The Sacred Hunt Duology (103 page)

“It's not his fault,” she replied evenly, waving a dagger that wasn't even much of a dagger, it was so unbalanced and ornate. “You sent him to get the mage alone—and he did—but he was—”

“The shadows were waiting.” It was Torvan's voice. Cracked and dry, as if he'd spent the last hour screaming as loudly as a throat could allow. “Arrendas, The Terafin—”

Avayna pushed Arrendas aside and knelt beside the body of her Lord. Silence, terrible with its weight, the uncertainty behind it. She did not raise her heavy head, but said only, “I don't know. Call Alowan,
now.
”

“We've—we've got him,” said a voice that Jewel recognized too well. Finch,
followed by Alowan and Teller, appeared from the north. Her hand was firmly entwined in the wrinkled grip of the older healer, whether for her comfort or his, she wasn't certain. Finch always looked young because she was small; she even looked helpless most of the time. Jewel smiled a little. Wasn't what she'd ordered, but it'd been the smart thing to do.

They'd answer for it later.

“Alowan—The Terafin—”

But the old healer had already firmly taken Avayna by the shoulders and pushed her aside as if hers was the lesser weight and the weaker body. He knelt, touching The Terafin's throat; bowed his white head, closing his eyes. All around him, silence—and beyond that the growling of dogs, the roar of the beast.

“Let's move her,” Avayna said, looking over her shoulder. “We're about to lose the line.”

But Alowan, eyes still shut, said softly, “She cannot be moved. Do not interrupt me. Do not allow
anything
to separate us.”

With a renewed energy, the Chosen turned to face the Hunter's Death.

• • •

All but two.

“Go to the north. You're injured, you can't fight here.”

“I cannot leave. If not for me—” Torvan retrieved his sword without really seeing it; he had eyes for the vanishing darkness and the beast, wild and furious, that had destroyed it. “If not for me—” He stumbled. Stared long at the two men and one woman who, with nothing but dogs for comrades, held the beast at bay. The young girl in the dark robes hung back, cradling what he assumed to be a dog's corpse. All around them, like the refuse that they were, the Allasakari lay. “Arrendas.”

“I won't do it. I'll ready my weapon for battle, but not murder.”

“Is it murder?” He turned to look at Jewel, and was surprised at the way she stared back; her eyes were round and shining; he could see the tears more clearly than he could see the color of her eyes.
Why didn't you just finish it?
“You should have . . .” but he could not say it, not to her. And it wasn't to her that it needed to be said. “We swore our oaths, Arrendas ATerafin. We are the Chosen. We pay the penalty for dishonoring
her
choice.”

“And
she
decides whether or not that penalty is to be paid. It is not up to you—or me—to decide that for her.”

Their jaws were clenched in anger, and their words forced and heated, but as they turned to see her body laid out like death's handmaiden against the floor, they fell silent. Bristling, Torvan stepped out, into the front of the line. Around him, the Chosen murmured, but they did not deny him. Still, he flinched.

Then, there was no time for flinching. The beast roared and charged.

• • •

Perhaps he knew his own flesh, his earthly blood. Perhaps he did not wish to harm her, although there was no recognition in the glint of his eyes. But the beast leaped
over
Espere. The ground shook with his landing, and the Terafin's Chosen were once again under attack.

But the Allasakari had been human—imbued with darkness, driven by shadows that Stephen did not understand, but human nonetheless. The great beast was not. Someone vanished under the weight of its claws; silver and steel snapped between its jaws. There was a scream, high and terrible—but it was not uttered by the dying.

Only the living had anything to fear.

Transfixed, Stephen watched the carnage, thinking,
knowing
, that this was his death. The hall's light was oddly colored; he thought he saw the ripple of windblown leaves in the shadows above, but there was only torchlight across barren stone. This was not the right place, not the right time.

Gilliam cried out a warning; Stephen felt it, but did not hear it. His world was a place of the dying and the newly dead. Leaping lightly over slick stones to join that vision was Espere, hair flying wildly behind her. She wore the shreds of clothing and even these seemed out of place; she was the wilderness, as the beast was the Hunt.

