The Sacred Hunt Duology (30 page)

Stephen was acutely conscious of the mess he presented. He glanced surreptitiously at Gilliam and cringed at what he saw.

But none of the Hunters or their huntbrothers seemed at all concerned—and not one of them was amused. No, their faces were grave, almost gray, in the afternoon light. He started to say something, and then his jaw stopped moving at all. All of the lords had removed their hats, and all of them wore the black sash of the Hunter's Death; it traveled across thin midriff and thick alike, clinging like a web.

Lord William of Valentin approached last; he fell to one knee and held out his hands. There, cradled carefully in the thin, scarred palms of the Hunter Lord were the three knives of unmaking; one to cut flesh and muscle, one to cut bone, and one to remove hide.

Each of these were much older than he—than any of the Hunter Lords who stood in silence before them—and they bore the crest of a stag over a field of stars in gold relief.

“The unmaking, Lord Elseth,” William whispered with bowed head.

No one moved for a moment. William raised his head and caught Gilliam in the light of his gray eyes. They were red-rimmed and murky with held tears. “These are yours, Lord Elseth.”

Stephen felt Gilliam's confusion turn. He knew a stab of fear so sharp, he wasn't certain whether it was his own, or his Hunter's. It twisted at him, doing more than a blade's damage. He bit his lip and looked at Gilliam's face. Gilliam didn't notice. He stared down at the three knives.

“Norn?” he said at last, and his voice was perfectly composed.

“Alive.” William's response came quickly and easily—it was the only good news he carried.

The new Lord of Elseth swallowed and accepted Lord William's burden. His hands were sure and certain as he took the weight of the unmaking and the responsibility of his father's lands.

But Stephen of Elseth cried. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and his eyes were so full that the world blurred and moved incomprehensibly. He wanted to speak, but words couldn't escape the closed wall of his throat.

And he knew that it wasn't his pain alone that drove him to such an improper display. He was huntbrother, and linked to a Hunter Lord—and Gilliam had never been good at expressing pain; the only emotion that came easily was anger, and Stephen was certain he would see that later.

S
OREDON LAY IN DEATH'S REPOSE
atop an ornate altar ten feet from the Queen's dais. The King's Priest stood beside him in the silence of the Sacred Hunt, his brown robes flapping at his legs like crippled wings. He did not speak, not yet, but rather attended to the body with the ease of experience. The blood had been washed away, and the vital organs—what was left of them—were now bound to the body in a skein of pale green. Soredon's face was slack; whatever pain had been felt in the dying had left him with his life.

At the foot of the rough-hewn altar lay Corwel; his spine had been snapped, but he had not otherwise been savaged. The great white hound, with his bandit's black mask and a history of successful, even enviable, Hunts behind him, still attended his Lord.

No one watched the Priest at work. The Hunter Lords, drawn now and silent, went about the final responsibility of the Hunt. Beside the burning braziers that were meant as an offering to the Hunter God, they unmade their kills, working with sleeves pushed up past the elbows and cloaks discarded on the ground. It was cool, but warming as the season yearned toward summer. The meat had to be cut, cured, and hung if it was to serve as food for the people in the various demesnes of the kingdom.

Only the kills of the King and the Huntsmen of the Chamber were for the nobles who now waited, and even these were properly unmade with the quiet respect for the hunted that the Hunter knows.

Gilliam worked in silence, first anchoring the stag by his horns, then widening the cut along the throat until it traced the whole of the stag's underbelly. He removed the heart with care, and Stephen stepped quickly in to catch Gil's sleeves before they became blood-sodden. It was the only way he was allowed to help.

The heart was offered to the fire; there was no formal prayer, no formal thanks to accompany the sizzle of flesh that would soon char. But the beast's spirit would be free when the heart was ashes—he would go to the Hunter, and dwell in the afterlands in peace and plenty.

Maybe, Stephen reflected quietly, as he watched the heart burn, there were no
formal words because the Hunter Lords, too new from their losses here, could not have been trusted to say them with the proper amount of pride and strength. Smoke, made heavy and dark with blood and flesh burning, wound its way up in a spiral of air, darkening the landscape and dimming the sun. He shivered as he watched, and then turned back to Gilliam.

A familiar figure barred his way. The pale, drawn face of the bard was a mirror to those of the Hunters, and any of the Lords who had thought his bawdy ballad a disgrace were mollified by the sorrow he now offered as his sole expression.

Only Stephen knew that the sorrow was not for Soredon's death, and he was surprised at the anger this brought him.

Kallandras saw the shift in Stephen's face and shook his head, smiling wryly. “It won't do, you know,” he said softly. “You're too transparent by half, and it won't serve your House well in the company of the Hunter Ladies. They're all sharp and cold as hunting falcons—but only twice as deadly.”

