Hounds of God (8 page)

“Not he alone,” said the monk who had spoken
before.

Alf raised a brow.

“He has kin,” the monk said, “creatures of
his own kind, marked as he is marked. Some even more clearly than he.”

“Yes, Brother? How so?”

“Only take up a mirror and see.”

The Chancellor sat back as if at ease. “Oh, I’m
a most egregious monster, I admit it freely. But he? He is the very image of
his father, or so they tell me; certainly he bears a close resemblance to his
nephews and cousins.”

“Somewhat distant cousins, and great-nephews thrice
over.”

“Ah well, Brother. It’s not as if he were unique
in the world. ‘Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begot a
son in his likeness, after his image; and he named him Seth. Adam lived eight
hundred years after Seth, and he had other sons and daughters.’”

“‘The whole lifetime of Adam was nine hundred
and thirty years; then,’” said the monk, “‘then he died.’”

“So he did,” Alf said. “And by that
reckoning, my King has a while yet to live before he is proved immortal.”

“You mock the word of God.”

“No,” Alf said softly. “That, I do not.
Nor am I mad or possessed or begotten of demons. No more than is my lord. If he
has ruled long, has he not also ruled well? Has any man suffered? Has any woman
wept or child died because Gwydion wears Rhiyana’s crown?”

“The flesh is dust and ashes, its comfort a lie. Only
the soul can live.”

“As no doubt it lives in Languedoc, its housing
ravaged with war and starvation.”

The monk drew himself up. His face was white, his cheekbones
blotched with scarlet. “Your very existence is a corruption of all it
touches.”

Alf contemplated him, head tilted a little to one side. “You
do not think,” he said. “You only hate. You, who profess to serve
the God of love. Enemy though you be, I find I pity you.”

The flare of hate struck Nikki blind. Sightless, walled in
soundlessness, he clutched at air, wood, firm flesh sheathed in vair. He could
not see, could not hear, could not—

oOo

Alun tensed. The air wavered; the children’s faces
blurred. Something reached. Darkness visible. Hate that groped, seeking, black
and crimson, wolf-jaws wide to seize, to rend, to devour.

Liahan!

She lay still. Her eyes were open, fixed.

He called on all his power. Somewhere, faint and far, voices
cried out to him.
No, Alun. This is too
strong for you. Alun!

It had Liahan. His lovely laughing lady with flowers in her
hair. It had her; it gripped her.

He struck with every ounce of his strength. The
wolf-darkness wavered, startled, turning at bay.

He laughed, for he had marked it, a long searing-bright
wound. Again he struck.

The enemy sprang.

oOo

Anna saw Alun leap erect over the cradle. His shape blurred
and darkened. And yet he laughed, light and strong and free. The darkness
swelled like smoke; coiled about him; hurled him down.

Behind Anna, Thea cried out, a harsh inhuman sound, raw with
rage.

Anna wheeled. The lady stood by the bed, swaying. Anna
caught her. “Thea, don’t, Alf said not—”

Anna gripped fur around a slash of teeth, white hound, mad
eyes, no Thea left at all. Grimly she clung. The darkness swooped, wolf-jawed,
hell-eyed. The light whirled away.

Nikki could see. He must.

They were all staring. Alf, closest, whose cloak Nikki
clutched—Alf sat bolt upright, white as death. “No,” he
whispered. “Oh, no.”

Fiercely Nikki shook him. He could not turn prophet now. The
monk’s eyes were avid. The Legate watched with deadly fascination.

With infinite slowness Alf rose. He was lost utterly in
horror only he could see. “Sweet merciful God—

“Alun!”

Not he alone cried out. Gwydion aloud, Nikephoros in
silence: a great howl of anguish.

Nikki’s hands were full of fur, the cloak empty,
people gaping. He saw none of it. He saw only darkness and light, and Gwydion’s
face. It wore no expression at all.

And the King was gone, the solar erupting in a babble of
voices.

Nikki’s mind was one great bruise, all the patterns
torn and scattered. He made the babble stop—willed it, commanded it. So
many eyes. And he could not vanish into air. He did not know how.

With a last wild glance, he spun about and bolted.

Someone pounded after. Father Jehan, miter tucked under his
arm, stiff robes hauled up to his knees.

Behind Nikki’s eyes, a small mad creature was
snickering. That great frame had never been made for racing, least of all in
full pontificals.

Nikki whipped around a corner. His lungs had begun to ache.
His feet beat out a grim refrain.
Too
late—too late—too late.

