The Sacred Hunt Duology (110 page)

But he was her Chosen; he stepped away from the shrine, saluted sharply—or
as sharply as stiff arms and a broken rib would allow—and then followed her order, leaving the shrine, and the two women, behind.

• • •

“His name was Jonnas,” The Terafin said, when only the sound of swaying branches remained in the wake of Torvan's passing. “He was, of all things, a cook, and at that not the cook to The Terafin himself, but rather a cook to those who tended the affairs of the House in this manor. Common wisdom dictates that cooks are either too large or too thin, but he defied common wisdom in many ways; he had lived his early years in the free townships, and retained many of their mannerisms. I'm not sure why he elected to serve at a big House.

“He kept the kitchen staff together as if it were a family, and he an uncle distant enough to be allowed to dispense wisdom without the resentment that it usually brings. Dispensing wisdom was one of the things that he did.

“I met him on my eighth day in Terafin, and I liked him. We had little in common—I, noble-born and bred, and he a commoner with no ties, until Terafin, to the nobility, and little enough respect for it. I asked him once why he served a noble House—one of The Ten, no less. His answer was this: It's The Ten that're most uppity; they don't
know
how to get anything practical done. They need me. And a man's got to be needed, he's got to be useful.” She shook her head ruefully. “I wasn't,” she said softly, “The Terafin then. And not destined to become The Terafin in his lifetime either.” She turned to face the shrine, with its bare altar, the darkness of night beyond it now complete.

“I discovered the shrine on my own, when difficulties in Handernesse—the family of my birth—arose. And Jonnas would come to me here, to speak with me and offer me advice on the responsibility of both the House and its Leader. Of family one is born to and family one chooses. Of the ties to either. He was known for his common wisdom, and it comforted me to hear it, because I respected the old man, even if I never told him so in so many words.

“When he died, I was already struggling with the three other possible heirs to the title; there was politics, and in one case, a very messy death. Assassination was not the way that I wished to take Terafin, and I would not use it; I was not involved in it, yet it still left me one less rival.

“But the divisions in the House caused by the death of the man in question—and his young son—were terrible; the manner of death could not be kept from the Crowns should it occur again, and the other Houses were beginning to crowd like vultures at our step.

“And I came to the shrine, as I did when troubled, for it seemed to me that I was going to lose my bid for the House—and possibly my life—to the man who was most ruthless in his quest for power.

“And as I prayed, Jonnas came to me as he always had, and sat, just there, cross-legged and at ease, waiting for what I had to say. And I said, ‘But you're
dead.
'”
She walked to the shrine, beckoning Jewel forward. The steps she took one by one, until at last they stood in front of the altar; there, she placed her reddened hand firmly down. “He said, very gravely, ‘No, but I will be, if Hellas becomes The Terafin.' Ah, I'm sorry. Hellas ATerafin was the man considered most likely to draw victory out of bloodshed. And most likely to cause bloodshed. We do not speak these names to outsiders.

“I realized then that he wasn't Jonnas, that he had never been Jonnas, and I understood at last what Jonnas—what this one—had said about Terafin, about the spirit of Terafin. I was his Chosen, and I was to rule Terafin . . . with honor.” She bowed her head softly to the stone, and then raised it; turning, she caught Jewel's gaze and held it.

“Do you understand?”

Jewel nodded. “Do you still speak to him?”

“No,” The Terafin replied, her eyes dark. “I have not seen him in many years. But if Terafin needs his guidance, and no one else can fulfill this role, he comes. Tonight, he called you.”

Jewel was silent for a very long time, and when she spoke, it was only partly to The Terafin. “I'm already ATerafin, aren't I?”

“Not yet,” was the quiet reply. “For I am The Terafin; the living rule here, and not the dead. Come. It is dark, and we have missed the early dinner hour. Dine with me, if you will.”

• • •

The fifteenth of Corvil.

The day upon which Stephen of Elseth had planned his departure, in haste, to the King's City. The day by which their safe, if hurried, arrival could be guaranteed, and upon which the fate of Elseth—Maribelle, Gilliam, and Elsabet—rested.

But no passage had been booked or arranged, no horses bought, or wagon for the dogs. And they would not be, Leof thought, as she stood beneath the face of the watching sun. They would not be.

