Hounds of God Read online

  “You did it for Alf, didn’t you?”

  “I did it for myself.” She softened a little. “Well. For him, too. Rather much for him.”

  “I remember when he first knew.” Alun grinned. “That was something. The whole castle shook with it. Drums and trumpets and choruses of alleluias; you could have lit a chapel with his smile.”

  She laughed. “Only a chapel? No; a whole cathedral.”

  “He’s still as happy as he was then,” Alun said. “Happier.”

  “Sometimes I think we’re all too happy.” But Anna smiled as she said it, exchanging her book for a milkily sated Cynan. “Though I remind myself that bliss is never unalloyed where there are children. Especially witch-children.”

  “When have there ever been—” Alun stopped and swung at her, mock-enraged.

  Thea deposited her daughter in his outstretched arms. “Oh, yes, sir, we all suffered with you. Now you can pay back the debt. Put her to your shoulder. Yes, so. And have at her—thus.” She clapped her hands. “Bravo! You’ll make a mother yet.”

  Alun rose, wobbling a little. Cynan lay already in the cradle and already asleep. Carefully the Prince laid Liahan beside him. Her eyes were shut, her mouth folded into a bud. But her hand, wandering, found his finger and gripped hard.

  He looked up into the women’s wide smiles, and down again, smiling himself, a little rueful, much more than a little smitten. Nor could all their mockery change a bit of it.

  oOo

  The Cardinal sipped slowly, appreciatively. The King’s wine was excellent. He looked over the cup into Gwydion’s face and sidewise to that of the Chancellor. The Bishop of Sarum had managed to station himself behind the latter, a formidable bulk with a face set in granite.

  He set down his cup and folded his hands. They were the image of amity, all of them, seated around a table of ebony inlaid with lapis and silver, flanked each by his loyal servants. Though to the Cardinal’s lowly monks the witch-lords boasted a bishop apiece—and for the King besides, the Archbishop of Caer Gwent, Primate of all Rhiyana.

  Who said in the way he had, slow and deliberate, pondering every word, “My lord Cardinal, you say you come merely to offer the greetings of the Pope to the King of Rhiyana. You deny any knowledge of troops gathering against us, let alone troops who march under the Cross. And yet, Your Eminence, my priests in the Marches bring me word of this very thing. Are my clergy to be accused of falsehood?”

  The Legate allowed himself a very small smile. “Certainly not, my lord Archbishop. Some anxiety would be understandable, what with the deplorable events in Languedoc; when one’s neighbors arm for war, one naturally fears first for oneself. Even when that fear is without cause.”

  “Is it?” The Archbishop leaned forward. “Would Your Eminence swear to that on holy relics?”

  “Guilt speaks loudly in its own defense,” said the monk on the Cardinal’s right hand. “Do you fear because you have reason to fear?”

  Alf had been silent throughout that long slow hour, intent on the faces round the table, on the voices speaking at length of lesser matters, on the pattern of wood and stone and silver under his fingertip. Now he raised his eyes. They were quiet, a little abstracted. “Suppose,” he said, “that we declare the preliminaries ended and come to the point. There is a Crusade arming against Rhiyana. Its purpose sits here before you. Your task is to offer the Church’s clemency, to present conditions under which the armies may be disbanded and the kingdom preserved.” He lowered his gaze and traced the curve of a silver vine. “You come, in short, to the first cause of the conflict. Rhiyana’s King.”

  “There is no conflict,” the Cardinal began.

  Again Alf looked up. The Cardinal inhaled sharply. Great eyes, pale grey as they had seemed to be—they were not grey at all, but the color of moonlit gold. And they were no more human than a cat’s.

  Alf smiled very faintly. “No conflict, Eminence. No mortal reason to preach a Crusade. Rhiyana is a peaceful kingdom, as orthodox as any Pope’s heart could desire; its churches and abbeys are full, its people devout, its clergy zealous in pursuit of their duties. And yet, my lord Cardinal. And yet. If there is no mortal reason, there remains the other. Again, my King.”

  “Not he alone,” said the monk who had spoken before.

  Alf raised a brow.

  “He has kin,” the monk said, “creatures of his own kind, marked as he is marked. Some even more clearly than he.”

  “Yes, Brother? How so?”

  “Only take up a mirror and see.”

