King's Blood (46 page)

Henry sat down deeper in the saddle and tightened rein. The stallion jibbed but settled somewhat. They had entered a region of mist, curling in dank tendrils around the horses' legs.

The mist had substance. It slowed the horses; they began to struggle. Henry debated the wisdom of drawing cold iron in this place. Not wise, no. He reached into the part of himself where the magic was, and drew a sword of light.

It cut through the mist like a scythe through grain. The horses, freed, sprang from wallowing trot into long-strided canter.

There was light ahead, past a swirl of darkness and stars. And there was a wall of bone and ragged flesh: hounds and riders of the Wild Hunt, barring the way back into the world.

Mathilda rode straight for them. Henry had no hands free for his earthly blade. One gripped hers; the other still held the sword of magic that he had made.

He swept it before them as they plunged through the Hunt. Hounds bayed; bones scattered. Light and air and mortal earth burst upon them. They fell in a tangle of limbs, horses and humans together.

CHAPTER 51

The scent of bruised grass filled Henry's nostrils. He sneezed. His body protested vehemently. It was rather more damaged than the grass.

Something moved under him. He groaned and disentangled himself from Mathilda.

They were both alive and apparently intact. So were the horses, apart from a broken rein or two. The beasts were grazing in a meadow surrounded by trees. The sun was halfway down the sky; the shadows had begun to lengthen.

It seemed an ordinary meadow in an ordinary forest, but Henry knew well how deceptive appearances could be. There was power here: a deep well of it, rooted in the meadow and the grove.

This was a holy place. Henry rose unsteadily, drawing strength from the earth.

Mathilda was already on her feet, and her wits were quicker than his, too. She pulled him about to face the rest of the Guardians, and behind them the eerie ranks of the Hunt.

The Hunt was all around them. The trees were full of its riders.

Mathilda ignored them. She was glaring at Robin FitzHaimo. “You warned him. He knows.”

“He knows nothing,” FitzHaimo said. “The words blew over him like wind. He delayed for a morning, that was all.”

“Sunset is a more powerful time to die,” said the Lady. “You did well.”

FitzHaimo's face set. Henry almost pitied him. This was easy for no one, but for a lover it must be brutal.

Old rites were brutal. That was the way of them. FitzHaimo was part of this; he had chosen it.

So had they all. Even Henry. Though what he had chosen, he was not sure yet.

The Guardians stood at each of the four quarters of the meadow. Mathilda had slipped free of Henry's grip to take the station of the east. He stood alone near the center.

The earth balanced precisely underfoot. The sky was its perfect image overhead. The Guardians lifted up walls of air: a fortress of magic and pure will. The Hunt waited, silent, un-moving. A new soul would join them by nightfall. That was their bargain and their expectation.

Unless, thought Henry, they were restored to their old semblance and returned to the Otherworld. They did not seem to have any fear of that.

There was one gap in the circle, one opening into the shadows of the wood. Henry heard hoofbeats there: swift, light, headlong. A stag was running. Behind it, fainter but still distinct, he caught the sound of horses galloping.

 
The stag's trail doubled on itself. Walter Tirel slipped ahead of William, who had paused to see if the beast had leaped into the underbrush. He peered through woven branches, searching for the tines of antlers.

The stag sprang out of the trees, straight across Walter Tirel's path. His horse shied. He was standing in the stirrups to shoot; he clung to bow and saddle, but the black arrow dropped, snapping under his horse's hoof.

He cursed, then laughed, flashing a grin over his shoulder at William. The stag veered and then bolted down the track toward a distant gleam of light.

Walter Tirel whooped and spurred after it. William was oddly sluggish, but his horse was not about to be left behind. When he failed to demand a gallop, the stallion made the decision for himself.

They pounded breakneck through the trees. Through the whipping of wind and lashing of branches, he could see Walter Tirel's flying hair, and the stag beyond him, bounding higher and ever higher the closer it came to the light.

There was clear air beyond, green of grass, and the sun hanging low. The stag, out in the open, leaped and darted. Walter Tirel kept the straight path—the most wizardly thing William had ever known him to do. He had a fresh arrow in his hand, as black as the other.

