Hounds of God Page 8

  For him Alf had a smile and a word or two, nothing of consequence, but enough to send the child skipping joyfully out the door. The others followed, save the squire, who had put away all Alf’s panoply and set his hand to the shirt beneath. The Chancellor let him take it.

  Torrino caught his breath. Someone, somewhere, had taken a whip to that back. Taken it and all but flayed him from nape to buttocks, leaving a trail of white and knotted scars. It was shocking, appalling—the worse for that, even so marred, it was still as fair a body as the Legate had ever seen.

  He forced his eyes away from it. He was not like many in the Curia, or outside of it, either. He had kept his vows; he had refrained from women and disdained that other expedient, so easy if one were a cleric, so simple to explain away.

  The squire’s brown hands moved over the white skin. Alf stood still, head bent as if in weariness, letting the water wash away the battle.

  “I see,” Torrino said slowly. “I begin to see.”

  Alf did not move. The squire looked hard at the Cardinal, who found himself staring back and shivering. This was a boy in truth, human if strikingly foreign, dark, slight, quick.

  Italian, Greek, Levantine—he had never been born in this cold and windy country. And yet he had a look, as if he saw more, or more clearly, than any mortal man should see.

  Torrino found himself nodding. “There is all the fear. Not evil, not even witchery. But by your very existence you make the world waver. There is no place for you in our philosophy.”

  Alf stepped out of the tub and let himself be rubbed dry. He was indeed too thin. One could count his ribs, follow the tracery of veins beneath the translucent skin. But there was strength in him, more visible now than when he wore armor.

  “Only regard yourself,” said Torrino. “You have it all: youth, beauty, great magic. Anything mere men can do, you can do better. And you never age or die.” He sighed. “Angels we can bear—they are pure spirits, invisible and intangible. Saints we love best if, born to all human imperfections, they come through struggle to their victory. Heroes are best and most conveniently dead. You…you are here and solid, and hence triply bitter to endure.”

  “Envy is a deadly sin.”

  “Deadly,” the Legate said, “yes.”

  Alf was clad, white shirt, black cotte and hose, black hood, somber as a monk, his face the paler for the starkness of his garb. “Will you call your Hounds upon us then?”

  Torrino inspected his hands. They were clean, well kept, without mark or scar. On one finger burned the ruby of his rank. “Several of my monks have been…escorted elsewhere. At, I understand, the King’s command.”

  “It is contrary to every monastic rule for a monk to claim a habit other than his own. And,” Alf added coolly, “the King has forbidden his realm to the Order of Saint Paul.”

  “The temporal authorities may not interfere with the sons of the Church.”

  “But the Church may contend with its own, and invite the secular arm to assist.”

  “Or be compelled to do so.”

  Alf sat on the hearthstone. His eyes, catching the fire, burned ember-red. “The Archbishop of Caer Gwent needed no compulsion. Indeed he had to be persuaded to leave his captives both alive and unmaimed.”

  “And unensorceled?”

  Beneath the terrible eyes a smile flickered. “Our arts leave no trace on the body or on the soul.”

  “You found nothing.” Torrino’s voice was flat, taking no joy in the knowledge.

  “By then,” Alf said, “there was nothing to find.”

  “Nor ever had been.”

  “No?”

  Torrino leaned forward. “I regret deeply the death of the Prince. He was cut down most cruelly and most untimely. But, my lord, it is no secret that he died by sorcery. And Rome has naught to do with such arts.”

  Alf was silent, his gaze steady. A shiver traced Torrino’s spine, a sensation like a touch yet without flesh, brushing him, moth-soft.

  The ember-eyes lidded. “It is from Rome that Prince Alun’s death came.”

  “From Rome, it may be. But not from the Lateran. The Pope does not oppose sorcery with sorcery.”

  “The Pope, perhaps. Elsewhere... if the end were good, would not some care little for the means?”

  Carefully Torrino sat back. “It is possible. I cannot say that it is so.”

  Alf turned his face to the fire, and after a moment, his hands. The flames bent toward his fingers, licking around them, harmless as sunlight. Gathering a handful, he plaited it idly, reflectively, drawing in a skein of shadow, a shiver of coolness.

