The Hallowed Hunt (Curse of Chalion) Read Free

household and valuables.” Ingrey’s gaze drifted around the chamber. Nothing else here…“Burn the leopard. Scatter its ashes.”
    Ulkra gulped and nodded. “When do you wish to depart, my lord? Will you stay the night?”
    Should he and his captive travel with the slow cortege, or push on ahead? He wanted to be away from this place as swiftly as he could—it made his neck muscles ache—but the light was shortening with autumn’s advent, and the day was half-spent already. “I must speak to the prisoner before I decide. Take me to her.”
    It was a brief step, down one floor to a windowless, but dry, storeroom. Not dungeon, certainly not guest room, the choice of prisons bespoke a deep uncertainty over the status of its occupant. Ulkra rapped on the door, called, “My lady? You have a visitor,” unlocked it, and swung it wide. Ingrey stepped forward.
    From the darkness, a pair of glowing eyes flashed up at him like some great cat’s from a covert, in a forest that whispered. Ingrey recoiled, hand flying to his hilt. His blade had rasped halfway out when his elbow struck the jamb, pain tingling hotly from shoulder to fingertips; he backed farther to gain turning room, to lunge and strike.
    Ulkra’s startled grip fell on his forearm. The housemaster was staring at him in astonishment.
    Ingrey froze, then jerked away so that Ulkra might not feel his trembling. His first concern was to quell the violent impulse blaring through his limbs, cursing his legacy anew—he had not been caught by surprise by it since…for a long time. I deny you, wolf-within. You shall not ascend. He slid his blade back into its sheath, snicked it firmly home, slowly unwrapped his fingers, and placed his palm flat against his leather-clad thigh.
    He stared again into the little room, forcing sense upon his mind. In the shadows, the ghostly shape of a young woman was rising from a straw pallet on the floor. There seemed to be bedding enough, a down-stuffed quilt, tray and pitcher, a covered chamber pot, necessities decently addressed. This prison secured; it did not, yet, punish.
    Ingrey licked dry lips. “I cannot see you in that den.” And what I saw, I disavow . “Step into the light.”
    The lift of a chin, the toss of a dark mane; she padded forward. She wore a fine linen dress dyed pale yellow, embroidered with flowers along the curving neckline; if not court dress, then certainly clothing of a maiden of rank. A dark brown spatter crossed it in a diagonal. In the light, her tumbling black hair grew reddish. Brilliant hazel eyes looked not up, but across, at Ingrey. Ingrey was of middle height for a man, compactly built; the girl was well grown for her sex, to match him so.
    Hazel eyes, almost amber in this light, circled in black at the iris rim. Not glowing green. Not…
    With a wary glance at him, Ulkra began speaking, performing the introduction as formally as if he were playing Boleso’s house-master at some festal feast. “Lady Ijada, this is Lord Ingrey kin Wolf-cliff, who is Sealmaster Lord Hetwar’s man. He is come to take you in charge. Lord Ingrey, Lady Ijada dy Castos, by her mother’s blood kin Badgerbank.”
    Ingrey blinked. Hetwar had named her only, Lady Ijada, some minor heiress in the Badgerbank tangle, five gods help us . “That is an Ibran patronymic, surely.”
    “Chalionese,” she corrected coolly. “My father was a lord dedicat of the Son’s Order, and captain of a Temple fort on the western marches of the Weald, when I was a child. He married a Wealding lady of kin Badgerbank.”
    “And they are…dead?” Ingrey hazarded.
    She tilted her head in cold irony. “I should have been better protected, else.”
    She was not distraught, not weeping, or at least, not recently. Not, apparently, deranged. Four days in that closet to sort through her thoughts had left her composed, but for a certain tightness in her voice, a faint vibrato of fear or anger. Ingrey looked around the bare hall, glanced at Ulkra.