped into the darkness of the shadow-covered floor as if it were being drunk. Gilliam reeled with the shock of the sudden death.

Loss was not unknown to the Hunter Lords, and those well-trained were able to bear the severing of a life bond under the duress of battle. Gilliam was well trained. He kept fighting. But Stephen could hear the keening that began to mount in the wilds of his soul.

Something was grabbing his shoulders before he realized that he was trying, desperately, to get through the lines; to stand at Gil's side. His sword was unsheathed—when and how that had happened he could not have said. With an angry shrug, he freed himself; the grip wasn't a strong one.

But in the time it took, Corfel was gone, his black and white body vanishing into darkness as the Allasakari continued their chill approach. Gilliam cried out again, and Stephen
felt
it, although everywhere there was silence. It was almost unreal, this death unfolding before him; the fallen to either side. It was cold in the foyer, and dark; he wondered if death's lands were not enshrouded in this very fog.

But Gilliam was real; Gilliam bridged the distance of silence, of darkness, of death. He knew the instant that Gilliam was wounded. Felt the darkness latch on to the open scrape, a dangerous and unknown poison seeping into the blood. There was no scream; not to be heard, not to be felt. As always, physical pain only made Gilliam more determined—it was the dogs that were lolling him with their deaths.

Stephen struggled forward, and this time the grip on him was
strong.
He tried to tell them—the Chosen, he thought—that he
must
go to his Hunter, but not a single sound escaped the tortured, silent rush of his lips. They were large men; Stephen had never been large. And he did not wish, not in this darkness, to turn his sword upon them—for such a division in the face of such an enemy was too grave a wrong. Helpless, he stared into the fighting, watching it unfold in silence.

The lack of sound made his hair rise; he wondered what else was being stolen, what other parts of the world were being devoured by the shadows the Allasakari carried. If he could somehow be heard—if he could give voice to the fighting Chosen—the battle's lines would be changed in an instant. For it was clear that the Allasakari were not fully in control of their actions; they did not seem to work from plan, and they were not working together. They were vessels, and only because of the thrall of the darkness did they carry the advantage.

The hair along his arms began to rise. The dreams returned, because they were also nightmares, and what better to carry them but darkness? His hand slid, nerveless, to the folds of his tunic; to the pouch that rested against his skin; to the thing therein.

There was one act that he could perform that would shatter that silence.

Gilliam!
he thought, as he raised the simple, bone horn to his trembling lips. He swallowed air, drank it into his lungs as deeply as he could.

And then, on the ninth day of Corvil, four hundred and ten years after the return of Veralaan with the Twin Kings, Stephen of Elseth winded the Hunter's Horn.

• • •

There was no grace in the note; it was loud and short, more like the honking of an angry, giant fowl than a musical call. But his hands were shaking, it was all that he could manage—and it was
heard.

A ripple went through the ranks of the Allasakari; a shiver through the fog and cloud of shadow. The Chosen of Terafin seemed to straighten slightly, although they did not turn to see what had caused the sound.

Nothing else happened, and after a moment, the shadow grew stronger and thicker, redoubling its effort as if speed were suddenly of the essence.

• • •

It wasn't enough. Stephen swallowed air; forced his shaking hands to rise again. He knew what he had to do; knew what call he had to make. Years, he and Gilliam had studied these. But it was the Hunter's duty to call the Hunt, and although Stephen knew the call, he had never made it.

Such a simple call; the easiest of all to make. Three long, loud notes in a rising sequence, held to the end of the caller's breath.

One note, and he could hear Evayne's pleading; the tenor of the fear beneath her words stronger than he had ever heard it. Two notes, and he could hear the cries of the Chosen of Terafin, free from the bondage of shadow, issuing orders and calling point. Three notes, and he could hear the panicked shouts of the Allasakari and the angry snarl—loud enough to fill the curved ceiling—of a demon lord in combat.

“You did it!” Evayne shouted, her violet eyes round with relief and wonder. “Whatever you did, it's—”

Her words were lost to the roar of thunder; the voice of the storm; the death of the Breodani. Stephen turned his pale face toward the west wall, where the shadow was beginning to buck and writhe like a living thing in agony.

“What—what's that?” she cried, her words a frightened echo of the dismay The Terafin's Chosen showed.

Stephen took her hand numbly. “Nothing that you need fear,” he said, pitching his voice so that it would carry above the din of the fighting around him.

“But what is it?”

He watched as the shadow grew frenzied; watched as a shred of it suddenly flew back. Shedding darkness as if it were colored water, it rose, scaled and furred and fanged. What its shape was, Stephen could not say; it writhed and twisted, shifting from beast to beast, death to death.

“It is,” he said softly, as even the Allasakari fell silent in awe and terror, “the Hunter's Death.”

The next screams that filled the hall were the last that the Allasakari closest to the western wall would ever utter.

• • •

Gilliam knew the Hunter's Death at once; his entire body resonated with recognition. With a wild cry he drew his horn and winded it, loud and long, calling the hunt Stephen had called, but without the timidity of the huntbrother—acknowledging his Lord's price with the defiance, marred by only the smallest of fear, with which the Hunter Lords had always approached it.

“Terafin!” he shouted, suddenly in his element in the damaged halls of an alien land. “Order your Chosen to retreat!”

• • •

The Terafin stiffened at his command—as did her Chosen—but she saw the look in Lord Elseth's eyes, and knew that he knew what he dealt with. She did not; her mage was in a combat that was hidden by the folds of shadow and darkness, and she could not reasonably turn to him for advice or counsel.

I can well see
, she thought, as he gathered his wounded beasts around him,
why the demons feared you.

She turned to Torvan. “Signal a retreat to the Hall of the Lattan Moon.”

Bloodstained and wearied, he nonetheless saluted sharply and carried out her command, his voice filling the air where hers did—and could—not. And then, as the Chosen began to form up, fighting their way into retreat position, Torvan ATerafin pivoted neatly and lifted his arm. Its shadow, short and squat, fell upon The Terafin's exposed back.

• • •

Jewel saw him and froze. Torvan's helm caught the light and threw it up in shards as his hand came down. The knife that he carried found its mark easily in the exposed back of the woman he served.

Not Torvan
, she thought, her hands sliding from the rails that she'd gripped during the onslaught of the Allasakari.
Not Torvan.

Carver wasn't beside her; she spun to give orders as her voice made its way up the closed walls of her throat, and found herself talking to air. Angel tapped her shoulder lightly before he bounded down the stairs, taking them three at a time and barely touching down before he was off again.

“Stay where you are!” she told the rest of her den, feeling failure and fearing it. Using the rails as a guide, she tore down the stairs—too late, already too late. The Terafin's body sprawled, in a half-turn, across the floor. A flash of crimson lay beneath her, running through the supple plates of her armor to cool against marble.

Carver was there, dark hair and shadowed visage a contrast to the light reflecting off Torvan's glinting armor. He was armed with daggers, a long, thin stiletto in his right hand, and a thicker, cutting knife in his left. Of the special dagger that Jewel'd gone through so much trouble to borrow, there was no sign.