Impact.

Gilliam screamed.

Stephen wanted to shout out a warning, but he had no voice for it. His Hunter raced deftly past the fallen Chosen, the standing Chosen. He had, in his hand, his boar-spear, although when he had loosed it, Stephen could not remember. During the fight with the Allasakari?

Gilliam!

The wild girl reeled back, bleeding; the bone of her forearm had been laid bare, and the skin across her collarbone was missing. She stumbled, gained her feet, and then froze as Gilliam bid her stay with such force that Stephen could hear it although no words had been spoken aloud.

The beast reared up, coat rippling with scales and fur and a sheen of otherworld magic. Gilliam braced himself and the spear, waiting for the attack. Was there fear there? Oh, yes.

Stephen swallowed voicelessly; his breath was short and shallow and harsh. Gilliam was afraid that
they
would die: the wild one, the dogs, Stephen. His own death stared him in the face, roaring, jaws ever-widening in the crest of its face, and he had no fear for it.

“Stephen!” he cried. “Take them to safety, now!”

Almost gladly, Stephen obeyed. He pushed Espere to the north, grabbed Ashfel and Salas, and began to herd them between the base of the stairs and the Chosen who gathered there.

And then he froze as he heard the jaws snap. Turned, his legs moving of their own accord, his eyes unblinking. The snout of the beast was closed, but Gilliam was not trapped between the sharp rows of teeth.

He'd thought he could do it. He really had.

“Evayne,” his voice was shaky.

“What?”

“Take care of them.”

“What?”

“Take care of Gilliam and Espere and his stupid dogs.” He turned back to her, and she wavered in his eyes as he realized how close to tears he'd come. “Promise it. Promise that you'll watch them no matter what age you travel in.”

“But I—”

“Promise it.”

“I—I promise, Stephen. But—”

“Swear it by Bredan. Swear it in his name.”

“I—” she swallowed. “I so swear. But—”

He ran, then. But not to the north. The south, with its crumbled walls, shattered crystal and guttered torches was the only safe place to retreat to. His conditioning was good; he could, for brief bursts, maintain the speed and the pace of a Hunter in trance. He called on that skill now, although it was hard to breathe, hard.

Breath was required. His hands, nerveless, gripped the Horn as he reached the theater of his choice; he dropped it once, and forced himself to right it. The beast, snapping and growling, had not yet killed his Hunter. He could see Gilliam, darting back and forth. A crimson slash spread itself across his chest, but he was whole; he didn't seem to notice the wound.

Gil
, he thought,
I love you.
And then, because he knew that Gilliam couldn't hear the words, and wouldn't make sense of the emotion in the complex thrill of the trance, he shouted it, that the world might hear. And remember.

The mouth of the Horn in his trembling lips was cold. But he blew it, somehow. And this time, there were nine notes; two long, two short, two long, and three of a length that only the huntbrothers used, and only during the Sacred Hunt.

And the beast wavered, stiffening suddenly as it caught the scent of its quarry. Stephen dropped the Horn because his hands hadn't the strength to bear it. Dressed in Hunter green, in the rank that he had sworn his service to, Stephen of Elseth fulfilled the Hunter's—the huntbrother's—Oath, and alone, faced the Hunter's Death.

It came, bearing down too swiftly for flight. He had time to swallow, time to inhale, time to scream once—and he had time to bind himself so tightly that the pain and the horror could spill out without driving Gilliam mad. It was his last gift.

• • •

Gilliam of Elseth screamed. The Chosen surrounded him as the world slid out from beneath the sureness of the Hunter's trance. He saw weapons—theirs—and knew, for a few seconds, that they were trying in some way to protect him.

He said something, or maybe just roared. But the roar that left his lips was a thin, terrible sound. He could make no denial.

He
knew.

Silence reigned. Where a moment before, the beast's voice had filled the hall, there was stillness now. The Hunter's Death had chosen among His people, and having satiated the desire to hunt—and to kill—it honored its victim.