  Torrino watched, sitting very still. “Your King has bidden your people to conceal themselves and by extension their witcheries. Yet you work open magic. Were I merely clever, I might think that you were the murderer, intent on Rhiyana’s destruction.”

  “And on the destruction of my lady, of my sister, and of my newborn children.”

  “Concealment merely, to lend verisimilitude to the deception.”

  Alf laughed, startling him. “Oh, clever indeed, Your Eminence! But all your speculations shatter on a single rock. You do not know my lady Althea. She could never vanish even in seeming, and leave me to effect a knightly rescue.”

  “Nor,” said the Cardinal, “would you do vile and secret murder.”

  With a sudden movement Alf rose and flung his plaited cord into the fire’s heart. “Your false Cistercians knew nothing. Not one thing. They were blank, innocent, scoured clean. And yet, when Alun died, I knew the power had used them as its focus. Listened, spied, and chosen its target, and struck with deadly force. Leaving its instruments as it had found them, mere frightened men, taught to hate what they could not understand.”

  “Were? Could? Are they dead?”

  “No,” Alf said. “We sent them away where they can do no more harm.”

  “You will pardon me if I ask you where.”

  “You will pardon me if I do not tell you. They were used and discarded. So too might you be; and what you do not know, you cannot betray.”

  Pride stiffened the Cardinal’s back. “No one would dare—”

  “That one has dared to murder a royal prince.”

  “A witch and the son of a witch.”

  Alf bowed with graceful irony. “Well and swiftly countered, Eminence. Yet if the enemy is of our blood as I fear he must be, then he is certainly mad, a madness that cries death on all witches yet despises your kind as mere and mortal beasts. As easily as he would destroy me, he would use your eyes and your brain, nor ever ask your leave.”

  Torrino sat erect and haughty. But horror darkened his mind. Used, wielded like a club, dropped when the moment passed—

  Hands gripped him, bracing him, as the clear eyes met his and the clear voice shored him up. “We will do battle as we can, and not only for ourselves. Believe that, Lord Cardinal. We are not of mortal kind; we are true and potent witches; but we do not traffic with Hell. No man or woman or child in this kingdom will suffer for what we are.”

  Torrino looked at him with great and growing sadness. “By your own mouth are you betrayed.” He shifted; Alf let him go. He stood. “When I was sent here, I had hoped that the tales would be false or unduly exaggerated, or that you would conceal what must be concealed for the sake of the peace. But you have been truthful; you have let me see what you are. You have left me no choice.”

  “Have I?”

  This was the Chancellor’s place, his squire at the door, barring it, hands on the hilt of the sheathed greatsword. Torrino looked up into Alf’s face. “You do have a path or two of escape. All your folk may give themselves into our hands to be judged without harm to the human people of the kingdom; or you may take flight.”

  “And if we stand and fight?”

  “Interdict. With, inevitably, the loosing of the Crusade.”

  Alf nodded once. “I understand. You must be bound by the Canons and by His Holiness’ command. Poverty, chastity, those fade and are lost. But obedie
nce holds fast still.”

  “What God commands, man must perform.”

  “God!” Alf’s voice cracked with sudden bitter anger. “You obey the Pope, who obeys the whisperings of fools, men twisted with hate and with lust for power. There is no God in any of it—unless, as with Job, He has left His Enemy to work His will.”

  “You are not evil,” Torrino said steadily, “but law—Scripture— It may well be that the evil lies not in you but in what you are and in what you do to us. The wolf in himself is an innocent creature, faithful to his nature, which is to hunt and to kill. Yet when he kills the sheep, so in turn must he die, lest all the sheep be lost.”

  The anger was gone, leaving Alf cold and quiet. “How are Rhiyana’s sheep lost? They are all faithful children of the Church. They confess their sins; they hear Mass; they are born and they marry and they die as Christians should. What harm has it done their souls that their King is the Elvenking?”

  “They suffer a witch to live.”

  “They also eat of unclean beasts, travel on the Sabbath, and forgo the rite of circumcision. Are we all then to go back to that old and vanished Law?” Alf laughed without mirth. “But my back remembers—some laws are more convenient than others. I was to be burned once, until a certain bishop recalled that I had a king’s favor. So I was suffered to live, though not with a whole skin.”

