King's Blood (43 page)

The whole of the land sighed. Life was coming back to it. The power that had drained its strength was gone. The sun's light was clean again. He could feel the earth healing under his feet.

His sister bowed with only a faint hint of irony. “Welcome,” she said, “to the heart of Britain. It seems we have a new Guardian.”

“Guardians,” said his Mathilda. She frowned. “It's not over yet, is it? The cause is gone, but the sickness is still there. It's mending, but too slowly.”

“The blight is deep,” the Lady said. “Healing needs time.”

Mathilda shook her head, but she did not argue with that. She turned back to Henry. “Do you know what I've got you into?”

“I rather think I got myself into it,” he said.

“Blame it on the gods,” Cecilia said. She slid in between them, took a hand of each, and tugged them away from the water. “It's over. It's done. The Saxon rule—it's ended, finally; there's nothing left of it. We have a victory to celebrate.”

Mathilda looked as if she might have begged to differ, but again she held her tongue. Politic as well as wise, Henry thought. He was enchanted.

 
The feast was hasty and some of the guests were rather late, but it was a grand celebration nonetheless. The Old Things came, one by one while the daylight lasted, but once night had fallen, they came flocking, from feys and airy spirits to the Great Ones of the Otherworld.

Henry must have danced with every female thing on the Isle. Some of them were very alluring indeed, but none was the one he wanted. She had disappeared somewhere between the feast and the dance.

At last there was a lull in the music. Even immortal musicians, it seemed, needed to rest now and then. Henry escaped before they struck up the dance again.

He found her just as he had concluded that she was not in the Isle at all, but had slipped away to God alone knew where. But there she was, close by where they had appeared that day, sitting by the lake with her knees drawn up and a striped cat curled around her feet.

He moved in quietly and sat beside her. The waves lapped softly on the shore. Faintly over the water, a night bird called.

The cat abandoned her to curl purring in Henry's lap. She astonished him with a smile.

“You weren't in the dance,” he said.

“I needed to think.”

He reached for her hand, just as she reached for his. It was quite different, and quite pleasant, without the jewel caught between. The cat's purr rose almost to a growl; it sprang out of his lap and disappeared into the dark.

As soon as it was gone, he forgot it in the wonder of her face. “Are you always so solemn?”

“I suppose,” she said. “I can't help thinking . . . there's more to come. We've won something, but not enough.”

He nodded. “The Hunt is still out there. It should have gone back where it belonged. It's still harvesting souls.”

“You understand,” she said. “The others, they all say it will run clean again, like a river after a flood—we only need to be patient. I don't think patience is going to help us. They've been running free for too long. They don't want to go back to order and limits and the gate only open for the great rites.”

“What do they do?” Henry asked. “On the other side—what are they? What are they for?”

She frowned slightly, as if searching her memory. “They're the hunters of souls—of course. They cleanse the skies of dark spirits. Their king is a great lord of the Otherworld. He rules the Beltane rite, and restores the land from its winter death. He makes life, rather than destroying it. Even the souls he takes, or took before he was twisted, are given a just punishment.”

“You should have let him take the abbess,” Henry said after he had considered all the angles of that. “If he is a bringer of justice, and you refused him that, his purpose is unfulfilled. He can't go away until that is somehow undone.”

“I don't believe that,” she said. “She wasn't for him. Something else keeps him here. Some other task undone. Something . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Henry was strongly tempted to let his hand slide softly down her back from the white curve of her neck to her rounded buttocks.

That would have been very ill-judged. Her fingers, laced with his, were warm. She sighed and bent her head and kissed the back of his hand, then turned it palm up and kissed his palm; then the inside of his wrist, where the pulse beat quick and shallow.

He had never known a woman to do such a thing—as a man would, as he would: turn to the body's pleasure and free the mind to find answers where it would.

It was a peculiar sensation to be used so. He had to be fair: when her eyes rested on him, they saw him. She knew who and what he was, and if he knew women at all, she was quite sufficiently pleased with it.

He took the challenge. He set out to make her forget everything but him. How well he succeeded, he was not absolutely certain. But when she cried out, it was his name that burst out of her.

He was pleased out of all measure—and almost out of his own pleasure. By the gods, he was in love. It had never been like this before; never so strong.

It was the magic. They were so very like, so very well matched. The land had known. It had brought them together. Maybe it had made them for each other.

Coldhearted prince he might be, but in the aftermath of loving, wrapped in her arms as she was in his, he was as giddy as a boy—drunk with the scent and the nearness of her. Then he was glad of this night and this victory, however incomplete it might seem once the light of morning was on it.

CHAPTER 48

Well, daughter,” Malcolm said. “That was cleverly done. Britain's free of the Saxon yoke now. Your mother's turning in her grave. Are you content with what you've done?”

Edith was awake, lying on the grass by the lake. Henry slept beside her. The moon was westering, the mist lying low. The last of the revel had died down some while since.

Her father was standing between Edith and the lake. His feet were grounded in mist. The rest of him was much as it had been in life. She saw no mark on him of the Wild Hunt: no naked skull or corpse-lights. He was a perfectly ordinary apparition, speaking in his familiar voice.

She was glad beyond words to see him so. Even that he seemed to be reprimanding her—he had a right, just as she had a right to say, “I am content. I've preserved this land from the jaws of the sea, and put an end to the plagues and famine.”

“That you have not,” Malcolm said. “It had already gone beyond the old woman in the abbey, however many souls she had living in her body. Britain may stay above the wave, but the Hunt will still ride, and the children will still die. When all the children are dead, and the old begin to fall, what will the rest do? How long will the kingdom endure?”

Any warmth that Edith had felt in her father's presence was gone. He had set in words what she knew in her bones. “What, then?” she demanded of him. “What more can we do?”