Beneath the cracked facade of the southern arch, surrounded by the broken, shadowless bodies of the Allasakari, the great beast began to unmake the body in the way that the wild beasts do. And then, as the Hunter Lords did upon the completion of the Sacred Hunt, it began to feed.

L
IGHTNING STRUCK THE FEEDING BEAST.

Sizzling against iridescent scales, sparking off claw and fang, it began an intricate, complex dance along the length of its body. Fire flared, surrounding the beast with a heat so sudden it was almost white. It joined lightning sparks, melting the fur and the skin of the creature. Light came next, and with it the shaking of earth, the falling of water; all things happened at once, joining in a dance that seemed to sculpt the very flesh.

Slowly, the beast lifted its head; slowly, that head began to shrink in on itself, warping and twisting beneath a multitude of lights and seasons.

The hall was silent as the mystery unfolded within it.

Only two in the foyer were not surprised by what they saw; the wild girl who did not speak, and the Lord that she followed, who could not.

The hall had been blackened by fire and lightning, drenched by elemental rains; blood darkened the floors; shards of crystal and twisted gold carpeted body and marble alike beneath the feet of the Hunter Lord.

Gilliam had thought He might come in Hunter green with spear and arrow, sword and shield. He thought that dogs should attend him, that birds of the sky-hunt should perch upon his wrist, that the pelt of the offered kill should ride upon his shoulders in a place of honor.

There were none of these things.

And yet this was the very Hunter God; Gilliam knew him by the tines that forked from his pale and perfect brow, rising into the air like a stag's in season. No blood stained his hands, his lips, his chest; no wound marred his features. His eyes, as they scanned the silent, gathered crowd, could not be met and held for long—there were sights reflected in them that mortal eyes could not see, nor should.

He stepped forward, and simple white robes gathered like cloud out of air around him. At his back, there was darkness and death. Stephen lay there, unmoving.

“Hunter,” the God said, and his voice was the voice of the multitude.

Pale and grim, Gilliam stood forward. It wasn't necessary; the Hunter Lord knew well that only one of his followers was in the great hall. He watched, unblinking and silent in his regard as Gilliam of Elseth dropped to one knee and lowered his forehead.

Carver fell to his knees at once, glancing with comfort at the broken and trammeled bodies on the floor—at anything but the God; Angel dropped to one knee. Finch, Jester, and Teller reached the floor, staying behind the stiff knees of the Chosen of Terafin. But Jewel did not bow. She bit her lip, kneading it between her teeth; she paled as she inclined her chin, but she did not—would not—bow.

Evayne held her ground. Hands covering her mouth as if to keep the breath in her body, she stared beyond the Hunter's shoulder. She knew what he was, and knew who—better than anyone else in the foyer except perhaps Espere.

The Chosen of Terafin did not bend or bow—but they stood in that formal rigidity of posture that spoke of respect as they formed an outward-facing circle around Alowan and The Terafin. Alowan alone did not pay heed to the God's visit.

Espere never left Gilliam's side. As he stepped forward, so, too, did she; but when he knelt, she stood proudly by him. Her eyes were golden, although it was hard to tell if it were color or the reflected light of the God in the tears she shed. They were Gilliam's tears; Gilliam's loss; he was so empty of purpose that he hadn't the strength to shed them.

The Hunter Lord stared for a long time into the silence of anger and pain. Of a sudden, he raised both arms skyward, his hands clenched in fists. The mists rolled in around them, becoming a thick, heavy wall. When they stopped, Evayne, Espere, and Gilliam stood within them; without, the rest of Terafin.

“The Breodani were starving.” The Hunter Lord spoke to Gilliam of history, but slowly, as if the passage of time made remembering difficult. “Of all the human tribes, they had chosen to follow my edicts; they are a people of honor, whose word and deed are entwined.

“When first they called, I would not leave my throne to make the journey across the divide; was I not the keeper of the Covenant? Was it not my rule and my binding that kept the Gods from journeying back to the mortal fold? In the half-world, we met; my silence was my answer.

