lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

“Shall I die of love, then?” murmured Ijada, sinking onto Ingrey's chest. “I always thought that was a figure of speech. Together, then? No! My Lord of Autumn, in this Your season, help us…!”

There are no gods here.

But Ingrey was here. Try something else. Try anything. Maybe the revenant captain had some power here as well; he carried a banner, after all, Old Weald sacred sign of rescues beyond death and the death of all other hopes. Ingrey whined, danced around the man, scratched at his booted leg with one paw, then crouched and nudged his long nose repeatedly at the scabbard hung on the gold belt on the opposite side from his head. Would the revenant understand his plea? The man swiveled his hips to regard him, his sandy gray brows rising in surprise. He stood and drew the hilt shard. Yes! Ingrey nudged the hand some more, and turned to bite at his own side.

Ijada didn't say this had hurt! Ingrey strangled a yelp and controlled a twisting jerk away. The ghostly hand descended into the gaping gash in his wolf-chest and emerged dripping red. The shard edge sliced across a slippery object in the warrior's palm, and then the warrior tossed something skyward. The bloody fist descended once more, and Ingrey's wolf-self seemed to breathe again as the hand withdrew emptied and the gash closed up in a long red line. Ingrey scrambled upright on his paws once more.

High on the spear tip, a whole heart beat, picking up the pulse.

Ijada inhaled sharply and sat up, blinking around. Her eyes met Ingrey's wolf-gaze, and widened in astonishment and recognition. “There you are!” Her head swiveled, as she took in the mob of agitated ghosts who had crowded up around this strange operation. “There you all are! You!” She struggled to her feet and curtseyed to the bannerman, signing the Five. “I was looking for you, my lord marshal, but I could not see.”

The ghost bowed back in deep respect. Ijada's hand curled in Ingrey's neck ruff, clutching and stroking the thick fur. He pushed up into the caress. She looked down at him-not very far down, for his big head came nearly to her chest. “How came you to be all apart like this? What is happening here?” Her gaze traveled around the clearing till it caught on the multifaced Horseriver. “Oh.” She flinched a little, but then her back straightened. “So that's what you look like, out of the shadow. What are you doing on my land?”

Horseriver had composed himself in an attitude of utter indifference, but this last jerked him into rage. “Your land! This is Holytree!”

The form of Horseriver stiffened, and the ironic mouth murmured, “Indeed, we go. Alas that you shall find your enjoyment of your legacy…brief.” That mouth smiled nastily, and Ingrey growled in response. Ijada's hand tightened in his fur.

“And these?” Ijada glanced up at the gold-belted marshal, and gestured at the gathered revenants.

“I am their last true hallow king. Follow me, they must.”

“Into oblivion?” she demanded indignantly. “Shall they die for you twice? What kind of king are you?”

“I owe you nothing. Not even explanation.”

“You owe them everything!”

He could not, exactly, turn away, with the faces chasing each other around his skull, but he turned his shoulders from her. “It is done. It is long past done.”

“It is not.”

He whipped back, and snarled, “They will follow me down to darkness, and the gods who denied us will be denied in turn. Oblivion and revenge. They have made me, and you cannot unmake me.”

“I cannot…” She hesitated, and gestured at the banner pole upon which the marshal-warrior now leaned, listening. Raising her face, she pointed to the mound where Wencel's body lay huddled and Fara knelt silent and staring. “You died, I think. Death lays a kingship down, along with all else a life accumulates in the world of matter. We go to the gods naked and equal, as in any other birth, but for our souls and what we've made of them. Then the kin meeting makes the king again.” She stared around at the ghosts, challengingly. “Do you not?”

An odd rustle ran through the revenants. The marshal-warrior was watching with a most peculiar expression on his face, an amalgam of sorrow and unholy joy. It dawned on Ingrey then that this man must have been the very first Horseriver hallow king's royal banner-carrier, who had died by his lord's side at Bloodfield. His body was doubtless buried in this same pit, for Horseriver had said his banner had been broken and thrown in atop him. And this warrior would never have given it up alive. The royal bannerman should have received the hallow kingship in trust, to carry as steward to the next kin meeting, to be surrendered in turn to the new king-but for the great, disrupted spell, that had carried it instead into this far, unfriendly future.

Horseriver snorted. “There is no other.”

The rustle grew, racing around the mob like fire, then back to the beginning. The marshal-warrior stood up straight, then saluted Ijada with that eccentric looping sign of the Five. The ghostly lips turned up in a smile. He let his banner pole fall out of his hand; Ijada's hand caught it and gripped it tight.

Wait, thought Ingrey, we living ones cannot touch these ghostly things, they run through our fingers like water…

Ijada grasped the pole with both hands and gave it a great yank. Above her head, the banner unfurled and snapped out in no breeze. The wolf's head badge of the Wolfcliffs snarled upon it, black on red.

Ingrey blinked up through his human eyes and wrenched to his feet, stunned. He was back in his body again, and it felt astounding. He inhaled. His wolf was gone…No. He clutched his heart. It's right here. Howling joyously through his veins. And something more…A line ran between him and Horseriver: the current between Ingrey and Ijada that Horseriver had made, broken, and bound again to his kingship. Tension seemed to reverberate back and forth along that line now, its power ascending. The pull between them was massive, straining.

Horseriver reached down and yanked Fara to her feet, and clasped her hands around his banner pole. “Hold!” She stared at him in terror and gripped as though her life depended on it. Grounded upon that mound of death and woe, the strength of the old kingship was vast.

He could feel Horseriver's geas of silence fly away from around her face like a spring of metal released, spinning away in the air. Fara took a huge breath.

Horseriver turned to her, and Wencel's face rose fully to the surface for the first time. One hand reached out toward her. “Fara…?” that young voice quavered. “My wife…?”

Fara jerked as if shot with a crossbow bolt. Her eyes closed in pain. Opened. Glanced at Ijada, at Ingrey. At the ghastly revenant before her. “I tried to be your wife,” she whispered. “You never tried to be my husband.”

And she lowered the tip of the banner pole to the ground, the gray rag falling in a silky puddle, put her foot upon the dry wood, and snapped it in half.

HORSERIVER FELL BACK A PACE. HALF HIS FACES SEEMED contorted in rage. Others registered ironic resignation, disgust and self-disgust, and one sad visage an ageless, dignified endurance. His hands dropped to his sides, and the current between him and Ingrey faded away like sparks burning out in the dark. The unspeakably agonized eyes stared across at Ingrey, and almost all of his expressions melted into a bitter pity.

Ingrey found himself clinging to Ijada's banner pole lest he fall down. The immense flaring pressure of Horseriver's kingship was not gone, exactly, but it seemed to become dispersed, as if pouring in from all sides and not just from the one quarter. And then there came a moment of stillness, hushed hesitation, and the inward flow of the kingly current seemed to turn, becoming an outward urgency. And with that came a diffuse dread unlike any other he had experienced in these long hours filled with fierce shocks.