The Sacred Hunt Duology (31 page)

He bowed, first to Lord Elseth and Stephen, and then to the crowd at large. Their silence was their applause.

Only one man remained unmoved. He was like a lamp empty of flame. There was nothing at all left, not even for tears. Kallandras bowed to him as well, the third bow and the last of the evening. Norn nodded, but the nod, like the man, was empty.

• • •

Krysanthos, mage-born, was not proof against the magic of Kallandras' talent. He wept as freely as any of the Hunter Lords, although he felt only contempt for their loss. Only when the bard stopped singing did the spell fade, and Krysanthos was left with anger, and not a little fear. He wanted to approach the Hunter Lords proper, but did not dare. Observers—the gifted and exalted of the realm who were not blessed by the Hunter's gift—had a small area on the green that could not be abandoned until the full and proper end of the Sacred Hunt. As always, surrounded by Priests of various orders, and the official heads of many guilds, Krysanthos kept to custom. But magic augmented his vision as he watched.

The pale, muddied hair of the Elseth huntbrother, who stood shoulder to shoulder with his Lord in the gloom, was a taunt and a question that he had no answer for. The Kovaschaii had gone out in the morning, trailing the hunt in silence. He had not returned, which Krysanthos had expected—but the boy had. What had happened?

He felt certain that the boy could not have destroyed the assassin; or rather, he wanted to feel certain of it. But the boy's life was evidence against the assumption.

He didn't understand why more had not been made of the attempt, didn't understand why the boy had not mentioned the assassin at all. Unless the assassin had never even made the first attempt.

But, no, that was unthinkable. The Kovaschaii were almost a legend, and for very good reason. Krysanthos had called upon them twice before, and both times they had offered success and silence in return for their very high fee.

What a waste of an opportunity. He would have to hire again, or attend to the deed with his personal resources. He shivered; it was cool. The boy that had dealt with one of the Kovaschaii was not an opponent that Krysanthos was willing to challenge, however cunningly, without further study. None of the mage's plans took into account his own death.

Ah, the feast was starting. Perhaps food and a little wine would warm him. He began to walk over to the banquet tables set up for the perusal of hungry guests. Yes, he would eat, and then he would arrange for surveillance of the huntbrother to the new Lord Elseth.

• • •

Eadward Lord Valentin, his huntbrother Michaele, and Lord William of Valentin formed the honor guard. One of the mage-born—not Krysanthos, he was too highly placed—was called from the Collegium of the Order of Knowledge. He came with the dawn and attended to the body, with spells and potions made to preserve it on the long journey home.

Lord Maubreche and his huntbrother Andrew also honored the dead with their presence. They held the preserve closest to Valentin, and slowed their journey home to lend the strength and dignity of numbers to Soredon's last journey.

Norn rode, in black robes with a hood that showed little of his face, at Soredon's side. Michaele and Andrew tried twice to speak with him or offer their comfort, but he declined all human contact—and he shunned the dogs as well.

The young Lord Elseth proved himself to be the model of restraint; he held the dogs in check throughout the two-week journey, and never once let tears be shed in public. In all things, he was his father's son, but especially in this. Stephen knew how important the appearance of strength was to his Hunter, and he said nothing at all about it, pretending, as the other Lords did, that all tears had already been shed in the closing of the Sacred Hunt.

Lady Elseth saw the procession coming; she must have. When they arrived, she had food and rooms ready for the Lords who had served as guards. Dinner, for it was late afternoon, was hurriedly rearranged, and a Priest from the village was called for. He arrived within minutes, and showed sorrow more openly than did any of the Elseth clan save Maribelle, who, while on the verge of adulthood, had not completely left the fields of childhood's open grief and sorrow.

• • •

Stephen heard Lady Elseth crying the evening before the funeral. He stopped outside of her drawing room doors. They were closed, and the rules of the house, made when he and Gilliam had been younger children, were quite strict: One did not disturb Lady Elseth if the doors were shut.