It was meant, Stephen knew, as a friendly comment; he smiled stiffly.

“Walk with me?”

“I can't. I have to attend to Gilliam—Lord Elseth.”

Kallandras nodded and threw the folds of his newly donned cloak aside. Cradled like a child in the crook of his arm sat his small lute. “Salla,” he said, naming her. “I wish to speak with your Lord, if he will allow it.”

“About what?”

“I would—I would sing his father's death.”

Stephen started to sidle away, and Kallandras caught his shoulder with his free hand.

“I offer it,” he said quietly, “because it is the only thing I can offer. And not a bard in the kingdom, not even the foremost of the Masters of Senniel, could sing a better death than I.”

“Why?”

“Why? Skill, perhaps. Too much practice.”

“I meant, why did you save my life? How did you know?”

“Ah.” Kallandras grew quiet. “If I answer your question—and I must say that you don't seem grateful for the saving of it—will you take my request to your Lord?”

Stephen nodded. Grudgingly, he added, “I'd ask him anyway.”

“And honest, too.” Kallandras shook his head, and ringlets glinted with firelight and dying sun. “Evayne sent me.”

“Evayne?” The lady, robed in midnight blue and surrounded by shadows and dark hair, who had stalked his sleep for three nights.

“Yes. You are under the wyrd of her father.”

“F-father?”

“She is god-born; that much I've been able to discover about her in the few
years that we've . . . known each other. She calls me when she needs me, and I do what I must to help her.”

“Why?”

“Too many questions,” Kallandras answered gently, but the distance had returned to his eyes. He stepped back, bowed, and then looked up again; Stephen's eyes had not left his face. “You are young,” he said, relenting a little. “I help because I'm committed to it. She fights the darkness in ways I don't understand, but she fights it with everything at her disposal. I fight because I, too, am under Fate's wyrd.” He lifted Salla and began to idly strum her strings. Without thought, he pulled melody and harmony from her; a pensive, wordless tune. “It always costs. Always.”

Costs? Stephen's dream came back, an echo too sharp to be just memory. Suddenly, he didn't want to ask any more questions. “Let me go find Lord Elseth. I'm sure he'd be happy if you'd sing his father's death. But—but don't make any jests, please?”

“No jests,” Kallandras said gravely. “In mourning, young huntbrother, we are closer than you will ever understand.” But the last words were a whisper, and Stephen, already searching for Gilliam's back, missed them.

• • •

The ring of torches and glass lamps and fires strove to capture the dying daylight when at last the Hunter Lords were entirely finished and ready. Their Ladies joined them in their bitter silence, offering them comfort and support by merely taking, and leaning on, the arms held out to them. Each Lord was allowed the presence of four dogs for the ceremony, and the clearing was warm and crowded.

Seventy-seven Hunter Lords stood at attention as the Hunter's Priest walked to the altar, accompanied by the King, four of the King's hounds, and four of the Priesthood. He carried a burning brazier on a link of chain that hung from a dark pole. The smoke from it smelled sweet and pungent as it rippled through the crowd. Two feet from the altar, he took the pole and drove it, hard, into the soft ground.

That done, he knelt before the King.

The King wore black; gone were Hunter greens and browns, gone the bow and the spear. Only black remained; emptiness, an absence of color, warmth, and light. For one instant, Stephen could see great tined antlers rising from the King's forehead into the night sky above the deep, calm wilderness of his eyes.

“Master of the Game, is the Hunt over?” The words, firm and strong, were ritual. But they were also sincere; a question that began and ended without a surety of the answer.

The Master of the Game walked over to Soredon, Master Hunter, and formerly Lord of Elseth. He stared down at the slack, still face as if searching for signs of life; nor did he give off this quiet, desperate search until minutes had passed.
Then, with infinite care and a respect that was tangible and not begrudged, the King reached down and gently closed his Hunter's eyes. “It is over.”

He held out one hand, palm up, and curled his fingers tightly around the horn the Priest gave him. The drums started as the four who had accompanied the King and his Priest took their places on the green and began to play. Their faces were hooded by more than the night, but their pain came out in the throbbing of the skins. The horn sounded the end of the Hunt, and before the first note had died, every Hunter in the realm, Gilliam and Stephen included, had joined in.

The dogs, aware of their masters' grief, began to howl in time of sorts—and together, men and beasts, they made enough noise to be heard even by a God.

The King stepped away at last, and silence was allowed to return. He gestured to the Priest, and the Priest took over while the King stood by his side. He began a quiet incantation over Soredon's body. The hems of his sleeves brushed pale white cheeks and shuttered eyes.

“Hunter,” he intoned, and it was clear that he spoke to the God. “We are no oath-breakers; we have come, and we have hunted at your behest, in your lands.

“And you, too, have hunted; you have taken, with skill that we cannot imagine or match, one of the greatest of our number.

