“A sorcerer?” she echoed, leaning against a tree bole. “I saw no sorcerer with Boleso. Unless he had one hidden in disguise. If Boleso himself was demon-ridden, I saw no sign, not that I would. Well, you can't, unless you are god-sighted or a sorcerer yourself.”
“No, the Temple would have…” Ingrey hesitated. “In Easthome, some sensitive from the Temple must have detected it, if Boleso had caught a demon. If he'd caught it more recently, since his exile…he might not have encountered anyone with the gift to discern it.” But whatever had been wrong with Boleso had surely been going on since before he'd slain his manservant.
Because I have worked for a decade and more to cripple it, bind it down tight. And I thought I was safe, and now your questions frighten me worse than the wolf-within. “You said there was a thing, another…smell, not me or my wolf. A third thing.”
She stared at him unhappily, her brows drawing in, as though she grappled for a description of something that had no relation to language. “It is as if I can smell souls. Or the leopard does, and leaks it to me in patches. I can smell Ulkra, and know he is not to fear. Another few men in the retinue-I know to stay out of their reach. Your soul seems doubled: you, and something underneath, something dark and old and musty. It does not stir.”
“My wolf?” But his wolf had been a young one.
“I…maybe. But there is a third smell. It is wound about you like some parasitic vine, pulsing with blood, that has put tendrils and roots into your spirit to maintain itself. It whispers. I think it is some spell or