King's Blood (27 page)

CHAPTER 30

Edith stumbled and fell.

She had been walking down the passage to the stillroom with instructions to fetch a potion for her mother, when the vision smote her. Such a thing had never happened before. It was like one of her magical dreams, vivid and immediate, but much stronger: so strong it brought her to her knees.

It was a soft day in Edinburgh, with a mist from the sea, but the sun was shining brightly in the vision. There was a river, swollen into flood, and a steep hillside, and a road running between hill and river.

Armies were fighting on the road and up the hill and falling into the river. She had never learned to make sense of a battle—an important skill, the men always said—and to her eye it was a confusion of men and horses, banners and weapons. Still, even she could see that some of the men were trying to push forward, and many more were before and behind and on the hill, either trying to kill them or trying to drive them into the river.

There were more than men in that place. The spectral Hunt was there, in the mortal world and under the mortal sun, well outside of its proper time and place. It circled in the air above the battle, poised to catch souls as they fled. The skeletal hounds rent them; the fleshless hunters devoured what little was left.

All but the Huntsman. He sat motionless on his bony mount, with his long stag's skull bent on the scene below, and the pale ghost-fire of his eyes followed one mortal out of them all. That was his prey, and he was waiting with terrible patience for it to fall into his hands.

Edith hovered in the air above both mortal men and Old Things. As she bent her focus on the battle, she seemed to swoop down toward it, until she drifted directly above it. Then she saw whose soul the Huntsman waited for.

Her father was fighting hard, his sword a blur of steel. He never seemed to tire. He was making headway—driving the enemy back, and rallying his own men to charge after charge. She could see that, once she focused on him: how some men fought with him, and a great number of others fought against him.

So that was how men saw a battle. She did not like it any better now she understood it. Because once she did, she could see that the Scots were terribly outnumbered, and the enemy—Normans, she presumed—could send men in waves, so that a good number rested while the others did the fighting.

This was her fault. She had shown the Hunt where to go. Now men were losing their souls because of her, and her father was like to lose his.

Somehow, far away from all this, her body staggered into the stillroom and collapsed onto the bench by the door. No one was there to stare or ask questions.

It was almost too strange, being in two places at once. Tempting, too, to leave the vision behind and try to forget it—but guilt and anger were too strong.

She pressed her hands to her face, squeezing her eyes shut. The stillroom vanished. There was only the battle, and her father fighting for his life and—though maybe he did not know it—his soul.

She saw the spear that struck for his heart. It was an ordinary spear in an ordinary man's hand, but it came from beside and below while Malcolm fought off a knight on a giant of a horse. He never knew it was there.

The Huntsman's face was a skull, and therefore lipless. Yet he smiled.

She cried out. She tried to muster magic—anything, spell or cantrip or sheer force of will—to turn that spear aside. But her power would not reach so far, not with the Huntsman to bar the way.

With appalling inevitability, the spear thrust through mail and padded gambeson, upward beneath the ribs to the heart. Malcolm continued the stroke that killed the knight—struck the head clean off his shoulders—and turned to find another man to kill. He stopped, eyes widening, surprised that he could not finish the turn.

Then he knew that he was dead. It did not seem to trouble him. He shrugged; laughed. Clove another Norman in two. And fell to the bloodied earth.

The spear wrenched loose as he toppled. Heart's blood sprang from the wound.

A sound like a long sigh ran through the Hunt. The Huntsman stooped out of the sky, reaching with a bony hand.

Edith had done nothing but grieve or rage—she could not even tell which. And yet abruptly she was there, between her father's body and the Horned King.

The soul was rising out of the broken flesh. The Hunt bayed. “No,” Edith said.

Her voice was much clearer than she had expected. It drew power from the earth below and the sky overhead. Her father's blood was in her, and her mother's that went back to Alfred: blood of kings twice over.

She looked into the hollow sockets of the Huntsman's skull, where a corpse-light gleamed. She was not afraid. The soul behind her was still struggling, like a snake slipping its skin. It was taking a terribly long time about it, while the earth fed on the blood that drained from the body.

“Britain has his blood,” Edith said to the Huntsman, who loomed over her, threatening her with sheer size. “You've no right to his soul.”

“Nonetheless,” the Huntsman said, “we will take it.”

“No,” Edith said as she had before. “You have what you came for. Now go.”

The horned head lifted. It was so close that she had to tilt her own head back to see it. “You dare command us?”

“In the name of Alfred,” she said, “and Arthur, and Bran the Blessed, I bid you begone. Blood of a king has fed you. Blood of a king will banish you. Turn away from the sunlight and return from whence you came.”

The Hunt had gone still. Souls drifted up past it, for once forgotten.

The Huntsman laughed, a deep bay. That sound beat Edith down. Somehow she fell across her father, as the last of him slipped free. But as she looked up, she saw the Hunt waiting, spread out across the sky.

He was befuddled as souls were when the body let them go, unless they were powerful mages. Like any newborn thing, he was weak and helpless: easy prey for their hounds and their masters.

She flung her arms about him. He felt like a memory of his old sturdy self. “Take me,” she said to the Huntsman. “Let him go.”

The Huntsman stooped over her, peering into her face. “You are a great power still to come,” he said. “Would you sacrifice it all for an old man whose time is past?”

“He is my father,” she said.

The Huntsman bent lower. But the soul in her arms said, “Wait.”

Edith was startled almost into letting him go. The Huntsman paused with his hand half-outstretched.

Edith did not recognize the being she clung to. He had been grey and old when she was born; she had never known him when he was young.

He was a fine young thing, upright and strong, with thick ruddy hair and a bright blue eye. The grimness that had been so much a part of him in age was barely beginning; the lines of care were not yet there at all.

