Hounds of God

by Tarr, Judith

  It had power, and it was stark with fear, all instinct, all resistance.

  Alf’s hands were on her, startlingly cool. “Push,” he commanded. He reached with his mind, drawing in the others, aiming, loosing.

  A cry tore itself out of her.

  He was relentless. “Again.”

  Oh, she hated him, she hated his will, she hated the agony he had set in her. She gathered all her hate and thrust it downward.

  Maura was there beside Alf. “Almost, Thea. Once more. Only once.”

  Liar. There were two of the little horrors. She pushed.

  Something howled.

  Something else tore, battling.

  Little witch-bitch. Kill her mother, would she?

  “Turn her.” Gwydion, but strange, breathless. Excited? Afraid? “Alf, turn—”

  Like a blocked calf.

  That was Alf’s shock and his utterly unwilling amusement. And his power, stretching and curving, turning—slipping.

  Strong little witch.

  Holding. Calming. Easing, inch by inch. Down, round.

  Ah, God!

  Out.

  The world had stopped.

  No; only the pain.

  Gwydion was grinning, impossible, wonderful vision. Alf was far beyond that. He laid a twofold burden on her emptied body, red and writhing, hideous, beautiful, and suddenly, blissfully silent.

  She met a cloud-blue stare. That was the little witch. And the little sorcerer without armor or spurs, only his strong young heels, with dark down drying on his skull; but his sister had none at all, poor baby.

  With great care and no little effort, Thea touched the damp soft skin. Real, alive, breathing, and strong. Strong enough to put up a magnificent fight and almost win it. Tired as she was, she laughed a little. “Alf, look. See what we made!”

  If he had shone with joy before when the children moved within her, now he blazed. His hand brushed them, found their mother, returned to the small wriggling bodies. They moved aimlessly, lips working, seeking. He laughed in his throat, soft and wonderfully deep, and eased them round, holding them without effort as each found a brimming breast.

  This too was pain, but sweet, swelling into pleasure. She curved an arm about each and realized that she was smiling. Grinning rather, like a very idiot.

  Gwydion bent and kissed her brow; bent again to her lips. She tasted the fire that slept in him.

  “Now,” he said imperiously, “name them for their King.”

  She met Alf’s gaze. Her arm tightened about her daughter. “Liahan, this is.”

  “And Cynan,” Alf said, cradling his son more carefully.

  “Good Rhiyanan names,” said the Elvenking.

  “They’re Rhiyanan children.” Alf’s eyes glinted. “Whatever their parents may be.”

  “A Greek witch and a renegade Saxon monk. A splendid pedigree.” Thea yawned in spite of herself. Liahan began to fret; Alf gathered her up deftly, one-handed. Her mother smiled.

  Within Thea, something shifted like a dam breaking.

  Her arms were empty. “The babies—where—”

  “Maura has them.” Gwydion was death-white, calm again.

  Too calm. Alf she could not see. She had lost her body again. “I want my children. Why did you take them away? I want my children!”

  Alf came back to her mind first, then to her eyes. His hands—

  A gust of laughter shook her—hysteria. “Alf! You’ve murdered somebody. You’re all blood.”

  She could not see properly. Could not think. Horror struck deep. “You killed them! You killed—”

  Strong hands held her down. She fought.

  Alf’s voice lashed out. “Stop it!”

  Gentle Alf, who never shouted, who would never even quarrel. She lay still, straining to see him. “Alfred—”

  He spoke quietly again. Very quietly, very levelly. “Thea. The blood is yours, and only yours. If you love me—if you love life—you will let me heal you. Will you, Thea? Can you?”

  Fear had gone far away. Alf was a white blur, a babble of words echoing in her brain. Her power throbbed like an ache. He was holding back the flood. Holding, but no more. Her barriers held too firmly against him.

  He could live in her mind. He could set his seed in her. He could—not—invade her thus. Reaching deep into her body, shaping, changing, outsider, alien, forbidden—

  “Thea!”

  His anguish pierced where reason could not, stabbing deep and deep. Relief like pain; the swelling of that most miraculous of his powers. Slowly she yielded before him.

  oOo

  Thea slept. Alf wavered on his feet. Even for one of his kind, he was far too pale.

