Hounds of God Read online

  Gwydion had surged forward, mad-enraged, poised to kill. Gently Aidan eased the body from his brother’s arms and laid it in the hands of the monks. Gwydion stood motionless, as if power and strength had deserted him in that one wild rush. His eyes could not even follow the Brothers as they bore their burden away. He was empty; broken.

  The Prince touched his shoulder. His own hand came up in turn. It was uncanny, like a vision of mirrors. But one image, the one in well-worn hunting garb, had let the tears come. The other would not.

  Still would not, as Alf would not sleep. The castle thrummed with it, a tension that would not break, a grief beyond all bearing. Not for friends or brother or Kin would Gwydion give way, not even for the Queen herself.

  He had shut them all away. Maura tossed in Aidan’s bed while the Prince and his Saracen strove between them to comfort her. She was not cruel enough to resist, but there was no easing that suffering, even by the magic of the Flame-bearer’s voice.

  Alf’s head drooped; he shivered. Half a day and half a night of this had poisoned the whole castle. Worse yet, a storm had come up out of the sea, fierce and bitter cold as the King’s own heart. The winds wailed more heartrendingly than all the women in the city; the clouds were as black as grief.

  Not a few folk suspected that the storm was the King’s own, called up out of his madness. Was he not the greatest mage in the world?

  “It cannot go on.”

  Alf started at the sound of his own voice. His fists had clenched on his thighs. He regarded them as if they belonged to a stranger. “It has to stop,” he said to them.

  Granted; and everyone admitted it. But no one had been able to do a thing about it.

  “Someone has to.”

  Aidan himself had tried and failed, and he could rule his brother where even the Queen could not.

  Alf shook his head. His hair swung, heavy, half blinding him. It needed cutting. Thea had meant to do it—before—

  His teeth set: He was as mad as the King, he knew it. But he had learned a greater skill in concealing it.

  Maybe that was what Gwydion needed. A skill. A mask. Enough to hold his kingdom together before it shattered.

  Alf was erect, walking. He let his feet lead him where they would.

  Like the Chancellor, the King had his own tower, set close to the prow of the castle. Light glimmered in its lofty windows, all but lost in the murk of the storm.

  Alf climbed the long winding stair. It was black dark; he walked by the shimmer of power about his feet. Solid though the stones were, they trembled faintly in the wind’s fury; its shrieking filled his ears.

  The door of the topmost chamber was shut but not bolted. For a moment Alf hesitated. He was not afraid; but one did not pass this door lightly. Common folk whispered that here was the heart of Gwydion’s magic, that it was a place of great enchantment, full of marvels.

  In truth it was plain enough. A circular room with tall narrow windows all about it, and when the sun was high, a splendid prospect of land and sea. It held a table, a chair or two, a worn carpet; a chest of books—but not a grimoire among them—and a writing case, and a trinket or two. A lamp of bronze, very old; a silver pitcher in the shape of a lion, its open mouth the spout; and the only possible instrument of wizardry, a ball of crystal on a stand of ebony.

  The windows glistened blackly in the lamp’s light. Gwydion stood framed in that which by day looked upon the sea. Tonight, even for witch-eyes, there was nothing to see; yet he gazed into the darkness, erect and very still.

  Alf eased the door shut behind him. Gwydion spoke, soft and even. “Not a good night for riding, this.”

  “Would you try?” Alf asked with equal calm.

  One shoulder lifted. “I did at least once, if you remember.”

  It was the first Alf had ever seen of Rhiyana’s King. A storm out of Hell, a weary mare, a rider all blood and filth, beaten, broken, and yet indomitable.

  The wounds had healed long ago, the bones knit, even the shattered sword hand learned again its skill, although to a keen eye it bore a memory of maiming, a slight twisting, a stiffness when it flexed.

  He had never let Alf heal it properly. Like Jehan, he needed the reminder.

  “And I heed it,” he said. He turned. His face was still; his eyes burned. “I rule myself. I do not pull down these walls about my head.”

  “No. You merely pull down your whole kingdom.”