He was still her father, and he stood up straight and set her gently but firmly aside. “So, old horror,” he said to the Huntsman with boldness that made Edith's breath catch, “what's this you're up to now? Shouldn't you have a scrap or two of flesh on those bones?”

“We are what fate has made us,” the Huntsman said.

Malcolm's eyes gleamed with the same cold light as the Huntsman's. “William has made you. So I'm the sacrifice that saves him. Was it you who drove me to this? And now you'll eat my soul?”

The bony shoulder lifted: half of a shrug. “We do what we must.”

“I would think,” said Malcolm, “that you would be glad of this. You're riding in daylight, taking souls when it should never be your time. Your power is greater than ever.”

“We are Britain's own,” the Huntsman said. “We do what we are destined to do. But if Britain dies, in the end, after we have devoured it all, we ourselves shall die, last and most terrible of all.”

Malcolm tilted his head. “You are complicated,” he said. “I'll make a bargain with you. Let my daughter go. I'll ride with you—and I'll help you hunt down Red William.”

Edith opened her mouth to protest—because that was a terrible thing he was doing, a ghastly thing, sealing his own damnation. But neither he nor the Horned King had any care for her.

“What help can you give us?” the Huntsman asked. “A mortal soul is of little use except to feed the Hunt. Why should we make you one of us?”

“Because,” said Malcolm with a death's-head grin, “I'm a king of this land and now my blood is in it. Who better to hunt a king?”

“And if we choose not to hunt him? If we pursue other quarry forever, and let him be? What then?”

“I'll risk it,” Malcolm said.

“You can't do that!” Edith burst out.

Malcolm brushed his hand over her hair, light as a breath of wind. “Go back now. Live well, and remember me.”

Edith could feel the magic tugging at her, the bonds of mortal flesh drawing her back. She fought, but they were too strong for her.

Everyone was too strong for her. She was sick to death of it.

“Not death,” her father said. “Not yet. Go.”

She whirled away like a leaf in a strong wind, straining and twisting to break free. Her father was mounted already on a beast like a horse, clothed in pallid flesh over the stark bone.

All the hunt had lost somewhat of its skeletal quality: it seemed lighter somehow, and less hideous. They had fed well, and regained a measure of their old substance.

Her father had done that. It was a great sacrifice, and a great damnation. Her heart wailed in sorrow, even as she opened her eyes on daylight.

Tears were running down her face. Her throat was raw as if she had been keening aloud as well as in spirit.

For a long moment she gave herself up to it. But cold sanity was creeping in. No one here could know what had passed far away in England. They still believed their king alive, well, and raiding Red William's towns and castles.

She wiped the tears away as best she could. There was still no one in the stillroom. The potion for her mother was made; she knew where it was, on the third shelf on the back wall, in the jar with the blue lid.

As thick as her head was with crying, she could barely smell anything, but this was pungent enough to make her sneeze. It cleared her head, too, inside and out. She measured it into the vial she had brought with her, lidded the jar and stoppered the vial.

By the time she was done, she was as calm as she could expect to be. Her first, childish impulse, to run crying through the dun, was gone. The messenger from the south would come soon enough. Until then, let Malcolm's people live without grief.

It was a fine resolve, and she was strong enough to keep it, too. She could feel her heart turning to steel. She was not a child any longer. She was going to learn how to use what she had, and how to make herself stronger.

 
The queen lay exactly as she had been before, hovering between life and death. Her priests had debated fiercely whether to give her the Last Rites. That would come soon, Edith thought.

There was no room in her for any more grief. She could be cold and dispassionate as she gave the vial to her mother's physician and went to stand by the bed, looking down on that wasted figure as the Horned King had looked down on her.

Had he felt powerful? Edith did not. She felt nothing.

She knelt beside the bed. Queen Margaret lay very still, but her breast rose and fell. Edith laid a hand on her forehead. It was cool. The life in her had retreated to her center.

Not long now, Edith thought dispassionately. She drew back for a moment as the physician dosed her mother from the vial. The queen struggled faintly, but her strength was nearly gone. When she lay still again, Edith returned to her side.

People came and went: priests and nuns mostly. Sometimes a man, uncomfortable in that thick, close air, came to assure himself that the queen was still alive. One or two of those were her brothers—strangers to her when she was small, and no more familiar now. She had to search her memory for their names.

She doubted that they were any more familiar with hers. They hardly seemed to see her: yet another female in black, hovering over their mother.

One of them must be king now, since Edward was dead, too. It little mattered to Edith which of them it was. She was growing out of Scotland, or Scotland had grown out of her.

Night fell as she knelt there. She hardly felt her body. Someone brought food that she ate and a cup of something that she drank. She was the only one who stayed so long. The rest took watches like guards.

 
In the deep night, when life even in the young and hale burned low, Edith started awake. She had not been asleep, exactly, but she had been dreaming: a dream that fled as consciousness recovered itself.

The queen's eyes were open. In lamplight they were dark, already fixed far beyond the world. But they saw Edith; they knew her face.

The cold gaunt hands gripped hers. Flesh covered them still, but she could not help but think of the Huntsman's skeletal fingers, and the terrible power that was in them.

He had never touched her. The queen held her fast. The black eyes bound her. The voice was a whisper, but it filled her skull. “I must go. My Lord, my beloved—He calls me home. But you I bequeath to England. You will restore it as I could not. I sinned—I loved a mortal man. You will turn from that path.”

“But—” Edith began.

“I see,” her mother said. “I know. . . . You are more even than I hoped. You must go back; take vows. Give yourself to God.”

Edith bit her tongue. What she did not say, she could not be forced to unsay.

The queen's grip tightened, grinding bone on bone. Edith hissed with pain. “Your father will try to force you into sin, as he forced me. Resist him.”