“Keep him in peace, and keep our lands whole and healthy for another year. Feed the very land as we feed our people, and we shall return again to renew our vows.”

The silence that followed was also part of the yearly ritual—but it, too, was full and heavy with genuine emotion and a grief too deep for words.

Only one man moved in the gathering. He came from the shadows at the farthest edge of the clearing in silence, carrying no torch, no horn, no weapon. He caught the King's eye, and the Priest's, but instead of gently remonstrating with him, they bowed their heads and looked away as he approached the body, to give him what privacy they could in such a public circumstance.

Norn of Elseth knelt in the dirt, his back to the gathered mourners. His broad shoulders seemed so shrunken they barely supported his bulk; the red lights of his hair were extinguished. His fingers moved blindly over Corwel's cold fur before they reached for the edge of the altar.

He rose. The drums stopped their beating, the breeze stilled. In silence, the huntbrother joined the Hunter Lord.

Loss. Stephen understood it well. There had been many deaths and disappearances in his past, in the years with the den, and even those leading up to them. Lord Elseth had changed all that—and now he lay as dead as any commoner. The magic of his presence, the force of his words—with their harsh anger and their prickly comfort—had been given to the Hunter and His Death. It hurt.

But not as much as it hurt Norn.

He knew that Norn shouldn't be alone. Gilliam caught his shoulder as he started forward, and he shook him off, quietly determined to go to Norn's side.

No doubt the death had been awful—it was hard to tell from the body—but at least, dead, Soredon was spared Lord William's fate. Norn was not. He had nothing now; unlike his Hunter Lord, he couldn't hear the voices of the dogs, and he couldn't anchor himself to their needs.

But when Stephen reached Norn, he found himself without words to say or comfort to offer. He reached out and placed one hand on Norn's stooped shoulder, but the larger man shrugged it off.

“Norn of Elseth,” the King said softly. “Lord Soredon made his choice years before—as did you. All loss, whether of life or of companionship, was accepted then. We are Hunters and huntbrothers, and the Death takes one of our number, always.”

Norn said nothing, nor did the King expect a response. The choice made as a child was bitter solace indeed for such a moment as this. They waited—King, Priest, and huntbrother—but Norn did not touch the body at all. He stared long into the frozen face and then turned away with a whisper. “It should have been me.”

Only Stephen heard it. He trailed alongside the older man, afraid of disturbing him, but more afraid of leaving him alone.

• • •

Kallandras was true to his word. When at last the King, a wounded Hunter Lord in his own right, retired to his place at the foot of the Queen's dais, when the Priest and the drummers quietly paid their final respects to their fallen and withdrew into the shadows, when the Hunter Lords were finally free to mourn as they chose, he rose, his small lute cradled gently and formally in his arms, and took his place before the altar. He bowed, a sweeping, serious motion, first to Corwel and then to Soredon.

The Hunter Lords looked askance at Gilliam, but as Gilliam did not demur, they kept their thoughts to themselves and waited.

He sang.

His voice was full with the emotion that the Hunter Lords kept carefully masked. They, who had always been strong, had no way to weep but through him—and his voice, accompanied by the sweeping range of lute strings that seemed too small, too inadequate to convey such sound, washed over them all.

There were tears on his cheeks; the fire from the brazier caught them and made pale rubies of their fall. His voice broke over words more than once, but that too became part of his song.

Stephen cried, and after a few minutes, Gilliam joined him. It was safe, after all; no one noticed. Their attention was fixed upon the bard.

Time passed, no one knew—or cared—how long, and Kallandras' song began
to slowly change. Strains of grief and utter despair, of loss in the most primal sense, were joined by a thin strand of hope. The death of the Hunter Lord became a green, unfolding life for the land of Breodanir; the fields became fertile, the ground soft and rich. The children, untouched by sorrow and death, played in the peace of Lord Soredon's sacrifice, instead of dying in drought or famine.

All of this, they knew—but they had never
felt
it so clearly, and so cleanly, as at this moment. As Kallandras sang, the ghost of Lord Soredon moved slowly, and with purpose, before them. He smiled, if smile it was—it was hard to tell with Soredon—and reached for his weapons. He frowned down, and Corwel suddenly joined him; Corwel remade, young and perfect and a little too eager. Together, they passed into shadow and were gone with the last strain of music.

In an hour, Kallandras had done what time would take months to do. A sweet, sad peace filled the clearing and spilled out into the forest. Hunter Lords and Ladies watched him quietly, seeing other deaths, other losses, from the perspective that peace allows.

They did not know that it was not the death of Lord Elseth alone that he spoke of; they didn't know that it was not the hope of the Breodani alone that filled the clearing. But they didn't have to; what they felt was Kallandras' emotion, and it was genuine, one with their own.