  The King said nothing. Alf sat near the table and closed his eyes. Now that he needed most to be alert—now, by nature’s irony, he knew he could sleep.

  When his eyes opened, Gwydion stood over him. He let his head rest against the chair’s high back. “You can’t go on like this,” he said. “Mourn, yes; storm Heaven and Hell; swear eternal vengeance. But not while Rhiyana needs you.”

  Still no response.

  He sighed. “Yes. Alun is dead. Your only son. As if he were all you could ever beget in all the eons before you; as if he could have been King after you and not the mortal cousin to whom the throne should rightly pass. As if no other man in all the black and bloody world had ever looked upon the murdered body of his child—as if God Himself had not known the pain that you know now, that you thrust upon us all without a thought for our own grief.”

  “If it troubles you,” Gwydion said just above a whisper, “get out of my mind.”

  “I can’t. You won’t let me. You want me to suffer as you suffer, drop by bitter drop, down to the very dregs.” Alf spread his hands wide. “All Rhiyana must howl with your agony, though it be destroyed. The Crusade will enter; the Church will rule in blood and fire; all you built through your long kingship will vanish, burned or stolen or slain. Was one child, however beloved, however brilliant his promise—was one half-grown boy worth so much?”

  “He was my son.”

  “He would hate you for this.”

  There was a silence full of ice and fire. Alf let his heavy eyelids fall. “I loved him, too,” he said, “and not because he was any prince of mine, or because he was the son of two whom I love, friends who are more to me than blood kin. I loved him because he was himself. And he is dead, foully murdered, my sister taken, my lady torn from me, my children slain perhaps as yours was slain. Must I bear all your burdens besides?”

  “You do not know that they are dead.”

  “I do not know that they live!” Alf drew himself into a knot, trembling a little with exhaustion and with grief. “If you do not school yourself to endurance,” he said carefully lest his voice break, “then I give you fair warning, I will do all I can to compel you.”

  “You would not dare—”

  Alf looked at him. Simply looked. “You see, Gwydion. Rhiyana, its people, even my kin—in the end, they matter less than this plain truth. Your self-indulgence is driving me mad.”

  Gwydion stood motionless. They were evenly matched in body and in mind. But Alf huddled in the tall chair, and Gwydion poised above him, tensed as if to spring.

  The King’s hands rose. Alf did not flinch. They caught his face between them; the grey eyes searched it, searing cold. Yet colder and more burning was the voice in his mind. You were always the perfect cleric. All crawling humility, but beneath it the pride of Lucifer.

  Which, said Alf, I have always and freely admitted.

  “Bastard.” It was a hiss. “Lowborn, fatherless, whelped in a byre—I gave you honor. I gave you lordship. I even gave you the teaching of my son. And for what? That he should lie dead in defense of your ill-gotten offspring, and that you should threaten my majesty with force.”

  “No majesty now,” murmured Alf with banked heat. He rose, eye to blazing eye. “Have you had enough? Or do you need to flog me further? You’ve yet to castigate all my charlatan’s tricks.” His power gathered, coiled. But he spoke as softly as ever in a tone of quiet scorn, the master weary at last of his pupil’s insolence. “Control yourself or be controlled. I care little which, so long as I have peace.”

  It was the plain truth. P
lain enough for a human to read, even for the Elvenking in his shell of madness.

  Gwydion drew a sharp and hurting breath. No one, not even his brother, had ever faced him so, addressed him so, looked upon him with such utter disregard for his royalty. “I curse the day I called you my kinsman.”

  Alf’s lips thinned, setting into open contempt. Gwydion struck them.

  They bruised and split and bled. The eyes above them raked him with scorn. No king, he. Not even a man, who could not bear a grief any mortal villein could overcome. He wallowed in it; he let it master him.

  Weakling. Coward. Fool.

  He whirled away. He was strong. He was King. He would command—he would compel—

  Alf touched his shoulder. A light touch, almost tentative, almost like a woman’s. Aye; he was as beautiful as one, with that bruised and beardless face.

  Body and mind armed against him. Gently, persistently, he drew Gwydion about. “Brother,” he said, close to tears. “Oh, brother, I would give my imagined soul to have him alive again.”