  Gwydion braced him. He allowed it for a moment only, drawing himself up, firming his stance. “She’ll live now,” he said, little more than a sigh. “My lord, if you would, I should bathe her; and the bed—the servants—what Dame Agace will say—”

  “We’ll see to it.”

  He stiffened. “I can’t rest now. The embassy from Rome—”

  “Your place,” said Maura, “is here.” She extricated him from Gwydion’s hands, drawing him with her. “Here, sit. Water is coming; you can bathe, too. And eat, and then sleep.”

  He would take the bath and the food; he could even let his King and his Queen together clear away the bloodied sheets and spread fresh ones sweet-scented with rose petals. But he would not sleep, nor would he sit by while they tended the unconscious body of his lady, washed it and clothed it in a shift and laid it in the clean bed. “If I need rest,” he said rebelliously, “then what of you?”

  “We’ll snatch an hour,” Gwydion answered, “but only if you rest now.”

  Alf’s eyes flashed with rare ill temper. “Blackmail!”

  The Queen laughed. “Assuredly. Lie down, brother. I’ll watch over you all and keep the throngs from the door.”

  “And your husband in his bed.”

  “That too,” she agreed willingly, and laughed again, for the King’s brows had met, his rebellion risen to match his Chancellor’s. But he knew better than to voice it. Proudly yet obediently he retreated.

  The Queen circled the room. Alf slept twined with his lady in the curtained privacy of their bed. Their children breathed gently in the cradle that had been Alun’s and bore still in its carvings the crowned seabird of the King; but the coverlet was new, embroidered with the falcon of Broceliande and the white gazehound of Careol.

  Maura smoothed it, moving softly, smiling to herself. Already the children’s faces were losing the angry flush of birth, taking on the pallor of the Kindred.

  By the bed’s head stood a table laden with books. There were always books where Alf was; he and Gwydion between them had made the library of the castle a scholars’ paradise, filling it with the rare and the wonderful.

  She took up a volume of Ovid. It was intricately and extensively written in, in Alf’s clear monkish hand and now and then Thea’s impatient scribble: glosses, commentary, and acerbic observations.

  Maura sat by the cradle, rocking it with her foot, and began to read.

  The door eased open. She looked up. A head appeared, eyes widening as they met hers. Alun hesitated, drew back, slid around the door looking guilty but determined.

  His mother held out her hand and allowed her smile to bloom. “You’re somewhat late,” she said.

  As he came into her embrace, the room seemed to fill behind him—Anna, Nikki, Jehan looming over them all. Their expressions mingled joy, anxiety, and a modicum of respect for the Queen’s majesty.

  Alun voiced it all in a breathless rush. “Mother! Are they well?”

  “All very well,” she answered him. “See.”

  The young ones crowded around the cradle, silent, staring. Jehan waited patiently, but his glance strayed most often to the bed. “Thea?” he asked very quietly.

  “Weak, but well.” His worry was a tangible thing; she smiled to ease it.

  He blinked, dazzled, and smiled back. “I
understand... it was a battle.”

  Alun turned quickly. “And when I wanted to go and help, you pulled me down and sat on me.”

  “So,” said Jehan, “I committed a crime. LËse-majestÈ.”

  “That’s only for kings.” Carefully, almost timidly, Anna set the cradle to rocking. “They’re beautiful children, these.”

  Alun turned back beside her. “They’re all red.”

  Nikki grinned. So had Alun been when he was born, shading to crimson when he howled.

  He glared but did not deign to respond. Nikki only grinned the wider.

  Alf’s head appeared from amid the bed curtains, peering out at the gathering. If it surprised him to see them all there after Maura’s promise, he gave no sign of it.

  Even so little sleep had brought back his sheen. He emerged with care lest Thea wake, drawing everyone at once into his joyous embrace. Even Jehan—especially Jehan, who had never been one to stand upon his dignity.

  “The old Abbot should see you now,” the Bishop said grinning. “He’d be cackling with glee.”