“When they called a second time, when their pleas could be heard across the Fields, I again undertook the journey to the place of meeting, and rebuked them for their summons. For the freedom of man the Covenant was joined; man had prospered by it—would they have me break it? Their silence was their answer.

“Thrice they called; but this last time, they did not ask for aid. They had become, at the last, a people of pride and strength. In their failing, in their twilight, they sought me. I came in anger; they met me in silence. And then the leader of the people that you once were knelt in the mists and plunged his spear into the half-earth.

“‘Why have you called me thus?'

“‘We have followed the ways of the Lord of Truth all our lives; as did our parents before us, and their parents, and theirs. Those who have failed have been cast out in accordance with the severity of their breach.'

“‘This I know,' I told them, waiting.

“‘But we have failed. We are few, and our children succumb to the harvest of the Lady. The land is barren; the hunt yields nothing.'

“Now it comes, thought I, for this is the way of man. ‘Why have you called?' I said again.

“‘To the East and the South—from a great remove—there are a people who do not know the Ways. They do not hunt, and they do not honor the seasons, and they do not keep the covenants that they have made, for they will not seal them with their lives.'

“‘I know of these people,' I said, for I did, and with misgivings.

“‘We have come, Lord, to lay before you the rings of your binding and the spears of our adulthood. Our land will not bear fruit, nor any to the North that we have searched, and to the South and West, there is death. But in the East, we have been offered food and shelter for our children.'

“‘We would have died for you, and in truth, we may still. But many of our children are not of the age to make the Choice that you have decreed, and we cannot in honor sacrifice them when a haven remains.'

“‘You have honored us in our life with your wisdom. You have strengthened us with the Code. We thank you, Lord. And we bid you farewell.' They stood, leaving their spears in the gray ground before me. ‘But we vow that in our time, we will return to you if we are able.'

“I did not take that oath. These people were
my
people, and while I had fashioned the Covenant's binding, I was not subject to it. Were they to be lost to the whim of the Southerners? Were they to become a people without honor, without oath, dwindling in time to a shadow of their former selves?

“I came. You know this.

“But the divide was not meant to be crossed by one such as I. The world that the Gods once knew, the world that we once walked, was strangely, subtly changed.” His eyes grew distant. “This city is not the city that it was; not so grand, and not so terrible. And humankind is not what it was.” He shook his head. “They have changed, but so, too, have the Gods.

“We cannot walk here without paying a price.” He lifted his chin and his eyes were very, very bright. “You walk to the Hall of Mandaros, to be judged and to choose, but if you return to walk in flesh again, you have no memory of the past for which you have been judged. Yet if you have no memory, it does not mean that you have not been born before, that you have not died; it means that you cannot
know
what has gone before until your return to Mandaros. That is the nature of
this new world: That the essence of the divinity is absorbed into the flow of mortality until it wanders unknowing to remake its choices. It does not die, but it does not live as it was.

“I did not know this when I came.” He bowed his head. “I spoke with the Maker of the Covenant; he was cool to my cause, and angry. Be wary of him.

“But he explained much to me. And much was bitter. A mortal cannot know the before, but a God can—because the power of a God is vast and deep. It is not endless.

“I came to my Priests—my children—and between us we fashioned a magic to hold the land; we brought life to the vast and empty wastes. The body of the earth is an ancient thing, and not easily appeased; not in a day or a month, a year or a single mortal lifetime, could such an undertaking be finished.

“Such was the power that I used, that during the fifth year, I could no longer remember the Fields; during the sixth, I could no longer remember my brethren; during the seventh, I could no longer hold the shape of the magic that we had built. I succumbed to the nature of the World of man because I had no power left.

“The land began to die. I knew it; and knew that there was nothing further I could do. I was not in my dominion. There was no power to call upon; no thing that was immortal and everlasting.”

Evayne's drawn breath was so sharp it cut off the voice of the God.

“You see much,” he said softly, “as you were born to. There was one thing upon which I could draw.”

“Them,” she whispered, horrified.

Her horror did not offend or perturb. He turned quietly to the silent Hunter before him. “They would not offer your strong; but your weak, your sick, your crippled—those could still be of use, when they could no longer aid your people in their struggle to feed their own.

