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Summary
Summary
An acclaimed legend in the field of fantasy and science fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold returns to the vivid and perilous world of her previous masterworks, the Hugo Award-winning Paladin of Souls and Hugo and World Fantasy Award-nominated The Curse of Chalion, with an epic tale of devotion and strange destiny.
Prince Boleso is dead -- slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile.
Lord Ingrey kin Wolfcliff has been dispatched to the remote castle of the late, exiled, half-mad royal to transport the body to its burial place and the accused killer, the Lady Ijada, to judgment. Ingrey's mission is an ugly and delicate one, for the imminent death of the old Hallow King has placed the crown in play, and the murder of his youngest son threatens to further roil already treacherous political waters. But there is more here than a prince's degenerate lusts and the fatal retribution it engendered. Boleso's dark act, though unfinished, inadvertently bestowed an unwanted mystical "gift" upon proud, brave Ijada that must ultimately mean her doom -- a curse similar to one with which Ingrey himself has been burdened since boyhood.
A forbidden spirit now inhabits the soul of Ijada, giving her senses she never wished for and an obligation no one sane would desire. At once psychically linked to the remarkable lady and repelled by what she carries within, Ingrey fears the havoc his own inner beast could wreak while on their journey, as he fights a powerful growing attraction ... and an equally powerful compulsion to kill.
The road they travel together is beset with dangers -- and though duty-bound to deliver Ijada to an almost certain execution, Ingrey soon realizes that she is the only one he dares trust. For a malevolent enemy with designs on a troubled kingdom holds Ingrey in his sway -- and without Ijada's aid and love, the haunted lord will never be able to break free and realize the great and terrible destiny bestowed upon him by the gods, the damned, and the dead.
Author Notes
Science fiction and fantasy author Lois McMaster Bujold was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1949. After graduating from Ohio State University, she worked as a pharmacy technician at Ohio State University Hospitals. Her first short story was published in Twilight Zone Magazine in 1984 and her first three novels were published in 1986. She received the Nebula Award for Falling Free and The Mountains of Mourning and the Hugo Award for The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, The Mountains of Mourning, and Paladin of Souls. She also received the Locus award for Mirror Dance and Paladin of Souls, the Minnesota Book Award for Komarr, the Mythopoeic Award for The Curse of Chalion, and a Romantic Times 2003 Reviewers' Choice Award for Paladin of Souls. She is best known for her series featuring Miles Vorkosigan.
She currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The absorbing third installment in Bujold's epic fantasy series (after The Curse of Chalion and the Hugo-winning Paladin of Souls) links a disinherited swordsman hero with a beguiling damsel accused of murdering a royal prince in a land worshiping five gods, menaced by encroaching neighbors and swarming with ancient magic and lethal political intrigue. Lord Ingrey kin Wolfcliff, sent by the kingdom's sealmaster to fetch orphaned Lady Ijada to trial, soon learns they both unwillingly bear animal spirits received in forbidden power rites stretching centuries back into the primeval Weald. With the aged Hallow King now dying, Ingrey and Ijada journey toward the king's hall at Easthome, falling into a love that appears doomed, while Ingrey's powerful fey cousin, Lord Wencel, spins a cunning web of bloodthirsty ambition that binds them to him in an unholy trinity. Though the book's complicated magical-religious structure requires considerable suspension of disbelief, Bujold brings to life a multitude of convincing secondary characters, especially skaldic warrior-poet Prince Jokol and his ice bear, Fafa. Bujold's ability to sustain a breathless pace of action while preserving a heady sense of verisimilitude in a world of malignant wonders makes this big novel occasionally brilliant-and not a word too long. Agent, Eleanor Wood. (June 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Here Bujold returns to the world of The Curse of Chalion (2001) and Paladin of Souls (2003) to show us intrigue and mystery in yet another land. Lord Ingrey kin Wolfcliff has been sent to the estate of Prince Bolesco, the half-mad son of the king of the Weald. The prince has been murdered, and Ingrey is to investigate. The accused is an orphaned young noblewoman. But the prince had been dabbling in forbidden sorcery, it seems, and the young woman lies under an ill-cast spell. Despite his ostensible duty to the royal family, Ingrey is drawn toward protecting the accused from those who want to hang her as the quickest way of hushing things up, as well as from the church, which might kill in an attempt to cure her. Bujold's reworking of a classic romantic situation is distinguished by its setting in a well-crafted world and masterly creation of characters whose fates will keep readers turning the pages. --Frieda Murray Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The Hallow King is near death, crazy Prince Boleso has been murdered, and Lord Ingrey must save the kingdom. From a multiple Nebula, Hugo, and Locus award winner (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Hallowed Hunt A Novel Chapter One The Prince was dead. Since the king was not, no unseemly rejoicing dared show in the faces of the men atop the castle gate. Merely, Ingrey thought, a furtive relief. Even that was extinguished as they watched