  “Wouldn’t he?” Alf laughed for the simple pleasure of it and stooped to the cradle, raising his son, setting the blanket-wrapped bundle in Jehan’s arms. But his daughter he gave to Alun with a little bow. “My lord, your bride.”

  Alun held her stiffly, staring at her face within the blankets. She was awake and a trifle uncomfortable. He shifted his grip, easing it, relaxing little by little. She blinked and stirred, but in comfort, learning this body in this new world, in the cold and the open and the sudden awesome light.

  “I remember,” Alun said slowly. “A long, long time ago... everything was so strange. All new. As if it had never been before, but now it was and would always be.” He blinked—had he known it, exactly as Liahan had done—and shook his head. Alf was smiling at him. “I do remember!”

  “I believe you. My memory goes back not quite so far, but far enough.”

  “Oh, but you’re old!”

  Alf laughed. No one had ever heard him laugh so much. “Old as Methuselah, and happy enough to sing.”

  “Do that!” cried Anna.

  “Yes.” Thea’s voice brought them all about. It was somewhat faint and she was very pale, but she was sitting up, smiling. “Do that, Alf.”

  His mirth faded. Turned indeed to a frown as she stood swaying, as white as her shift.

  Swifter than sight he was beside her, sweeping her up. “You, my lady, are not to leave your bed for a day at least.”

  “Indeed, my lord?” She linked her hands about his neck. “Am I such a weakling, then?”

  “You almost died.”

  “Only almost.” She sighed deeply. His stare was implacable. “Well then. I suppose I can humor you. If—”

  “No ifs, Thea.”

  “If,” she continued undaunted, “you forbear from fretting over me. Aren’t you supposed to be receiving an embassy?”

  “You’d send me away now?”

  He looked almost stricken. Her eyes danced. “Not just now. You can hover over the cradle for a bit. You can sing for us all. But first and foremost,” she said, drawing his head down, “you can kiss me.”

  6.

  Alf paused just outside the King’s solar. Nikki, in the grey surcoat and falcon blazon of his squire, straightened the Chancellor’s chain of office and smoothed his cloak of fine wool and vair. He was oblivious to the service, ears and mind intent on what passed beyond the door.

  Nikki smiled wryly. There’s one advantage in being late, he said. You don’t have to stand through the usual round of ceremonies.

  Alf turned wide pale eyes upon him. Slowly they came into focus. “Gwydion is alone in there.”

  Alone with half his court.

  “Servants and secretaries.”

  And the Bishop of Sarum.

  But none of his Kin. He had commanded it. The Pope’s men could have seen them in the hall, tall fair people mingling freely with the human folk, but there would be no closer meetings. Not while the kingdom’s safety rested on the goodwill of the embassy.

  Abruptly Alf strode forward. Nikki stretched to keep pace. The guard bowed them through the door.

  oOo

  The Pope had chosen his men with great care. The Legate himself was slightly startling, a young man for a cardinal, surely no more than forty, lean and dark and haughty, with a black and penetrating eye. But he was no fanatic.

  No; he was something much more deadly. A true and faithful man of God, deeply learned in both law and theology, and gifted with a rare intelligence. It took in the arrivals; absorbed but did not yet presume to judge, although the kind of the tall young-faced nobleman was clear to see.

  His attendants were less controlled. Ordinary men, most of them, uneasy already in the presence of one of the witch-people. They crossed themselves as Alf passed, struggling not to stare, fascinated, frightened, but not openly hostile. But one or two among them struck Nikki’s brain with hate as strong as the blow of a mace. He staggered under it.

  They never saw. He was only a servant, human, young and rather small, invisible.

  He firmed his back and raised his chin. He could see who hated. They looked no different from the rest, Cistercians by their habits, eyes and faces carefully matched to their companions’. Only their sudden hate betrayed them, a hate thickened with fear.

  Gwydion seemed undismayed by it, sitting as he sat when he would be both easy and formal, his cloak of ermine and velvet cast over his tall chair but his crown on his head. He rose to greet his Chancellor, gesturing the others to remain seated, holding out his hand. “My lord! How fares your lady?”

