The Sacred Hunt Duology (14 page)

“When will you tender this explanation?”

“When it does not threaten our future.”

He chuckled and brought the pipe to his lips again. “I will accept your word.”

But he wouldn't. She knew it, and knew that his inability would shame him. “Thank you, Master APhaniel. I've—I've always done my best to be true to your teachings.”

His eyes shone with a genuine pride, and for a moment his expression was soft, almost gentle. “You are an odd student, but easily the best I have had.”

The door to the study swung open. In the shadow of the door frame, lit by golden spell-light and not by day, stood the girl. She cocked her head to one side and gave Evayne a puzzled look.

“Come,” Evayne said. “We have far to go today, if I have guessed correctly.” She walked toward the girl, and then stopped to look back.

It hurt, suddenly, to leave his study as a stranger. She had never done it before.
Never look back
, she told herself bitterly, as she turned away for the last time.
Especially when there's nothing you can do but mourn.

• • •

Meralonne APhaniel watched her leave, his lips tightening around the stem of his long, ancient pipe. When she was gone, he nodded and the door swung shut. On her. On their discussion.

But other doors had opened. A past that he rarely thought about, and never spoke of, had been recalled by the strangely aged Evayne's visit. Smoke wreathed the air again, eddying in the currents of his breath, his silent words. He brushed long, ivory strands out of his eyes as he stared into a past that he had thought lost forever.

He did not move. Were it not for the smoke that continued to curl in an upward spiral, he could have been mistaken for one of the statues in the gallery.

Sunlight, filtered by exterior glass and interior shutters, worked its way into the
room. He had work to do; things to see to. Perhaps it was time to investigate the findings in Breodanir.

• • •

A rock skittered across cobbled stone as a sulky young man let fly with a kick. His hands were jammed into his pockets, and his hat was pulled down over his forehead; stray, unkempt curls jutted out to either side. Were it not for his expression, he would have looked quite pleasant. He was slim, with a fine-boned face and large eyes. His limbs were slender and his skin pale. It was obvious that his day was not taken up with hard physical labor, or perhaps any labor at all. An elderly woman, walking by with two attendants, gave him a distinct frown. He met it with a scowl, but moved out of her way.

Kepton Crescent was lively enough for an off-market street, and it would become more lively still as Korven's Drinking Establishment opened for the day. The public baths kept the morning traffic brisk, especially when the day was bright, warm, and reasonably clear. Today was just such a day, and the outdoor springs—although they were no more than trumped-up fountains—meant that the baths would be in great demand.

The young man found it hard to loiter without being nudged off the road by any number of parties who were making their treks toward the baths. Finally his patience ran out and in a fit of pique and surly annoyance, he stood his ground, glaring at a young woman and her attendant, a rather stiff, plainly attired matron.

The older woman in the mottled dress looked down the bridge of her nose out of stern, violet eyes. “Excuse me, young man, but you impede our passage.” Before he could reply, she turned to the young girl who walked behind her and took her hand, both protectively and forcefully.

The young man lifted the corner of his hat, and then mumbled something under his breath. “Ma'am.”

“Kallandras.” Evayne a'Nolan, dressed in the matronly, severe style of decades past, inclined her head slightly. Her voice very soft, she said, “Are you almost ready?”

He shrugged, and then fell into step beside her as she continued to walk down the street. His tone and his words belied each other; the casual listener would have no reason to suspect anything other than wheedling ill humor. “Where do we go?”

“I'm not sure. Not precisely.”

He nodded as if he expected no more and then glanced casually at the young girl who was fidgeting with her skirts. “Who is she?”

Evayne was certain that although he had only just met the wild girl, Kallandras was more likely than she to be able to answer questions about her height, her weight, her age. He would know, if he never looked at her again, what she wore,
what its colors were, where the style of the dress originated. “She is a rather unusual young lady.”

“Which means you won't say.” He shrugged. “You're old, this time. Does this mean trouble?”