Alun was gone. Anna was gone. Thea was gone. The children
were gone.
Dead, gone, dead, gone, dead—

A sob ripped itself from him. He flung himself forward.

oOo

It was very quiet in the Chancellor’s bedchamber. The
bed was tumbled, empty. The cradle rocked untenanted, the coverlet rent and
torn as if with claws.

Alf stood over it like a shape of stone. At his feet
crouched Gwydion with a limp and lifeless body in his arms, his eyes flat,
fixed on nothing, dead.

The Queen wept, huddled by him, stroking Alun’s hair.
The same gesture over and over. Gwydion had no tears. He had nothing at all.

Nikki tasted blood. Then pain, his own hand caught in his
teeth. It throbbed as he let it fall, stumbling into the room. The air stung
his nostrils as after lightning, the memory of great power unleashed and now
withdrawn.

With infinite slowness Alf sank to one knee. His lips moved,
and his hand with them, signing the Cross. “
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison.”

Gwydion turned his head. Nikki, out of range of his stare,
still flinched. Alf met it fully. The King’s voice was as terrible as his
eyes, flat and stark and cold, emptied of all humanity. “God has no
mercy.”

“Kyrie,”
said Alf,
“eleison. Pater noster,
qui es in coelis—”

“We have no God. We have no souls. Only flesh and the
black earth.”

“—sanctificetur
nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum—”

“God-damned devil-begotten renegade priest.” In
the flint-grey eyes, a spark had kindled. Rising, swelling, raging, lashing in
his voice. “What is your God that He should take my son?”

The Queen reached for him. Lightning cracked; she recoiled,
hands pressed to her face. One of them was red, angry, blistering.

Alf reached in his turn to the wounded lady. She shook him
off. Her eyes bled tears, but they were hard and fearless. “This is not
God’s work. This bears the stench of His Adversary.”

“They are the same.” Gwydion rose, the bright
head rolling loosely on his shoulder. “They must be the same. Else it
would be I who lie here in all my pride and guilt, and not—”

“You in all your folly.” She stood to face him.
She was very tall; she had only to raise her eyes by a little. Yet it was not
to him that she spoke but to the air. “Aidan. Do what must be done.”

Fire flashed from Gwydion’s eyes, sudden as the lightning.
“I have not yet lost my wits!”

“No,” she said. “Only your son.”

He stood very, very still. His face had gained not a line,
yet it showed every moment of his hundred years. “Only my son,” he
said slowly. “Only—” He drew a ragged breath. “Let me
pass.”

She moved aside. He trod forward. Jehan retreated, leaving
him a clear path. He followed it pace by pace, and the Queen after. Her back
was straight, her head high. Only with power could one know that, even yet, she
wept.

Nikki ventured cautiously into the room. The crackle of
power was fading, a mingling as distinct to his senses as scents to the nose of
a hound. Maura, Gwydion—grief and hot iron. Aidan startlingly, unwontedly
cool. Alf walled in stone. And dimmer memories: Alun, Thea, the faint sweet
newness of the children.

Alf had risen by the cradle. All the anguish was locked in
his mind behind his frozen face. “They’re gone,” he said. “Gone
utterly, as if they were dead—but if Thea had died, so too would I. Ah,
God! How can I live with half my mind torn away?”

Jehan thrust past Nikki, dropping cope and miter, seizing
Alf’s shoulders.

Alf froze. His eyes were wide and wild, glaring without
recognition. He was as still as a stalking panther, and fully as dangerous. “I
will kill him,” he said without inflection. “Whoever has done this—I
will kill him. Death for death, maiming for maiming—”

Jehan struck him a ringing blow. With a beast-snarl, he
lunged.

Jehan fell before the force of him, defending only, with
neither hope nor intention of subduing him. There was nothing of reason in him,
only rage and bitter loss.

Nikki’s head tossed from side to side. It was all
beating on him. Madness, death; loss and hate and numbing terror; Alf’s
mind that, stripped of all its barriers, was an open wound. Were they so weak? Could
they not see? They had played full into their enemies’ hands.

They rolled on the floor, Bishop and Chancellor, like hounds
quarreling in their kennel. Fools; children. Nikki made his mind a whip and
lashed them with all the force he had.
Be
still!

They fell apart. He was hardly aware of it. The one scent,
the vital one, was well-nigh gone. But he could follow, must follow, down the
long winding ways of the mind. It was strong, and arrogant in its strength; it
had not shielded itself fully, although it overwhelmed the minds of all its
prey together.