  Gwydion’s power reared like a startled colt. Braced for the whip, it had fallen prey to the silken halter: that gentle hand, that breaking voice, that flood of sorrow.

  His body stood rooted. Light hands on his shoulders; tears streaming down pale cheeks; great grieving eyes.

  They blurred. A spear stabbed; a dam broke. Somewhere very far away, a voice cried aloud.

  oOo

  Gwydion looked once more into Alf’s face. It was as quiet as his own, emptied, serene. “Bastard,” he said to it calmly.

  Alf smiled, not easily, for it hurt. Gwydion ran a finger along his lip, granting ease of the small pain. “Behold, your beauty saved. It’s a great deal more than you deserve.”

  “You’re sane enough,” Alf said, “though you’re talking like your brother.”

  “And why not? I feel like my brother. Angry.”

  “Glad.” Alf’s knees gave way; he sank down surprised. “Did you fight as hard as that?”

  Gwydion dropped beside the other. As abruptly as he had wept, he began to laugh. It was laughter full of pain, but genuine for all that. “Someday, my friend, you’ll meet a man you can’t witch to your will.”

  “There is one woman—” Alf bit his mended lip and struggled up. “My lord—”

  “Now it is ‘my lord.’” Gwydion caught him and held him. He resisted; the King tightened his grip. “No, Alfred. Here, one does not heal with love and hot iron, and walk away with one’s own wounds still bleeding.”

  “They are cauterized,” Alf said. “Maura’s are not.”

  “You are always armed, my knight of Broceliande.” Gwydion let him go and

  paused. A gust of grief struck him, shook him, passed.

  He swallowed bruising-hard. His voice when it came seemed hardly his own. “Yes. She needs me more. At this moment. Later...”

  “Later will come when it comes.”

  “And then we will speak,” said the King, still with that edge of iron, but with eyes cleansed of all his madness.

  oOo

  Nikki had cried himself to sleep and cried himself awake again. His eyes burned; his throat ached. He felt bruised, mind and body.

  He drew into a knot in the center of the bed. His companion stirred and edged closer, curling warmly against him. She recked nothing of loss or of sorrow; she knew only that he had need of her presence. In a little while, when he lay still, empty, she began to purr.

  He stroked the sleek fur. He got on well with cats; people liked to call this one his familiar, because she never seemed to be far from him. Sometimes Thea, playing her witch-tricks, had taken on that sleek black form with its emerald eyes, and nestled in the curve of his belly as the true cat did now, and waited till he wavered on the brink of sleep; then flowed laughing into her own, bare, supple shape.

  It was only a cat tonight. Thea was gone, Anna was gone, Cynan and Liahan were lost, Alun was dead. The world had broken in a single stroke of power, nor could it ever wholly be mended.

  A light weight settled on his bed’s edge. He opened his eyes to Alf’s face. It was the same as always, though tired and drawn, shadow-eyed. It even smiled a little, in greeting, in comfort.

  Nikki sat up, suddenly ashamed. It was not as if he had never known his world to break. It had shattered utterly when he was very young, sweeping away his house and his family and all his city; beside that, this was a small thing.

  “But this is now, and that was long ago.” Alf lay down as if he could not help himself, resting his head in the crook of his arm. The cat, enchanted, found a new resting place against his side. Her body shook with the force of her purring.

  He stroked her idly, his face quiet. Nikki watched him. He would sleep soon. It was his own bed he could not bear.

  “No,” he said though he did not move to rise. “I don’t mean to—”

  I don’t mind, said Nikki.

  Alf flushed faintly. “It’s true I’d rather not—I haven’t slept alone since—”

  Since he came to Thea’s bed. Nikki schooled his face to stillness.

  “It becomes a habit,” Alf said after a little. “A necessity of sorts. Even—especially—to one like me. I was a priest so long… Do you know, I never knew what it was to desire a woman until I saw her? She was the first woman of my own kind that I had ever seen. The only one who—ever—”

  Nikki held him while he wept. It was not hard weeping. Most of it was exhaustion, and power stretched to its limit.

