The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [210]
Without warning, Nicholas spoke. ‘I am going to lose it.’
‘What?’ said the priest. He drew alongside. Ahead, all the lights were now masked, and only John’s torch guttered and flared, his enquiring face stark in the light.
‘Hersia ad tenebras. The Tenebrae Hearse,’ Nicholas said. ‘There’s a good three-part setting; I’ve sung it. The tapers extinguish one by one, or they should. Will you give me your torch?’
His voice was normal again. John hesitated, and then held it out. As he did so, the hound music seemed to float upwards again. With an exclamation, Nicholas snatched the brand and, raising his arm, hurled the torch into the night. Darkness fell. All noise stopped, save for a thin, disembodied, musical scream that faded into flakes and fragments and tatters of sound.
‘I have lost it,’ Nicholas said.
There was a space. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry. Your only light. Let me go ahead. We should pick up the flares as soon as we’ve rounded this shoulder.’ Which, of course, they did.
Nicholas himself, at this time, was concentrating on leading as normal a life as he could in abnormal circumstances.
He knew by now that he had certain powers, and had found ways of extending them. He could not only detect the presence of water, of silver, of copper; he could guess the depth at which they lay, and their extent. From what tests he had been able to make, these predictions were accurate.
He did not feel it necessary to reveal all that he knew but even so, after the first cynicism had subsided, he found that his gift, whatever it was, had so altered people’s perceptions as to blur the purpose for which he was there, and even distort the talks he held with the Duchess’s advisers on behalf of his Bank, which should have been succinct and business-like, but instead were suffused with misgivings. He made what progress he could.
When the initial prospecting ceased and he was invited to travel with the Duchess’s court to Duke Sigismond, he felt intense relief. A pretty, petulant man of forty-two with his long, fair fringe, tip-tilted nose and kittenish eyes, Sigismond of the Tyrol was more intent on proving himself and his guests in the hunting-field than embarking on difficult questions of business.
It suited Nicholas. At first, haunted by his new-found ability, he had speculated on his chance of becoming the most accurate bloodhound in Sigismond’s pack. He was thankful to find that the dogs were still better than he was. They scented what was living and moving. His senses provided him with the emanations, shifting and muddled, of every place where their objective habitually trod. He could lead them very well to where it had been the previous week.
Those, of course, had been the ordinary hounds, not the others. Sound, it seemed, was another influence to beware of. It was as well to know. The Duchess, in her wry way, had said that.
He had, then, to learn to shut out that side of his perception. It meant reinstating the blockage by numbers. The mental effort was strenuous but it was still better than the exhaustion of Brixen.
When he had completed his business, that would end. His gift would remain: a weapon he had never dreamed of possessing, which would very likely win him the game, even if he lost the occasional throw. Whatever it meant to lose the occasional throw.
He wished he didn’t need the metallurgical skills of Father Moriz. He was glad, as he had never expected to be glad, that Godscalc was dead. He was finally pleased to be climbing with Sigismond on this hunt which, he was well aware, had not been arranged for his pleasure. To succeed here, he required nothing but human skills and a little flamboyance, and the prize at the end was worth reaching for. He trained all his thoughts upon that.
There were fifteen in the Duke’s party, but many servants climbed with them, and yet more were deployed in the passes to net those beasts which might escape, and to aid, in their various ways, the ducal hunters.
They left their mounts at the foot of the range,