He was close—closer. Walls and sanctity. Walls, and
sanctity.

Snake-swift, it struck.

Nikki swam up out of night. Alf stooped over him. The world
reeled into focus. Alf was corpse-pale; a bruise purpled his jaw. But his eyes
were sane.

Nikki seized him.
I
know
, he said
. I know where they are.

The sanity staggered, steadied. The voice was soft, but the
mind was a great swelling cry. “Where?”

In Rome. With a power—

Alf’s face shimmered. Nikki snatched with mind and
hand.
No!
He must not go, not
knowing, not seeing—

Alf was strong. Before that Hell-strong stroke of power, he
kept his consciousness, if little else.

Nikki glared at the face beside his own.
With a power,
he continued grimly,
greater than any I’ve ever known. It’s
on guard now; we won’t get closer to it than we have. Not from here, and
not with the strength that’s in us.

Alf sat up with care and pushed his hair out of his face,
holding it there, drawing a shuddering breath. “In Rome,” he
muttered. “From Rome, he—she—whoever, whatever it is—did
this.” His eyes closed. “Dear God.”

“Dear God indeed.” Jehan knelt stiffly beside
them. For Alf’s lone bruise, he had a dozen; already one eye was swelling
shut. “A force that can reach through all Rhiyana’s walls, kill
Alun, take Anna and Thea and the twins, drive you back—it must be the
Devil himself.”

“Or one of his minions. Or,” Alf said, “one
of us.”

Nikki’s body knotted with denial, but his mind spun
free of it. Yes. Horrible as that was, it could well be. It was power he had
scented, and power that had felled him.

But the Kindred were gentle people. They did not, they could
not hate as that one hated, without measure or mercy.

“No?” Alf smiled with all the sadness in the
world. “Nikephoros my child, you saw me only a moment ago. And I am one
of the gentlest of us all.”

Nikki groped for his hand and clung with convulsive
strength. As if that one weak mortal grip could hold him; could unmake it all
and bring back the brightness that had been the world.
Thea will be strong. I know she will. We’ll get her back, or she’ll
come back herself, hale and whole and spitting green fire. Why, she could make
trembling cowards out of the very devils in Hell!

Alf smiled faintly but truly. “And Heaven help any
mere black sorcerer.” He rose, wavering, steadying. “As for us, for
now, we’re needed here.”

That was all Alf, and all sanity. Yet they stared, taken
aback. That he could be so calm, so easy; that he could abandon his sister and
his lady and his children, abruptly and completely, with no visible qualm.

His eyes flickered. Like Gwydion’s: deep water above
and fires raging below. Their gazes dropped.

“Come,” he said. “We have much to do.”

One could forget, for a little while. One could drive
oneself, body and mind, until thought was lost and all one’s being
focused on the duty at hand.

Until one was weary beyond telling, and one reached for the
strong bright other, steeled against her mockery, bolstered already by the
prospect of it—and met nothingness. She was gone; she was not. There was
only the void, bereft even of pain.

Alf could not sleep. His bed, his whole tower, was full of
her absence. The cradle tormented him with its emptiness. He should dispose of
that at least; he could not bear to. As if the act would make it real and
irrevocable. They were gone; they would never come back.

No. He would find them. He must. Somehow. If there was a
God. If there was such a thing as hope.

The chapel was dark and cold. Neither too dark nor too cold
for the Brother Alfred who had been, but he was dead. Rhiyana’s
Chancellor found the stone floor hard, the crucified Christ impassive.

In shock, in the suddenness of Alun’s death, the
priest had stirred in his deep grave. He had spoken the words for the dead; he
had faced unflinching the terrible grief of the King. He was gone again, as he
must be.

Alf sank back on his heels, eyes fixed on the crucifix but
focused within. Seeing Gwydion in the hall, Alun in his arms still, a blur of
people; voices raised in startlement, in confusion, in piercing lamentation.
The men from Rome, at a loss as were they all, although some rejoiced in
secret; the Cardinal excusing himself with graceful words, half-heard and
half-heeded—but his sorrow, even to the touch of power, was real. The
Archbishop of Caer Gwent with a following of loyal monks, weeping unashamedly,
begging and cajoling and finally commanding the King to give his son over for
tending. Prince Aidan as white and still and terrible as his brother, saying
with searing cruelty, “Hold him then. Hold him till he rots.” And
in every mind with power, the brutal vision, swelling and stench, flesh dropping
from bones, worms—