“I'm
not
that old,” she replied. “And, yes, it does.” Evayne at forty still did not understand the otherwhen, but she could begin to see a pattern to the course the path chose for her. She was a mage now of no little power; her knowledge was up to the test of the best of the Order; her ability to protect both herself and any she chose to champion had never been greater.

It was not a coincidence that, as she aged, the dangers she found herself facing grew more potent and more deadly. At least, it did not appear to Evayne to be so.

She glanced out of the corner of her eyes and saw that Kallandras was watching her intently. He was young, this time, but his youth was not the liability that it would have been for any other.

“Which is why you summoned me.”

“Yes,” Evayne said softly. She looked up at Kallandras. His eyes were, in youth, the same piercing blue that they would always be; meeting them, she could almost forget to notice the rest of his face. His attention always seemed entirely focused, entirely absorbed. “You won't be missed?”

“Evayne—Lady.” He frowned a moment, and then smoothed the expression from his face. “When you forced me to make the choice, I was already one of the best of my number. It's important to your mission that I not be missed; I will not be missed.” He fell silent as they walked to the end of the street. “I've arranged,” he said, waving his arm, “for transport—but it would've helped to know where we are going.”

Evayne let herself relax a little bit as a single-horse cab pulled to the side of the road. As always, Kallandras had looked to the details of their meeting. He offered her companion an arm, and the girl looked at it dubiously before scampering up into the body of the carriage. He shrugged, offered Evayne his arm, and then joined them. “I've told the driver we wish to go to the northwestern quarter. Will that be out of our way?”

“No. You've done well.” Evayne sat back in the padded chair and let the city begin to move by.

“Good.” He gazed out of the windows as well, his face losing all signs of surliness or aimlessness. Then, after a moment, he turned to her and met her gaze. She knew what he would ask next, but it always unnerved her to hear it, especially on occasions when he was young.
But in youth
, she reminded herself,
we have less compassion and more of a will to absolutes, to brutality. When you are older, Kallan, even you will mellow.
But not much, if she was being honest; not much at all. The Kovaschaii took their members very young and trained them well.

“Who do you wish me to kill?” His expression was completely neutral; there
was no judgment in it, and no curiosity whatsoever. He became, for the moment, just another weapon; one to be held with care and used with confidence.

She did not wish him to be such a thing. “Kallan,” she began. “How has Senniel fared?”

“The college fares well, with me and without.”

“And Sioban?”

“As far as I know, she's fine. She's still the headmaster of the college, if that's what you mean. I haven't seen her in a month, but I've been avoiding it. She means to give me my papers and my route and have me travel the empire between Attariel, Senniel, and Morniel.”

They were three of the five bardic colleges in Essalieyan; Senniel was oldest and foremost. Evayne nodded as if the conversation were a normal one. “And training of the voice?”

“She says that she hasn't seen a talent as strong as mine in all of her years at the college. She also says that she can't train it further; it will grow with experience or not at all.” The reply was smooth and without inflection. Kallandras took no pride or joy in being bard-born. It was a fact, like the weather, only slightly more relevant. His very detachment made it hard to envy him. It also made it hard to like him much.

“Kallan, do you enjoy the music?”

He shrugged. “It's music, like any other skill.” But she thought his expression just a touch softer. “You haven't answered my question.”

She grimaced. “I don't want you to kill.”

“You want me to kill, or you would not have summoned me.” He turned his gaze back to the city streets.

She grimaced. “You leave me no illusion, do you?”

“You aren't a woman in need of illusion.” He shrugged, and she thought she caught a glimpse of anger and impatience in the motion. It was hard to tell; all of Kallandras' public displays were dramatic and not genuine. “You came to me because I was an assassin. You showed me what you needed me to see. I gave up the brotherhood for you, but I took my skills with me.

“Who, Evayne?”

