The Sacred Hunt Duology (112 page)

“You remember the old crypt in the Church of Cartanis?”

“Yeah. Plaques on the floor, engravings on the wall, bits and pieces of stone.”

“Not those. The big, stone boxes, with the statues on top. The ones the really important people get.”

“I believe,” Ellerson said, clearing his throat in exactly the way he did when he was about to offer a helpful correction, “that you are speaking of the sarcophagi. And it is not necessarily people of import that receive such treatment, but rather people whose generosity to the Church is measured in appropriate funding. Usually after the fact of their death when their last testament is made public in the Halls of Omaran.”

“Ellerson,” Angel snapped, “do you have to turn everything into a lecture?”

The domicis subsided with a sharp glare, but Jewel smiled. It helped, to hear him so normal in such a terrible time. “Do forgive the interruption, Jewel. Continue.”

“We didn't know what they were. We thought they were just statues, same as always. I didn't think we'd come out beneath a Church—but you know how hard it is to figure out how the underground and the above match up. Anyway, we
went to grab a torch—the room was lit—but there weren't any.” She smiled bitterly. “It was magic, of course, and magic makes me nervous. Made Duster nervous, too.”

Angel swore.

“Right. You
know
what she was like when she was nervous. We had our own small lamp, and we went into the crypt. You couldn't see the ceiling. I don't understand why. It was like—like walking into another world. But you could see these three tombs, and on them, these three statues. The floor was stone, same as the walls, but around each of the three were three thin, black circles, and in each of the circles were words. At least I think they were words. Couldn't read them.”

“Did you recognize the alphabet?” Ellerson's voice was slightly sharp.

“No. It was more like pictures than anything else.

“But the words, or whatever they were, were in gold; Duster thought we could pick them out, maybe sell them. I thought we could try tracing a couple, maybe find out if Old Rath could read 'em.” Jewel shook her head. “Duster got there first. She bent down, touched the first circle, and
snap
, she was flying across the room.”

“That's where she got that burn!”

“That's where.” Jewel's smile was bitter again. Mention of the dead was still too painful. “They were
alive
. The one that she'd gotten near—he moved.” She swallowed. “They were—they were asleep.”

“The Crypt of the Sleepers,” Ellerson whispered. “Blood of the Mother. You do not know how lucky you were, young Jewel; there is a God that watches you. I have heard stories . . .”

“Yeah. Me, too. Like about where the Sleepers supposedly fell.”

Their silence was—for the den—profound.

“I thought they couldn't be—they couldn't be
the
Sleepers—but they weren't human, Ellerson. They weren't like anything I've ever see. They were taller and thinner and paler; they wore armor that only an Artisan could've made. And—and—they were so
beautiful.”
But she shivered, saying it.

“You didn't like them.”

“How would I know? They were sleeping.”

“Jay,” Teller said.

She sighed. “No, I didn't. I don't know how Moorelas could have chosen them to make his final stand with—Moorelas was as close to a god as any man's ever going to be, but even
I
wouldn't take 'em for my den.” She glanced sidelong at her domicis. “What is it, Ellerson?”

“Tell The Terafin,” he said quietly. “Tell her all.”

“But we don't know what it means yet.”

“Trust your instincts,” he replied.

Trust your instinct.
The guardian of the Terafin Shrine had said no less to her, that first night when the dreams had driven her out of the manor.

“Do you know where it is?”

“Could I reach it again above ground, do you mean?”

He nodded.

Jewel glanced nervously at her den and then at the table-top. The silence, not of uncertainty but rather of fear, grew.

“Jewel?”

“I think so.”

He raised a brow. “This is unlike you,” he said gently, although each word was a rebuke. “Where?”

“Beneath the Sanctum of Moorelas.” She said it defensively.

The eyes of the den grew wide, and wider still as they watched her pale face.

“I wasn't aware,” Ellerson said at last, “that that was possible.”

Carver and Angel were still staring at Jewel. It was Carver who spoke at last, and his words were a muttered prayer to Kalliaris. “You fell under Moorelas' shadow.”