It was an odd clearing, a nearly perfect circle, and the trees that ringed it were all very, very old; yet they seemed planted: oak and ash and thorn. At each quarter of the wind, William saw a standing stone. It almost looked like a hooded figure, erect and still, raising a vast edifice of magic over what must be an old holy place. It certainly had the look.

William felt strangely at ease here. His horse slowed; he let it. Magic that had been the bane of his life seemed right and proper in this place. It belonged here. And so, God knew how, did he.

 
Men and stag burst into the clearing together. They were blind to what was in and about it: Henry saw how they looked over Cecilia's head as if she had not been there, and stared straight through Henry where he stood in the center.

The stag veered past him, so close he felt the puff of its breath on his cheek. Walter Tirel was hot on its heels. Henry roused almost too late and hauled his horse back. Walter Tirel's light-boned chestnut skittered and shied and careened into him.

Henry's larger, heavier horse kept its feet, but the chestnut went down. Walter Tirel flew from the saddle, tucked and rolled like a tumbler.

His bow took flight, too, but with evident will and intent: straight for Henry's hand. Henry had it before he knew what he had done, and in his other hand a black arrow, stinging as it slapped into his palm.

William had drawn rein just within the walls of air. The stag stood motionless between. Henry had clearly seen it bolt past him, but there it was, halfway back the way it had come. It was real; he would have known an illusion, and that was true and mortal hide and hair and bone, heaving sides and staring eyes and moistly quivering nostrils.

Henry met William's eyes over the stag's back. William had a bow and it was strung, but he had not nocked an arrow to the string. He was waiting for Henry to shoot.

Not Henry—no. William would have been surprised to find his brother here, who had last been seen in Salisbury. Henry looked for the reflection in those eyes, and saw Walter Tirel's face.

Magic and delusion. Henry willed the king to see who faced him and why. The power in this place dragged at that will; strove to distort and twist it into more illusion. Henry set his teeth and ripped at it.

He could shoot the stag. Or any of the Guardians. Or the Huntsman himself. This arrow in his hand had such power. It was a working of the Otherworld, but its tip was mortal steel—coldest of cold iron, death to Old Things.

Death to mortals, too; it was wickedly sharp, a hunting point, meant to pierce muscle and bone of beasts heavier, thicker-skinned, and stronger than men. Henry nocked it to the string. William sat still on his red horse as if enspelled—or as if, at the last, he understood.

Once more Henry met those bright blue eyes. There was recognition in them. Acceptance? Maybe William had not come to that yet.

The earth of Britain was healing. The folk of air were stronger. But plague still ran rampant, and there was the Hunt, riddled with corruption, waiting for Henry to fail.

He could not fail. His chest was tight; his breath came hard. He raised the bow, aimed and sighted. Straight for the heart.

If the stag moved, if it came between, then so be it. Maybe Henry waited a second beyond the necessary, hoping for it. But the world had gone still.

The arrow flew. William could still escape—still throw himself aside. But he stood as stiff as a target. Did he shift, even, to lie more surely open to the shot? Did he know—understand? At the last, was he the willing, the royal sacrifice?

God knew. Henry's powers were spent. All of them had left him with that black arrow, plunging into his brother's heart.

William reeled out of the saddle. The stag was gone. He fell headlong. The arrow twisted and snapped, tearing flesh. Heart's blood sprang.

The earth sighed. The Guardians moved. Tears were streaming down FitzHaimo's face.

The Hunt left the concealment of the trees. William's blood fed the thirsty land, but the Hunt was still dark—still stained with the blight. Henry watched it in despair. Even murder—fratricide, regicide—had not been enough. Dear gods, must it be suicide, too?

He slid from his horse's back. The bow was slack in his hand. He let it fall.

Walter Tirel was crouching there, wide-eyed and conscious and paralytic with terror. Henry had no time to spare for him.

William was not quite dead. His soul was no fool; it clung to its body in dread of the Hunt.

