Hounds of God (20 page)

“God raised me. Raised me up, exalted me, taught me my
purpose. To serve Him; to wield my power in His name.”

“Not God,” Anna said harshly. “Some venal
monk who saw a weapon he could use. Did you kill him, too?”

He shook his head, neither grieved nor angered. “He is
venal, yes, and he uses me, but God has chosen him. His commands arise from the
will of the One Who rules him. And,” he added quite calmly, “he has
always been too pleased with his own cleverness to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid, either.”

“I know.” He smiled his rare smile, unbearably
sweet. “She was much like you, the girl from the field. Not so prickly;
not so wise. But she was younger, and she didn’t know what I was, except
that I was unique in all her world. She thought I was a wonder and a marvel.
She never had time to learn to hate me.”

“I don’t…exactly…hate you.”

It was true, Anna realized. She did not like it, but she
could not avoid it. “I can’t hate someone I know. Just
abstractions. War, injustice, corruption. The force that murdered a child
simply because he existed.”

Simon’s face shifted with familiar swiftness. His
smile was long dead. His hands tore at flesh that could not be wounded, at
cloth that at least stayed torn. Heavy though it was, wool woven thick and strong,
it shredded like age-rotted silk. Rough darkness gaped beneath. Of course he
would wear a hairshirt, that mad servant of a mad God.

“Hate!” he cried. “I—hate— I
am a horror. With a touch, with a thought, I kill. The priest was not the
first, never the first. My mother never wanted me, never wanted to love me,
struck me when I cried till I learned not to cry, fed me and cared for me
because duty forced her to. She hit me. I would be there where she could see
me, and she would take a stick to me. And then it swelled in me, that thing,
the other, and it uncoiled and at last it struck. It killed. I only wanted the
stick to go away.
It
would have more.
I hate it. I hate—”

Anna clapped her hands over her ears.

He was kneeling in front of her. Calm again, gentle again.
Her hands were no barrier to his soft voice. “You understand. I have no
power over that other. I can only do as I am commanded.”

“By it or by your Hounds of masters?”

“By God.” He sat back on his heels, hands
resting lightly on his thighs.

Anna’s own hands fell to her sides. She was very
tired. Bored, even, in spite of all his dramatics. It was only the same thing
over and over. God and madness and a deep, rankling hatred of himself. Her pity
was losing its strength; very soon she would be irritated. Did he think that he
alone had ever suffered? Some of the Folk had endured far worse, had come out
of it singing. Even she knew anguish; she had not shattered under it. What
right had he to rend worlds for his little pain?

He turned slightly, oblivious it seemed to her anger. After
a long moment Anna heard the scraping of bolts.

Her glance, passing him, caught and held. His face was
stiff, set, yet blazing from within with such a mingling of hate and scorn,
fear and surrender and something very close to worship, as Anna had never
dreamed of. In a moment it had vanished behind the marble mask; Brother Paul
filled the doorway.

Anna had seen him but once, and then only dimly in the
reflection of his companion. She had not known that he was so large. He was as
tall as Simon, as tall as Alf, and nigh as broad as Father Jehan. But he had
not the Bishop’s muscular solidity; his flesh swelled into softness. His
eyes were as lazy as ever in the full ruddy face, taking in the tableau, Thea
curled with the children in a far corner, Anna upright on the pallet, Simon at
his ease nearby.

“Brother?” he inquired of the last.

Simon straightened. “The woman does not yield.”
His voice once more was flat.

Brother Paul advanced a step or two, folded his arms, looked
down at Thea. She did not dignify his presence with a snarl. “Your King
and his wild brother have been fighting. They haven’t fought well, I
understand. Maybe it troubles them that their sorceries are held in check; that
they have to live and fight as simple mortal men. One has even been wounded, I
can’t be certain which. They’re so much alike, people say; now and
again they exchange blazons. The man who fell fought under the sign of the
seabird crowned.”

Anna’s breath rasped in her throat. Thea seemed unmoved,
staring steadily up at the monk.