  Yet it seemed a long while before he quieted. When Nikki let him go, he lay back open-eyed.

  You’ll sleep now, Nikki said.

  He stiffened. “I can’t. I mustn’t. If anything—if Thea—”

  We’re all on guard. Sleep, Nikki willed him. Sleep and be strong.

  Little by little his resistance weakened. His eyelids drooped; his breathing eased. At last, all unwilling though he was, he slept.

  9.

  Benedetto Torrino hesitated. The chamber was tidy, swept and tended and strangely empty. A fire was laid but not lit, the air cold. Something—someone—had lived and loved here. Lives had begun; at least one had ended. But they were all gone.

  He shook himself. It was the endless, damnable storm; the errand he was coming to hate; and the pall of grief that lay on the whole kingdom. This was only a room in a tower, rich enough though not opulent, with a faint scent of flowers. Roses. On the table beside a heap of books lay a bowl full of petals, dry and dusty-sweet, a ghost of summer in this bleak northern winter.

  His hands were stiff with cold. He found flint and steel on the mantel. The fire smoldered, flickered, flared. He crouched before it, hands spread, drinking up the heat.

  After a moment he straightened. He had not lit his own fire in—how long? Years. That was servants’ work, and he was a prince of the Church. Kinsman to half a dozen Popes, likely to be Pope himself one day if he played the game of courts and kings, outlasted and outwitted the seething factions of the Curia.

  If he survived this embassy.

  He considered Rhiyana as he had seen it, riding through it. Not a large kingdom, but a pleasant one even in winter. Its roads were excellent, and safe to ride on. Its people knew how to smile. Had he been in any other realm in the world or on any other errand, he might have fancied that he had come to a country of the blessed, without war or famine, fire or flood or grim pestilence; a peaceable kingdom.

  Under a sorcerer king. Gwydion was that, there was no doubt of it. He breathed magic. One could glance at him, see a tall young man, a light, proud, royal carriage, a pale eagle-face. But the eyes were ages old and ages deep.

  He was strange; he could be frightening. But he woke no horror.

  None of them did. They were hiding, Torrino knew, as he could guess why; yet he had seen them here and there at a distance, tall, pale-skinned, heart-stoppingly fair.

  They had mingled with the throng in the guardroom not an hour past, some close enough to touch, cheering on the two who locked in
fierce mock combat. Anonymous though the combatants were in mail and helms, they were well enough known for all that, the Chancellor and the Prince. They were of a height, of a weight, and nearly of a skill; light, blindingly swift, with a coiled-steel strength. Together they were wonderful to see.

  “Imagine it,” he said aloud to the fire. “A champion born—he learns his skill, he hones and perfects it, he ages and he loses it and he dies. But if he should not age, what limit then to the perfection of his art?”

  “Why, none at all.”

  He turned with commendable coolness. The Chancellor was still in his heavy glittering hauberk although his helm was gone, his coif thrust back on his shoulders. His cheeks were flushed, his hair damp on his forehead.

  He looked like a tall child, a squire new come from arms practice. Even the true squire looked older, the dark boy Torrino had seen before, moving past Alf with the sheathed greatsword and the helm, shooting the Cardinal a black and burning glance.

  Torrino settled into the single chair. It was not precisely an insolence.

  The Chancellor’s brow arched, but his words were light and cool. “Good day, Eminence. If you will pardon me...”

  He could not have seen the Legate’s gracious gesture, bent from the waist as he was in the comic-helpless posture of the knight shedding his mail, with the squire tugging and himself wriggling, easing out of his shell of leather and steel. When he straightened in the padded gambeson, he was breathing quickly; the gambeson too fell into the dark boy’s hands. He was less slight in his shirt than he had seemed in his state robes, less massive than in his mail, wide in the shoulders and lean in the hips, with very little flesh to spare.

  A pair of servants brought in a large wooden tub; pages followed them, bearing steaming pails. It all had the look of a ritual. Torrino could read the faces: skepticism toward this odd unhealthy habit; deep respect for its practitioner, shading into worship in the youngest page.