But he lingered in the hall, the lamplight flickering beneath his chin like ghostly fingers. He wanted to enter and offer her comfort, but didn't know how. If he hadn't been wandering the halls, he would never have heard her—and it was obvious that she didn't want to be heard, just as it was obvious that Gilliam did not.

In the end, he chose to knock.

The crying stopped; he heard the rustle of cloth behind the doors before they were opened. In the darkness, the redness of her eyes and the slight puffiness of lids and cheeks were not so obvious.

“Stephen,” she said, and tried a smile.

He held the lamp higher, so that its light touched them both. “Can I come in?”

“What are you doing awake at this hour? The funeral's tomorrow, and both you and Gilliam have to participate.”

“I couldn't sleep.”

“No.” She stepped back and held the door open. He glided past the inlaid panels and into the room. She didn't wait for him to close the doors. Instead, she returned to her seat at the writing desk in the bay window. “I was—I was just working on accounts.” She picked up a quill and set it to paper that was blotched and sodden with a liquid other than ink.

“The lamp is low,” he offered.

She nodded. “I won't be up for much longer.” But the quill trembled uselessly in her hands, and she set it aside. Gaining her feet, she turned to stare out of the windows. The curtains were pulled, and the moon, laced with clouds, glared down. Her feet, against the wood of the floor, must have been cold, but she didn't notice.

Stephen went through the drawing room and into her sleeping quarters, picked up the old knitted woolens and brought them out, offering them silently. She took them and bent down to place them on her feet, but her shoulders began to shake, and she left them in a messy pile on the floor.

“It isn't—it isn't for Soredon,” she said, although it was hard to hear the words. “It's Norn. I can't reach him at all.”

“He's lost his Hunter,” Stephen replied.

“I don't care why,” was her equally quiet answer. It showed him, again, how different their lives had been, because it told him clearly how poorly she, who had loved Soredon, understood the depths of his loss to Norn. “I can't reach him at all.”

She opened the right-hand drawer of her desk and pulled out a crumpled handkerchief. She blew her nose, a most unladylike and inelegant gesture, and then
rubbed her cheeks clean of tears with the sleeve of her night robe. “I'm so sick of the Hunter God,” she whispered. “I'm so sick of all of it. He won't even talk to me. He only said, ‘Lady, I'm sorry.' That was all. I called for him; he came and he just sat here, saying nothing.” The tears fell harder, and her voice became raw. “I've tried everything in the last day, Stephen. But he's lost.”

“He'll come back,” Stephen said awkwardly. “Lord William did.”

Her laughter was harsh and heated, a curse, not an expression of mirth. “Watch,” she said bitterly, “and learn. The Hunter has no mercy. It is not enough that I lose husband; I must lose huntbrother as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Norn—he's—” And then she dropped her face into her hands. “Go away, Stephen. I'm sorry, but I can't be what I should. Go
away
.”

He left.

And in the morning, the Lords and their Ladies gathered to stand witness as the body of Soredon of Elseth was laid to rest in the cemetery of the Elseth estate. A headstone would follow soon enough, one as fine and unornamented and strong as Lord Soredon himself had been.

Norn accompanied the body into the Priest's circle, and Norn stood beside it as it came to rest upon the Elseth altar. He knelt in the mud and the dirt, and clung tightly to Soredon's lifeless hands as if afraid of being parted.

• • •

And six months later, at the height of the harvest season, Norn of Elseth joined his Lord. He never recovered from the loss, it was said. What was not said, and what Stephen learned only with the passage of time, was that huntbrothers left alive after the Sacred Hunt were left alive in body only, a shadow of what they had been, until even the body, like an echo, paled and faded into nothing.

Norn's funeral was quiet but well-attended, and Lady Elseth was the gracious hostess throughout. She had wept what tears she had had on the nights after they had brought her husband's body home.

Stephen cried as he stood beside Maribelle; she, too, offered her tears. But Lord Elseth was as grim and silent as his mother. It was the best display of strength he could offer as his last sign of respect to the man who had been a second father for all of his life.

