The Dog and the Wolf (68 page)

Unshed tears can fill the gullet. “Wha-what did you do?”

“I told her to sin no more. And yet—she acted less in fear or hatred than out of love. That was why she could not wholly repent.” A rusty chuckle. “I asked her if she was sorry she could not, and this she agreed to. So then and there I baptized her.”

Gratillonius caught hold of the hand that clasped him, and pressed it hard.

“I’ll provide for her, of course,” he said when he was able. “She can’t stay on alone in that wretched shack.”

“She dares not come into town at all any more, now that
she carries Evirion’s child,” said Corentinus harshly. “And Verania wonders whether your children and she are safe, even within the walls. She will no longer let them out, no, not to the manor house where they’ve had pleasure, certainly not across the bridge and down along the river to see their grandmother. Dwellers on the coast live in fright, worse than any barbarians ever brought them, for barbarians are at least human and—do not stalk the shores in winter.”

As he listened, a tide rose in Gratillonius. He heard it roar, he felt himself drowning in it. “Dahut,” he called across the wild waters, “Dahut.”

“You cannot keep hiding from this,” the relentless voice marched on above him. “We must destroy that hell-creature or perish in trying.”

Gratillonius sprang up. “We can’t!” he yelled. “There is no way!” He struck his fist against the wall. Plaster cracked apart and fell. The cross shivered.

“There is, with God’s help,” said Corentinus at his back. “Nemeta staked her soul to discover it.”

Gratillonius leaned head on arm and shut his eyes.

The bishop’s tone gentled a little. “She did not see this herself, and best we keep the secret between us. I did not either, at first, nor is it entirely clear to me yet. We’ve a fouled line to untangle, you and I, and afterward a hard course to steer. It may well end in wreck for us too.”

Somehow the warning put a measure of strength back in Gratillonius. He turned from the wall.

“Good man, oh, good man,” murmured Corentinus. “I need your counsel. Can you give it? Afterward I’ll let you go home.”

Gratillonius forced a nod.

“I haven’t told you quite everything about poor mad Riwal,” said the other. “He was carrying something when the shepherd found him, and wouldn’t let slip of it. As I tried to speak with him later, he mouthed broken words about Dahut, the White One, bringing him ashore. Well, I’ve told you that. I thought, as I imagine you do, she did this—for Nemeta’s vision declared it was true she did—in refined cruelty. She’d leave no doubt that she, and nothing mortal or natural, had sunken the ship and murdered
the crew. But then I looked at the thing in his hand, and the peasant who’d brought him in explained about it. When I asked, he gave it to me, no, forced it on me. ‘For Gradlon,’ he babbled, ‘for Gradlon.’ I still don’t understand. But here it is.”

He stooped with an aged man’s stiffness and from beneath the blanket fetched a small object which he proffered. Gratillonius took it and held it near the lamp to see. Rotten wood was damp and spongy between his fingers. Decayed, worm-eaten, battered, the thing had scant form left. And yet he knew it. Suddenly he was cold down into his bones, sea-bottom cold.

“It doesn’t seem like a cult object or a magical tool, does it?” he heard across immensities. “Almost a toy.”

“That’s what it is,” he heard inside his skull. “A horse figure I made for her when she was a little girl.”

“Why on—earth—would she send it to you? A taunt? A challenge?”

“I think not,” said Gratillonius from somewhere outside himself. “My daughter was always glad of my gifts. She was so proud that her Papa could make them. This one was her special favorite. I think she’s calling me.”

2

Snow began to fall as the couple neared the top of Mons Ferruginus. It dropped through windless quiet in flakes tiny but teeming. Beyond a few yards there soon was white blindness. Ground vanished beneath it and the bare boughs of trees and shrubs bore a new flowering. A measure of warmth had stolen into the air.

Gratillonius halted on the trail. “We may as well go back,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Verania replied. “You wanted so much a view over your country.”

He glanced down at her. She looked up from within her snow-dusted cowl. The cloak happened to be black, and winter always paled her fair skin, so lips and hazel eyes
and a stray brown lock bore all the colors he saw in a world of gray and white.

“Did I say that?” he asked.

“No, not really. But I could tell.”

“You notice more than you let on.”