  Alf bowed over the King’s hand, as graceful a player as he, and no less calm. “She is well, Sire, I thank you for your courtesy.”

  The King turned to the Legate. “Here is joy, my lord Cardinal. His grace the Chancellor is new come to fatherhood: a fine pair of strong children, born on this very day of Epiphany.”

  Had Nikki been free, he would have laughed. The poor monks were appalled. The Hounds in shepherds’ habits were outraged. Benedetto Cardinal Torrino was wryly and visibly amused. “My felicitations, my lord,” he said, smooth and sweet and impeccably courteous.

  Alf bowed. The Cardinal regarded him under long lids, considered, offered his ring. Devoutly Alf kissed it.

  Nikki’s mind applauded. The devotion was real enough, but the drama was splendid. One good simple monk, chosen for his faith more than for his erudition, looked to see the Devil’s spawn expire in a storm of brimstone.

  He did not even flinch. The Cardinal smiled. “So, sir, you are the White Chancellor. Even in Rome we have heard of your accomplishments.”

  More even than he knew, Nikki thought.

  “Your Eminence is kind,” Alf said with becoming humility.

  “I am truthful. You are, so they say, a man of exceptional talents.”

  The fair young face was serene, the voice unshaken. “I am no more than God has made me. And,” he added, “no less.”

  “The Devil, they say, may quote Scripture.” That was meant to be heard, the speaker one of those who hated. He stood close behind the Legate, a man whose face one could forget, whose mind blurred into a black-red mist.

  Nikki’s shields sprang up and locked. He stood walled in sudden silence.

  Alf moved to sit beside the King, not, it seemed, taking notice. But that mind was wrong. Nothing human should be all hate. Nothing sane; nothing natural.

  His throat burned with bile. Nikki laid his hand on Alf’s shoulder, opening the merest chink of his power.

  Through it shone Alf’s reassurance: He can’t touch us here.

  He had no need to. There was something in him. Something strong. Something with power, but not the power Alf had, the white wizardry of the Kindred. This was black and blood-red.

  You needn’t stay, Alf said.

  Nikki thought refusal, with a touch of temper.

  Alf shrugged invisibly against his hand. That choice was his to mak
e. But let him listen and be firm and not be afraid.

  This time the flare of anger made Alf start. Nikki muted it in sudden shame, but he could not entirely quell his satisfaction. He was alarmed, not craven; certainly he was no weakling.

  oOo

  Alun shook himself hard. His long sleepless night was creeping up on him. Anna sat where the Queen had been before, reading the book Maura had left behind. Thea drowsed in the bed with Cynan curled against her side.

  In his own arms, Liahan hovered on the edge of sleep. By witch-sight she glowed softly, power as newborn as herself, flickering a little as he brushed it with his own bright strength.

  Sometime very soon, she was going to be hungry. He could feel it in his own stomach, which in truth was newly and comfortably filled. He smiled and touched a finger to the small round belly with its knot of birth-cord.

  She stirred. She was startlingly strong, adept already at kicking off her blankets, as at objecting when the cold air struck her skin. Her lungs were even stronger than her legs.

  “Here,” Thea said, rousing and holding out her arms, “let me feed her.”

  Alun surrendered her with great reluctance, to Thea’s amusement. Which deepened as he backed away, blushing furiously, looking anywhere but at the swell of bare breast, white as its own milk.

  He clenched his fists. She was laughing. Of course she would, who had made an ardent lover of an Anglian saint.

  He pushed himself toward her, even to the bed at her side, where Cynan was waking to his own sudden hunger.

  “This could get inconvenient,” Thea observed as Alun settled her son into the curve of her free arm. He banked her with pillows. Twofold mother though she was, her smile was as wicked as ever. “Greedy little beasts. No wonder sensible ladies put their babies out to nurse.”

  He perched on the bed’s edge and tucked up his feet. His blush was fading. “I think you’re sensible. As long as you’re…able... I mean, two of them—”

  “I mean to be able.” Her expression was pure Thea, both tender and fierce. “I went to a great deal of trouble to have these two little witches. I’m not about to hand them over to someone else to raise.”