Hounds of God (15 page)

He looked down at Thea with no expression at all; and that
was less a mask than his joviality had been. “You did not do as you threatened.
I doubt very much that you can.”

Thea could not be disconcerted. She settled once more on
guard, but easy in it, almost lounging, with her children close against her.
To return to the point, monk, I’m fair
enough prey when all’s considered, and we have the matter of the young
ones still to settle. My sister is no part of this. You would do very well to
let her go.

The monk smiled. “I think not, milady witch.”

“Why?” demanded Anna. “Because you think I’m
the closest thing you’ll find to a weakness in her?”

Of course,
Thea
said,
and he can’t threaten you or
his own neck is in jeopardy. On the other hand, the possibility’s always
there. One never discards even a potential weapon unless one has to.
She
tilted her head, considering him.
Weapons,
you know, can be used by either side in a battle. Take care you don’t
find yourself on the wrong end of this one.

“I do not intend to.” He examined her again,
deliberately, as if he could make her writhe. She only arched her back and
stretched like a cat. His jaw clenched. “One way or another, we will have
it all: you, your cublings, Rhiyana itself. You may choose the way of it,
whether salvation for your children and a swift and merciful end for your kind,
or a long slow deadly war fought with the mind as well as with the body.
Brother Simon is a mightier power than any you can muster, and God is with him;
he cannot but conquer. With your aid he will do so quickly and cleanly. Without
it, I can promise only anguish. For you, for your kind, and for your children.”

So that’s my
choice. Swift death or slow death. What’s the difference, in the end?

“Pain,” said Brother Simon, sudden as a stone
speaking.

All the more reason to
give my people time to arm against you.

“They cannot. They cannot even find me. But I find them
with perfect ease. Shall I test my power on them?”

Thea was on her feet, but the nameless monk stood in her
way. “Not yet, witch-lady. You still have a choice to make. Swiftly now,
before we make it for you.”

She stood erect, at gaze, trembling just visibly.
It is made,
said the voice in all their
minds,
made thrice over. No, and no, and
no. Better death in this shape than slavery to the likes of you.

“We shall see,” he said, “how long this
pretty show of defiance can last.” He drew up his cowl with a ceremonious
gesture. “Examine well your heart, milady witch. If heart indeed you
have.”

At first Thea seemed only glad to be free of her chain. She
whirled around the cell, mocking the bolted door with every line of her body.

Yet at length she quieted, dropping panting to the floor
beside the bed. She grinned at Anna, who stared levelly back and said, “It’s
no good, is it? You can’t get us out.”

Not yet,
Thea
said, inspecting each child with care, washing Liahan all over until the memory
of Simon’s touch was scoured away.
But
he’s cocky. He’s leaving me free enough inside this place, though
every wall is also a wall of power. He’ll learn to regret that.

“He could be listening to you now.”

I know he is.
Thea
leaped up again, as if her long captivity in alien shape had left her sated
with stillness. She prowled the cell, coming to a halt under the lamp cluster.

Her eyes sparked. The lamps burst into a blaze of sudden
light. She stood beneath them, watching them, while Cynan stalked her manifold
shadow.

The light died. Thea’s eyes closed; she seemed to dwindle,
to shrink into herself.
He’s
strong,
she said. She sank down slowly.

There was a little water left. Anna wheedled it into her. It
seemed to strengthen her; she raised her head, drawing a long breath.
I’m not in the best of condition for
this.

“Is anyone?”

I plan to be. I won’t
give in to those cursed Hounds, and I don’t intend to die for it.

“Maybe someone will come,” Anna said.

Thea rounded on her.
Pray
for it if it suits you, but don’t lie back and wait for it. We’re
hidden completely. We’re not even in Rhiyana.

Anna had guessed that much. But to hear it spoken made it
real, a knot of pain where her stomach should be. “Then where—”

Rome,
Thea
answered.
Old Rome itself, that’s
more than big enough to hide us even if anyone can track us here. He knows it,
that captor of ours. He’s very pleased with his own cleverness.