It was not the Hunter's green that either Morganson or Faergif knew. It was neater, warmer; the grass was older and thicker. No spring mud weakened it, no heavy rain, no melting snows. The altar that stood in its center was a flat, stone tablet laid out atop two plain pillars; it had no history, no family of women who came, before and after the Hunter's short season, to pray, to mourn, or to offer silent thanks.

But it was a quiet, private place, and the words that they spoke here, or murmured, the press of warm forehead to cool stone, would hallow it and make of it a space where the Hunter's people might go.

Gilliam of Elseth stood at the periphery of the circle. His dogs were nowhere in sight, and it pained Leof greatly to see their absence. The Hunter's daughter was likewise absent, but she felt she understood that: She was kin to the one who had
taken Stephen of Elseth. What Hunter could bear that knowledge, and not resent the fact?

Lady Morganson crossed the green first, carrying the kneeling mats in her arms although they were largely symbolic. Leof hesitated. Gilliam, Lord Elseth was hooded; he wore black, although where he'd found it, and when, she didn't ask. She couldn't see his face, and wasn't certain that she wanted to.

Because she knew what it looked like.

Turning, she saw Helene kneel and touch the altar. The shadows lengthened as the woman who had once ruled Morganson paid her respects to the dead. Gilliam did not move; he stood erect, his hands locked behind his back, his legs planted firmly against the ground. Bearing witness, Leof thought. For Stephen.

It occurred to her, as she crossed the green in her turn, that he was angered by the lack of villagers, the lack
of family
, that followed the Sacred Hunt. That these two women, each offering a woman's respect and the depth of a private grief, could not compensate for the ceremony that Stephen, dying upon foreign soil, had been denied.

She acknowledged, not for the first time, as she knelt and pressed her head firmly against the stone, that there was a reason Hunter Lords accompanied the dead on their final journey from the King's City; that they formed an honor guard and watch against carrion eaters; that they came, by Hunter's Law, from the surrounding demesnes, with their entire families, to pay their final respects. Their grief was a commonality and a binding for the Hunter Lord, or the huntbrother, left behind.

And as she lifted her face, turning it a moment at just the right angle, Leof met the eyes of Lord Elseth. She looked away at once, but not before the image of his face had burned itself into a memory that had never failed her.

She let her forehead sink into the comfort of stone again, and she wept, as she had promised herself she would not do. Because Gilliam of Elseth needed to see tears cried for his brother, and he would not—could not—cry them himself.

But she heard, in the distance, the howl of the hounds, and she knew that they, too, offered a voice to their Hunter.

15th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Vexusa

The screams of the dying were constant.

In the darkness, they did not falter and they did not fade; the kin were adepts at the art of pain, and they kept their victims awake and aware for far longer than any mortal torturer might have. Nor did they dabble in the merely physical, for pain was their vocation, and the causing of it no base thing.

The coliseum of the cathedral was lined with the bodies of the dead—and the
bodies of the living, made spectator to the work below. Men whimpered, and women; the children were silent in the face of a terror so large they could not give voice to it. But they knew, for they had seen the truth of it, that their parents would provide no protection at all from the reaving.

The demon that had passed as Lord Cordufar for far too long breathed in the scent of fear-laden darkness, content—or more than content. For
these
souls, these unstained little bits of divinity, had not chosen their final place of rest—but they would not go free; they would know no peace. The Lord of the Hells was close enough to the world that he needed the sustenance of their spirits to continue his journey.

These souls were trapped in Allasakar for eternity.

Sor na Shannen was licking her wounds in the undercity; she was his promised victim when the Gate finally opened fully and the Lord of the Hells walked the earth as freely as his servitors.

“You take your time.”

The demon lord turned his head slightly, and then frowned. “Isladar. I would think your work here done.”

Isladar came, shrouded in human frailty; only the glint of eyes in the darkness were truly powerful. “Oh? Why?”

“There is
nothing
the humans can do now. We've sealed off the city. The Lord will come; he cannot be prevented.”

“I see.”

Cordufar hated that tone of voice; Isladar commanded nothing in the Hells; no demesne was his. And yet the Lord valued him highly, and he was not without his power. Power always ruled. Power that did not was incomprehensible. And what you did not understand was always dangerous.

“We were careful before because we needed to take these sacrifices in secret. Now, we have what we need.”

“You underestimate,
Karathis
, and you always have.”

“Mortal months, and each passing day our Lord grows stronger. Listen well to the upper world; their mages and their Priests cannot pierce the barrier that our Lord has built.”

“That barrier delays the Gate's final opening.”

