Hounds of God Read online

  No one spoke, to approve or to protest. With startling suddenness his glance seized Alf. “You go to Rome, you and Nikephoros. I charge you to find your lady and your sister and your children; to track our enemy to his lair and to dispose of him however you see fit; and finally to confront His Holiness the Pope. He let this war begin. Let him treat with us directly, with no intermediaries, and let him make an end.”

  “But,” Alf said in the stunned silence, “you need me here. My power, my sword—”

  The King’s gaze was compassionate although his words were as harsh as stone. “You are of no use to us as you are. Your sword is skilled enough, to be sure; your power likewise. A human might almost be deceived. But you are not what you were. Your temper is uncertain; you struggle to keep your mind clear and your body strong. You are perilously close to breaking.”

  Alf shook his head, mute.

  Gwydion’s eyes bound him. “Behind your shields, half your mind is torn away. Struggling, enduring, but bleeding to death slowly and surely. I command you to seek the only possible healing. Find Althea and the children she bore you. Avenge them and your sister and my son. And speak for Rhiyana before the Chair of Peter.”

  Or die in the trying. That was in all their minds, clear as a shout.

  Slowly Alf shrank, drawing together, covering his face with his hands. Jehan noticed as if for the first time how thin those hands were, thinned to the bone. He was terribly, frighteningly fragile: he was beginning to break.

  Aidan’s every muscle was taut with protest. Maura was white and silent. Nikki alone seemed glad. He had been chosen; he could go, he could act, he could conquer or die. He was very and truly young, as not one of the others could be.

  Alf straightened. His hands lowered; his head came up. He seemed perceptibly to gain in breadth and strength—a wonder, a marvel.

  He met the King’s stare directly and smiled, bright and splendidly fierce. “Yes,” he said in a strong sure voice. “Yes, Gwydion. In Rome it began, and in Rome it will end. Alun will have his blood price, I my kin. That I promise you, by my Lord and all His hallows.”

  oOo

  Jehan wanted to hit him. “I know you have to go. I know you’ll be in constant and arcane danger. I know you’ll probably get killed! And I’m. Going. With you.”

  Alf’s burst of strength had passed. He lay on Nikki’s bed; Nikki lay beside him, face to the wall, ears and mind closed, deeply and blissfully asleep.

  He himself would have sought the same blessed oblivion but for Jehan’s persistence. “Jehan,” he said with weariness that came close to desperation, “I love you dearly. You’ve been a brother to me; a son. I know you’d happily go to your death for me, as would I for you. But. This is no errand for any mortal man, let alone an anointed bishop. Even if you manage to escape with your body and your sanity intact, what will become of your life? You’ll be worse than discredited. You’ll be unfrocked; excommunicated. In a word, destroyed.”

  Jehan’s jaw set. “I won’t be a drag on you. I know Rome. I lived there off and on for a good twenty years, remember? I know people, places—”

  “We can’t use them.” Alf sat up and caught Jehan’s wrists. His fingers were fever-hot. “We have to find the enemy first and in complete secrecy, or he can simply reach out and shatter us. If we have you with us, well known as you are in the city and the Curia, and without power besides, we’ll be doubly pressed to defend our concealment.”

  “And what’s more invisible in the Eternal City than a Jeromite monk with a pair of pilgrims in tow?”

  “Anything at all, when that monk is the very large, very famous, and very distinguished young Bishop of Sarum.”

  “My size,” growled Jehan, “I can’t help. But in a well-worn habit, with a well-worn beard—”

  Alf’s glance was eloquent. Jehan grimaced. “Well. I’ve got almost a day’s start. With a little help from you...”

  With great reluctance Alf laughed. “You ask me to bebristle your chin when I can’t even manage a beginning on my own?”

  Jehan’s wrists were still imprisoned, else he would have given Alf a good shaking. “You could if you would, and you know it. Stop your nonsense now and think. Who will look after you when you’re in one of your trances?”

  “Nikki—”

  “Nikephoros is a charming boy, an excellent squire, and a passable scholar. But can he stand in the market and haggle over the price of a turnip?”