  The Chancellor sat back as if at ease. “Oh, I’m a most egregious monster, I admit it freely. But he? He is the very image of his father, or so they tell me; certainly he bears a close resemblance to his nephews and cousins.”

  “Somewhat distant cousins, and great-nephews thrice over.”

  “Ah well, Brother. It’s not as if he were unique in the world. ‘Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begot a son in his likeness, after his image; and he named him Seth. Adam lived eight hundred years after Seth, and he had other sons and daughters.’”

  “‘The whole lifetime of Adam was nine hundred and thirty years; then,’” said the monk, “‘then he died.’”

  “So he did,” Alf said. “And by that reckoning, my King has a while yet to live before he is proved immortal.”

  “You mock the word of God.”

  “No,” Alf said softly. “That, I do not. Nor am I mad or possessed or begotten of demons. No more than is my lord. If he has ruled long, has he not also ruled well? Has any man suffered? Has any woman wept or child died because Gwydion wears Rhiyana’s crown?”

  “The flesh is dust and ashes, its comfort a lie. Only the soul can live.”

  “As no doubt it lives in Languedoc, its housing ravaged with war and starvation.”

  The monk drew himself up. His face was white, his cheekbones blotched with scarlet. “Your very existence is a corruption of all it touches.”

  Alf contemplated him, head tilted a little to one side. “You do not think,” he said. “You only hate. You, who profess to serve the God of love. Enemy though you be, I find I pity you.”

  The flare of hate struck Nikki blind. Sightless, walled in soundlessness, he clutched at air, wood, firm flesh sheathed in vair. He could not see, could not hear, could not—

  oOo

  Alun tensed. The air wavered; the children’s faces blurred. Something reached. Darkness visible. Hate that groped, seeking, black and crimson, wolf-jaws wide to seize, to rend, to devour.

  Liahan!

  She lay still. Her eyes were open, fixed.

  He called on all his power. Somewhere, faint and far, voices cried out to him. No, Alun. This is too strong for you. Alun!

  It had Liahan. His lovely laughing lady with flowers in her hair. It had her; it gripped her.

  He struck with every ounce of his strength. The wolf-darkness wavered, startled, turning at bay.

  He laughed, for he had marked it, a long searing-bright wound. Again he struck.

  The enemy sprang.

  oOo

  Anna saw Alun leap erect over the cradle. His shape blurred and darkened. And yet he laughed, light and strong and free. The darkness swelled like smoke; coiled about him; hurled him down.

  Behind Anna, Thea cried out, a harsh inhuman sound, raw with rage.

  Anna wheeled. The lady stood by the bed, swaying. Anna caught her. “Thea, don’t, Alf said not—”

  Anna gripped fur around a slash of teeth, white hound, mad eyes, no Thea left at all. Grimly she clung. The darkness swooped, wolf-jawed, hell-eyed. The light whirled away.

  7.

  Nikki could see. He must.

  They were all staring. Alf, closest, whose cloak Nikki clutched—Alf sat bolt upright, white as death. “No,” he whispered. “Oh, no.”

  Fiercely Nikki shook him. He could not turn prophet now. The monk’s eyes were avid. The Legate watched with deadly fascination.

  With infinite slowness Alf r
ose. He was lost utterly in horror only he could see. “Sweet merciful God—

  “Alun!”

  Not he alone cried out. Gwydion aloud, Nikephoros in silence: a great howl of anguish.

  Nikki’s hands were full of fur, the cloak empty, people gaping. He saw none of it. He saw only darkness and light, and Gwydion’s face. It wore no expression at all.

  And the King was gone, the solar erupting in a babble of voices.

  Nikki’s mind was one great bruise, all the patterns torn and scattered. He made the babble stop—willed it, commanded it. So many eyes. And he could not vanish into air. He did not know how.

  With a last wild glance, he spun about and bolted.

  Someone pounded after. Father Jehan, miter tucked under his arm, stiff robes hauled up to his knees.

  Behind Nikki’s eyes, a small mad creature was snickering. That great frame had never been made for racing, least of all in full pontificals.

  Nikki whipped around a corner. His lungs had begun to ache. His feet beat out a grim refrain. Too late—too late—too late.