That was the last sacrifice. Loosing the arrow—that had been easy beside this. Henry had to pry the soul free and let the Hunt take it.

William had been an infamous sinner, arrogant, head-strong, and heedless. Many a priest and holy monk would sing hosannas to hear what damnation waited for him. So would one damned soul in the Hunt: old Malcolm grinning down, savoring the prospect. He had damned himself for this, to exact the perfect revenge.

Henry knelt beside his brother and touched his finger to the still-warm stream of blood from the wound. He raised it to his lips. It tasted of iron and sweetness and slow fire. That was life, though he would have expected a good deal more bitterness, and the salt of tears.

“If he goes willingly,” he said to the dead king and the immortal Huntsman, “no one here will stop him.”

“You mortals,” the Huntsman said, tossing his crown of antlers. “Always you bargain. We are not merchants.”

“No?” said Henry. “This isn't a negotiation. This is what will be. He chooses this—or he goes free.”

“And his kingdom—the kingdom you have won—dies from the heart outward. Children first, young king. All the children, every one.”

Henry steeled himself against that. It was as difficult a thing as he had ever done. He would do what he must do. No matter the cost.

He dipped his finger in blood again and drew the posts and lintel of a gate on the cooling forehead. “Out,” he said. “Out and face yourself.”

William's eyes opened. His voice was a breathless whisper. “Don't know how. Don't—”

“Think it,” Henry said. “Make it so. Choose.”

The lids fell shut. He was not going to—Henry knew it. He would resist to the last, and destroy them all.

His body shuddered. His soul sprang out of it, the very image of him to the life, straight up toward the Huntsman. He had a sword in his hand—though where he had got it, only he and the gods knew.

He grinned like a wild thing, taking them all aback—even the Huntsman; even as his incorporeal blade plunged between those bony ribs.

The world stopped. The walls of air wavered and threatened to fall.

William laughed. “Lord!” he cried. “What fools we mortals be!”

He wrenched his blade free. The Huntsman wailed like the wind through empty places. The hounds echoed him, and the army of Old Things and dead souls and spectral hunters.

Then the world changed.

The sun was all but touching the horizon—and yet darkness went away. The world was washed in a tide of light. Henry looked up into William's face, the broad grin and the hot-blue eyes and the joyous arrogance that would never change, no matter whether he was alive or dead.

The Huntsman stood behind him, utterly transformed: the Horned King, tall and strange and beautiful. His mount wore flesh; his huntsmen rode in the semblance of Great Old Ones, high lords of the Otherworld, or of old kings and heroes, princes of renown, who had won this destiny for their bravery and their prowess in battle. Even the hounds were returned to the light again, great white hounds with red ears, and their eyes were full of stars.

Henry bowed to them. They bowed in return. William said, “Don't worry. I understand.”

For the first time Henry felt the rush of grief, the realization that his brother was dead. Truly dead, and not to be reborn.

“But not damned,” William said. “Not by my lights. Don't wallow, little brother. You've got what you were always meant to have—won fair and true, in the oldest of the old ways. It takes a king to kill a king—and to make one.”

Henry bowed again, down to the ground. When he rose, the Hunt had vanished, melted into the gold-red light, taking with it William's soul. The gates of the Otherworld were shut. The walls of air had grown, swelled, expanded to encompass the whole of the isle and a good part of the sea.

“There will be no other conquest,” said the Lady Etaine. “No more invaders. No such defeat, ever again.”

“Amen,” Henry said.

The Guardians had drawn in close. With the Hunt gone, the air was full of Old Things, so thick with them that they dimmed the sky.

Etaine bent over the fallen king's body. As Henry had done, she dipped her hand in blood. She painted Henry's face with it, a war-mask of the old time. She painted his breast and hands, and last of all his lips, whispering as she did so, incantations so strong that words were too small to hold them.

He tasted blood, still warm with the heat of life. He felt the bindings as she made them: binding him to the earth, to air and sky, to the waters of Britain; weaving him into the land, and the land into him. There was no sin or atonement, no guilt or grief. He was the king, and king's blood made it so.