lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

The glance Fara cast him was equally devoid of both fear and consolation, or indeed, much expression at all. Ingrey was impressed that she did not snarl in return; if offered such a platitude in such a moment, he would have been tempted to draw steel and run the divine through. She merely murmured, “Where is my brother Biast? He should be here. And the archdivine.”

“He was here earlier, my lady, for a good long time, and will return shortly. I expect the archdivine and my lord Hetwar will be accompanying him.”

She nodded once and shrugged away from him. His hand hesitated in air, as if to offer another consolatory pawing, but fortunately he thought better of it, stepping away to leave the princess in her stolid sorrow.

Horseriver stood watching all this with his feet braced a little apart, the picture of a supporting spouse and lord. His face seemed no more stern than the occasion demanded. It was only to Ingrey's eye that he seemed crouched like a cat at a mousehole. What more was about to happen in this room than the long-expected death of an aged man, even if aged king? Horseriver had been hovering in Easthome for weeks. What did he await, besides the end of this vigil? And if his presence here was so vital to his schemes, how much had it maddened him to have to break away and tend to the untimely intrusion of Boleso's funeral?

There are two hallow kings in this room. How can there be two?

The question Ingrey had asked in Hetwar's chambers, to which he'd received no satisfactory reply, came back to him now. What made the hallow kingship hallowed? Ingrey could barely guess. Horseriver, he suspected, knew.

Ingrey felt his own blood pulsing through his veins. He would have thought the piling up of his wolf's wolf-lives, and of Horseriver's stallion's horse-lives, would have made each more quintessentially wolf or horse, but it seemed not; it was as though all such wisdom-creatures converged on some common center, the denser and deeper they grew. They are both a lot like each other, Ijada had said. Indeed.

The hymn singers came to the end of their piece, and stopped; a faint shuffling suggested a recess. The Mother's acolyte had been dispatched down the corridor to watch out for Prince-marshal Biast. The divine had walked to the other side of the chamber and was helping himself to a glass of water. From the bed came a labored breath that was not followed by another.

Fara's face went stiffer, her eyes glassy with moisture that did not fall. Horseriver stepped briefly forward only to hand her a lace handkerchief, which she clutched with a spasm of her hand, then stepped back. The earl did not say anything foolish. He did not say anything at all.

He did shift back a pace, then rose almost on his toes, stretching his arms out like a falconer calling his bird to him.

Ingrey boiled up to full alertness, craning his neck and straining his senses. Ingrey could not see souls, as saints were reputed to do. He discerned the departing essence only because something unwound from it in its passing, spooling off like some heady perfume spiraling through the air. Gods, he had more than felt before; only by that experience could he identify the vast Presence that raised his hackles like a breath in the dark. But this One was not to his address, and was gone with its prize before his pupils could widen in a futile effort to take it in.

Ingrey caught the moment when Horseriver's head jerked back and breathed the kingship in. The earl staggered a little, as though a great eagle had landed upon those outstretched falconer's arms. His eyes squeezed shut, he folded his arms around himself, and he breathed out in a satisfied huff. When his eyes snapped open again, they blazed.

Holy fire, thought Ingrey. And, So fast! What just happened? Surely Horseriver had not-no, he had not waylaid the hallow king's departing soul and taken it in like another spirit animal atop the dark, distorted hoard he held already. And his spell for deathlessness captured body and soul both, leaving his own corpse behind like an emptied husk. Ingrey whispered in mystification to Wencel, “Have you stolen a blessing from the gods…?”

Horseriver's faint mirth nearly melted his heart. “This”-the earl gestured down himself, barely breathing the words-“was never the gods'. We made it ourselves. It belongs here. It was wrenched from me two and a half centuries ago. Now it returns. For a little time.”

The Father's divine, oblivious to all this, had hurried to the hallow king's bedside, where the physician was bent over making his final examination. They murmured together in grave consultation. The divine signed the corpse and himself, and began intoning a short prayer.

So. Wencel was revealed in another lie, or half-truth; Ingrey could not summon the least surprise anymore. There had not been two hallow kings in this room; there had been two partial kings, mutually crippled, each holding hostage the other's fulfillment. Now there was one, whole again. Ingrey shivered under the terrible weight of his sovereign smile.

Fara turned to glance at her husband: her eyes widened and her breath drew in. If she saw one-tenth the towering glamour with her ordinary eyes that Ingrey sensed with his shaman's sight, he could not wonder at her sudden awe. Horseriver licked his thumb again and touched her brow, then moved to embrace her, leaning their foreheads together in a gesture one might mistake for comfort or blessing. Fara's eyes, when he drew back, were glazed and staring. Ingrey wondered if his own eyes looked just like that.

His arm around his wife's waist as if to support her, the earl turned to the Father's divine. “Tell my brother-in-law, when he arrives, that I have taken the princess home to lie down. All of this has brought on one of her debilitating headaches, I'm afraid.”

The divine, suddenly very attentive to the earl, nodded eager understanding. “Of course, my lord. I am so sorry for your loss, my lady. But your father's soul is born now into a better world.”

Horseriver's lips twisted. “Indeed, all men are born pregnant with their own deaths. The experienced eye can watch it quicken within them day by day.”

The divine flinched at this disturbing metaphor, but plowed on sturdily. “I'm not sure that-” Horseriver held up a restraining hand, and the man fell silent at once. “Peace. Tell the prince-marshal that we will meet with him in the morning. Late morning, probably. He may begin the arrangements as he wills.”

“Ingrey…” Horseriver turned to his retainer, and his lips drew back on the most disquieting smile yet. His voice dropped to an eerie low register that vibrated through Ingrey's bones. “Heel.”

Furious, fascinated, and frantic, Ingrey bowed and followed his master out.

HORSERIVER HUSTLED HIS WIFE AND INGREY SWIFTLY AND ALONE through the darkened corridors of the hallow king's hall. Another murmur of Peace had the gate guards saluting them through without hindrance or question. They turned into the night streets, the air growing misty in the gathering chill. As they rounded the first corner, Ingrey looked back over his shoulder and saw a procession of swinging lanterns. Voices carried through the fog: Biast and a noble company hurrying back to his father's deathbed. Too late. Ingrey's ear picked out Hetwar's voice, replying to the prince-marshal. He wondered if Hetwar carried the hallow king's seal that was his charge in its oak box, together with the silver hammer to break it at the bedside.

Horseriver's party was lightless, black-cloaked, stepping softly; Ingrey doubted anyone from the prince-marshal's retinue saw them at all. They started down the hill. A few streets farther on, they did not turn aside to Horseriver's mansion as Ingrey expected, but continued till the stable mews loomed out of the darkness. The doors were open wide, and a few lanterns, hung from the rafters, burned softly within the redolent space.