He shook his head with feigned sadness. “It would be a
grim thing if your King should die. He’s not dead yet, Brother Simon
says; he can’t work his magic to heal himself. He hangs between life and
death. Now suppose,” he said, “that you were to surrender. Brother
Simon works miracles of healing; he could be persuaded to pray for yet another.”

Thea yawned and said coolly,
You’re lying. Even if Simon Magus can pierce Rhiyana’s
defenses—and I grant you, he’s strong enough for that—even he
can’t overwhelm both Gwydion and Aidan at once. They’re twinborn;
they’re far stronger together than the plain sum of their power.

“So they may be, together. They had no time to prove
it. Pain is a great destroyer of the mind’s defenses.”

If it’s so
childishly easy to overcome us,
Thea said coolly still,
why do you need my submission? Why not just
cut us all down at once?

“It is not easy,” Simon answered tightly. “Your
King was open to me, fighting on the edge of his realm, struck with a sudden
dart. God guided it and me. In a hunt amid pain like fire and flood, I found
the part of him that heals; I sealed it with my seal. Only I can loose the
bonds.”

You are unspeakable.
Thea said it without inflection, which was worse in its way than a storm of
outrage.

“I do what I must. No one near your King has any
powers of healing, nor can any such come to him unless I will it. He cannot
age, but he can die. Would you save him? Surrender now.”

Thea was perfectly steady.
What would be the use of that? If you have your way, he’ll die
anyway. This at least is a little quicker.

“A witch’s heart,” said Brother Paul, “is
ice and iron. Never a wife, hardly a mother, now you show yourself a poor
vassal besides.”

What if I do surrender?
she flared with sudden heat.
What then? I’m
dear enough to my lord King, I don’t deny it, but he won’t
sacrifice all his people on my say-so. I doubt he’d do that even for his
Queen. And you killed his son.

Simon spoke softly, more to himself than to her. “Our
people have tried and condemned a number of heretics in your royal city. Some
are guilty of no more than believing their King and his Kin to be children of
Heaven rather than of Hell. It’s evil, but it’s rather enviable how
loyal your Rhiyanans are. They’re to be burned tomorrow. The Queen has no
power to stop it.”

Nor, it seems, does
the Pope’s Legate. You can’t tell me he approves such lunacy.

“He has power only against your kind. This I tell of
is done by command of our Order under His Holiness’ mandate. We winnow
your fields, witch; we hunt out mortal prey. Soon they’ll be crying for
your blood rather than suffer more on your behalf. Then the Legate will be
compelled to perform his duty. He’s already seen enough to condemn you
all thrice over—and it was your own lover who betrayed you.”

Simon’s eyes glittered with contempt. “Oh, yes;
he worked magic before the Cardinal’s eyes, and told all your people’s
secrets, babbling like a child or a black traitor. Though I would be
charitable; I would declare it plain folly and assurance of the power of his
own beauty, even over a man who takes enormous pride in his chastity. Such men
in the end are easily laid low. He knew. He was one.

“But the Cardinal has held against him. I’ve
seen to it. In a week or a fortnight, the Interdict will fall and the people
will rise up.”

With your aid, I
presume.
Her mind-voice was rough.
Your
course is set. You can’t delude me into thinking I can change it, even if
I grovel at your feet. I grieve for my King and my kin; I mourn for my country.
I won’t submit to you. Nor will any of the rest, however you torment
them.

“They will fall before me. God has said so.”

She laughed, cold and clear.
When you sit your throne over the wasteland you’ve made, look
about you and think, and then put a name to the voice that speaks in you. God;
or Satan.

“You are evil.”

Take care, Brother
Magus. It may not be I who break under the weight of truth. It may well be you.

Simon looked long at her, his eyes almost black, his face
corpse-white. “You,” he said at last, “would drive an angel
to murder. Yet it is all bravado. I see you now; I see how you tremble deep
within, weep for your King and your people, long for your white-eyed paramour.
It does not even irk you to be helpless, not in the heart of you. There, you
have always been as other women, soft and frail, sorely in need of a man’s
strength to rule your waywardness.”

She laughed again, but freely, with honest mirth.
Brother, you have a certain talent, but you’ll
never make a torturer. I have a weakness here and there, I know it perfectly
well, and the worst of them is my love whom you hate so much and for so little
visible cause. But as for the rest of it… Simon Magus, I’m a woman
and I’m proud of it, and I’ve worn a man’s body often enough
to know I much prefer the one I was born in. It’s infinitely stronger.