  Alun was gone. Anna was gone. Thea was gone. The children were gone. Dead, gone, dead, gone, dead—

  A sob ripped itself from him. He flung himself forward.

  oOo

  It was very quiet in the Chancellor’s bedchamber. The bed was tumbled, empty. The cradle rocked untenanted, the coverlet rent and torn as if with claws.

  Alf stood over it like a shape of stone. At his feet crouched Gwydion with a limp and lifeless body in his arms, his eyes flat, fixed on nothing, dead.

  The Queen wept, huddled by him, stroking Alun’s hair. The same gesture over and over. Gwydion had no tears. He had nothing at all.

  Nikki tasted blood. Then pain, his own hand caught in his teeth. It throbbed as he let it fall, stumbling into the room. The air stung his nostrils as after lightning, the memory of great power unleashed and now withdrawn.

  With infinite slowness Alf sank to one knee. His lips moved, and his hand with them, signing the Cross. “Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison.”

  Gwydion turned his head. Nikki, out of range of his stare, still flinched. Alf met it fully. The King’s voice was as terrible as his eyes, flat and stark and cold, emptied of all humanity. “God has no mercy.”

  “Kyrie,” said Alf, “eleison. Pater noster, qui es in coelis—”

  “We have no God. We have no souls. Only flesh and the black earth.”

  “—sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum—”

  “God-damned devil-begotten renegade priest.” In the flint-grey eyes, a spark had kindled. Rising, swelling, raging, lashing in his voice. “What is your God that He should take my son?”

  The Queen reached for him. Lightning cracked; she recoiled, hands pressed to her face. One of them was red, angry, blistering.

  Alf reached in his turn to the wounded lady. She shook him off. Her eyes bled tears, but they were hard and fearless. “This is not God’s work. This bears the stench of His Adversary.”

  “They are the same.” Gwydion rose, the bright head rolling loosely on his shoulder. “They must be the same. Else it would be I who lie here in all my pride and guilt, and not—”

  “You in all your folly.” She stood to face him. She was very tall; she had only to raise her eyes by a little. Yet it was not to him that she spoke but to the air. “Aidan. Do what must be done.”

  Fire flashed from Gwydion’s eyes, sudden as the lightning. “I have not yet lost my wits!”

  “No,” she said. “Only your son.”

  He stood very, very still. His face had gained not a line, yet it showed every moment of his hundred years. “Only my son,” he said slowly. “Only—” He drew a ragged breath. “Let me pass.”

  She moved aside. He trod forward. Jehan retreated, leaving him a clear path. He followed it pace by pace, and the Queen after. Her back was straight, her head high. Only with power could one know that, even yet, she wept.

  Nikki ventured cautiously into the room. The crackle of power was fading, a mingling as distinct to his senses as scents to the nose of a hound. Maura, Gwydion—grief and hot iron. Aidan startlingly, unwontedly cool. Alf walled in stone. And dimmer memories: Alun, Thea, the faint sweet newness of the children.

  Alf had risen by the cradle. All the anguish was locked in his mind behind his frozen face. “They’re gone,” he said. “Gone utterly, as if they were dead—but if Thea had died, so too would I. Ah, God! How can I live with half my mind torn away?”

  Jehan thrust past Nikki, dropping cope and miter, seizing Alf’s shoulders.

  Alf froze. His eyes were wide and wild, glaring without recognition. He was as still as a stalking panther, and fully as dangerous. “I will kill him,” he said without inflection. “Whoever has done this—I will kill him. Death for death, maiming for maiming—”

  Jehan struck him a ringing blow. With a beast-snarl, he lunged.

  Jehan fell before the force of him, defending only, with neither hope nor intention of subduing him. There was nothing of reason in him, only rage and bitter loss.

  Nikki’s head tossed from side to side. It was all beating on him. Madness, death; loss and hate and numbing terror; Alf’s mind that, stripped of all its barriers, was an open wound. Were they so weak? Could they not see? They had played full into their enemies’ hands.

  They rolled on the floor, Bishop and Chancellor, like hounds quarreling in their kennel. Fools; children. Nikki made his mind a whip and lashed them with all the force he had. Be still!

  They fell apart. He was hardly aware of it. The one scent, the vital one, was well-nigh gone. But he could follow, must follow, down the long winding ways of the mind. It was strong, and arrogant in its strength; it had not shielded itself fully, although it overwhelmed the minds of all its prey together.

  He was close—closer. Walls and sanctity. Walls, and sanctity.