I
N THE GLITTERING HALLS
of Maubreche, beneath a flood of light made sharp and faceted by three huge chandeliers, Stephen of Elseth began to search for a quiet place to hide. It wasn't easy; the press of moving bodies and alert Ladies—many of whom wished his aid in cornering the Elseth title for either themselves or their offspring—created an eddy in the social currents that threatened to pull him under. To make matters more complicated—which was only barely possible—he could sense that Gilliam, lost to view somewhere in the ever-changing, ever-moving crowd, was angry with him. That was the last thing he needed at the moment. He felt as if he were eight again; the surety, poise, and skill of his twenty-two years were about to abandon him to a room full of strangers.

Luckily, recessed along the gold-foiled west wall of the ballroom, there were balconies, curtained heavily to close out the night and all hint of darkness. In the chill crisp air, he found his refuge. Lady Elseth would be disappointed, no doubt, and he would hear about it in the morning, but he needed the respite badly.

He shrugged himself out of his dancing jacket, taking care to hold tight to cream ruffles and lace as they tried to follow green velvet and satin. Better. The jacket he slung over the stone balcony before he turned to face the night. Music—the opening strains of Coravel's
Revelry
played with spice and skill by the small orchestra—reached above the din of conversation and tickled his ear. He knew, without checking his card, that he listened to the beginning of the fourth dance.

It was a three-step waltz, simple enough to maneuver through without demanding much of the Hunter Lords who would always be too busy to learn the grace and skill a more difficult dance would require. And Lady Cynthia of Maubreche, the center of the evening's celebration, would no doubt be dancing with one or another of the louts who'd been told to court her. He ground his teeth in frustration.

Lady Cynthia had come late into her majority—she'd seen the turn of eighteen, when many young Ladies had already married into the fold of a Hunter Lord. She even had the grace to look—and act—her age; her long, slender body and her sharp, serious face had rarely been found in gatherings such as these. No, until
now, Stephen had been likely to find her in the temple libraries—or the King's libraries, if the time of year was proper.

His fingers tried to dig holes in the balcony, and his mood was such that he wouldn't have been surprised had the stone not resisted. But even that satisfaction was denied him.

The music of the dance went on and on. He closed his eyes and saw more clearly the sweep of her emerald-green gown as it flew above the floor; saw the twinkle in her eye, the smile on her lips, the pale, pleasing blush along her cheeks. Which Lordling held her made no difference to him; he had not even tried to reserve a dance for the evening.

“Stephen?” The curtains rustled and flew open, and Gilliam stepped out into the night. He was Lord Elseth now, which meant more to the Ladies than it did to the Lords, and he wore the title the same way he wore his clothes.

Had Stephen not been so moody, he would have stopped to yank the lace out of the stranglehold the collar of Gilliam's jacket had on it. He didn't even have the energy to comment on the crumbs that had been crushed into the pile of the pleats above Gilliam's left thigh. “Something bothering you?”

“No.”

“Dogshit.”

Gilliam was angry; had been angry for most of the last fortnight. His huntbrother hadn't been in the mood to deal with it, and frankly, he thought it would do Gilliam some good to deal with his tantrums on his own.

Stephen drew a breath and turned to face his Hunter. Air hissed out as his jaw stiffened. “Gil, now is not the time. All right?”

“‘Now is not the time.'” Gilliam shoved his jacket back and sat down, hard, on the stone. “It's been the same damned story for the last month.”

“Gil . . .”

“You've come hunting, what, twice? If you can call what you were doing hunting.”

“Fine.” Stephen bent down, picked up his jacket, and shoved his arms into the sleeves. Even angry, he was careful with both linen and lace. “What did you want of me?”

Gilliam shrugged in turn, and his face, broader and harsher than Stephen's, set in exactly the same lines. “Nothing.”

For a moment they glared at each other, and temper tightened their fists. But they were twenty-two now, no longer boys, or even adolescents, to be forgiven for fist play in public. Stephen, as always, turned away first. If Gilliam wanted to play out a stupid game, he could damned well do it on his own.

“It's her again, isn't it?”

Only the huntbrother's head turned. “Her?”