She shook her head. “I only pay attention—to you, my dearest.”

“Ah, well,” he sighed, “I’ve plenty memories from here.” With a grave smile: “Besides, what I most wanted was to get off alone with you.”

She came to him and laid her cheek against his breast. For a moment they held each other, then started homeward, hand in hand. The trail being narrow, often one of them must go off it into brush which scratched and crackled unnaturally loud; but neither let go.

“Anyhow,” Gratillonius said, “now I’ll have more time with the children before we tuck them in.”

“They’re lucky,” she answered. “My father was like you in this, if little else. It’s a rare kind.”

“Aw,” he mumbled.

Her grip tightened. Abruptly her voice grew shrill. “Come back to us!”

He stopped again. Her delicate features worked until she could stiffen them. Tears glinted on the lashes. “Of course I will,” he promised.

“How do I know?” The words tumbled forth. “You haven’t told me anything except that you’re leaving already.”

It tore away the visor he had lowered against her. “I haven’t dared,” he rasped. “Nobody. Nor can I speak till afterward.”

“You are going—”

“To deal with a certain menace. It won’t take long.”

“Unless you’re the one who dies.”

He shrugged.

“It could be worse than death,” she said frantically. “Gradlon, that evil is not of this world.”

“You notice too much,” he snapped.

She looked from him, and back at him, shuddered within the cloak, finally said low, “And I think about it.”

He tugged at her hand. “Come,” he proposed. They went on downhill through the snowfall.

When he thought she had calmed a bit, he said, “You’ve always been wise for your age, Verania. Have you the wisdom now to keep silence?”

She nodded.

Her fingers, which had gone icy, seemed pace by pace to thaw in his. At last she gave him a smile.

The snowfall thickened.

“Strange,” he said slowly. “All at once I remember. Today is the Birthday of Mithras.”

Alarm touched her tone. “You don’t follow that God any longer!”

“Certainly not. But it seems to me somehow as though this, everything that matters to me, it began that selfsame day, five-and-twenty years ago. I stood guard on the Wall … And soon, one way or another, it will end.”

“It won’t!” she cried. “Not for you!” Her face lifted toward hidden heaven. Snow struck it, melted, ran down in rain. “Holy Maria, Mother of God,” she appealed, “we’ve only had four years.”

In a way he did not understand but that was like a smith quenching a newly forged sword, it hardened his will for that to which he had plighted himself.

3

Midwinter nights fell early and dwelt late in Armorica, day hardly more than a glimmer between them, but this one was ice-clear. Stars thronged the dark, so bright that he could see colors in some, blue like steel, yellow like brass, red like rust. Their brilliance was also in the Milky Way, which to Ys had been the River of Tiamat, primordial Serpent of Chaos, but which elsewhere was the bridge by which the dead leave our world. Snow on the ground caught the light from above, glowed and glittered. It was a crust frozen hard, crunching underhoof; the earth beneath it boomed. Gratillonius rode easily across a vast unreal sweep of hills above the whitened valley. He was aware of the cold around him but did not feel it; he went as if in a dream.

The moon rose full, immense, over the eastern range as Favonius started down Aquilonian Way. Night became yet the more luminous, dazzlingly; but now there were fewer stars and many crooked shadows. The stallion slowed, for scattered or broken paving blocks, holes, and brambles made this part of the road treacherous. Below the thuds and the vaporous breathing, his rider began to hear the sea.

Tide was about two hours into ebb, water still well up the bay. Radiance ran across it where wave crests caught moonbeams. The wet strand shimmered. He could make out the last few rubble-bulks as blacknesses unstirring amidst that mercury fluidity. Right and left, the cliffs also denied the light. Their brutal masses shouldered into a sky that Ocean walled off afar.

He came down onto level ground and turned again west. The amphitheater huddled in its congealed marsh under a ragged blanket of snow. He glimpsed stars through gaps in the sides. Demolition had continued since he fought his battle here. By the time of his death, likely no trace whatsoever of Ys would remain.

That was supposing he reached a fairly ripe age. He might die this hour. No fear of it was in him. He had dropped such human things on the journey from Confluentes. They waited for him at home.

