lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

“Lord Ingrey? What is your opinion? You were certainly correct before.”

“I don't think…I can move.” The oak floor was hard and chilly, but by the swimming of Ingrey's head, horizontal seemed vastly preferable to vertical.

He was forced to the vertical despite himself, dragged up and placed in the divine's vacated chair by the two servants. Bernan tapped off the bolts with a hammer and Hergi, clucking, collected a basin of fresh water, soap, towels, and the leather case of what proved to be medical instruments and supplies that she had brought in with her. She tended expertly to Ingrey's injuries, new and old, under the divine's eye, and it occurred to Ingrey belatedly that of course the sorceress would travel with her own midwife-dedicat, in her present state. He wondered if Hergi was married to the smith, if that was Bernan's real calling.

“In that place you found yourselves,” Hallana began again.

“It wasn't real,” mumbled Ingrey.

“Mm, well, yes. But while you were in that, um, state, what did you perceive of me, if anything?”

“Colored fire flowed from your hands. Into my mouth. It drove the vein growing there into a frenzy, which it passed on to the others. Its other parts, I suppose. It was as though your fire flushed them from their hiding places.” He ran his tongue around his mouth now, to reassure himself that the hideous distortion was truly gone. More disturbingly, he found his face was slimed with spittle. He started to wipe away the sticky foam with the bandage on his left wrist, but his hand was intercepted by Hergi, protecting her work. She gave him a disapproving headshake and wrung out a wet cloth instead. Ingrey swabbed and tried not to think about his father.

“The tongue is the Bastard's own sign and signifier upon our bodies,” Hallana mused.

“That ought to mean something. I wonder what? I wonder if there are any manuscripts of Old Weald lore that would illuminate this puzzle? When I get back to Suttleaf, I will search our library, but I'm afraid we've mostly medical tracts. The Darthacan Quintarians who conquered us were more interested in destroying the old ways than in chronicling them. It was as if they wished to put the old forest powers out of reach of everyone, even themselves. I'm not sure they were wrong.”

“When I was in the leopard-when I was the leopard,” said Ijada, “I saw the phantasmal images, too. But then it was all shut away from me again.” A faint regret tinged her tone.

“I, on the other hand”-the sorceress's fingers drummed on the closest level surface, which happened to be the top of her stomach-“saw nothing. Except for Lord Ingrey ripping his way out of iron chains that should have held a horse, that is. If that was typical of the strength their spirit animals lent the old warriors, it's no wonder they were prized.”

If the old warriors had hurt like this afterward, Ingrey wasn't so sure their ghost animals would have been as prized as all that. If the forest kin had carried on as he just had…he wanted to ask about the noises he'd made, but was too mortified.

“If there was anything to see, I should have seen it,” Hallana went on in increasing exasperation. She plunked down on a spare chair. “Dratsab, dratsab. Let us think.” After a moment, she narrowed her eyes at Ingrey. “You say the thing is gone. If we cannot say what it was-can you at least now remember who put it on you?”

Ingrey leaned forward, rubbing his scratchy eyes. He suspected they were glaringly bloodshot. “I'd better have these boots off.” At Hallana's gesture, Bernan knelt and assisted; Ingrey's ankles were indeed swelling and discolored. He stared down at them for a moment more.

Hallana sucked on her lower lip. “Think harder. A compulsion to kill your prisoner was more likely laid on you between the time the news came of Boleso's death and the time you left Easthome for Boar's Head. Before then, there was no reason, and after, no time. Whom did you see in that time?”

Put like that, it was even more disturbing. “Not very many men. I was called to Lord Hetwar's chambers in the evening. The courier was still there. Hetwar, Hetwar's secretary of the chamber, Prince Rigild the king's seneschal, Earl Badgerbank, Wencel kin Horseriver, Lord Alca kin Otterbine, the kin Boarford brothers…We spoke but briefly, as Lord Hetwar gave me the news and my instructions.”

“Which were?”

“Retrieve Boleso's body, transport his killer…” Ingrey hesitated. “Make his death discreet.”

“What did that mean?” asked Ijada, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“Make all evidence of Boleso's indiscretions vanish.” Including his principal victim?

“What? But aren't you an officer of the king's justice?” she said indignantly.

“Strictly speaking, I serve Sealmaster Hetwar.” He added after a cautious moment, “It is Sealmaster Hetwar's steadfast purpose to serve the closest needs of the Weald and its royal house.”

Ijada fell silent, dismayed, her brows drawing down. The Temple sorceress tapped her lips with one finger. She, at least, did not look shocked. But when she spoke again, her swift thoughts had plainly darted down yet another road. “Nothing of spirit can exist in the world of matter without a being of matter to support it. Spells are sustained by sorcerers through their demons, which are necessary but not sufficient; the demon's sustenance must come from the sorcerer's body, ultimately. But your spell was being sustained by you. I suspect…hm. To use your word, Ijada, a parasite magic? The spell was somehow induced in you, and your life maintained it thereafter. If this strange sorcery has any resemblance to my own, it flows most readily, like water, downhill. It does not create, but steals its capabilities from its host.”

Wasn't it?

“But…” Ijada's lovely lips thinned with thought. “Sealmaster Hetwar must have a hundred swordsmen, soldiers, bravos. A half dozen of his guardsmen rode out with you. The…the person, whoever-might have laid the geas on any of them just as well. Why should the only man in Easthome who is known to bear an animal spirit be sent to me?”

A flash of expression-insight, satisfaction?-flew across Learned Hallana's face and vanished. But she did not speak, only sat back more intently, presumably because leaning forward more intently was not feasible. “Is it widely known, your spiritual affliction?” she asked.

Ingrey shrugged. “It is general gossip, yes. Variously garbled. My reputation is useful to Hetwar. I'm not someone most men want to cross.” Or have around them for very long, or invite to their tables, or, above all, introduce to their female kin. But I'm well accustomed to that, by now. Ijada's eyes widened. “You were chosen because your wolf could be blamed! Hetwar chose you. Therefore, he must be the source of the geas!”

Two extremely unpleasant realizations crept over Ingrey. One was that he was still bearing Lady Ijada toward her potential death. Her drowning in the river yesterday could have been no worse than some later poisoning or strangling in her cell, and a hundred times more merciful than the horrors of a dubious trial and subsequent hanging.

And the other was that an enemy of great and secret power was going to be seriously upset when they both arrived at Easthome alive.

INGREY WOKE FEVERISH FROM DIMLY REMEMBERED NIGHTMARES. He blinked in the level light coming through the dormer window in the tiny, but private, chamber high up in the eaves of his inn. Dawn. Time to move.

Movement unleashed pain in every strained and sprained muscle he possessed, which seemed to be most of them, and he hastily abandoned his attempt to sit up. But lying back did not bring relief. He gingerly turned his head, his neck on fire, and eyed the trap of crockery he'd set on the floor by his door. The teetering pile appeared undisturbed. Good sign.