Evayne looked at her hands, stiffly clasped in her lap. How long had it been for Kallandras? She counted the years at three. She did not often see him as a youth anymore, and she had forgotten how the choice she had forced upon him could still sting.

For she had taken him from the brotherhood of the Kovaschaii shortly after she herself had been forced to give up her own life to walk the path of the otherwhen, and she had not been gentle.

I was younger then
, she thought.
And youth is always cruel.

“I play no game with you, Kallandras. I do not know if we will be called upon
to kill or to hold our hand. But we travel in search of our history, and I do not know exactly how long it will take.”

“What do you hope to find?”

“Nothing. But that's not what I think we
will
find.”

“You've been walking again.”

She nodded. Kallandras was so different from Meralonne. He knew that she traveled in time, but he never asked her what she had seen, or where she had seen it. The past was not his concern, nor was the future. The present was the time for action, and he concentrated his considerable power upon it.

“It was yesterday,” she said softly. But she could not tell him what she had seen, although she greatly desired the freedom to do so. The dictate of the maker of the otherwhen was absolute. “But what I saw there is not what we will see today.”

He nodded. “Today?”

So unlike Meralonne. “As I said, I'm not sure—but I think, if we see anything, we will see the kin.”

“Servants of darkness,” Kallandras whispered. “So soon. Do you think it will be over with this?”

She did not answer because she knew the answer was not the one he wanted—yearned—to hear. “Be ready,” she said softly.

• • •

“What do you know of the history of Vexusa?” Evayne's robes had fallen back into their familiar shape. She did not regret the loss of the matron's dress, as perhaps she had regretted other gowns in the past.

She let the curtains fall back into place and turned from the window of the Imperial State's hotel room. Her eyes were light, yet somehow dark, as if they reflected both the aurora and the night sky.

Kallandras shrugged. He sat stiffly in one of three high-backed chairs. Both of his feet were planted against the floor, and his hands rested in his lap.

“You would have made a terrible mage,” she said, and smiled.

“I never wanted to be anything but Kovaschaii,” he replied. “And you cost me that.”

It had been long since she had seen him in his youth, and she had forgotten how much his words could cut. At twenty, he did not view her as the ambivalent friend he would know her to be when he became forty. She remembered, as well as she was able, what she had been like at twenty. Meeting Kallandras as an older man had been a shock, then.
We circle each other, Kallan. Will we never walk the same path?

“I'm sorry,” she said, and she meant it. “I would not have taken you from your life of death had I another choice.”

“So you've said.” He did not relent.

“Kallan—”

“Tell me what we seek, Evayne.”

She turned back to the window, looking for a way out. To come straight from Meralonne to the intense chill of Kallandras . . . “History, as I said.”

“If you seek history, then you have far to go. Vexusa exists in legend and lore, but the annals of the wise have very little to offer in the way of truths. If you remember,” he added coldly, “the city was destroyed by the combined wrath of the god-born; it was razed to the last stone.”

“Vexusa existed in far more than the fancy of beautiful voices and children's tales.” Her voice became remote. “You know the old Weston bardic lays?”

“Some.”

“Do you know the
Fall of Light
?”

“Yes.” Grudgingly, he added, “It was about the loss of the Wizard Wars, when the Dark League destroyed the last of the Dawn Rose.”

“And do you know the
Hand of Myrddion
?”

He nodded again. “Shall I get my lute?” His voice was tinged with a trace of sarcasm, but his fingers began to flex where they rested against his thighs.

“If you wish it, yes.”

He looked down at his hands and then back at her; he stayed his ground. He knew what compassion was although the learning of it had been difficult, but he would not lay it at her feet; not yet. “Myrddion was a mage of the Dawn Rose. He fought and failed against the Dark League when he was betrayed by Ancathyron, his apprentice. Carythas, who led the Dark League, stripped Myrddion of his power, and put him on display in the coliseum in Vexusa, the capital of the mage-state. They cut off his right hand, and then they set him to fight.