The Hallowed Hunt

Another tap at the door broke the tensing upward spiral of his disquiet, and a sharp female voice inquired, “Lord Ingrey? I need to see you.”

“Mistress Hergi. Come in.” Belatedly, Ingrey grew conscious of his shirtless state. But she was presumably an experienced dedicat of the Mother’s order, and no blushing maiden. Still, it would be courteous to at least sit up. It would.

“Hm.” Her lips thi

She plunked her leather case down on the washstand and rummaged within, withdrawing a square blue glass bottle and pulling out the cork stopper. She poured a sinister syrup into a spoon, and as Ingrey creaked up on one elbow to ask, “What is it?” popped it into his mouth. The liquid tasted utterly vile. He swallowed, afraid to spit it out under her steely gaze.

“A decoction of willow bark and poppy, wine spirits, and a few other useful things.” Her gaze traveled up and down his body; she pursed her lips, then bent and administered another spoonful. She nodded shortly and restoppered the bottle. “That should do it.”

Ingrey swallowed medicine and a surge of bile. “It’s revolting.”

“Eh, you’ll change your mind about it soon enough, I warrant. Here. Let’s see how my work is holding up.”

Efficiently, she unbound his wrappings, applied new ointment and fresh bandages, daubed the stitches in his hair with something that stung, combed out the tangles, washed his torso, and shaved him, batting his hands away as he tried to protest his own competence to dress himself. “Don’t you be getting my new wraps wet, now, my lord. And stop fighting me. I’ll have no delays out of you.”

He hadn’t been dressed like this by a woman since he was six, but his pain was fading most deliciously away, to be replaced by a floating lassitude. He stopped fighting her. The intensity of her concentration, he realized dimly, had nothing to do with him.

“Is Learned Hallana all right? After last night?” he asked cautiously.

“Baby’s shifted position. Could be a day, could be a week, but there are twenty-five miles of bad roads between here and Suttleaf, and I wish I had her home safe now. Now, you mind me, Lord Ingrey; don’t you dare do anything to detain her. Whatever she wants from you, give it to her without argument, if you please.” She sniffed rather fiercely.

“Yes, Mistress,” Ingrey answered humbly. He added after a blinking moment, “Your potion seems very effective. Can I keep the bottle?”

“No.” She knelt by his feet. “Oh. Your boots won’t do, will they? Do you have any other shoes with you…?” She scavenged ruthlessly in his saddlebags, to emerge with a pair of worn leather buskins that she jammed onto his feet. “Up you come, now.”

The agony, as she pulled on his arms, seemed pleasantly distant, like news from another country. She towed him relentlessly out the door.

The sorceress-physician was already waiting in the tap-room of Ijada’s i

“Yes. Thank you. Your medicine helped. Though it made an odd breakfast.” He smiled at her, a trifle hazily he feared.

“Oh. It would.” She glanced at Hergi. “How much…?” Hergi held up two fingers. Ingrey could not decide if the twitch of the divine’s eyebrows was censure or approval, for Hergi merely shrugged in return.

Ingrey followed both women upstairs once more. They were admitted to the parlor, a little doubtfully, by the female warden. Ingrey looked around surreptitiously for signs of his late frenzy, finding none but for a few faint bloodstains and dents on the oak floorboards. Ijada stepped from the bedchamber at the sound of their entry. She was dressed for travel in the same gray-blue riding costume as yesterday, but had put off her boots in favor of light leather shoes. Uneasily, Ingrey searched her pale face; her expression, returning his gaze, was sober and pensive.

More uneasily, he searched his own shifted perceptions. She seemed not so much different to him this morning as more, with an energetic density to her person that seized his focus. A heady warm scent, like sunlight in dry grass, arose from her. He found his lips parting to better taste that sun-smell—a futile effort, as it did not come through the air.

Hallana, too, had more than a taste of the unca

Learned Hallana embraced Ijada and pressed a letter into her hands.

“I must leave very soon, or we won’t be home before dark,” the divine told her. “I wish I could go along with you, instead. This is all most disturbing, especially… “ She jerked her head at Ingrey, indicating his late geas, and his lips twisted in agreement. “That alone would make this Temple business, even without… well, never mind. Five gods guard you on your journey. This is a note to the master of my order in Easthome, begging his interest in your case. With luck, he can take up with you where I am forced to leave off.” She glanced Ingrey’s way again, an untrusting tension around her mouth. “I charge you, my lord, to help see that this arrives at its destination. And no other.”

He opened his hand in an ambiguous acknowledgment, and Hallana’s lips thi

“Learned… “ Ijada’s voice was suddenly thin and uncertain. Learned, not dear Hallana, Ingrey noted. Hergi stood alertly ready to usher her mistress out the door; she frowned in frustration as the divine turned back.

“Yes, child?”

“No… never mind. It’s nothing. Foolishness.”

“Suppose you let me be the judge of that.” Hallana lowered herself into a chair and tilted her head encouragingly.

“I had a very odd dream last night.” Ijada stepped nervously back and forth, then settled in the window seat. “A new one.”

“How odd?”

“Unusually vivid. I remembered it in the morning right away, when I awoke, when my other dreams melted away out of my mind.”

“Go on.” Hallana’s face seemed carved, so careful was her listening.

“It was brief, just a flash of a vision. It seemed to me I saw a sort of… I don’t know. Death-haunt, in the shape of a stallion. Black as soot, black without gleam or reflection. Galloping, but very slowly. Its nostrils were red and glowing, and steamed; its mane and tail trailed fire. Sparks struck from its hooves, leaving prints of flame that burned all to ash in its wake. Clouds of ash and shadow. Its rider was as dark as it was.”

“Hm. Was the rider male or female?”

Ijada frowned. “That seems like the wrong question to ask. The rider’s legs curved down to become the horse’s ribs, as if their bodies were grown together. In the left hand, it held a leash. At the end of the leash ran a great wolf.”