The amphitheater fell behind. Snow dwindled to patches and then to naught, washed away by sea-spray. Frost sparkled on rocks and leafless shrubs. The murmur he heard from the heights had become deep, multitudinously whispery at the shore, rumbling and roaring farther out. Phantoms leaped where combers broke on skerries.

“Whoa,” said Gratillonius, and drew rein. He sprang from the saddle and tethered Favonius to a bush at the rim of the beach. His cloak he unfastened and laid across the horse’s withers for whatever slight warmth it might give. It could hamper him. He wore simply Gallic tunic, breeks, soft shoes that let his feet grip the soil. Roman sword and Celtic dirk were at his belt, but he did not think he would have use for either.

Favonius whickered. Gratillonius stroked a hand down
the head and over the soft nose. “Good luck, old buddy,” he said. “God keep you.”

He turned and walked over sand and shingle toward the water. They gritted. Kelp coiled snakish. Cold such as this deadened most odors, but his nostrils drank a sharpness of salt.

Two hillocks marked where High Gate formerly stood. Passing between, he saw more. On his left, that one had been the royal palace; on his right, that one had been the Temple of Belisama. A vague track and two or three cracked slabs told him that he betrod Lir Way. Moored to a stump of stone lay a boat—aye, the lifeboat from
Brennilis.

At the water’s edge he halted and looked outward. Receding, Ocean nonetheless cast small waves that licked around his ankles. He did not mark their chill. Froth roiled around pieces of wall and a single pillar.

Here I am, Dahut, his spirit called. I have come in answer to your bidding.

For a span that seemed long, nothing stirred but the waves. He was without expectations. How could a mortal man foreknow what would travel through this night? Witchcraft had told that she would be in her Ys, but Satan was the wellspring of untruth. Gratillonius had arrived at moon-rise to make doubly sure, and to see as well as might be, little though he wanted to. He was himself burdened with sin, and unbaptized; she ought not to fear him. Though she had knowledge of where those were whom she hated, he did not believe she could hear their thoughts; else she would scarcely have sent her token to him. But what did he know?

His task was to keep her heedful of him; how?

He waited.

A wave, yonder where the gate once opened to the sea? A riptide? Seal-swift it flowed his way. A wake shone brokenly behind. Now he saw an arm uplifted, now he saw the thick, rippling hair. She reached the shallows, a few yards from him, halted, and stood.

The tide swirled around her waist. The light poured over her face, her breasts, the arms she held toward him. White she was as the snow or the waves that shattered on the skerries, save for the mane that he knew was golden
and the eyes that he knew were summer-blue. So had he last seen her, demonic at the Bridge of Sena, and the worst horror of it had been the lust that raged aloft in him.

But tonight it was not thus at all. She was merely and wholly beautiful. The whiteness was purity. Her sea had washed her clean; she was renewed, Princess of Ys, and she smiled across the water like that little girl for whom he carved a wooden horse. She was his daughter, born to Dahilis, and she needed him.

Her song went high and sweet over the shout and thunder below the cliffs.

“Out of this moonlight on the sea,

Sundered from you ashore,

Father, I call you, come to me

And give me your love once more.

“Though I have left your world of man,

Flung on the wind like foam,

Do you remember how I ran

To meet you when you came home?

“Lullaby now is wave on reef,

Hollow and comfortless.

Yours was the laugh that healed all grief,

And there was no loneliness.

“Cold were those years when I at sea

Longed, and yet could not weep.

Father, I call you, come to me

And rock me again to sleep.”

By the mercy of Christ. No, he could not judge that. He must not utter it.

She stood waiting for him. If he stayed on the land that was forbidden her, she would soon swim away, alone forever.

He waded forth. The bottom sloped steeply. A few feet past her, he would be over his depth. Salt drops stung his lips.

Joy pulsed from her. She leaned forward, as if she could
go no higher. The hands trembled that reached for him. Her smile outshone the stars that wreathed her hair.

He opened his arms. She fell into them. He held her tightly against him. Her embrace around his neck, her head on his breast, stabbed with chill. “Dahut,” he said, “oh, Dahut.”

She wrenched herself loose. Her scream clawed. Never had he beheld such terror on any face.

Not looking around, he knew that his follower Corentinus had reached the strand and begun the exorcism.