He blinked in astonishment when the growing parade was joined by half a dozen dark-haired hacked-about men wearing the tabards of Darthacan archers of Audar’s day. They swung wide around Horseriver, but crept up to Ingrey’s heels. The other revenants did not seem to mind their presence here; equal in death for four centuries, perhaps they had made their own soldier’s peace. Audar, Ingrey had heard, had carried out his own dead rather than burying them in this accursed ground, sealed from men and gods, but the battle had been great, and conducted largely in the dark; it was no wonder a few had been missed.
The warriors flowed after the kingly banner like a muster of mourners; a river of sorrow; a whisper of supplication.
The bowl of the valley had turned shadowless with evening, but the sky above was still pale, and the oak branches overhead interlaced against it like crooked black webs. Horseriver seemed to be aiming generally toward the center of the wood, but not in a straight path; it was as though he searched for something. A faintly voiced Ah told Ingrey he had found it. The roof of branches thinned and drew back around a long low mound upon which no trees grew. Horseriver halted beside it, pulled Fara down from her wary cob, and helped her step up the bank and plant the banner pole by her boot.
Released, the horse sidled nervously away through the trees, somehow avoiding touching any of the gathering mob of curious revenants. More than curious, Ingrey realized; agitated. His blood seethed in the surf of their excitement. More and more came, crowding up thickly around them, and Ingrey began to feel in his marrow just how many four thousand murdered men were. He tried to count them, then count blocks and multiply, but lost his place and abandoned the attempt. It failed utterly to aid his sweating grip on reason anyway.
Horseriver knelt upon the mound, pushed aside a thin screen of sickly weeds, and ran his fingers through the dark soil. “This was the trench I was buried in,” he remarked conversationally to Ingrey. “I and many others. Though I never actually spilled my blood at Holytree. Audar was careful about that. That shall be rectified.” He climbed wearily to his feet. “All shall be rectified.” He nodded to the ghosts, who stirred uneasily.
At the outer edges of the circle, late arrivals milled about; those few who could, craned their necks. It seemed they spoke to each other; to Ingrey, the voices were blurred and faint, like hearing from underwater men calling or arguing on a shore. Ingrey touched the dirty bandage on his right hand, hardly more than a rag wrapped about to keep knocks from paining the healing wound’s tenderness. It wasn’t bleeding again, at least. Yet.
With difficulty, Ingrey cleared his throat. “Sire, what do we do here?”
Horseriver smiled, faintly. “Finish it, Ingrey. If you hold to your task, and my banner-carrier holds to hers, that is. Finish it.”
“Hadn’t you better tell us how, then?”
“Yes,” sighed Horseriver. “It is time.” He glanced skyward. “With neither sun nor moon nor stars to witness, in an hour neither day nor night; what more befitting a moment than this? Long was the preparation, long and difficult, but the doing—ah. The doing is simple and quick.” He drew his knife from his belt, the same he’d used to cut the throat of Ijada’s mare, and Ingrey tensed. Kingly charisma or no, if Horseriver turned on Fara, Ingrey would have to try to… He made to lift his hand to his sword hilt, but found it heavy and unresponsive; his heart began to hammer in panic at the unexpected constraint.
But Horseriver instead pressed the haft into Fara’s limp hand, then took the banner pole and ground it deeper into the soil so that it stood upright, if slightly tilted, on its own. “This will best be done kneeling, I think,” he mused. “The woman is weak.”
He turned again to Ingrey. “Fara”—he nodded to his wife, who stared back with eyes gone wide and black—“will shortly cut my throat for me. Being my banner-carrier, she will hold, for a little moment, my kingship and my soul here. You have until her grip fails, no more, to cleanse my spirit horse from me. If you do not succeed, you will have the full, but not unique, experience of becoming my heir. What will happen then, not even I can predict, but I am fairly certain it will be nothing good. And it will go on forever. So do not fail, my royal shaman.”
Ingrey’s pulse throbbed in his ears, and his stomach knotted. “I thought you could not die. You said the spell held you in the world.”