Ellerson snorted, and there was a very real anger to the sound. “You speak like children at street games,” he scoffed. “Will you also not step across the cracks of the cobbled stones?”

“Duster died,” was Teller's quiet reply.

20th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Terafin

“Lord Elseth.”

At the sound of the voice, Gilliam looked up into the face of Kallandras, the bard of Senniel College. His was an almost welcome face, because Kallandras was one of the few Essalieyanese who still had a connection—however tenuous—to his huntbrother.

Kallandras was not the type of man that Gilliam usually spoke with: He was not a Hunter Lord. But there were no Hunter Lords in Averalaan, and only three of his dogs. Ten days had passed; he walked the edge of anger and an emotion that he did not wish to name—but the anger, like some thin veneer, was cracking. He could not say it, but he did not wish to be alone, and that surprised him, for he had been alone most of his adult life.

No, not alone. Never alone, until now.

Ashfel whined; his master snarled, and Ashfel, subdued, sank back to earth. It was enough that he was there, but it was hard, both for alaunt and master. Espere was nowhere in sight. She came for short periods, and he took comfort in some small measure from her presence—but he always sent her away again.

Because, of course, Stephen would be angry. Disappointed. Maybe disgusted. And although he was dead, it
mattered
what Stephen would think. It was the only respect he could pay the memory.

“I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your practice,” the bard said quietly, as he noted the wooden stick that Gilliam held in a sweating hand. It was long; not a sword, but a spear; weighted at the front with iron, the midsection was cut across with a bar intended to keep the gored animal at as safe a distance as possible. It often didn't work.

Gilliam grunted and put up the spear; it was as much a reply as he usually made. But then, because he didn't want the stranger to leave, he added, “No. Nothing to hunt here yet.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

Kallandras held Salla—at least, Gilliam thought that's what Stephen called the heavy, rounded lute—in his arm. She was quiet.

They stared at each other for a moment, and the moment lengthened; neither man—the friendly, courtly bard, nor the taciturn, grieving Hunter—knew how to start to bridge the gap that silence—and privacy—made between them. Not surprisingly, it was Kallandras in the end who found the words; it was part of his calling.

“I was—unable—to attend the rites.” He paused. “Were it not that the safety of the Kings themselves required my presence, I would not have missed them.” His ice-blue eyes met Gilliam's dark ones. “We are tied, you and I, at least in this part of the battle. If you would grant it, I would ask a boon of you.”

“What?”

“I sang your father's death at the end of the Sacred Hunt. If you would, I would be honored to sing your huntbrother's death.”

He didn't know how to say no, and he didn't want to. Stephen's death was one of many to The Terafin and her people, and it wasn't special; there were customs and niceties observed by the Ladies and the villagers of Breodanir that Gilliam finally understood the need for. Song, oddly enough, was not really one of them—but Kallandras' offer was an offer to honor, and Stephen
needed
to be honored.

So Gilliam, Lord Elseth, nodded. “There is no bier,” he told the bard solemnly.

“Ah, but there is, huntbrother's brother. You carry it here.” And he pointed to the center of Gilliam's chest. “And no fire will raze it, no earth will open to swallow it, no water will carry it upon the eastern boats into the arms of the open sea.” As if realizing that he had spoken too intensely, Kallandras began to strum his lute.

He sang.

He sang as he had spoken, but with an emotion beyond even the words. He sang with
understanding
. Gilliam had lost his brother, and the word brother, to a Hunter, meant more than it did to any other men or women; the great Houses could not conceive of its depth, and even the petty nobles, with their hopes of continued lineage, could lose their best and brightest heir and never know the loss that Gilliam felt.

Did mother lose child, who could feel such a void? No. There had been
Stephen, and there would never be a man to take his place; Gilliam of Elseth had been cut in half, and would wander blindly through life, for Stephen had been his eyes, his mouth.

Stephen had been his soul.

Gilliam cried out, and it was a type of song, a keening, the wildness of the grief that he felt, expressed in the only way he knew how. Yet even uttering such a cry gave him a measure of peace.