“He’s a horror. To call himself Simon after the
notorious wizard, the first heretic—”

Or after the Prince of
Apostles, for the matter of that. No; he’s not our captor, he’s
merely our jailer. I meant the other. The mastermind in the guise of a fat
fool. Brother Paul as his mind was trumpeting to me, loudly enough to make it
certain that that’s not the name he was christened with. He’s the
one to look to. He’s the evil genius in this.

“But he’s only human.”

Thea laughed with a bitter edge.
Poor Anna! We’ve ruined you. All our visible power, our
disgustingly pretty faces, our stubborn refusal to let time touch us; we’ve
let you think we’re perfection, or as close to it as earth allows. We’ve
failed completely to teach you something much truer. No one’s
only
human, Anna. He might be as ugly as Satan
himself; he’ll certainly be dead in a hundred years; he hasn’t a
glimmer of our magic. But he has something more powerful than all the rest. He
has a brain. A thinking brain. Whether by chance or his own black brilliance,
he’s caught one of us, trained him to jesses and a lure, and hunted him with
all too much success. You can be sure he’s not resting on it.

Anna shook her head obstinately. “The fat one might be
giving the orders, but the other is only letting him. If he really has that
much power—”

He has more. Do you
remember how Alf held down the dance the night—
Thea’s
mind-voice caught for the merest shadow of an instant—
the night the babies were born? Do you
remember how he was? Ruler in the circle, master of enchanters—as Brother
Simon himself has said, greater than a king. Now remember your worst and
falsest image of yourself. That’s how much weaker Alf is than this second
Simon Magus.

“Then how can anyone control him, let alone that fat
lecher of a monk?”

I don’t know,
Thea said,
but this Paul can. And does.

Now came Anna’s time to pace with Cynan for escort,
and Thea’s to watch in silence. Except that Thea gave it up after a turn
or two and turned her attention on Liahan.

The little witch had not moved since Simon set her down, not
even to protest her rough and thorough cleansing. Her eyes were wide still,
bright and fixed. And yet when Thea nosed her, they blinked; her tail wagged
very slightly in recognition.

Anna stopped, alarmed. “What has he done to her? Has
he hurt her?”

Thea’s response was slow in coming.
No, I don’t think…he wouldn’t
dare…
Her lip wrinkled.
He
wouldn’t dare!

Anna knelt beside them. Liahan did not flinch or snap when
Anna lifted her. She felt as she always did, warm and silken-furred, wriggling
a little against Anna’s shoulder. “Her mind,” Anna said. “Her
wits. Has he—”

He can’t,
Thea snapped. Cynan, jealous, scrabbled at Anna’s knee; his mother caught
him by the scruff of the neck, roughly enough to startle him, and all but drove
him to nurse. Her head whipped back toward Anna.
I’m nothing to that tower of strength, but I bore these children
in my body. While I have any power at all, he can’t touch them.

“The other one—Paul—he said—”

I’m a long way
yet from losing my mind. Liahan—
Thea tossed her head, a very human
gesture, yet also very canine.
I can’t
touch her mind. It’s walled and guarded. There’s no stench of Simon
Magus about it; and yet she’s too young. She can’t know how to
shield. Not like that. Not from me.

Anna caressed the hound-child, stroking her favorite places,
behind the ears, along the spine. She squirmed with pleasure, climbing higher,
burying her cool wet nose in Anna’s neck. “Liahan,” Anna
said, for what good it could do, “he’s gone. You can open your mind
now.”

Thea made a small disgusted sound.
Talk. As if she could understand.

Anna ignored her. “Witch-baby, shields are splendidly
useful things, and you are a wonder for having made one so young, but it’s
making your mother angry. Open a chink at least and let her in.”

Liahan stiffened a fraction. Anna cradled her, holding her
face to face. Her eyes were all gold. Winter-gold like Alf’s, shining as
his shone when he wielded his power. “Oh, you are your father’s
child. Your mother’s, too, stubborn as you are and laughing in it. Won’t
you lower your shield? Just for the practice?”

The little witch blinked. Anna reeled with sudden dizziness.
Those eyes—

Liahan!
Thea’s
will cut like a sword, severing the spell.

Yes, Liahan was laughing even now, though chastened,
reaching to lick Anna’s cheek, begging to be set down. Once freed, she
set to nursing as if she had never been more than she seemed, a very small and
very hungry gazehound pup.