“Follow it around, Ingrey. The trees, and all the living web of Holytree, are bound to the souls of my warriors, and support them in the world of matter. These”—he gestured broadly at the clustering revenants—“create my hallow kingship that binds them to me. My spirit horse”—he touched his breast—“my power as a shaman, binds the trees to the men. I told you that the hallow king was the hub of the spell for invincibility, I do remember that. Cut the link at any point, and the circle unwinds. This is the link you can reach.”
And you cannot? No…he could not. Horseriver was bound up in his own spell, like a key locked inside its box. “That’s what this has all been about, then? An elaborate suicide?” said Ingrey indignantly. He struggled once more to move, to jerk his physical body into motion, but achieved only a shudder.
“I suppose you could call it that.”
“How many people did you actually kill to arrange this?” As carelessly as you set me on Ijada?
“Not as many as you’d think. They do die on their own.” Horseriver’s lips twisted. “And to say I would rather die than to have all this to do over again both sums and fails even to touch the truth.”
Ingrey’s mind lurched. “This will break the spell.”
“It’s all of a piece. Yes.”
“What will happen to these, then?” Ingrey waved about at the crowding ghosts. “Will they go to the gods as well?”
“Gods, Ingrey? There are no gods here.”
It is true, Ingrey realized. Was that part of what disturbed him so deeply about this ground? The interlocking boundaries of the spell, the will of this unholy hallow king, excluded Them. Had done so for centuries, it appeared. Horseriver’s war with the gods had been in stalemate for that long, while his host had slowly become instead his hostages.
Horseriver pressed Fara to her knees and knelt in front of her, facing away. He pulled her knife hand round over his right shoulder and briefly kissed the white knuckles. A flash of memory washed over Ingrey, of his wolf licking his ear before he’d cut its throat.
The unmaking of this twisted spell, the long-delayed cleansing of Bloodfield, seemed no intrinsic sin, apart from Wencel’s self-murder. Yet five gods had opposed this, and Ingrey could not see why. Not till now.
Once broken free from the misfortunes of the world of matter, the divines said, souls longed for their gods like lovers, save for those who turned their faces aside and chose slow solitary dissolution. And the gods longed back. But this was no mutual suicide pact between Horseriver and his spirit warriors. Even as his fortress fell, he meant to slay his immortal hostages along with him: eternal revenge, a death beyond death and a denial absolute.
“You will be sundered? Wait—you will all be sundered?”
“You ask too many questions.”
Not enough. A very late one came to Ingrey then. Ijada, she had said, had given half her heart to these revenants. They held it still, somewhere here, somehow. What would happen to whatever piece of her soul she had pledged when these lost warriors went up in smoke? Could a woman live with half a heart? “Wait,” said Ingrey, then, reaching deeper, “wait!”
A ripple ran through the revenants as if they swayed in an earth shock, and Fara looked up, gasping.
“And you argue too much,” Horseriver added, and drew Fara’s knife hand hard around his throat.
Blood spurted for three heartbeats while Horseriver stared ahead, his expression composed. Then his lips parted in relief, and he slumped forward out of Fara’s grasp. She clutched the banner pole to keep from falling atop him, her lips moving in a soundless cry.
The world of magic peeled away from the world of matter then, ripping apart
the congruence, and Ingrey found his vision doubled as it had been in Red Dike. Wencel’s body lay facedown upon the mound, and Fara bent over it, half-fainting, the bloody knife fallen from her grasp. But upon the mound there arose…
A black stallion, black as pitch, as soot, as a moonless night in a storm. Its nostrils flared red, and orange sparks trailed from its mane and tail as it shifted. It pawed the mound, once, and a ring of fire shimmered out around its hoofprint, then faded. Upon its back a man-shaped shadow rode astride, and the figure’s legs curved down into the horse’s ribs and united with them.
This brutal, ancient power was not at all like Boleso’s thin, miserable menagerie. I don’t know what to do with this, and I have no god on my side in this place. Frenzy reverberated in Ingrey’s belly. His beginning howl of terror transmuted in the voicing of it into a bellow of challenge. He leapt away from his frozen body, landing astonished on all four paws, heavy claws ripping up the dirt in clots. Completing a transformation he had only been half-able to effect, to mere man-wolf mixture, the time before.