“What of it? I tell you, it cannot be breached!”

Isladar was silent a long time, and when he spoke, his voice was a whisper that the screaming almost drowned out. “Remember the Shining City,” he said softly. “Remember Moorelas.”

Snarling, the demon spat.

“Mortal legend says that he will return to ride again against the dark host when the need is greatest.”

“And only you would spend the time necessary to learn what mortal legend
says. He is dead,” Karathis replied coldly. “Mandaros has long since sent him on his way. And such a one,” again a snarl, “is long beyond the confines of
this
world.”

“Ah. Then remember, Karathis, the Oathbreakers.”

Distant screaming, the warmth of it suddenly vanished.

“Why have you come?”

“To see that your arrogance does not doom us all,” was the smooth reply.

“It is clear to me, Isladar, that you do not rule.”

“No. Nor do you; we both serve Allasakar.”

They stared at each other a moment, Karathis very close to the edge of a challenge that could spend his precious power. But it was Isladar; his game and his purpose were unknowable.

“Bredan could still pierce the barrier,” the lone demon said, staring into the roiling darkness of the gate.

Karathis nodded, but grudgingly. “The Oathtaker was called once by his followers, and he did nothing. If he did not assail us when we were weaker, he will not assail us now—and if he does, he will not succeed. Not without warning. These last few days, our Lord has grown strong in his hold here.” He listened a moment, gaining a measure of peace from the proceedings below before he spoke again. “The servants of the Oathtaker will find no passage here. Sor na Shannen failed us,” he added, with quiet pleasure, “but it matters not; the Spear of the Hunter was meant to kill the Oathtaker's form. It will avail our enemies nothing against the Lord.”

Isladar nodded quietly. “But they are working against us,” he told Karathis softly. “Let us distract them, brother.”

18th Corvil, 410 A.A.

Averalaan, Cordufar

M
IRIALYN ACORMARIS RARELY TRAVELED.
The Halls of the Righteous Rule were her home, and even when the courts removed to Evereve for their brief Summer sojourn, she remained behind, watching halls that had been hallowed by history, and seeing to their safety.

Outside of those halls, she almost felt she had no identity; the world, even
Averalaan Aramarelas
, was a place where the lives of others unfolded—others who did not require her protection, her guidance, or her ability to assume responsibility. Or so it had been.

The dirt was loose and lightly packed in piles about the roadway; the cobbled stones had been removed either by soldiers' hands or dubious magic, and lay scattered about as well, across the broken landscape. The gate of the manse protected the site from idle curiosity—it was the ideal place to begin excavations of a magical, and dangerous, nature. Especially since it seemed that it was in Cordufar that the threat to the lands originated.

Three shattered bodies lay beneath a heavy shroud in the early morning sun; they were newly discovered this day, and no one could say with certainty that they would be the last. All other bodies had already been interred by the cooperative power of the Priests of the triumvirate. Such a slaughter as had happened here had never been seen in living memory; even the stories of the grim rule before the Advent were not so terrible in fancy as the dead here had been in fact.

Allasakar.
It had almost become a name to frighten small children with; a threat to keep them well behaved, while youthful fancy conjured demons hideous beyond imagining. And now, they were all as children before the threat of the God's return; they bore a fear that was palpable, those who worked these grounds, a fear that was hard to reason with.

Mirialyn was ACormaris. But she still felt the edges of that irrational fear tug at her as she surveyed the grounds. Meralonne worked diligently with members of the Order in the bowels of the house; Devon and his small staff sifted through the
artifacts that the mages declared “safe.” They were trying to reconstruct the events that had led up to the destruction of the House and the slaughter of the family.

But, privately, Mirialyn had been told that three of the mages trained in delving into such events with the use of magic and an understanding of time that bordered on gibberish had already retreated to the farthest edge of the investigation that the Order would allow.

“Miri!”

The sound of that alto voice was familiar; turning, the ACormaris saw the broad shoulders and tilted, strong chin of a woman known widely throughout the kingdom. “Bardmaster.” Mirialyn bowed elegantly.

Sioban Glassen smiled, but it was the smile one offers when in pain, a tightness around the lips and eyes that passes into nothing before it's finished. “We didn't expect to see you,” the older woman said quietly.

“Nor I you,” was the equally quiet reply.

“I've brought the bard-born,” Sioban said. “Kallandras was here yestereve.” She paused. “He said that they—we—were needed. If you want him, he's with Devon.”