Witch,
Thea said,
half in exasperation, half in pride.
Born
and bred contrary, and determined to stay that way. I almost pity our poor
enemy.

“Pity
that?
”
cried Anna.

That,
Thea agreed.
She began to bathe her son, who, sated, lay on the verge of sleep. Anna watched
in silence that stretched into peace.

The air’s singing shattered it. Anna watched the bowls
and cups appear. It was no less uncanny for that now she knew how they had
come, and by whose will.

One would think…
Thea mused. She shook herself.
No.

“What?” Anna snapped the word viciously.

Thea lowered her head to her paws, reflecting.
Simon the Magus is a coincidence. Of course
a man of the Folk, if he were tall and light-eyed and flaxen fair, would look
uncannily like Alfred. It’s the cast of the face—it’s the
same in all of us. But that he should be so very like, and be so bitterly our
enemy…that must be God’s black humor.

“He’s not quite…right, is he?”

One could not deceive Thea with an air of indifference. Not
that it mattered. Thea had never weakened anyone’s will with a show of
compassion.
He’s utterly mad. He’s
a travesty; a caricature. A nightmare of a might-have-been.

“He makes me think of Nikki, too. Somehow. In the way
he’s twisted; in the way he seems to be missing something. I remember how
my mother used to talk, once in a great while, when she didn’t know I
could hear. Before Alf came and changed everything. She’d been told to
raise my brother like a colt or a puppy, because that was as close to a man as
he’d ever get; she could train him, maybe, and she did housebreak him and
teach him to eat decently. But he’d never be properly human.”

He would never have
been like yonder creature.

“How do you know?” Anna flared at her. “How
can you imagine what he would have grown into? You know what a mind he has. Alf
set it free. What if Alf had never come? Maybe we all would have died when the
City fell. That would have been a mercy. But if we hadn’t, if Nikki had
grown up, trapped, treated the way people never could help but treat him—all
that wit and all that wildness with no way out of his head and no way in…”

I can imagine it.
Thea’s
inner voice was so flat that Anna stopped short. Remembered, and felt the heat
rise to burn her cheeks. Her tongue had run away again. Would she never learn?

Thea was choosing not to take offense.
Nikephoros would not have let himself sink into a madman. No more than
Alf did. He’d have raged; he’d have fought. He would have tried to
make something of himself.

“Sometimes I think, if you ever got tired of Alf, you’d
have Nikki in your bed before the hour was out.” No. Anna would never
learn.

An hour?
Thea
laughed.
That long? Anna Chrysolora, you
credit me with altogether too much restraint.

“So that’s why you won’t marry my elder
brother. You’ve got your eye on the younger.”

Of course. Would I be
myself if I didn’t?

In spite of all her troubles and her festering temper, Anna
began to laugh. Thea had the eye and the tongue of a notorious harlot, but for
all of that, her heart was as fixed and immovable as the roots of Broceliande.
She could look, she could laugh, she could tease; she could no more turn from
her dozen years’ lover than she could make herself a mortal woman.

Not,
she agreed,
at the moment. There’s a significant
lack of opportunity here. As for Brother Magus… Have you ever suspected
how very little I like smooth-skinned fair-haired boys? I’m one for a
fine black eye and a warm brown skin and plenty of curly beard to play with.

“Nikki doesn’t have enough to—”

He will when he’s
a little older. No, Anna; I despise a pale man. You can imagine how shocked I
was when I discovered that I’d fallen in love with the palest of all pale
men. All he had to commend him was a good breadth of shoulder—which he
was always managing to hide—and a certain indefinable air. This fetch of
his obviously has neither.

“How can you tell under the habit?”

Thea’s eyes sparkled wickedly.
How could I tell under Alf’s? Sometimes I forget you never knew
him when he was Brother Alfred. He was the loveliest boy who ever put on a cowl,
the meekest white lamb who ever lay down before an altar. A more perfect monk
never graced an abbey. But now and then when he was most off guard, I could
catch it. A look, a word, a hint of something else. And there were always those
shoulders; not to mention another attribute or two, once I got the habit off him.