The stallion snorted. Ingrey pulled back his black-edged lips along his long jaws, bared his sharp teeth, and snarled back. His tongue lolled out to taste a rank sizzle in the air, like burning rotted hair, and saliva spattered from his jaws as he shook the toxic tang from his mouth.
The stallion stepped off the mound and circled him, tracking little flames.
If I lose this fight, what returns to my body will not be me. It would be Horseriver re-formed. With such a prize, no wonder Wencel had not bothered to bespell him further in his cause. Ingrey was battling for more than his life.
So.
He circled the stallion in turn, head lowered, neck ruff rising, the earth cool and damp under his pads. Fallen leaves crackled like real leaves, and the sharpness of their musty scent amazed his nose. The stallion swirled, its hind legs lashing out.
Ingrey ducked, too late; one hoof connected with a heavy thunk to his furry side, and he rolled away, yelping. How could an illusion not be able to breathe? He would have to pay as implacable an attention as in any sword fight, but now he had to watch four weapons, not just one. How do you kill a horse with your teeth? He tried to remember dogfights he had witnessed, boar-baitings, the climaxes of hunts.
Any way you can.
He gathered himself on his haunches and launched himself at the horse’s belly, twisting his open jaws at an awkward angle. He scored the skinless surface in a long slash, and barely made it away from a retaliating stamping. The—not blood—uncanny ichor, ink-black fluid, burned his mouth as the red snakes had, before. Worse. His jaws foamed madly in pained response.
The ghosts crowded around in a ring for all the world as though they were watching a boar-baiting. Which beast were they betting on, whom did they cheer? Not their lives but their souls had been wagered, and not by them. That Horseriver rode himself to oblivion, to sundering from the gods, was regrettable, but not even the gods could override a person’s will in that matter. That his will overrode all these other wills seemed a blacker sin. Ijada would surely weep, Ingrey thought bleakly as he dodged the stallion’s snapping teeth, swung round at the end of a suddenly snaky neck, ears back flat. And, Five weapons. I have to watch five weapons.
This is going badly. He was too small; the stallion was too large. Real wolves hunted prey this size in packs, not alone. Where can I get more me? Nothing of spirit could exist in the world of matter without… He eyed his standing human self, shivering mindlessly on his feet at the edge of the clearing. Dolt. Dupe. Useless son. All or nothing, then. All.
He pulled strength from his body, all he could. The emptied form swayed and collapsed onto a drift of leaves. Everything in the clearing slowed, and Ingrey’s already-searing perceptions came ablaze. His wolf-body felt at once both dense as the past and weightless as the future. Yes. I know this state. I have traveled this path before.
He was, abruptly, half the size of the horse, and it shied back. But slowly, so slowly, as though it swam in oil. His mind sketched his strike at his leisure, measuring the arc of his leap. This looted strength could not last. No time. Now.
He plunged forward and sank his teeth into the horse’s neck, shaking his head wildly. He could not flip it back and forth as a dog shook a rabbit, but it went down under his twisting weight, and something snapped and something spurted. Around them, the ghosts dodged back as though to avoid a splash from some tainted puddle.
The thing in his jaws stilled. Then melted away and ran down his lips like a bite from an icicle in winter. He spat and backed up. Horse-shape became shapeless, a mound, a puddle, a blackness soaking into the ground like a spilled barrel of ink. Gone.
Wencel stood up, freed from his dark mount. On two bowed legs. His shape was restored to humanity, but his face…
“I’m glad I didn’t use that stag,” he remarked from one of his mouths. “It would not have had the strength for this.” Another mouth grinned. “Good dog, Ingrey.”
Ingrey backed away, growling. Across Horseriver’s skull, faces rippled, rising and sinking like corpses in a river. One succeeded another haphazardly, all the Earls Horseriver for four centuries and more. Young men, old men, angry men, sad; shaven, bearded, scarred. Mad. Young Wencel passed like a bewildered waif, his dumb gaze alighting on Ingrey in recognition and plea, though plea for what, Ingrey could not tell.