  Torrino struggled to breathe quietly, to be calm. This—man—had endured much. He must endure more, because he was what he was. And there was no way…

  “If you could swear,” the Legate said, “if you could lay down all your magic arts to remove yourselves utterly from humanity, to live apart and in penitence, I would let you live. With no Interdict; no Crusade.”

  Alf’s smile was gentle, and as terrible in its way as the fire in his eyes. “You have a wise and compassionate spirit. Unfortunately… We do intend to withdraw. Utterly, as you say; finally. Men are no better for our peace than we are for theirs. But our power, our pride, those we will not forsake. Our King will not depart a penitent with ashes in his hair, atoning for what to him is no sin.”

  “Not even for his kingdom’s sake?”

  “That,” said Alf, “is why we will fight.”

  “As must we. The Church will not be mocked.”

  “She too is proud. We are all proud; intransigent.” Alf closed his eyes for a moment. “Your pardon, Eminence. My wisdom is all scattered; I have neither the will nor the wit to treat with you as your office demands. If this can be settled at all, perhaps… You will not immediately pronounce your sentence?”

  “I must follow the proper procedure,” the Legate answered. “I will not delay it, but neither will I hasten it.”

  Alf nodded. “We can ask no more. Only, for my King’s sake I beg you, allow his son a Christian burial.”

  “Can I prevent it?” Torrino asked.

  Their eyes met. Alf bowed slightly. “For that, Eminence, my thanks.”

  There was, thought Torrino, very little else that he could be thanked for. He bowed with respect, with regret, and turned. The door was open, the squire gone. With back stiff and head up, he took his leave.

  10.

  Prince Alun lay in state before the high altar of Saint Brendan’s Cathedral. The light of many candles caught the broidered silver of his pall, winked in the jewels of his coronet, turned his hair to fire-gold.

  Jehan’s eyes blurred. He blinked irritably. There had been tears enough here, a whole kingdom’s worth. He needed to see.

  A boy asleep. Not handsome, not sturdy; always too pale, blue-white now, the bones standing stark beneath the thin skin. With his quicksilver stilled he was haughty indeed, his nose like his father’s, arched high; his lips thin and finely molded, closed upon the greatest of all secrets.

  Slowly Jehan crossed himself and knelt by the bier. The air was full of chanting, the slow deep voices of monks, ceaseless as the sea. He let them shape his prayer for him.

  By day and by night Rhiyana’s people kept vigil over their prince. Women veiled in black, men in dark hoods, had come to look, to pray, to weep or to turn quickly away. Fewer came as the night advanced; of those few, some took refuge in side chapels, praying as Jehan prayed, silently, while the monks sang.

  Perhaps he drowsed, arms folded on the bier’s side, head bowed upon them. Stiffly he straightened his neck.

  Others had come in silence to stand about him, a circle of hooded shadows, tall and black and shapeless on the light’s edge. The chanting had paused. The only sound was his own breath, loud and quick.

  One by one the hoods slipped back. Alf was a sudden luminous pallor across the bier; Prince Aidan came to kneel at his side as Nikephoros knelt at Jehan’s. And at Alun’s feet stood the King; at his head the Queen.

  The monks’ voices rolled forth anew.

  “Dirige, Domine, in conspectu tuo viam meam.

  Introibo in domum tuam:

  adorabo ad templum sanctum tuum in timore tuo.

  Domine, deduc me in iustitia tua;

  propter inimicos meos dirige in conspectu tuo viam meam....”

  “‘Because of mine enemies...’” Alf spoke softly yet very clearly. “They are many, and they are one alone who can slay with power.”

  “Perhaps he did not mean to kill,” murmured the Queen.

  Aidan’s eyes flashed green. “Ah, no; he meant only to taunt us, to set all our power at naught, to escape unscathed and unconquered. Who but a fool would venture so little when there was so much more to gain?”

  “Whatever his intent,” Alf said, “this he did. From Rome, all at once, with deadly ease. I’m proud enough, cousins, but I tell you freely, I’m afraid.”