“You pray for a rescue. You dream of a man’s
strong hands.”

Yes, and in such
places, doing such things… Why, lad! You’re blushing. Have I
shocked you, poor tender creature? Are you wishing someone would sweep you away
from all my wickedness?

Simon bent close to her, even with his flaming cheeks. “Words,
words, words. Your strength is all in your tongue. I hear you in the nights. I
hear you weeping and crying your lover’s name.”

I hear you,
she
shot back,
mewling for your mother. But
she’s dead. You murdered her. I at least have a living man to yearn for.

His fist caught her. Flesh thudded sickly on furred flesh;
something cracked like bones breaking.

She fell limp. Anna sprang through a white fog of terror.
Thea lay deathly still. No breath stirred her body; no pulse beat for all of
Anna’s frantic searching.

Her mind was extraordinarily calm. It could only think of
Alf, how grief would drive him mad. As mad as Simon, at the very least. Then
would come such a vengeance as the world had never seen.
Let it come soon,
she thought as she watched her hands. Foolish
things; they tried to smooth Thea’s coat, to settle her limbs more
comfortably, as if it could matter.

Simon’s shadow darkened the world. He was staring at
his hand. It looked odd, swollen, a little misshapen. “Ice,” he
muttered. “Iron.”

Thea stirred, tossing. She whimpered softly as with pain.
Her eyes blinked open.

Anna’s cry died unborn. The voice in her mind was most
like a fierce whisper, yet with the force of a shout.
Now, while he’s lost in his pain—move!

Simon rocked with it. Paul seemed dazed, unfocused. The door
was open behind him. Had it been so from the beginning, all unnoticed?

Move!
Thea willed
her.

She jerked into motion. She could not—Thea must not—

A force like a hand thrust her sidewise around the two
monks, toward the path Thea had opened for her. Suddenly, like a startled
rabbit, she leaped for it.

The passage was long and bleak, a stretch of stone and
closed doors, cold as death. She had no thought but flight, yet somewhere in
the depths of her raged a fire of protest. Where could she go, what could she
do, what would they do to Thea?

Walls of air closed about her. She struck the foremost with
stunning force, reeled and fell, too shocked for despair.

Simon spoke above her, cool and quiet. “A valiant
effort. But not wise.” She heard him step back. “Get up.”

She would not. Part of it was plain collapse; a goodly part
was defiance.

He lifted her easily and in spite of her struggles. A glance
at his face stilled her utterly. It was expressionless, as often, but something
in it made her blood run cold.

He set her in the cell. The door was shut. Thea crouched
trembling, eyes clouded. A thin keening whine escaped her.

Simon’s hands on Anna’s arms were as cruel as
shackles. “I am not to be mocked,” he said.

He flung her down; she gasped as her knees, then her hands,
smote stone. But that pain seemed but a light slap, as all her being burst into
a white agony. Nor would it end with the mercy of bodily anguish. It went on
and on, stretching into eternity.

And all for so little.

Between the rain and the advancing evening, Rome seemed dim,
half-real. Nikki picked his way through a waste of ruins and past the dark
plumes of cypress, his feet uneasy on the sodden earth. The mist that rose
about him held a faint chamel reek, a warning of the fevers that lurked in it.

If this hunt ever ended, no doubt his mind would still
continue it, set in a firm mold of habit. Sometimes he saw himself as a hound
weaving through coverts; sometimes he was a cat stalking a prey it could almost
see.

Tonight he was a hawk on the winds of the mind-world, riding
them in slow spirals, letting them carry him where they would. Yet he was also,
and always, aware of his body, of the cold kiss of fog on his face, of the
dampness that worked through his cloak and the growing wetness of his feet.
They would be glad to rest by the brazier in Stefania’s house; she would
insist that he linger, and old Bianca, recovered now and utterly smitten with
his black eyes, would press food and drink upon him, and Uncle Gregorios keep
him there with the plain joy of the Greek in exile who had found a countryman.