  “He would never need to—”

  Jehan snorted. “Maybe he wouldn’t. Those eyes of his are lethal to anything female. But he can’t talk, and very likely he’ll be in a trance himself. You need someone without power, to keep your bodies together while your souls do battle.”

  “You.” Alf released him and sighed. “We’re all going to regret this.”

  A grin welled to the surface. Jehan throttled it. “We never have before.”

  “Thanks to God and Dame Fortune.”

  “So we’ll say our prayers and do our best to keep our balance on the Wheel. When do we leave?”

  Alf shook his head and smiled. “Patience, patience, my lord Bishop. When Alun is in his tomb and I have settled my affairs, then we go.”

  “Two days,” Jehan mused. “Three at most. Good. I’ll be ready. And heaven help you if you try to leave without me!”

  11.

  The light came back slowly. Infinitely slowly. Its focus was dim, more suggestion than shape: vaulted arch, loop of chain, clustered shadow outlined in flamelight. A lamp—lamps, set in a wheel of iron. But only one was lit, the one directly overhead.

  Anna blinked. She did not know that lamp. There was nothing like it in any room she could have been sleeping in. But then she seldom woke with hurts in so many places, with a throbbing in her head to match the throbbing in her hands.

  She raised one. It was stiff, swathed, bandaged. The sleeve was indubitably her own, the tightness of her white linen camise, the embroidered edging of her third-best cotte, gold on russet.

  Her hand fell again to a clean rough sheet, a blanket she did not recognize, heavy and well woven though not rich. There was a pallet under her, a bare floor, a wall beside her of smooth pale stone. Four walls, a heavy door—she did not know any of it.

  Something stirred against her foot. She recoiled, knotting against the angle of the wall.

  It was only a hound. A white alaunt with ears more red than brown, crouched at the foot of the pallet as Anna crouched at its head. A heavy collar circled its neck, with a chain welded to it and welded again to a ring in the wall. Even had the beast tried, it could not have reached Anna; the chain was too short.

  Anna’s heart slowed its pounding. She was not afraid of a hound. This one was very beautiful.

  It—she. A bitch, her teats swollen with milk, her belly distended as if she were newly delivered of pups.

  Beneath the sheltering body something moved, a tail, the pink tip of a nose. Two half-blind, half-formless creatures, seeking each the sustenance of a nipple. One was male, red-eared like its dam. The other, female, was all silver-white. Or, no; pale, pale gold. The exact color of—

  Anna snapped from her crouch. Bright witch-eyes gleamed strangely in the beast-faces, Thea’s, Cynan’s, Liahan’s; Thea’s temper snarled in the collared throat. Those fangs were deadly sharp; Anna’s fingers remembered beneath the bandages.

  Yet she dropped to her knees well within striking range and gripped the collar. It was massive, all iron, and welded shut; though not precisely choking-tight, it gave not an inch to Anna’s tugging. Her fingers found evidence of Thea’s own futile efforts, fur worn and roughened, the beginnings of a gall.

  Anna could not breathe properly. She found herself at the door, beating on it, gaining no response. It was bolted as solidly as a castle gate; the grille above the level of her eyes looked out upon darkness. For a long moment she dangled, clinging to the bars, biting back a howl. Then she dropped and turned.

  Thea had not moved. Her eyes held a glint of mockery.r />
  Anna faced her again. “This is a joke,” she said. “The Folk are playing pranks again. Morgiana—the things an Assassin will laugh at, even a tame Assassin—”

  Thea’s muzzle wrinkled. Anger, scorn, or both.

  “It is a joke,” Anna persisted. “It can’t be what it seems to be. We were in the tower, and Alun was falling hopelessly in love with his own prophecy, and—”

  A stab of pain brought her up short. This time Thea had not broken flesh, only nipped it scathingly. Anna hit her.

  Tried to. One could not hit air and fire. Even air and fire in an iron collar, with ears pressed flat and fangs bared.

  Very slowly Anna sank down, huddling into her skirts. She was cold, and not only with the damp chill of stone untapestried and uncarpeted, with neither hearth nor fire to warm her.