“Cynthia.” No honorific, no title, and certainly no respect in the word. Stephen
opened his mouth, but before he could answer in kind, Gilliam continued. “Why don't you do something about it, instead of fretting here like a bitch in heat?”

The color drained out of Stephen's face. His jacket slid to the stonework in a messy pile that also covered his boots.

“It's Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia! You think of nothing but Cynthia!”

“I—”

“Maybe you'd rather be her lover than my huntbrother—but you aren't doing both!” He slid to his feet and walked past Stephen, taking a moment to shove him to the side.

“Gil, I swear—”

“What?” Gilliam's voice was low as he stood, half in the light, half out. Already a quiet hush had built around the recess.

“You understand
nothing
! All
you
ever think about are your dogs and their kills! Maybe that's enough for you—who knows what—”

“Stephen.” The voice was soft and feminine. The chill in the word had nothing to do with the air. “Gilliam. You do your House no honor by this . . . display.” Her voice was not raised, and indeed her lips were turned up in the semblance of a perfect smile, which fooled no one. The Lady Elseth had grown in power over the years; if age had weakened her at all, none were there to witness it. She stood tall, although her cheekbones didn't clear her son's shoulders, and the regal fall of a perfect, night-blue dress made her face seem all the whiter.

“Lady,” Stephen murmured. He dropped his shoulders and his head in a bow, and held it long enough for the flush to leave his cheeks.

“Good. Gilliam!”

Stephen looked up to see the back of Gilliam's head disappearing—none too politely—through the crowd. He was heading toward the doors.

“What was that about?” Lady Elseth asked softly.

“A private matter, Lady. Nothing important.”

“Good. If you need a few minutes, take them, but you might consider making the social rounds soon.” She nodded quietly to the alcove, and Stephen retreated as the curtains closed out the room once again. He picked up his jacket and brushed out the folds before they became wrinkles. All the while, his hands were shaking. In darkness, anger warred with pain; neither won.

For as Stephen stood alone again, under the eye of the moon, he felt a familiar tingle, an odd rush of warmth that surged through his skin and ran along his limbs. He cried out, but his throat passed a whisper, no more, and once again the jacket spilled to the stone like a liquid with no vessel to hold it. His hands found the balcony railing, for strength and stability's sake, as his vision floundered in the darkness like a wild, hunted thing.

He stood in the glow of the Hunter God's presence. And for just a moment, glimmering like fireflies near the perfectly kept lake, two golden, glowing eyes
stared back at him. He blinked; they were gone. But the touch of God remained to sing its urgent, incomprehensible message.

He turned and the terrace became a spinning, unstable outcropping on the side of the larger building. His hair stood on edge, and his skin tingled so much it hurt. If the Sacred Hunt had ever threatened his life, he forgot it. Nothing had ever felt so full of danger as this moment.

Instinct, not any sure knowledge, guided his steps. He had to find Gilliam, and quickly.

• • •

Gilliam, Lord Elseth, was indeed an angry Hunter. His hair was a wild, dark mess, and his clothing, created at the behest of Lady Elseth, and chosen specifically for an occasion such as this, fit him both perfectly and poorly. Ashfel, the pride of his hunting pack, was safely kenneled at the Elseth Manor, as were the rest of his dogs; there was no release at all to be had in the streets of the King's City.

The fact that none of the other Hunter Lords had traveled with their dogs did nothing to still his temper. They, at least, had the attention and fealty of their huntbrothers, whereas he—

He swore, a steady stream of words that the Ladies would have heartily disapproved of—if they condescended to hear them at all. What was so bloody interesting about Lady Cynthia anyway? He kicked at a clod of dirt and overturned the edge of the flower bed that had been newly planted. A long green stem, topped by a stiff oblong bulb, keeled over into the cold air.

Oh, he supposed she was pretty enough, if you cared for that sort of thing; she was certainly quiet and not given to loud displays or political games; she dressed well and spent little time powdered and primped as so many of the younger Ladies did. So what? Any of her so-called good points were negatives; she wasn't like most of the other Ladies. And she still couldn't hold a candle to the glory and the stress of the Hunt.

