Cumril nodded, and glanced somewhat fearfully at Ijada. “It was her.”
Ijada looked astonished. “What?”
“The night Boleso died, I was in the next chamber. To assist him in enspelling the leopard. There was a knothole in the wall, from which we could remove the knot and look and listen through.”
Cumril bore up under their speculative glowers, and continued, “Boleso believed that the animal spirits he took in would allow him to bind each kin to himself. He had a, a, theory that the leopard was your kin animal, Lady Ijada, by reason of your father's Chalionese bloodlines. He meant to use it to bind your mind and will to his, to make you his perfect paramour. Partly, partly for lust, partly to test his powers before he took them into the arena of politics, partly because he was half-mad with suspicion of everyone by this time and only by such iron control dared to have any woman so close to his person.”
“No wonder,” said Ijada, her voice shaking a little, “he took no trouble to court me.”
Lewko said quietly, “That was grave sin and blasphemy indeed, to attempt to seize another's will. Free will is sacred even to the gods.”
“Was the leopard spirit meant to go into Ijada, then?” asked Ingrey, puzzled. “Did you put it there?” As you once gave me my wolf?
“No!” Cumril fell silent a moment, then gathered himself again. “Boleso took it, had just taken it, when the lady fought free from under him. And then…something happened that no one controlled. I know not by what courage she seized the war hammer and struck him, but death, death opens the world to the gods. It all happened at once, in a moment. I was still working upon the leopard as Boleso's soul was torn from his body, and the god…the shock…my demon…Boleso's soul struggled wildly, but could not get free of its defilements either to advance or retreat from the Presence.
“The leopard, so barely anchored, was torn from him, and fell into…no, was called into the lady. I heard a music like hunting horns in a distant dawn, and my heart seemed to burst with the sound. And my demon fell screaming in terror from it, and released its hold upon my mind, and fled in the only direction it could, inward and inward into a tight knot. It cowers there still”-he touched his chest-“but I do not know for how long.” He added after a moment, “Then I ran away and hid in my room. I wept so hard I could not breathe, for a time.” He was weeping again now, a quiet sniveling, rocking in his chair.
From his place by the wall, Ingrey growled, “I would know of an earlier beginning, Cumril.”
Cumril looked, if possible, more fearful, but he ducked his head in acquiescence.
Ingrey breathed exhilaration and dread. Finally, some truths. He contemplated the miserable sorcerer. Maybe some truths. “How came you to my father? Or did he come to you?”
“Lord Ingalef came to me, my lord.”
Ingrey frowned; Lewko nodded.
“His sister Lady Horseriver had fled to him in great fear, begging his aid. She had a frantic tale of her son Wencel having become possessed by an evil spirit of the Old Weald.”
Lewko's head came up. “Wencel!”
Ingrey choked back a curse. In one sentence, a whole handful of new cards was laid upon the table, and in front of Lewko, too. “Wait…this possession occurred before Wencel's mother's death? Not after?”
“Indeed, before. She thought it had happened at the time of his father's death, some four or so months earlier. The boy had changed so strangely then.”
So already Wencel was caught in a lie. Or Cumril was. Or both could be lying, Ingrey reminded himself; but both could not be telling the truth. “Go on.”
“The two concocted a plan for the rescue of her son, they thought. Lady Horseriver feared to go to the Temple openly, in part for terror that they might burn her boy if they could not release him from the possession.” Cumril swallowed. “She meant to fight Old Weald magic with Old Weald magic.”
“I, I, to this day I do not know. The huntsman spoke to me on his deathbed, half-raving by then; he, he, he was not bribed to the deed, of that I am sure. He did not guess his animals were diseased, or I think he would have handled them more carefully himself!”
Ijada asked curiously, “Where was young Wencel when all this was going on at Birchgrove?”
“His mother had left him at Castle Horseriver, I understood. She meant to keep her actions secret from him until she could bring help.”
And the implications of this were…“She feared him? As well as for him?” asked Ingrey.
Cumril hesitated, then ducked his head again. “Aye.”
So…if a geas could be set in a man to make him kill at another's will, as the parasite spell had been set in Ingrey, how much easier would it be to set one in a wolf-or in a horse? Was the death of Lady Horseriver, trampled by her mount, no accident either? What, now you suspect that Wencel killed his own mother? Ingrey's blood was thudding in his head now, but mostly in a sick headache.
But the why of his wolf was answered at last. A lethal mix of family loyalty, good intentions, bad judgment…and secret uncanny malice? Or was that last some lesser intent, gone wrong? Had the unseen foe meant to kill Lord Ingalef, or just his animals? “My wolf-what of my wolf, which arrived so mysteriously?”
Cumril shrugged helplessly. “When its effect on you proved so disastrous, I thought it must have been sent like the rabid ones.”
Lewko was pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut. “Lord Ingrey. Lady Ijada. You have both seen Earl Horseriver lately, and not just with mortal eyes. What do you say of this accusation?”
“You have seen him, too,” said Ingrey cautiously. “What did you sense?”
Lewko glanced up in irritation; Ingrey thought him about to snap, I asked first!, but instead he took a controlling breath, and said, “His spirit seems dark to me, though no more so than many a man who courts death as though to embrace it. It crossed my mind to fear for him, and for those near him, but not like this!”
“Ingrey…?” said Ijada. Her question was clear in her rising tone:
Should we not speak?
Wencel had been right: once the Temple started looking, they must find. And silence was the only sure safety. And it would, indeed, have been prudent to find and question Cumril before the Temple authorities did. Ingrey wondered grimly what else he would discover Wencel to have been right about. “Wencel bears a spirit animal, yes. Its evil or good I cannot judge. I had guessed Cumril must have laid it in him, too, as part of the same dire plot that gave me mine, but now it seems not.”
“No, no,” muttered Cumril, rocking again. “Not me.”
“You did not mention this earlier,” said Lewko to Ingrey, his tone suddenly very flat.
“No. I did not.” He returned the tone precisely.
“Wild accusations,” murmured Lewko, “a questionable source, not a shred of material proof, and the third highest lord in the land. What more joys can this day bring me? No, don't answer that. Please.”
Lewko glowered at her.
Cumril's confessions didn't make sense, in Ingrey's head. Why sacrifice one child to save another? What gain could there be in both heirs being defiled? His thrill at the seeming chance of uncovering old truths faded. “How was making my father and me into spirit warriors supposed to rescue Wencel?”
“Lady Horseriver did not tell me.”
“What, and you did not ask? It seems a blithe disregard for your famous Temple disciplines, oh sorcerer, to kick them all aside at a woman's word.”
Cumril stared at the floor, and muttered with extreme reluctance, “She was god-touched. Most…most grievously.”
A new thought chilled Ingrey. If bearing an animal spirit sundered one from the gods, like Boleso, what had happened to Lord Ingalef's soul? That funeral had long been over before Ingrey had recovered enough to ask about it. None had told him that his father was sundered. None told me otherwise, either. Lord Ingalef had been as well buried in tacit silences as in earth.