For the first time, Inglis realized he had appeared on the plane in his human form—not as wolf, or even as man-with-wolf’s-head. It might be a good thing. The stretched-out boar spirit was, he saw now through its ferocity, quite frightened enough. This time, he coaxed it out softly, gently. He had hated it for what it had done to Tollin, and through Tollin to himself, but it was one of the Son’s creatures with the rest. He handed it off to the waiting god, and bowed his head in respect, and spread his fingers wide over his heart in His sign.
Tollin unwound from the knife and stood up, looking dizzied and bewildered. His colors were ragged, paler than Scuolla’s, who sat taking it all in like a satisfied onlooker to some beloved campfire tale. Tollin’s mouth opened as he saw Inglis, though no sound came out, but then his face rose to the figure by the wall, and he stood stunned.
For a moment, to Inglis’s horror, Tollin held back. Guilt, grief? Fear of not being good enough, strong enough… it had not just been youthful arrogance that had led him to beg for the boar spirit, after all. A mixture of motives not savory, but so, so understandable to Inglis now. Tollin stood silent, and small, and ashamed.
The Son of Autumn held out His hand, close but not touching. Tollin’s face turned away, suffused with misery, but his hand jerked out, once, twice. On the second, his hand was grasped, and all anguish fled from his features, because the astonished awe left no room for it.
And then he was gone.
The Hunter turned then, bent, and extended his hand to Scuolla. Who, to Inglis’s surprise, spoke, and in the affectionate voice of a man to a long-time comrade: “But will there be good beer?”
The Hunter’s voice returned, in like humor: “If there is beer, it will be very good. If there is not, it will be because there’s something better. It’s not a wager you can lose. Come on, old man.”
As the Hunter heaved Scuolla up, the old man said, “You took your time, getting here.”
“I did My best with what I had,” the god answered him back.
“Seems so.” Scuolla looked warmly down at Inglis. “Take good care of my dogs, lad.”
Inglis nodded, breathless. “I will, sir.”
Scuolla dipped his chin in pleased acceptance. “Now I can go.”
“About time,” his Friend murmured, amused. “Who is dawdling now?”
Inglis found himself on his knees, holding up both hands palm-out, fingers spread. He hardly knew what he meant to say. Is that all, am I done? Instead it came out, “Will we meet again?”
The Hunter smiled. Once, for certain.
And then Inglis let go, and he was falling, falling, back into the world, laughing so hard he was crying, or crying so hard he was laughing, or some other reaction much too large for any human frame to hold.
Fortunately, Learned Penric was waiting to catch him before he rolled off the ledge that he’d forgotten was before him.
“There, there…” Penric clutched his shaking body and patted his back as if calming a hysterical child, prudently dragging him over to the wall again. “You’ve seen a god, I know, I know,” he soothed. “You’ll be drunk on it for days. No doubt Oswyl will be highly offended, which will be entertaining in its own way…”
Gasping, Inglis rolled over in his lap and grabbed up at his collar. “What, what did you see? Just now?”
Penric gently undid his clenching fingers before he tore the fabric. “I saw you go into your trance. It was a bit alarming. Might have been taken for a stroke—you should warn your companions about that. Your nose bled. I saw when Tollin came unbound, and when he went off. Scuolla, too. It was hard to get much more, because Des went into retreat. Since she has nowhere to go but inward, this results in her curling up into this sort of impenetrable, useless ball—” his voice rose on this last, not, apparently, to Inglis’s address, for he added aside to Inglis, “Gods terrify demons. They are the one power that can destroy them. Understandable.” Inglis wasn’t sure who was supposed to understand what, but Penric hesitated for a long moment. He held up his hand, fingers spreading as if miming a man pressing on a glass, except that it also recalled his five kinds of prayers. Supplication, Inglis thought. “Otherwise… otherwise, it was like standing outside a window in the rain, looking in on some harvest party, to which I knew I was not invited.”
“Oh,” said Inglis, stupidly. And at an echo in his mind of Stop that, grinned uncontrollably despite it all. He rubbed at his upper lip, and his hand came away sticky and red, but the bleed seemed to have stopped on its own.
Penric held his hair and peered down into his face with a curiosity…medical? theological? magical? or just the inquisitive scholar? Voices and barking echoed from below, and Penric craned his neck. “…Right. So, here comes Gallin, and a lot of excited men with ropes. I hope they brought enough. Arrow and Blood are running over to greet them, or maybe hurry them along. Or trip them and break their legs, hard to tell with dogs. Are you going to give us any more trouble?”
“I am in your hands,” Inglis said, limply. And truthfully. And thankfully.
Rescue. I am rescued. Of all men to be lost in these mountains, he had to have been the most lost, and the most rescued. Such rescues had been Scuolla’s calling, had they not? him and his brave band of dogs. The shaman’s last rescue, and the shaman rescued, hand to hand to hand to hand in a long, long chain of help beyond hope. Reaching how far back?
…And how far forward?
XIII
Getting the two men off the ledge took over an hour. Like the injured shaman, the sorcerer waited to ride the rope net down; unlike the shaman, he stepped out of it with the panache of a prince descending a palace stair. When taxed by Oswyl, Penric claimed that it was much harder to climb down than up, because he couldn’t well see where he was putting his hands and feet. No mountaineer, Oswyl had to take him at his word. It was hardly a thing to balk at, considering what all else of the uncanny events he was forced to take the sorcerer-divine’s testimony for. The eager Acolyte Gallin ate up their wild tale like a starving man, and asked for seconds. The guards and the valemen grew wide-eyed. In all, it was rising dark before they made it back to Linkbeck once more.
Inglis, certainly, seemed a man profoundly changed, unless the fall had struck him mad. Madder. When they’d cleaned up, and Penric in his third guise as physician had seen to their prisoner’s new bruises, they all went down to dinner, where Gallin and Gossa were slavishly grateful—to Inglis. For Gossa, this took the form of trying to stuff him like a feast-day goose, and feeding his dogs like people. Penric beguiled his own neglect by telling the servant girl, who turned out to be the daughter of the village wet-nurse, all about the fine opportunities for an energetic young woman in the silk industry at Martensbridge, under the princess-archdivine’s careful eye.
Oswyl finally broke it up by announcing an early start in the morning. As they mounted the staircase, he said to Inglis, “You are still my prisoner. Still under arrest. And we are still going back to Easthome.”
“Oh, yes,” said Inglis, pensively. “It’s all very good now. And if it is not, there will be something better.”
For his part, Oswyl predicted a blizzard with the dawn.
In the blackest hour of the night, Oswyl dreamed.
A deep, slow voice, which seemed to reverberate to the ends of the world, said judiciously: “You were not too late. Well done, child.” After a thoughtful pause it added, in a far less grave tone, “No snow tomorrow. But do not linger three days.”