Hetwar turned to him and stood close under a sconce. The candlelight edged his troubled features. “It had been my belief before now that Wencel's keen interest in the upcoming election was on his brother-in-law's behalf. He has been deep in my councils therefore. Now I've cause to wonder if, like Boleso, it is some much closer desire.”
“Has he made new actions aside from his odd interest in Ijada?” “Say rather, old actions seen in a new light.” Hetwar rubbed his forehead, and squeezed his eyes shut, briefly. “While you are guarding Fara, keep your eyes open for evidences of any, shall I say, unhealthily personal interest on Wencel's part in the next hallow kingship.”
“This statement does not reassure me, Ingrey. Not when a certain wolf-lord has uttered the words kingship and magery in the same breath. I know very well you left things unsaid in there.”
“Wild speculation bears its own hazards.”
“Indeed. I want facts. I do not wish to lose a valuable ally through offensive false accusations, nor conversely to fail to guard against a dangerous enemy.”
“My curiosity in this matter is as great as yours, my lord.”
“Good.” Hetwar clapped him on the shoulder. “Go, then, and see about that food and sleep you mentioned. You look like death on a platter, you know. Are you sure you weren't really ill, this morning?”
“I should have much preferred it. Did Lewko report my confession?”
“Of your so-called vision? Oh, aye, and a lurid tale it was.” He hesitated. “Though Biast seemed to take some comfort in it.”
“Did you believe it?”
Hetwar cocked his head. “Did you?”
“Oh,” breathed Ingrey, “yes.”
Hetwar stood very still, first seeking Ingrey's eyes, then, after a moment, dropping his gaze uncomfortably. “I regret missing that entertainment. So what did you and the god really say to each other?”
“We…argued.”
Hetwar's lips curled up in a genuine, if dry, smile. “Why does this not surprise me? I wish the gods well of you. May They have better luck getting straight answers from you than I ever did.” He began to turn away.
Hetwar turned back. “Aye?”
“If, ah…” Ingrey swallowed to moisten his throat. “A favor. If, for any reason, my cousin Wencel should suddenly die in the next few days, I beg you will see that I am brought at once before a Temple inquiry. With the best sorcerers Lewko can muster doing the examination.”
Hetwar frowned, staring at him. The frown deepened. He started to speak, but closed his lips again. “I suppose,” he said at last, “you imagine you can just hand me a thing like that and walk off, eh?”
“So you swear, yes.”
“You are confusing swear and curse, I think.”
“Swear.”
“Yes, then.”
“Good.”
Ingrey bowed and retreated. Hetwar did not call him back. Though a low and breathy cursing did, indeed, drift to Ingrey's ears as he turned for the stairs.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IJADA WAS SITTING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRCASE AS THE porter admitted Ingrey to the prison-house's entry hall, hunched over with her arms wrapped even more tightly about herself than the last time. Her warden sat a few steps above her, looking on in disquiet. Ijada sprang to her feet, her eyes searching Ingrey's face for he knew not what, but she seemed to find it, for she pounced upon him. Grasping his arm, she dragged him into the side room, slamming the door on the disapproving but cowed face of the warden.
“What was that, a while ago?” Ijada demanded. “What happened to you?”
“Visions, Ingrey, terrible visions. Not from the god, I swear. Some little while after you went out, I was overcome again. My knees gave way. The world around me did not fade altogether this time, but the pictures were stronger than memory, less than hallucination. Ingrey, I saw Bloodfield, I saw my men! Not tattered and worn as they were in my dream in the Wounded Woods, but from before, when they yet lived.” She hesitated. “Died.”
“Did you sense Wencel? Did you see him or hear his voice?”
“No, not…not as he is. These visions were in your mind, I think. Were they not?”
“Yes. Pictures from before-times, yes? The Old Weald. The massacre at Bloodfield.”
She shuddered and touched her own neck, and the horrible crunch of the ax parting bone sounded again in Ingrey's memory. She felt that, too.
“Why do we share such things? What has happened between us?” she asked.
“The pictures, those visions-Wencel put them in me. He is not just spirit warrior like you, not just shaman like me. He's more. Lost out of time, terrible in his power and pain. He thinks he is-he claims to be-hallow king.”
“But old Lord Stagthorne is king, has been since before I was born-how can there be two?”
“I think that is some problem, some mystery, that I have not yet come to the core of. I went to Wencel planning to beat the truth out of him if I had to. Instead, he beat it into me…”
He guided her into a chair and sat next to her, their hands still gripping each other across the tabletop. Haltingly, Ingrey described his terrifying interview with the earl. Ijada seemed to have shared only the mystic visions, not their context; Ingrey thought she must have spent the last hours wild with bewilderment, for even now her eyes were dilated and her body shivering.
“My other dream,” she breathed. “Of the burning horseman, the leashed wolf racing through the ash. It was you! It was both of you.”
“Do you think? Perhaps…”
“Ingrey, I recognized Holytree, I recognized my men. I am bound to them as certainly as I am bound to you, though I do not know how. And if Wencel spoke true, he is bound to them as well, and they to him.”
“Wencel's tale was full of gaps, but he did not lie about that,” said Ingrey certainly. “That binding is at the very heart of all this.”
“Then the circle is complete. You are bound to me, me to my ghosts, they to Wencel, and Wencel, it seems, to you. Is Wencel trying to work some great magic with all of us here?”
“I'm not sure. This is not all Wencel's doing, exactly. For one thing, the choice of his mystical heir is not his own, or he would surely have picked someone other than me. Which makes a sort of sense; the spell must have been made to work in the chaos and heat of battle, when both king and next heir might fall in the same hour-as happened at Bloodfield, more or less. The transfer must take place without attention or will on the part of the hallowed ones. So that part of the spell must be bound up with the dead spirit warriors in the Wounded Woods. It's as if the whole of the Old Weald, or what remains of its kin powers, chooses its heir through Wencel.” There seemed to Ingrey to be an enigmatic, daunting validation in the notion.
Ijada's eyes narrowed. “Are we all three supposed to go to Bloodfield, then? And if so, what are we supposed to do when we get there?”
Ijada rubbed her wrinkled brow. “What am I, in this? Half-in, half-out-do I even belong? I am alive, they are dead; I am a woman, they are men-mostly-I think…My leopard is not even a proper Wealding beast! I did nothing for Boleso's soul this morning; I just stood there stupidly gaping. It's you that's wanted, Ingrey, you who might free the ghosts from their old creatures!” Her gaze upon him was devouring in its conviction.
“A door in a wall is at once both inside and outside,” said Ingrey slowly. “Half and half, as you are in your very blood, by your father's grace. And you were wanted, too, though not, I think, by Wencel. Did your ghosts not choose you? Of all who slept and dreamed in the Woods that night?”
She hesitated, straightened a little. “Yes.”
“So, then.” Then what? Ingrey's exhausted brain did not supply an answer. “More matters arose, after the visions. Wencel wants very much to keep me closer, I think. He coaxed me with an offer of a post in his household. More than coaxed. Coerced.”
She frowned in new worry.