“Devon? Interesting.” Miri stared into the harsh clarity of the cloudless sky. “When will it start again?”

“There isn't a set time,” the older woman replied, unconsciously wringing her hands. “It just—starts.”

“You're certain it's human?”

“Well,” Sioban said tightly, “screaming is not a discipline we teach at Senniel, so there might be some small chance that I'm wrong.” Pause. “Apologies, ACormaris, it's—”

It came, clearest from the bowels of the manse, but not confined to it. The ground trembled, the ground
spoke.
And it spoke with a child's voice, attenuated, high—the sound of a child, who could not yet speak, pleading and crying. Another voice joined it, a woman's voice, low and loud and hoarse; terrified. They screamed together, woman and child; the one being slowly killed, and the other, forced to watch it all.

Miri turned her face to the heavens in white rage; in a mix of emotions that she could not even name. The air carried the sounds; the people in the streets beyond stopped, as frozen as she.

It went on. And on. And on. And then: a voice.

Ah, I fear she's dead. Come, little mother, you can hold what's left if you like—your son is waiting his turn at the altar.

Silence. Pain too profound for weeping.

Mirialyn ACormaris was white, except where her nails had pierced her palms. She met the eyes of the bardmaster in horror.

Sioban Glassen's eyes were so dark the brown seemed dissolved into the
blackness of pupil; it was almost as if she stared into the deepest of night, with no light at all to guide her. Her face was gray, her hands were shaking; the horror that Mirialyn felt seemed suddenly weak by comparison, although why, the ACormaris could not say.

The bardmaster's lips moved, deliberately, slowly, but the sound that left them was taken by breeze, by bardic will, by the working of talent; Miri heard no word.

• • •

Jewel's fingers didn't fit into her ears, but she tried to put them there; her hands, cupped tight, were not enough to stop the voices. But once heard, the silence wasn't enough either; memory played them again and again, demanding some response, some action other than cringing or crying or screaming in chorus.

She hated Devon ATerafin, for he worked, and continued to work, all the while the child died—and the dying was long.

“It isn't real,” he said, through teeth clenched so tightly his voice was unnatural. “It's an illusion, a delusion—don't give in to it.” His face, pale, was beaded with sweat, and his shoulders hunched as if against a gale—but he continued with his work, clinging to it.

But it
was
real. There was nothing illusory about it. She knew it for fact, and the knowledge, harsh and terrible, would not let her slide into Devon's beliefs.

The first time, two days ago, it had not been so bad; the cries had been distant, and only when working in the stairwells and underground was the full force of the torture made evident. Yesterday, it had grown loud enough that it could be heard no matter where in the ruins of the manse you were—and today . . .

“Put it down, Jewel!”

She looked up at the sound of her name—at the sound of the name she despised—and saw Devon's face.

“Put it down,” he said again, but not so frantically.

She held a shovel. There were clods of grass and dirt all round her feet, and a shallow hole before her. When she had started to dig it, she didn't know. But it wasn't big; hardly large enough for a small squirrel, let alone a child. A child.

I'm not a child
, she wanted to tell him, but she couldn't speak; her throat was full of words and fear and the self-loathing of helplessness. He took the shovel from her hands and threw it to the side without bothering to see where it landed.

I lived in the streets
, she thought.
I saw worse than you could ever imagine, you pampered lordling.
But she looked up into the collar of his shirt, the rolled edge of his cloak, and she wasn't so certain anymore; she felt the curve of his arms around her as the world blurred. The boy was whimpering; he was calling his mother. His mother was trying not to scream, trying not to terrify him.

“They have to be stopped,” Jewel said. “They have to
pay
.”

“They will,” Devon answered, his lips close to her hair, her ears. “I swear it by the turning, and by every life I ever have.” He lifted her, swinging her legs lightly
over his arms, although he was not an overly tall man. “Come. This is not the place for you.”

She threw her arms around his neck, not in an embrace, but rather in the sudden abandonment of responsibility that marks childhood, and not until she heard the new sound did she raise her head.

• • •

Devon stopped walking, although he did not put Jewel down. They both looked toward the ruins of the gutted manor. There, in a thin line around it, stood men and women of indeterminate age; they wore different styles of clothing, and different colors, but it was clear that they served a single purpose here.

Sioban.

“Who are they? What—what are they doing?” It was Jewel's voice, but so quiet and so tentative that it hurt to hear her speak.