“It was not so simple for a people of honor; while the Priests and the Hunters understood our need, they could not ask the Breodani to murder their mothers, their fathers, their children—it was too high a price, and too dark a stain. Days, we spoke on this, and weeks. And yet, in the end, the choice was not our own.

“I remember him still, the man who began the long tradition. He had been a Hunter for all of his young life, but in the prime of his days, he was struck in the thigh and the leg by a wild beast. The bleeding did not kill him, nor the infection thereafter—but he could not hunt again, and he fell in upon himself and grew old in a space of years, shadowed by the light of his former glories.

“His name was Jerem, and he offered his life as sacrifice—his life and more—that his people might live. His only request was that he once again be allowed to accompany the Hunters; that he die in the Hunt.

“He died as he lived. Bravely, and with honor. That much I could still do, then. I took his spirit as it lingered for the Three, and I made it a part of my own, that
I might draw upon its brief light to remember, to retain what I knew. It was not enough, this single life, yet it was something, and after the ceremonies and the silence, we gave his blood to earth. And there, too, came the unlooked for.

“The Old Earth answered:
a life for life.

“It was an offer, Lord Elseth. And we were failing in our power. We accepted. It is to the Old Earth that the blood of the Hunt still falls; it is the Earth that punishes you when the Hunt fails, and only when the ancient ways are a shadow of memory, forgotten even in child's play, will the land—and the Breodani—be free of that binding; for the Breodani and the Old Earth are Oathbound.”

He paused, measuring the Hunter who knelt before him in angry silence. And then, so softly it might have been a single voice speaking, he said, “The soul of Jerem still resides within me, trapped until the moment of my ascension.”

• • •

“And Stephen,” Evayne whispered, when she could speak at all.

“Even so,” the God replied.

Gilliam of Elseth said nothing; it was Evayne who cried out wildly, savagely, “Let him
go
.”

The antlered God was not troubled; he spoke. “I cannot; I do not have the power. These are not the forests of Breodani; not the lands of the Leoganti, and even there, the choice is not mine. Under a different sun, I was a Lord of the Wild—and not for the sake of a soul, not for hundreds, would I unleash that upon this earth.”

It was to Gilliam that he spoke, but it was Evayne who shook her head numbly.

“This is not the time of renewal.” The tines of the Lord of the Hunt angled up, and up again, as he stared at the curvature of the ceiling that was now hidden in the darkness of the chandelier's demise. “But you have called, I have come. The price has been paid. You are Lord of the Elseth Responsibility, and I deem you true to your Oath.” His face was impassive as he spoke, but something in his eyes shifted when the daughter of his earthly flesh stepped forward, shielding the man who was—and was afraid to be—her master.

She did not bow as she stood; instead she tossed the wild tangle of matted dark hair defiantly, angrily. Gold eyes met eyes that had no earthly color; blood-spattered lips opened upon a single word. “Father.”

He flinched as she spoke it, and then bowed his head. “Tell me,” he said, the softness of the words in no way masking the command they contained.

Not even Kallandras could have told a deeper—or a truer—story, but no one in the hall could know it, for the language that she spoke was not a human language, and the throat that uttered it, not a human—not quite—throat. Her voice was the rush of wind, the twisting of ocean current, the slow growth of forest—a roar that spoke of time and change and more subtle things beside.

His voice was the beast's voice, but robbed of the wilderness that was death;
and in timbre it matched hers, but in glory far outshone it. He called her once, and she would not come. A second time, and she stepped forward but held her ground. A third and she snarled back, pain mingled with defiance.

And then the God smiled, and the smile was light. “I see,” he said softly. “Very well. It is your choice to make now.” A youthful seeming was upon him as he turned to Gilliam.

“Your history has been lost to time. But my child tells me that you are still a proud and honorable people. That you wield your power as the sword and the responsibility that it is; that you bring nobility to being noble-born. The lands are green, the game is plentiful, the magic of the sacrifice renews all in its human season.”