  Anger was no help. She had been in the White Keep, warm and glad, and now she was elsewhere. And Thea—Thea was a shape-changer, that was her nature, the white gazehound her most beloved disguise; but not collared and chained and in visible discomfort, perhaps even in pain, her children transformed as was she, not after she had labored so long against her very nature to bear them in their proper forms.

  “Thea,” Anna said as steadily as she could, “Thea, if this isn’t a joke or a game, you had better put an end to it. Your babies are too young yet for shape-shifting.”

  If Thea’s eyes had blazed before, now they blinded; her snarl had risen to a roar. Anna caught her before she could lunge—stupid, stupid; but her hands were tightly bound, protected.

  At length Thea quieted. She crouched panting, trembling, her short fur bristling.

  Shakily Anna smoothed it. “You can’t,” she translated.

  She felt weak and dizzy. The Kindred were powerful, invincible. Nothing could bind them, nothing compel them. Not prayers, not cold iron, not any mortal prison. There was nothing they could not do.

  Thea made a small bitter sound, half whine, half growl.

  “But what? Who? Why?”

  Thea could not answer. She could not even set her voice in Anna’s mind; and that was worse than all the rest of it together.

  Anna had never been a very womanly woman. In extremity, she did not weep or storm or otherwise conduct herself as befit her sex. No; she became very still, and she thought. Brooded, some might say, except that she did not let revenge overwhelm her reason.

  She returned to the relative comfort of the pallet, spread the blanket over herself and her companions, and concentrated on staying warm, still, and sane. It was cruelly hard. She kept seeing Alun falling and Thea changing, melting and dwindling into a maddened beast.

  Then darkness, and this. Whatever this might be.

  At first she thought she had imagined it. A glimmer. A humming. A tensing of the air.

  She had no weapon, not even the little knife she used for trimming pens. Thea’s head was up, ears pricked, a silent growl stirring her throat.

  Shadows shifted and took substance. Anna stared.

  They remained: a bowl, two jars, a plate. The bowl held meat, blood-raw; the plate a hard grey loaf and a lump of cheese, an onion and a handful of olives. One jar sloshed with liquid; the other was empty, but in shape and size eloquent enough.

  Anna’s body knotted from throat to thigh. She had not known she could have so many needs all at once, amid such a nightmare.

  The air, having yielded up its burdens, was still. Anna fought to quell her thudding heart. “What is this? Who plays these games with us?”

  Silence.

  “Where are we? Who are you who taunt us with your power?”

  Nothing changed. No voice responded. No figure appeared before her. She had been speaking Rhiyanan; she shifted to the langue d’oeil. Nothing.

  “Who?” she demanded in ProvenÁal, in Saxon, in Latin, and last of all, with fading hope, in Greek.

  The closed door mocked her despair. She leaped toward the grille and clung. Without lay only darkness and silence and empty air.

  “Damn you!” Anna screamed at it, still in her native Greek. “Who are you?”

  She could as easily have shouted at the stones, or at Thea, who at least would acknowledge that she spoke.

  Her hands cried pain; she unclamped them, dropping the handspan to the floor. There was wine in the smaller jar, sour and much watered but drinkable. She gulped down a mouthful, two, three, before she choked.

  Thea wavered in front of her. She had a terrible head for wine; she was dizzy already.

  She blinked hard. The hound was on her feet, and the wavering was not entirely in Anna’s vision.

  Anna picked up the bowl. It was surprisingly good meat. She set it where Thea could reach it. The witch-hound sniffed it, shuddered, turned her head away.

  “You have to eat,” Anna said.

  Thea’s eye was as yellow as a cat’s, pupiled like a cat’s, more alien even in that face than in her own.

  “Eat,” Anna commanded her. “You were never so fastidious before, when you didn’t need your strength except to play. Eat!”

  Thea did not precisely obey. Rather, she chose to taste the offering.

  Anna had less restraint. She had to struggle not to bolt it all down at once.

  Like the wine, like the meat, the food was inelegant but adequate, far better than any prison fare she had ever heard of. And it gave her strength; it brought her to her senses, and woke her to a quiver of hope. Whatever was to become of them all, certainly they would not starve.

  oOo

  Having eaten and drunk and put the chamberpot to good use, Anna lay on the pallet.