Ingrey's troop of riders clatter under the gate's vaulting into the narrow courtyard. They recognized who he was -- and, therefore, who must have sent him. Ingrey's sweat grew clammy under his leather jerkin in the damp dullness of the autumn morning. The chill seemed cupped within the cobbled yard, funneled down by the whitewashed walls. The lightly armed courier bearing the news had raced from the prince's hunting seat here at Boar's Head Castle to the hallow king's hall at Easthome in just two days. Ingrey and his men, though more heavily equipped, had made the return journey in scarcely more time. As a castle groom scurried to take his horse's bridle, Ingrey swung down and straightened his scabbard, fingers lingering only briefly on the reassuring coolness of his sword hilt. The late Prince Boleso's housemaster, Rider Ulkra, appeared around the keep from wherever he'd been lurking when Ingrey's troop had been spied climbing the road. Stout, usually stolid, he was breathless now with apprehension and hurry. He bowed. "Lord Ingrey. Welcome. Will you take drink and meat?" "I've no need. See to these, though." He gestured to the half dozen men who followed him. The troop's lieutenant, Rider Gesca, gave him an acknowledging nod of thanks, and Ulkra delivered men and horses into the hands of the castle servants. Ingrey followed Ulkra up the short flight of steps to the thickplanked main doors. "What have you done so far?" Ulkra lowered his voice. "Waited for instructions." Worry scored his face; the men in Boleso's service were not long on initiative at the best of times. "Well, we moved the body into the cool. We could not leave it where it was. And we secured the prisoner." What sequence, for this unpleasant inspection? "I'll see the body first," Ingrey decided. "Yes, my lord. This way. We cleared one of the butteries." They passed through the cluttered hall, the fire in its cavernous fieldstone fireplace allowed to burn low, the few red coals halfhidden in the ashes doing nothing to improve the discomfort of the chamber. A shaggy deerhound, gnawing a bone on the hearth, growled at them from the shadows. Down a staircase, through a kitchen where a cook and scullions fell silent and made themselves small as they passed, down again into a chilly chamber ill lit by two small windows high in the rocky walls. The little room was presently unfurnished but for two trestles, the boards laid across them, and the sheeted shape that lay silently upon the boards. Reflexively, Ingrey signed himself, touching forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, spreading his hand over his heart: one theological point for each of the five gods. Daughter-Bastard-Mother-Father-Son. And where were all of You when this happened? As Ingrey waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadows, Ulkra swallowed, and said, "The hallow king -- how did he take the news?" "It is hard to say," said Ingrey, with politic vagueness. "Sealmaster Lord Hetwar sent me." "Of course." Ingrey could read little in the housemaster's reaction, except the obvious, that Ulkra was glad to be handing responsibility for this on to someone else. Uneasily, Ulkra folded back the pale cloth covering his dead master. Ingrey frowned at the body. Prince Boleso kin Stagthorne had been the youngest of the hallow king's surviving -- of the hallow king's sons, Ingrey corrected his thought in flight. Boleso was still a young man, for all he had come to his full growth and strength some years ago. Tall, muscular, he shared the long jaw of his family, masked with a short brown beard. The darker brown hair of his head was tangled now, and matted with blood. His booming energy was stilled; drained of it, his face lost its former fascination, and left Ingrey wondering how he had once been fooled into thinking it handsome. He moved forward, hands cradling the skull, probing the wound. Wounds. The shattered bone beneath the scalp gave beneath his thumbs' pressure on either side of a pair of deep lacerations, blackened with dried gore. "What weapon did this?" "The prince's own war hammer. It was on the stand with his armor, in his bedchamber." "How very ... unexpected. To him as well." Grimly, Ingrey considered the fates of princes. All his short life, according to Hetwar, Boleso had been alternately petted and neglected by parents and servants both, the natural arrogance of his blood tainted with a precarious hunger for honor, fame, reward. The arrogance -- or was it the anxiety? -- had bloated of late to something overweening, desperately out of balance. And that which is out of balance ... falls. The prince wore a short open robe of worked wool, lined with fur, blood-splashed. He must have been wearing it when he'd died. Nothing more. No other recent wounds marked his pale skin. When the housemaster said they had waited for instructions, Ingrey decided, he had understated the case. The prince's retainers had evidently been so benumbed by the shocking event, they had not even dared wash or garb the corpse. Grime darkened the folds of Boleso's body ... no, not grime. Ingrey ran a finger along a groove of chill flesh, and stared warily at the smear of color, dull blue and stamen yellow and, where they blended, a sickly green. Dye, paint, some colored powder? The dark fur of the inner robe, too, showed faint smears. Ingrey straightened, and his eye fell on what he had at first taken for a bundle of furs laid along the far wall. He stepped closer and knelt. It was a dead leopard. Leopardess, he amended, turning the beast partly over. The fur was fine and soft, fascinating beneath his hands. He traced the cold, curving ears, the stiff white whiskers, the pattern of dark whorls upon golden silk ... The Hallowed Hunt A Novel . Copyright © by Lois Bujold. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.