  Snake-swift, it struck.

  Nikki swam up out of night. Alf stooped over him. The world reeled into focus. Alf was corpse-pale; a bruise purpled his jaw. But his eyes were sane.

  Nikki seized him. I know, he said. I know where they are.

  The sanity staggered, steadied. The voice was soft, but the mind was a great swelling cry. “Where?”

  In Rome. With a power—

  Alf’s face shimmered. Nikki snatched with mind and hand. No! He must not go, not knowing, not seeing—

  Alf was strong. Before that Hell-strong stroke of power, he kept his consciousness, if little else.

  Nikki glared at the face beside his own. With a power, he continued grimly, greater than any I’ve ever known. It’s on guard now; we won’t get closer to it than we have. Not from here, and not with the strength that’s in us.

  Alf sat up with care and pushed his hair out of his face, holding it there, drawing a shuddering breath. “In Rome,” he muttered. “From Rome, he—she—whoever, whatever it is—did this.” His eyes closed. “Dear God.”

  “Dear God indeed.” Jehan knelt stiffly beside them. For Alf’s lone bruise, he had a dozen; already one eye was swelling shut. “A force that can reach through all Rhiyana’s walls, kill Alun, take Anna and Thea and the twins, drive you back—it must be the Devil himself.”

  “Or one of his minions. Or,” Alf said, “one of us.”

  Nikki’s body knotted with denial, but his mind spun free of it. Yes. Horrible as that was, it could well be. It was power he had scented, and power that had felled him.

  But the Kindred were gentle people. They did not, they could not hate as that one hated, without measure or mercy.

  “No?” Alf smiled with all the sadness in the world. “Nikephoros my child, you saw me only a moment ago. And I am one of the gentlest of us all.”

  Nikki groped for his hand and clung with convulsive strength. As if that one weak mortal grip could hold him; could unmake it all and bring back the brightness that had been the world. Thea will be strong. I know she will. We’ll get her back, or she’ll come back herself, hale and whole and
spitting green fire. Why, she could make trembling cowards out of the very devils in Hell!

  Alf smiled faintly but truly. “And Heaven help any mere black sorcerer.” He rose, wavering, steadying. “As for us, for now, we’re needed here.”

  That was all Alf, and all sanity. Yet they stared, taken aback. That he could be so calm, so easy; that he could abandon his sister and his lady and his children, abruptly and completely, with no visible qualm.

  His eyes flickered. Like Gwydion’s: deep water above and fires raging below. Their gazes dropped.

  “Come,” he said. “We have much to do.”

  8.

  One could forget, for a little while. One could drive oneself, body and mind, until thought was lost and all one’s being focused on the duty at hand.

  Until one was weary beyond telling, and one reached for the strong bright other, steeled against her mockery, bolstered already by the prospect of it—and met nothingness. She was gone; she was not. There was only the void, bereft even of pain.

  Alf could not sleep. His bed, his whole tower, was full of her absence. The cradle tormented him with its emptiness. He should dispose of that at least; he could not bear to. As if the act would make it real and irrevocable. They were gone; they would never come back.

  No. He would find them. He must. Somehow. If there was a God. If there was such a thing as hope.

  The chapel was dark and cold. Neither too dark nor too cold for the Brother Alfred who had been, but he was dead. Rhiyana’s Chancellor found the stone floor hard, the crucified Christ impassive.

  In shock, in the suddenness of Alun’s death, the priest had stirred in his deep grave. He had spoken the words for the dead; he had faced unflinching the terrible grief of the King. He was gone again, as he must be.

  Alf sank back on his heels, eyes fixed on the crucifix but focused within. Seeing Gwydion in the hall, Alun in his arms still, a blur of people; voices raised in startlement, in confusion, in piercing lamentation. The men from Rome, at a loss as were they all, although some rejoiced in secret; the Cardinal excusing himself with graceful words, half-heard and half-heeded—but his sorrow, even to the touch of power, was real. The Archbishop of Caer Gwent with a following of loyal monks, weeping unashamedly, begging and cajoling and finally commanding the King to give his son over for tending. Prince Aidan as white and still and terrible as his brother, saying with searing cruelty, “Hold him then. Hold him till he rots.” And in every mind with power, the brutal vision, swelling and stench, flesh dropping from bones, worms—