The body was worse. Cuts, scars, dreadful gaping wounds rose and fell from the surface of the skin, every death wound Horseriver had ever received. The burns were the most frightening, wide patches of red and weeping blisters, cooked and charred flesh. The stink of them wafted across Ingrey’s sensitive wolf-nose, and he sneezed and backed away, whimpering for a moment and pawing his muzzle like a dog. This was Horseriver, turned inside out. This was what being Horseriver had been like, behind that smooth ironic mask, the brittle wit, the jerky rage, the apparent indifference. Every hour, every day, sunsets falling like trip-hammers, time without end.
The eyes were worst of all.
Ingrey stalked warily around the edge of the clearing, keeping his distance from the mound and the Horseriver-aggregate, until he came to his own collapsed body. It looked disturbingly more pale and dead than the headless ghosts gathered about looking on. He nosed it, pawed at it, and whined anxiously, but it did not stir. Did he even breathe? He could not tell. In this wolf-state, he realized, he had no voice—and, therefore, no weirding voice. A critical aspect of his powers seemed severed from him. Could he even get back in? Five gods, what if I can’t?
Had Horseriver planned this? With his wolf and most of his own soul removed, Ingrey’s silent husk was empty as an abandoned house, and as available for squatters to move into. If the undoing of his spell went awry, Horseriver might still have a body-heir, and now without the complications that had worried him earlier. Ingrey glanced up at the agonized thing that was Horseriver. No, that was not an end Horseriver desired, but if he indeed found himself with it all to do over again, well, he could. And judging by his level silence, watching Ingrey, he knew it. Ingrey shivered and pawed his unresponsive body again.
Hoofbeats and a frightened equine squeal sounded from the woods, and Ingrey whirled around. Could the haunt-horse have reanimated…? No, this was a real horse; he could feel the thudding of its gait through the solid ground as he had not the fiery footfalls of the other. The hoofbeats stopped, shuffled about in the leaf drifts; then lighter footsteps rustled, running flat out.
The ghosts spun aside, opening an aisle, and many lifted their hands in clumsy salutes. And blessings, or troubled supplications; the fivefold sign wandered awkwardly, when forehead and lips were hung at a belt, and the hand moved only aside to navel and groin before rising to the unbeating heart. Wolf-Ingrey’s head lifted and he sniffed in wild surmise. I know that blissful smell, like sunlight in dry grass…
Running through the gap between the ghosts, Ijada appeared. She wore her dark brown riding dress, the jacket sweat-stained, her split skirts splashed with mud
, and all of it scored with little rips as though she’d galloped through a thorn hedge. Wisps of dark hair clung to her flushed face. She stopped short, and her gasping became a cry; then she staggered more slowly to where Ingrey’s body lay and dropped to her knees beside it, her face draining white.
“No, oh, no…” She rolled his body over and gathered his head into her lap, and stared down in dismay at the lifeless features and pale lips. “Too late!”
She cannot see me, wolf-Ingrey realized. She cannot see any of us. Except for the very material Fara, still collapsed beside the throat-slashed body of Wencel. Ijada spared the couple a brief, appalled glance, clenching her teeth in distress, then turned back to Ingrey.
“Oh, love…” She lifted his face to her own teary one, and pressed her lips to his. Wolf-Ingrey danced around her in frustration, for he could not feel those warm lips or taste that wasted honeyed breath at all. Frantic, he pawed her sleeve, then licked her face.
Her breath drew in sharply, and she lifted her hand to her cheek and stared around. Had she felt some disturbing liquid chill, as he had from the ghost’s hand? He licked her ear, and her breath huffed out in what might have been a laugh, under other circumstances; she scrubbed at the ear as though it had been tickled. She laid Ingrey’s body out on his back, felt along it—oh, if I might feel that touch—and frowned. “Ingrey, what have they done to you…?” His body bore no visible wounds, no crookedness of broken bones, but his rag-wrapped right hand, he saw, was soaked with blood, and his leather jerkin was smeared slippery with it. Ijada’s frown deepened as she clutched the gory hand to her breast. If I might only move those fingers… “Or you to yourself?” she added more shrewdly. “You tried something brave and foolish, didn’t you?” Her gaze rose once more to Wencel’s corpse and Fara.