“They're from Senniel,” he told her, bowing his head to answer.

“Bard-born?”

He nodded, although he didn't know it for fact. The Astari did not have many connections in the bardic college—the bards were notoriously poor at keeping information to themselves. No matter who it was given to there, the truth, embroidered by song and a change of name or two, always seeped out in song. And in song, there were none to challenge the master bards that Senniel produced. None.

As if to prove the truth of this, the bards began to play, their fingers against the strings of their varied instruments a quiet resistance.

Jewel gained her feet almost shyly, but held on to Devon's arm; together they made their way across the broken ground, listening to the music that in no way masked the screams of the dying.

• • •

“What can we do?” Gilliane's voice was strained, although her playing never faltered. She was an elderly woman who had done her traveling apprenticeship on the southern border during the Annagarese campaigns; it had hardened her, in some ways—but not so much that she couldn't feel horror.

“We can drown them out,” Tallos offered.

“We could,” Sioban said, her bard-voice strained from overuse. “But for how long? They grow louder by the day, and if all of the bard-born singers in the Empire were gathered here, we couldn't sing them to silence for—” She stopped as her words caught up with her. For how long? How long?

“You've an idea,” Alleron said, testy as was his wont. He had a reputation to preserve, after all; he was the most feared master in all of Senniel, and it was to him that the youngest and most prideful of the newcomers were sent.

“Not a good one,” she answered softly. The screams grew in the silence, wrapped around words that were still recognizable.

“It's better than nothing.”

“We can Sing them to sleep.”

“You're right,” Alleron snapped. “It's not good.”

“Then come up with something—anything—else.”

There was no silence to think in, no silence in which to gather thought. And then, the youngest of the master bards spoke, his voice cool and measured.

“Sioban Glassen has the right of it. If we drown out the screams, we aren't ending their pain, not even for a moment.”

“And Sleeping them will end it? They'll be woken again, sure as sunrise—it'll be that much the worse; the hope, and then, more torture.”

“Alleron.” It was Tallos—and he, AMorriset. The master subsided. “We do not think clearly. Kallandras, Sioban—forgive us. This is not the work that we thought to do when we first arrived.

“Let us weave a song of Sleep, and let us make it strong. We have fifteen voices here; it will not be so easy to wake the Sleepers while our voices still have strength. And after?” His face grayed. “And after, we will know that we have done all that we can. The triumvirate does not ask for more, and if we are to continue, we
must
not.”

He spoke with the voice, and the voice was heard. It reminded everyone present—any who needed the reminder—that to become AMorisset
meant
something.

“Alleron,” Gilliane said softly. “You tell this to your students time and again: The voice cannot force a man to do much against his nature. The voice cannot order a man to die. These, we cannot save; accept it.”

“I'd give them death, if I could,” the master said, his voice as quiet as it ever was.

“Then you would study the lost arts. The dead arts. And you would make of us something other than what we are—if that possibility exists in the here and now.”

“I know it,” Alleron said, speaking through teeth that would hardly open. “But it must be better than allowing
that
.” Pale, he dropped his head into the edge of his harp. “Sioban, forgive me. I—I will speak Sleep.”

“It's already done. Come. Let us begin.”

Some of the men and women who had been playing set their instruments aside; some did not. The use of the voice did not require music; it did not, in fact, require song, although many of the bardic masters had been taught with song as the medium.

What it required was will, and the peculiar focus of talent, of self, that only the bard-born could call upon.

The members of the Order of Knowledge came first from the bowels of the building that was their study; they moved with the skittish nervousness of fear, of strain. Only Meralonne was calm as he approached the bardic masters, and he bowed stiffly and formally.

“The field is yours,” he told Sioban, for all that she was no longer listening. Her
face was turned inward, toward the burned ruins, her brow creased in concentration and sorrow. She was the bardmaster; she spoke first, fashioning with her voice the essence of sleep, of the desire for sleep, of a weariness so all-encompassing that not even pain could stand against it.

Tallos joined her, speaking second as was his right; he whispered of dreams, the hidden fount by which the night ruled, the landscape of the impossible, where horror could at any second turn into familiarity and beauty.

Alleron sang; his was the voice of a stern and wise parent pointing the way to bed and sleep, by turns threatening and cajoling.

And when Gilliane sang, she sang of deserved rest, of the softness of sheet against skin, of the comfort of arms against back and shoulder. Of the end of war, when finally, and fully, one could take one's rightful rest.