  Thea had finished the bowl after all and licked it until it gleamed dully; she returned to her whimpering offspring and began to wash them and herself. And that, reflected Anna, was a tremendous advantage; she might be condemned to speechlessness, but she would be clean.

  She could also sleep, abruptly and thoroughly, as Anna could not. Anna stroked her flank, and after a pause, the small bodies nestled against it. They were warm and soft and supple, a little damp still from their cleansing, breathing gently.

  Very carefully Anna lifted one, the silver-gilt creature who was Liahan, cradling her. She fit easily into two joined hands, who in other shape had made an ample armful.

  Anna swallowed hard. The small things were always the worst to bear. “We’ll get out of here,” she whispered into the twitching ear. “Somehow. We’ll get out. I promise you.”

  12.

  Prior Giacomo was in no very good mood. Never mind that the day was glorious, bright as a new coin and touched with a fragile, fugitive, springlike warmth. Never mind that he was free to enjoy it within certain easy limits: the Abbot’s dispensation to walk abroad, good company in young Brother Oddone, and an errand smoothly and swiftly completed, the collection of an annual and strictly symbolic rent from a house of minor princes.

  Crumbling old Rome looked almost fresh although its green was winter-muted; the Tiber’s reek was only a twitch in the nostrils; the pilgrims were crowding thickly and some were singing, one or two even on key:

  “O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,

  cunctarum urbium excellentissima....”

  Prior Giacomo snarled and hid his head in his cowl.

  Insult to injury—Brother Odone raised his own voice in an echo as willing as its pitch was uncertain.

  “…Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea,

  albis et virginum liliis candida—”

  “One would think,” Giacomo said acidly, “that after seven years in a monastery, even a cat would learn to sing on key.”

  Oddone shut his mouth in mid-note and wilted visibly. But nothing could quell Brother Oddone for long. After a judicious moment he said, “Brother Prior, you really shouldn’t take it so hard.”

  Giacomo’s scowl, with the brows black and beetling over a nose as nobly Roman as his pedigree, would have put the Abbot himself to flight. Oddone met it bravely and with the best will in the world. His Prior was sorely tempted to strike him.
r />   But Giacomo had learned discipline. Not easily, but by now quite thoroughly. He restricted himself to a growl and a slight speeding of his pace.

  No, he should not take it so hard. It was not as if the world had ended or the barbarians invaded, or his family lost the last of its sadly eroded property. So his sister had taken the veil. He should be rejoicing that another of his blood had found a vocation—and his favorite sister besides, his pet, pretty Fioretta.

  The veil he could have faced, if she had not gone mad with it. He would have seen her into any convent in Rome and made certain that she was well treated there. He could even have borne her departing elsewhere, if any Continelli would dream of forsaking her city, if only she was content.

  But this. Not for Fioretta Saint Benedict’s learned nuns or Saint Anastasia’s holy nurses or the cloistered solitude of Saint Anthony. No; nothing so simple or so reassuring. Fioretta had gone with the new madwomen, Clara and her barefoot sisters, camp followers of the Friars Minor. Her veil was a rag and her feet unshod, and when she was not begging on the highroad she was ministering to those who were.

  And she was not content at all. She was gauntly, luminously, maniacally happy.

  “Plague take the girl!” he burst out. “Why couldn’t she have settled on something less drastic?”

  “But if she had,” said Oddone with sweet reason, “she wouldn’t be your sister.”

  Giacomo had stalked forward another half-dozen strides before the barb sank in. Oddone’s face was all innocence; his eyes were guileless.

  His Prior stopped short. The crowd of passersby eddied and swirled. Already Oddone was almost swallowed in it, a weedy brown-cowled figure, a sallow circle of tonsure. With a bark of sudden laughter, Giacomo pushed in his wake.

  Giacomo, though not tall, was solid, a respectable weight even against a market-day mob. Oddone had neither height nor girth, and no muscle at all. Once the current caught him, it swept him along like flotsam.