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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 ca
“I ca
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 ba
“You died,” insisted Ijada. “This is an Old Weald kin meeting, the last of all time. They can make another king, one who will not betray them beyond death.”
Horseriver snorted. “There is no other.”
The rustle grew, racing around the mob like fire, then back to the begi
Wait, thought Ingrey, we living ones ca
Ijada grasped the pole with both hands and gave it a great yank. Above her head, the ba
Ingrey blinked up through his human eyes and wrenched to his feet, stu
Horseriver reached down and yanked Fara to her feet, and clasped her hands around his ba
Ingrey moistened his lips, cleared his throat. Found his weirding Voice. “What do you have to say, Fara?”
He could feel Horseriver’s geas of silence fly away from around her face like a spring of metal released, spi
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 ba
Chapter Twenty-Four
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 ba
“You shall find,” breathed Horseriver, “that a hallow kingship looks different from the inside. And my revenge shall be redoubled thereby. And oblivion… shall still be mine.” His voice faded away in a sigh.
Though Horseriver did not move from his burial mound, he grew distanced, silenced at last, like a corpse seen underwater. Stripped of both his yoked powers—his great horse and his hallow kingship—he was reduced to one revenant among the many, except for his dire multiplicity, an extra denseness that lingered about him. Yes, thought Ingrey, he, too, is a ghost of Bloodfield, who died on this sacred and accursed ground; he is no longer more, but he ca
But what have I become?
He could feel the mystical kingship settle into place upon him, in him, through him. It did not make him feel as though he’d been stuffed with pride and power, replete and overflowing. It made him feel as though all his blood was being drawn out of him.
Ijada and Fara both, he realized, were staring at him with that same openmouthed awe tinged with physical desire that Horseriver had inspired. Such stares ought to make any man preen, surely. Instead, he felt as though they contemplated eating him alive.
No, not Ijada and Fara—well, yes, them, too –it was the ghosts that alarmed him now. They crowded up closer as if fascinated, reaching for him, touching him in chill liquid strokes that stole the warmth from his skin. They were growing unruly in their urgency, shouldering past and even climbing over one another, thicker and thicker about him. Famished beggars.
Nothing of spirit can exist in the world of matter without a being of matter to support it. The old catechism rang through his spi
Him.
“Ijada… “ His voice came out a wail. “I ca
He was growing colder and colder as the ghosts pawed him. He grabbed for Ijada’s outstretched hand like a drowning man, and for a moment live warmth, her warmth, flooded him. But she gasped as she, too, felt the unholy pull of the ghosts’ insatiable hunger. They will pull us both to shreds, drain us dry. And when there was no more warmth left to give, his and Ijada’s frozen corpses would be left upon the ground, fog steaming off them in the night air. And all trapped here would dwindle to oblivion in a last, starveling cry of abandonment, betrayal, and despair.