Because Kallandras understood.

We will hunt them, you and I
, the bard sang.
We will kill them, you and I.

Peace.

• • •

Two days later, in a silence heavy with the unspoken, Kallandras of Senniel—Kallandras of no other name that Gilliam had ever heard spoken—brought the simple, unadorned spear that had in the days of the Breodanir's youth been the centerpiece of the Hunter's Temple. It was long in shaft, and slender, with no knots that the eye could discern, no flaws; it was oiled against the damp and the dry, but it was not colored. The tip of the spear was made of a metal that might better be suited to jewelry, it was so shiny—but it was sharp enough to cut the finger on, as Gilliam found out.

He started to ask the bard questions, but Espere growled low and backed away as the spear came to her master's hand; nor would she approach him again while he carried it. And when the spear rested in his palms, Gilliam of Elseth felt a jolt, some shock of knowledge, that rendered all questions meaningless.

This
was the very Hunter's Spear. He was meant to wield it on the Hunt, and not for anything, not even safekeeping, would he relinquish it now. For with it, Stephen's death would be avenged. Stephen and every other huntbrother who had ever given their lives to the Hunter's Death.

• • •

Meralonne APhaniel sat in the office of The Terafin as if it was the only civilized room he had seen in the last month. His hair, fine and long, was braided tight and held above his shoulders; his hands were callused, and dirt, black and rich, clung to the undersides of his chipped nails. He, who never looked tired, seemed exhausted.

And that did not bode well for the interview.

“Terafin,” he said, nodding his head instead of performing the required, socially correct bow, “I realize that I am a mage in the employ of your House. But at the moment the Crowns demand my attention and my diligence. It is not easy to come here, and my presence will be missed.”

“I would not call you for a message of little import, and indeed I expect that you will see this information to the source that it will best be served by.” Her words were brittle.

He sighed, stood, and formally bowed. “Your pardon, Terafin.”

“Accepted.”

“How may I serve you, Terafin?”

The smile that touched her lips was cold, but it was genuine. “It has come to my attention that there is a colloquial phrase used among the general populace. ‘When the Sleepers Wake.' It is used to mean—”

“That something will never come to pass. Yes. I've heard that phrase.”

“Good. It is not a phrase that is used in my presence, and not one that I am familiar with, perhaps because I have studied some of the history of the Sleepers.”

“You have studied childhood lore,” was the sharp reply.

“And yet, you would agree that the Sleepers do exist.”

Utter silence, and then Meralonne smiled, and the smile eased the exhaustion and toil of responsibility from the fine lines of his face. “I would agree, yes. But I would not necessarily say that the bardic understanding of the Sleepers and the actuality meet in any meaningful way.”

“Are these Sleepers dangerous?”

“Who would know?” The mage lifted a silvered brow. “They have never woken.”

“Yet it is considered an act of treason to interfere with them at all—to even, if I understand the law correctly, attempt to see or study them.” She lifted a sheaf of papers from her desk's surface and let them fall again. “A very old law,” she said softly. “Upheld when the Kings took power. It is not in the records of the current magisterial courts, but rather the historical ones. Four hundred years ago. When the Sleepers were, in fact, considered myth.”

“How—”

“I wished plans, some lay of the ground, that would indicate that the Sanctum of Moorelas had once been part of a building.” She paused. “Have you heard the phrase ‘under Moorelas' shadow'?”

Meralonne's face paled, and his brow rose in the most open display of surprise that The Terafin had ever seen from him. Then he smiled, and she recognized the smile for the concession it was. “Yes,” he said softly. “It means, colloquially, that someone is doomed.”

“So much history,” The Terafin said softly, “beneath the ground of Averalaan, of what was once AMarakas, and before that, Develonn. And before that? Vexusa, I think.” She saw the cool shift of Meralonne's eyes, understood well his dislike of the name, and continued. “Yes. The Dark League. I did not know how old these lands were, or how much history they contained; I feel, almost, that I walk in legend.” Abruptly, her tone changed. “The Sanctum,” she said softly.