“You know,” he said.

“Bind the king to Britain,” she said—sighed, rather. “He won't. He flat refuses.”

“This needs more than a binding,” Malcolm said. “To heal the land and shut the gates of the Otherworld and restore the Hunt to its old nature and purpose—each of those is a great working.”

“You need a sacrifice,” Edith said. Her voice had gone flat.

“King's blood,” said Malcolm. “On sacred ground with a blessed weapon, in the old way and the strong way. There is no other choice.”

“Must it be a crowned king?”

Henry was awake, sitting up, and clearly focused on Malcolm. They must have met, Edith thought. Or he knew because she knew.

Malcolm took him in at leisure. “So. You're the youngest. You look like your mother.”

“So they say,” said Henry. “Is there an answer to my question? Do you know it?”

“It must be a true-born king of Britain,” Malcolm said.

“Born to the blood?” Henry asked. “Is that what it needs?”

“It needs the blood,” Malcolm said.

Henry nodded. “So it does. I can feel it. The land is in me, spirit. Will that be enough—that, and a willing sacrifice?”

“No,” said Edith. She had not even been aware she was speaking until the word was out. “No, not you. You can't—”

She knew that expression. William had it when he refused to be king, Anselm when he would not be Guardian. Henry refused to be the youngest brother, the one whom no one counted, the prince who would never be king.

“They told me I was the year-king,” Henry said. “The land claimed me. The power is in me. If I give it up—if I offer my life and blood and even my soul—will the kingdom be saved? Will the people live?”

“That would be a great offering,” Malcolm said.

“I forbid it,” said Edith. “You cannot do it, and
you,
” she said fiercely to her father, “cannot accept it.”

“What other choice is there?” Henry asked. He sounded resigned, as if his mind was entirely made up. “My brother won't give way. It's too much a matter of pride for him now. He's a good enough king. He'll find an heir who will do—another of Robert's bastards, or for that matter one of mine. The kingdom will do well, once the burden of magic is lifted from it.”

“Britain is magic,” Edith said, shaping each word with care. “You can't do this. I won't let you.”

“And who are you,” said Henry, “to allow or forbid?”

“She is a daughter of kings,” Malcolm said before Edith could speak, “and a Lady of the Isle, and a Guardian of Britain.”

Edith opened her mouth to point out that she was not yet a Lady and probably never would be, but Henry was already speaking. “If you are all that, lady, then you know I have to do this. Who else can? There are kings in Scotland and Wales, and they're as royal as any, but this needs William the Bastard's blood. Doesn't it, spirit?”

Malcolm spread his hands. “It does seem so. I only bought you seven years. William conquered this kingdom; it stands to reason that his blood would be required to save it.”

“There,” said Henry. “That's clear enough. What do I need to do? Is there a ritual? Does it need a consecrated weapon, or will good Norman steel do?”

He had drawn his sword, the idiot, as if he would fall on it then and there. Edith rose up in outrage and blasted it to shards.

He stood empty-handed, staring at the smoking fragments that had been a sword. She was perilously close to rendering him into the same condition. “If you must die,” she said with all the control she had left, “you will do it in the proper way and in the proper time. You!” she cried to her father, “Begone! I loved you while you were alive and honor you in your death, but if you take my beloved from me, I will hound you through all the worlds.”

Malcolm's ghostly brows rose. “Ah, so,” he said. “So that's the way of it. Well, lad, I wish you a good fight. With this one you'll need it.”

Henry opened his mouth to speak, but Malcolm was gone. They were alone in the starlight, beside the still lake. Nothing moved; apart from them, nothing breathed. The world itself had gone motionless.

Edith rounded on Henry. “Don't you dare kill yourself! Or get yourself killed, either.”

“Is there any other choice?” he asked her with a touch of weariness.

“There are endless choices! I won't lose you. Do you hear me? I won't let you go.”

“Even if this kingdom falls? Even then, lady?”

She shook her head. “It won't fall. I won't let that happen, either. Will you promise not to die until there truly is no other choice?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good,” she said. Then she stopped. “Do I appall you?”

He blinked. “No,” he said. “No, you're fascinating.”

She would not ask the question that her heart was insisting she ask—that no doubt, great man for woman that he was, he was expecting. She kissed him, because there was no resisting it, and pulled him to his feet. “I'll lock you in durance vile if I have to—bear that well in mind. I'll make sure you keep your promise.”

“Yes, lady,” he said meekly.

She eyed him with suspicion, but he was the picture of innocence. He went willingly with her away from the lake, back toward the houses and the Ladies' protection.

 
Henry was enchanted—truly. But the conclusion he had come to, in spite of his promise, would not go away. He had been arriving at it, one way and another, since he set foot in England the year before. He was the one. The land had chosen him. In every way it could, it had been telling him so.

He was not afraid. Death was a door, the old religion said; and the new one, its own God knew, preached the superiority of heaven. Not to be alive again, not to see her living face, did trouble him—but who knew? He might be granted leave to haunt her.

He was as close to content as he could be, as his beautiful and imperious guide brought him to the largest of the round houses in the Isle. People were still awake there, conversing softly by firelight: the three Guardians and one or two white-gowned Ladies, and a cat that was not, by its nature, a cat at all.

Cecilia greeted them with a glance that saw a great deal—but not everything. Henry smiled as he sat beside her.

She did not smile back. The council had been grim, he could tell from their faces. He had a fair reckoning of what they had been saying, too.

His lady—because she was that; he could not deny it—was eyeing him narrowly. He would tell his sister later what he had decided. For now, there were greetings and inconsequentialities, and after a little while, they all repaired to bed for what was left of the night.