lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

“Well, it was goodwill. My Badgerbank uncle's wife actually found me the position with Princess Fara. She thought my stepfamily dreadfully common, and that I should be raised up out of it before yeomanry became a habit with me.”

Hallana's snort was more caustic, this time. The very learned divine, Ingrey realized, had not introduced herself as kin anyone.

“But Hallana,” Ijada continued, “physician or not, I do not understand how you may safely bear a demon and a baby at once. I thought demons were terribly dangerous, in that state.”

“They are.” Learned Hallana grimaced. “Disorder flows naturally from demons; it is the very spring of their power in matter. The creation of a child, wherein matter grows an entirely new soul, is the highest and most complex form of ordering known, apart from the gods themselves. Given all that can go wrong with the process without a demon, keeping the two apart becomes rather urgent. And difficult. The difficulty is why some divines discourage female sorcerers from becoming mothers, or women from seeking that power until they are grown old. Well, and some of them are just self-satisfied fools, but that's another subject. It's all very well, you know, but I saw no reason to stop my life for other people's theories. My risks are no greater-or different-than any other woman's, if my skills match them. Oh, apart from the danger of the demon entering the baby during the distractions of birth. Ordinary infants are demonic enough! The secret of safety turns out to be to, ah…how shall I put it. Shed excess disorder. By cascading small amounts of chaos continually, I keep my demon passive, and my baby safe.” A fond maternal smile lit her eyes. “Alas, it's a trifle hard on everyone around me for those months. I have a little hermitage on the edge of the seminary grounds that I move into.”

“Not at all. My dear husband brings the two older children to visit me every day. And some evenings without the children, too. I catch up on my reading and my studies-it makes the most wonderful retreat imaginable. I should be quite too inclined to repeat it, but I imagine a dozen babies would be a mistake, and anyway, I think my husband would draw the line well before then.”

The maid Hergi, who had made herself small and quiet near her mistress's feet, giggled in a remarkably unservile fashion.

“It is not, you know, different in kind from the sort of thoughtful self-discipline any Temple sorcerer must keep. To use disorder alone, never trying to reverse the flow of its nature, but in good cause…calm, careful, never yielding to the temptation of shortcuts. That was the salvation of my calling-when a certain brilliant logician pointed out that surgery destroys to heal. And I saw how to correctly use the powers that had been granted me in the direction my heart desired. I was so overjoyed, I married him.”

Ijada laughed. “I am so happy for you! You deserve all good things.”

“Ah, what we may deserve, well, the Father alone knows that, in the balance of His justice.” The sorceress's face grew solemn again. “So tell me, love, what truly happened out in that cold castle?”

IJADA'S LAUGHTER WAS ABRUPTLY EXTINGUISHED. INGREY QUIETLY rose and sent the warden out for the meal that he had been diverted from ordering, increasing the servings. This also removed her interested ear from the proceedings. She looked disappointed, but dared not disobey.

He was alert for discrepancies, but the tale Ijada told Learned Hallana was much the same as what she had-finally-told Ingrey, though this time all in order with nothing left out. Except that she revealed much more to Hallana of her suffocating fears. Hallana's expression grew so intent as to be stony during Ijada's account of her leopard dreams. Ijada brought her story up to her nearly disastrous fall at the ford, yesterday, and hesitated, glancing across at Ingrey. “I think the next part should be Lord Ingrey's to tell.”

Ingrey jerked in his seat, flushing. For an instant it almost seemed like the red fog returning, and his hand spasmed on the edge of the sill on which he sat. He became uncomfortably aware that he had grown careless again, on some dim assumption that the sorceress could protect both herself and Ijada. But sorcerers were not proof against steel, not once it closed on them. He'd allowed himself to be alone with the women while still armed. And now his direst secrets were challenged…

He blurted, “I tried to drown her. I've tried three other times to kill her, that I know of. I swear it is not my desire. She thinks it is some spell or geas.”

The sorceress pursed her lips and vented a long, thoughtful stream of breath. Then she sat back and closed her eyes, her face growing very still. When she opened them again, her expression was enigmatic.

“No sorcerer has currently bespelled you. You bear no sustaining link-no spirit-threads wind to or from you. No elemental from the fifth god lies within your soul. But something else does. It seems very dark.”

He looked away. “I know. It is my wolf.”

“If that's a wolf's soul, I'm the queen of Darthaca.” “It always was a strange wolf. But it is bound!”

“I don't know if I am…safe.”

Her brows twitched up; she looked him over, and he grew acutely conscious of his road stains and brigand's beard stubble. “I think I shall not argue with that. Ijada, what do you see in him?”

“I don't see anything,” she replied unhappily. “It is as though the leopard smells him, and I overhear…oversmell? Howsoever, I am lent these unfamiliar sensations. There's the dark wolf-thing you see-at least, it smells dark, like old leaf mold and campfire ashes and forest shadows-and a third thing. Whispering around him like a rumor. It has a most strange perfume. Acrid.”

Hallana tilted her head back and forth. “I see his soul, with my soul's eye. I see the dark thing. I do not see or hear the third thing. It is not of the Bastard in any way, not lent from the world of spirit that the gods rule. Yet-his soul has strange convolutions. A clear glass that one cannot see with the eyes, one might still touch with the fingers. I must risk a deeper touch.”

“Don't!” said Ingrey, panicked.

“Lady, ought you…?” murmured the maid, her face crimped with alarm. “Now?”

Hallana's lips moved on what might have been, Dratsab, dratsab, dratsab. “Let us think.”

A knock sounded at the door; the warden had returned, flanked by some inn servants with trays and the man Hallana had called Bernan, who lugged a large chest. He was a wiry, middle-aged fellow with an alert eye; his green-leather jerkin was spattered with old burn spots, like a smith's. He inhaled with deep appreciation as the trays were borne past him. The delectable odors of vinegared beef and onions seeping from under the crockery covers forcibly reminded Ingrey that he was both ravenous and exhausted.

Hallana brightened. “Better still, let us eat, then think.” The inn servants set the table in the little parlor, but after that the sorceress sent them away, saying she preferred to be served by her own folk. She whispered aside to Ingrey, “Actually, I make such a mess, just now, I don't dare eat in public.” Ingrey, warily circumspect, sent the warden downstairs to eat in the common room and tarry there until called for. She cast a curious look back as she reluctantly withdrew.

Hergi whipped a napkin the size of a tablecloth around her mistress and helped her to her food, deftly catching tilting glasses, skidding jugs, and sliding stew, often before they spilled, but sometimes not. “Drink up your wine,” the sorceress recommended. “It will go sour in half an hour. I should take myself off before the innkeeper discovers the trouble with his beer. Well, his store of fleas, lice, and bedbugs will not survive me, either, so I hope it is a fair exchange. If I linger, I may have to start in on the mice, poor things.”