lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

The sorceress, making her way up the stairs with hand to the rail and her maid close behind, glanced back at this, her lips twitching. She lumbered on upward, and Ingrey hastened after.

To his satisfaction, he found the door to Lady Ijada's parlor locked. He rapped upon it.

“Who is there?” came her voice.

“Ingrey.”

A slight pause. “Are you awake?”

He grimaced. “Yes. You have a visitor.”

Puzzled silence for a moment, then the clink of the key in the lock and the scrape of the bar being withdrawn. The warden drew the door wide, blinking in astonishment as the sorceress and her maid swept within. Ingrey followed.

“Ijada?” said the sorceress, sounding taken aback. “My word, child, how tall you've grown!”

Then Ijada's face was swept by such joy as Ingrey had never yet seen illuminate it. “Hallana!” she cried, and hurried forward.

The two women fell into each other's arms with feminine shrieks of recognition and pleasure. At length, Lady Ijada stood back with her hands upon the shorter woman's shoulders. “How ever did you come here?”

“The news of your misadventure came to the Mother's seminary at Suttleaf. I teach there now, you know. And then there were the dreams, of course.”

“And how came you there-you must tell me everything that has happened with you since-oh, Lord Ingrey.” Ijada turned to him, her face glowing. “This is my friend I told you of. She was a medical missioner at my father's fort on the west marches, and a student in the Bastard's Order as well, pursuing both her callings-learning the fen folk's wisdom songs, and treating what of their sicknesses she could, to draw them to the fort and our divine's Quintarian preachings. When she was younger, of course. And me-I was the most gangling awkward child. Hallana, I still don't know why you let me tail around after you all day long, but I adored you for it.”

“Well, aside from my not being immune to worship-makes me wonder about the gods, indeed it does-you did make yourself quite useful. You were not afraid of the marsh, or the woods, or the animals, or the fen folk, or of getting thoroughly muddy and scratched or of being scolded for it.”

Ijada laughed. “I still remember how you and that dreadfully priggish divine used to argue theology over the meal trestles-Learned Oswin would grow so furious, he would positively stamp out afterward. I should have worried for his digestion, if I had been older and less self-absorbed. Poor skinny fellow.”

“Oh, but look at you-here, you must sit down-” Lady Ijada and the maid Hergi joined forces briefly to find the best chair, pad it with cushions, and urge Learned Hallana into it. She sank down gratefully, blowing out her breath with a whoosh, and adjusted her belly in her lap. The maid scurried to prop her mistress's feet on a stool. Lady Ijada pulled a chair to the table opposite her friend, and Ingrey retreated to the window seat, no great distance away in the tiny room, where he could watch both women. The warden hung back, cautious and respectful.

“Your double scholarship is a most unusual combination, Learned,” said Ingrey, nodding to the woman's shoulder braids. Their pin was working loose again, and they hung precariously on their perch.

“Oh, yes. It came about by accident, if accident it was.” She shrugged, dislodging the braids; her maid sighed and wordlessly retrieved and reinstalled them. “I had started out to be a physician, like my mother and grandmother before me. My apprenticeship was quite complete, and I had begun to practice at the Temple hospital in Helmharbor. There I was called to attend upon a dying sorcerer.” She paused and glanced shrewdly at Ingrey. “What do you know about how Temple sorcerers are made, Lord Ingrey? Or illicit sorcerers, for that matter?”

His brows rose. “A person comes into possession of a demon of disorder, which has somehow escaped from the grip of the Bastard into the world of matter. The sorcerer takes it into his soul-or hers,” he added hastily. “And nourishes it there. In return, the demon lends its powers. The acquisition of a demon makes one a sorcerer much as the acquisition of a horse makes one a rider, or so I was taught.” “Very correct.” Hallana nodded approval. “It does not, of course, necessarily make one a good rider. That must be learned. Well. What is less well known, is that Temple sorcerers sometimes bequeath their demons to their Order, to be passed along to the next generation, with all that they have learned. Since, when a sorcerer dies, if she-or he-does not bear the demon back to the gods, it will jump away to the next living thing nearby that may sustain it in the world of matter. It is not a good thing to lose a powerful demon into a stray dog. Don't smile, it has happened. But done properly, a trained demon may be directed into one's chosen successor without ripping one's soul to pieces in the process.”

“You were ten. All the world is an equal mystery then.” She shifted in her chair, not without difficulty, evidently seeking a more comfortable position. “The Bastard's Order in Helmharbor had groomed this divine, a very scholarly young fellow, to receive his mentor's powers. All seemed to go as planned. The old sorcerer-my word, but he was a frail thing by then-breathed his last quite peacefully, all things considered. His successor held his hand and prayed. And the stupid demon jumped right over him and into me. No one was expecting it, least of all that lofty young divine. He was livid. I was distraught. How could I practice the healing arts when plagued with a demon of disorder itself? I tried for some time to be rid of it-even made pilgrimage to a saint reputed to have the Bastard's own power over His strayed elementals.”

“In Darthaca?” inquired Ingrey.

Her brows rose. “How did you know?”

“Fortunate guess.”

The flare of her nostril expressed her dim opinion of that quip. “Well, so. We made the rite together. But the god would not take His demon back!” “Darthaca,” confirmed Ingrey glumly. “I believe I once met the same fellow. Remarkably useless.”

Lady Ijada bowed her head, a shadow crossing her face. “Ours was not a high-walled fort for no cause. Angry, foolish men, an imprudent ride out to attempt reason at a time when tempers were running too high…I had seen only the lovely side of the marsh country, and the kindness of its people. But they were only people after all.”

“What happened to you and your lady mother, after he was slain?”

“She went back to her own kin-my own kin-in the north of the Weald. In a year, she married again-another Temple-man, though not a soldier-her brother made little jokes about that. She did not love my stepfather in the way she had loved my father, but he was fond and she was ready to be comfortable. But she died-um.” Ijada stopped, glanced at Learned Hallana's belly, and bit her lip.

“I am a physician, too,” Hallana reminded her. “Childbed?”

“About four days after. She took a fever.”

The warden, listening in all too much fascination, signed herself in sympathy, caught Ingrey's eye upon her, and subsided.

“Hm,” said Hallana. “I wonder if-no, never mind. All too late. And your-?”

“Little brother. He lived. My stepfather dotes on him. But he was the reason my stepfather remarried so very quickly.”

It was the first Ingrey had heard Lady Ijada had living siblings. I hadn't thought to ask. “And so you found yourself living with…no one you'd ever planned to,” Learned Hallana mused. “And vice versa. Was your stepfamily comfortable?”

“And she's, ah, how many years older than you?”

A dry smile fleeted across Ijada's face. “Three.”

Hallana snorted. “And so when your chance came to go, she bade you farewell with right goodwill?”