  “So are we all.” Maura’s hand rested on Alun’s cheek, lightly, tenderly. But her eyes on Alf were level. “God alone knows when he will strike again, or where, or how.”

  “We’re ready for him now,” Aidan said. “He struck once through all our ramparts, all unlooked for. But never again.”

  “Can we be sure of that?” Alf sounded ineffably weary. “I’ve met our enemy. Only from afar and only for a brief moment, but I tell you, strong as you all insist that I am, trained and honed in my power, he is as much stronger than I as the sun is stronger than the moon. All the careful weavings of our magic are to him as spider threads, to be snapped at his pleasure.”

  He hates us, Nikki said. I felt that when I found him. Abomination, he called us.

  Aidan shook his head, sharp with impatience. “One stroke and you’ve let him conquer you. He may be the greatest of all mages, or even Prince Lucifer himself, but he is one, alone. There are a full score of us. Surely we can band together against him.”

  “How and when,” Alf asked, “and for how long? A score is a very small number when half of them are untrained or relatively weak, and one of the strongest lost already to that same enemy.

  And if we—you—band together as you say, what happens to Rhiyana? It needs our bodies now, preferably in armor, and as much of our minds as we can spare.

  The Prince leaped up and began to prowl, oblivious to the altar and the holy things save as obstacles to his passing.

  They all watched with a measure of indulgence. He was as changeful as the fire he was named for, volatile always, in small calamities as in great ones. Maura even smiled, as if she took comfort in his restlessness.

  He halted in a swirl of cloak. “As to Rhiyana, some of the Folk are useless in physical combat: most of the women; Akiva the scholar; our handsome jongleur. But of these, many are strong in power. Let them wall themselves in Broceliande. The rest of us, who fight as well with the body as with the mind, can stand to Rhiyana’s defense.” His white teeth bared in a grin. “We’ll see how a rabble of hedge-knights and hired soldiers will contend with my lady of the Hashishayun.”

  “Not to mention the Flame-bearer himself.” Maura’s smile died. “I know how we intend to face the threat of the Church and its Crusade; that was settled long ago. But this new danger may be worse than eit
her. Our armies can drive back invaders; our clergy can treat with the Pope’s embassy. How must we face the sorcerer? His body lies in Rome, long leagues away. His power can strike us down one by one. In the end, if we are gone, can all Rhiyana’s priests and men-at-arms stand fast?”

  “Not under Interdict.” Alf bowed his head under all their stares, and raised it again almost defiantly. “Why do you stretch your eyes at me? Of course the Church will use that most persuasive of its weapons. No Mass, no sacraments. No offices of the Church anywhere while the Pope sustains his ban.”

  “Without us,” Aidan said with a touch of bitterness, “there would be no such ban.”

  “There might,” murmured the Queen, “if rebellion persisted—for pride, for honor. Remember, brother. Always remember Languedoc.”

  “So,” the Prince said, “the sorcerer threatens us all—then let us do battle with him. Go to Rome, challenge him, cast him down. Then we can get to the work of defending our kingdom.”

  “It’s a month’s ride to Rome,” Jehan muttered.

  Aidan laughed like a whipcrack. “For us, dear Bishop, a moment’s journey at the speed of a thought.”

  That supposes you can find him instantly. Nikki flushed a little under the Prince’s glare, his own quick temper rising to match it. He scorns us; he let me see the shape of his city. But not precisely where he was, and he doesn’t mean us to find out. And Rome is a big and complicated place.

  “I could find him,” Aidan said.

  Could you destroy him?

  “Peace,” the King said. Only that, but in each the lightnings retreated; Jehan’s hackles settled, caught in the middle as he was, with fire on either side.

  They looked at Gwydion. Almost they had forgotten his presence as he had seemed oblivious to theirs, walled in his private grief. His face was waxen pale, yet his eyes were clear and quiet. They rested on each in turn, and lifted to the altar, to the golden glitter of its cross. “Those of the Folk who cannot wield a sword will go to Broceliande. The rest remain here in the world as we had decided, some to ride with the army to the Marches, some to guard Caer Gwent under the Queen’s regency.”