It was Ingrey's charge to spy on Horseriver and guard Fara. So far the first was going swimmingly, in a way, but he was surely making a hash of the second, for all that he rode beside her seeming to guard her still. He'd made an effort with the stag that had proved sadly misdirected. His lurid fear that Horseriver might want his wife for some bizarre blood sacrifice did not stand up to reasonable examination. She could not be hanged from a tree as courier to the gods in her new horse-spirit-ridden state, nor was she virgin for all her barrenness. Nor did Ingrey think that Horseriver wanted to communicate with the gods, beyond obscene gestures of defiance. And where were They, in this night of inexplicable events?
A hallow king's banner-carrier was traditionally a close kinsman. Symark was second cousin to Biast, and had been his elder brother Byza's bannerman before that. The late king's own longtime bannerman had died half a year before him, from natural causes, and the old man had delayed replacing him-anticipating his own end even then and scorning to set some latecomer in that treasured companion's place? Or had a new appointment been blocked by Horseriver, for arcane reasons? A hallow king needed a bannerman of his own high blood, to match his honor. Or banner-woman? Ingrey glanced aside at Fara, clinging to her mount, her face pale and shadowed. She was an adequate horsewoman only. This night would test her endurance.
Hetwar would blister him for this. If he lived. If he lived, Ingrey decided, Hetwar could blister him to his heart's content. Better-if he and Fara lived, it would set an interesting conundrum for Ijada's judges. Any precedent of punishment or reprieve to Ijada for bearing her leopard must logically apply also to the princess and her new night-mare. I think I could do something with this. And if I couldn't, I'll wager Oswin could.
They neared the Stork and turned north along the main river road. The moonlight reflecting off the river's broad surface filtered in bright bursts through the trees lining the banks. Past the clip of hooves and creak of leather Ingrey could hear the faint rippling of the current, mixing with the whisper of falling leaves.
He kneed Wolf forward to match the big chestnut's long gait. “Sire, where are we going?”
North. They could be in flight to exile in the Cantons, but somehow Ingrey thought not. A two-day ride at a courier's pace would bring them to the edge of the Raven Range…
“The Wounded Woods. Bloodfield.”
“Holytree that was. Very good, my wise wolfling.”
Ingrey waited, but Horseriver added nothing else. After a moment, the earl urged his horse into a canter, and the other two mounts snorted and picked up the pace.
Ingrey's reason still worked, it seemed. It was his emotions that Horseriver's kingship had overwhelmed. What a strange geas-no, this was no mere spell. Not at all like the tight, self-contained parasite magic he had fought and defeated at Red Dike. This was something else, huge and old and strong. Older than Horseriver himself? Nor did it feel intrinsically evil, though all gifts turned to despair in Horseriver's age-blackened hands.
The terrible charisma of kings…men crept close, longing to bask in it, for something more than material reward. The lure of heroism, the benediction of action, might have only death for its prize, and yet men flocked to the king's banner. The seductive promise of perfection of self in service to this high bright-seeming thing?
Horseriver had not made his kingship out of himself alone, all those centuries ago. He had received it as heirloom-time immemorial was all too true a phrase for a tradition that knew no writing to bind the years in tame ranks, but the kin tribes had been on this ground so long they seemed as old as the great dark forest itself. Whatever royal magic they had made out of themselves, they had been making it for a very, very long time.
The old kinsmen, even by their own accounts, had been a collection of arrogant, stiff-necked, bloody-minded, and bloody-handed madmen. It would take something as intense as this burning glamour to bring them into any sort of line, however ragged. Fear of Audar had driven them, to be sure, in their late days, but fear was as likely to scatter efforts like leaves in a storm as to concentrate them. How much energy had Horseriver possessed, how much expended, to bring that great rite at Holytree even to a beginning, let alone to fruition? If this was his kingship's last dying gasp, what must it have been in its fierce prime?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BY THE TIME THE MOON WAS HIGH, THE LATHERED HORSES were flagging. They were miles beyond the point at which a royal courier would have stopped to change mounts, and Ingrey was beginning to wonder if Horseriver planned for them to ride the animals to death, when the earl finally allowed his big chestnut to drop to a weary walk. After a few more minutes, he pointed and led them off the road toward a farmhouse set alone in the trees toward the river. A lantern hung from its porch rafters, burning faint and red in the moon-blue dark.
Three horses were waiting, tied to the railing. As they dismounted a Horseriver groom scrambled up from a bedroll and set about transferring the tack. Horseriver allowed only enough time for Ingrey and Fara to consume some cheese wrapped in bread, swallow some ale, and visit the privy behind the house before mounting and taking to the road again. Fara was pale and strained, but the hallow king's will held her to her grim task of clinging to her fresh horse and galloping once more. Even Ingrey was swaying in his saddle by the time they stopped again, at another old thatched farmhouse just over a hill from the main river road. They had passed no other riders in the deep night, and had swung quietly around the walled villages lying farther and farther apart up the narrowing Stork. Fara fairly fell out of her saddle into her husband's arms.
“It is just as well. Even you and I could not ride straight through without stopping. We'll take a rest here.”
An arranged rest, clearly, for a daunted-looking farm girl appeared to take Fara in charge and lead her into the house. The earl followed another Horseriver groom, obviously stationed here for this duty, as he led the horses around behind the rambling house to a rickety shed. Wencel looked over the waiting remounts and grunted satisfaction. No farm nags, these, but more horses sent ahead from the earl's own stables.
This flight was well planned, it seemed. Pursuers might inquire at roadside inns and other public liveries where men in a hurry could rent remounts, yet find no trace of them, no witnesses, no abandoned horses. To stop and inquire at every farmhouse along the Stork between Easthome and the northern border would waste precious time, even for men with such resources as the prince-marshal and Hetwar. And they would have half a dozen other roads away from Easthome in all directions to search, as well.
To what degree can I resist this kingly geas? Ingrey wondered, in a sort of melted desperation. If he could but once gather the will and wits, that is. Would escape from the range of Wencel's voice break this false calm in which he seemed to float, would the trance falter if Wencel's attention was divided? Ingrey felt as hungry for that royal regard as a dog desiring a bone from its master or a boy a smile from his father. The dogged fawning merely made him grit his teeth, but that Horseriver should so casually pilfer a filial loyalty Lord Ingalef had never lived to enjoy sent a vein of molten rage through Ingrey's heart. Still he found himself creeping after his lord like a cold tired child huddling to a hearth.