He kicked something else that got in his way, a rock of some sort that lined the garden path. Hurt his toe, too, although his boots were heavy. He didn't really notice.

If Stephen wanted to mope around after Lady Cynthia, he could bloody well do just that. But if he thought that Gilliam would stand around and plaintively watch, he was an idiot. Gilliam, Lord Elseth, had far better things to do with his time—and anyway, he hated coming-of-age balls with all their attendant frippery and stiff-lipped good manners.

• • •

Shoving his hands into pockets that were not designed for a bulge made of fists, he stalked off down the street under the watchful eye of the ever present moon-in-glory.

“Stephen?” Lady Elseth's fingers were gentle as they curled around the crook of his arm. “What is it?”

He shrugged her off as gently as possible, and once again donned the jacket that now seemed impractical and gaudy. “Did you see which way Gilliam went?”

“Out.” Her voice made clear what she thought of his departure. It was enough to give Stephen pause, but not enough to stop him.

“I—I'm sorry, Lady Elseth. You'll have to give our regrets to Lady and Lord Maubreche.”

She raised one graying brow, but her hands fell idle and disappeared into folds of blue velvet. “Why?”

“Gilliam's in danger.” As the words rolled off his tongue, he felt them to be both true and false; later, perhaps, he'd have the time to wonder why. “I've got to find him.”

She caught his face in her hands then, searching his eyes thoroughly—but quickly—before releasing him. His cheeks were warm with the imprints of her fingers as he bowed his head. “Oh, Stephen?”

“Lady?”

“We need to speak about Lady Cynthia when you return.”

“Lady.” But he felt no dread, and little embarrassment; the urgency of his brush with God had put his life in perspective again. Gilliam, had he known, would have been pleased.

• • •

The guards at the door were not completely useless; they pointed to the damage that Gilliam had done to both the flower bed and the rock garden on his way out of the west gate. The keeper of the house was less helpful; he stopped Stephen once to comment quietly upon the state of the grounds, and twice to assure himself that Stephen needed no carriage. Stephen only barely managed to shake the man off before he made his way to the stables.

Gilliam was walking; Stephen would soon be mounted. Surely it wouldn't be that difficult to catch up to his Lord and bring him back to the estate. Whatever there was to be faced, they would face it together in the company of other Hunter Lords and their huntbrothers.

But the stables were shadowed and dark, and the stable boys too slow for Stephen's liking. He demanded a horse, and they brought out three that he deemed less than useless; they were fine-spirited, high-strung animals meant to be ridden by those with the time for odd tempers. They pranced about, evading bit and saddle and nickering their displeasure and their anxiety.

As if speaking in their tongue, he snorted to make his annoyance plain, and the fourth he chose himself: Greysprint, a horse used for riding that might as easily have pulled a great carriage without aid. He was steady, or so the stable boys vowed, but as Stephen mounted, he felt the beast shudder.

“Not now,” he murmured, the words at odds with the soothing tone of his voice. He caught the reins, waved the hands off, and cantered out into the open air. The night, even with the moon to lessen it, was dark and shadowed. And unlike her sister sun, the moon gave off no warmth.

• • •

Gilliam had had enough of the social circus to last a long lifetime. He hated the odd dress and foreign mannerisms deemed necessary to interact with either the Ladies or the other Lords, who undoubtedly felt as dubious about the privilege as he. He hated the food, bits of ridiculous portions and equally ridiculous methods of preparation; hated the tinkling music and the constricting form of the few dances he knew; hated the milling servants with their stiff voices and perfunctory bows that so reminded him of his own manor's keeper, Boredan. He was angered by the strict adherence to the dogs-stay-at-kennel rule, angered by the idiotic velvet and silk that his mother insisted he wear, and annoyed by the fact that Maribelle, born of the same father and mother, fit so smugly into the whole charade.

But mostly, he was angry at Stephen.

The night was indeed cool now, and he'd left his jacket over the rails of the grand central staircase that pointed the way out of Maubreche Manor, so he walked briskly to keep the chill at bay. He had no idea where he was going; destination was not so important as escape.