Hounds of God

by Tarr, Judith

  He says? He commands? Nikki’s own lips had drawn back. What does he think we are?

  Human. Cynan said it without scorn, but without gentleness. It was a plain fact. Don’t think things at me. It won’t help.

  Won’t it?

  Jehan came between them, bulking large. “Leave the boy alone, Nikephoros. He’s only obeying his father. As, it seems, the rest of us will have to do. While we wait, I suppose we can pray.”

  We can always pray, Nikki growled, but he let Cynan be. We’ve talked straight through your damned Night Office. Are you going to drag us all to Matins?

  “Only those who want or need it,” Jehan responded, unperturbed. “Brother Oddone, I’m sorry we’ve kept you here.”

  The monk’s eyes were shrinking at last to their normal dimensions; he even smiled. “Oh, no. Brother, it’s my fault. I heard the bell, but it was all so fascinating… Do you mind if I stay a little longer? I’d like to see what happens, if I can.”

  “Stay and welcome,” Jehan said. He meant it, which surprised him a little. The man was frail, and mortal, and probably in great peril of his vows if not of his immortal soul. But there was an obscure comfort in the presence of another habit among these Greeks and witches. It was a talisman of sorts. A shield against the uncanny. Or at the very least, someone to talk to while Nikki brooded and Cynan drowsed and the women whispered and giggled about—of all things—Pliny the Elder. Not that Jehan was either averse to or ignorant of natural philosophy, but not in the dark before dawn, with Alf gone and no present hope of getting him back again, Oddone’s gentle chatter was a rest and a relief, and in this black hour, more blessed than sleep.

  28.

  Alf, hot on the scent, was aware of little else. As in the scriptorium, he let his body do as it willed, which was to hunt in the manner of a great cat, flowing from shadow to shadow, silent itself as a shadow. If anyone saw him, his observer thought him a dream, or else fled in superstitious terror. The leopard would have delighted in a kill, if not of a man then of the donkey that brayed and fought and overturned its cart, or of one of the dogs that ran yelping from his path; but the enchanter promised sweeter prey at the end of the hunt.

  The thread had grown till it was as wide as a road, as blindingly brilliant as a bolt of lightning. Even had he wished to, he could not turn away from it. Thea. Her name sang in his bones. Thea Damaskena. Soon he would have her. Soon his power would be whole again. He would be healed, strong, made anew. Then let the Magus do what he would.

  His body was running easily, exulting in its smooth swiftness. He was close now. The scent was strong enough to taste, almost unbearably sweet. Thea, Thea Damaskena.

  Leopard’s caution brought him up short. Leopard’s instinct made him one with deep shadow. Mind and body met with a bruising shock; he crouched flat, every sense forcing itself to the alert.

  He realized dimly that not only his eyes were his own; he had taken his proper shape. Sometime very soon, he was going to have to take this new power in hand.

  He lay in a tangle of thicket. About him was wasteland, dark under a hard glitter of stars. Before him bulked a great shape of blackness. He sharpened his eyes. There was the loom of a castle, rough and raw and new yet backed and guarded by Roman walls. Part of those lay in ruins, but much was solid still, transcribing a shape he knew.

  He swallowed bitter laughter. Many a day from San Girolamo’s campanile he had looked straight into this open grassy vale with its long oval of walls. Once it had been the Great Circus of the city, his thicket its center, the spine of stone that had brought so many hurtling chariots to grief. And there in its curving end was the castle whose tower had seemed to stare at him, awkward bastard child of old Rome. Somewhere in or about it, in full sight of the long vigil, lay his lady and his daughter.

  They slept within their strong walls, the Frangipani princes. None seemed to know what prisoners they held. Nor what approached them, a man moving as a leopard would move, his white skin dappled with mud and starlight.

  The scent led him round the castle itself, past the frown of the gate toward the older walls. The ranks of seats were gone, fallen or taken, but the skeleton remained; and it was thicker than it had seemed. Of course; there would have been a webwork of passages and chambers, stables, storage places for fodder and harness. Not the mighty labyrinth of the Colosseum, maybe, that had brought Nikki back one night in a fever of excited discovery, but enough and more to hide two women and two children.

  And who need ever know? Not the Frangipani, secure in their fortress. Not the few folk who dwelt on this the edge of the populous places. Not ever the hunters quartered so close and never suspecting that their quarry lay in plain sight.

  He paused in the lee of the wall. From here it seemed immensely long and high, impossibly complex. The scent that had been so strong was fading fast. The thread was thread again, thin as a spider’s. He sped along it, abandoning both caution and concealment. Beast-shape would be faster, but flight was faster still. He spurned the earth, flung himself upon air, wingless yet swifter than any bird.

  He nearly overshot the mark: an arch far down the wall, across the field from the place where he had begun. Of all the many arches, this one alone cried out to him; it gaped blackly, his height and more above the ground. He hovered before it, shaping light to see within.

  A door shut. An axe fell. A great force severed thread and power together. He fell like a stone and lay stunned, blind and deaf.

  With infinite slowness his sight restored itself. He could move. Nothing had broken, although every bone felt as if it had been stretched upon the rack. He dragged himself to hands and knees, to knees alone, to his feet. The arch yawned above him. The wall beneath, cracked and crannied, offered hand- and footholds. Grimly he attacked it.

  This dark was no natural lightlessness. Starlight should have been enough even for cat-eyes, more than enough for witch-sight. But he was as blind as any human, groping his way down a stone passage with no power to guide him. Was this what it was to be human? Blind, deaf, wrapped in numbness.

  The floor dropped away. Once more he fell, once more he lay on the edge of oblivion until pain dragged him back. This rising was harder by far; when he walked, he walked lame; But again his bones were intact, his steps steadying as the pain faded to a dull and endurable ache. He moved more slowly now, with greater care. Another fall might break him indeed; and being what he was, he would not die easily. He could lie long ages in agony before his enemy came to add to his torment, or until death claimed him at last.

  Light.

  His eyes mocked him with hope. No; it was growing. It flickered. Torchlight. Dimly at first, then more clearly, he saw what lay about him. A long passage a little wider than his arms’ stretch, a little higher than he could reach. It was not Anna’s passage; no doors broke the featureless walls. What it had been, what it was meant for, he had no wits left to guess.

  He stumbled toward the light. It illumined a stair, a short downward flight. The torch was old, ready to gutter out, but he wrenched it from the crack into which it had been thrust.

  With it in his grip, he felt slightly stronger. He could move more quickly, indeed he must, before the light died.

  Another stair. Upward. At last, a door, bolted. With ruthless, furious strength, he tore bolt and bars from their housings.

  Satisfaction warmed him, stronger than regret; his muscles at least had not lost their power, whatever had become of his mind and his senses.

  He strode through the broken door. He was close now. This must once have been an entryway into the arena, a wider space bordered with arches. One was blocked with rubble and rough brickwork. The other, though barred below, offered a thin half-circle of open sky.

  Alf paused, drawing clean air into his lungs, drinking in strength. He advanced more steadily than before into a passage which, oddly, seemed less dark.

  In a little while he was certain. His power was returning. Even before his torch sputtered and died, he had no need of it;
he saw clearly enough.

  Yet another stair descended below the level of the ground, but its ceiling was a sloping shaft roofed with stars. The passage at its foot ended in a second door. This bolt he slid back almost gently, knowing what he would find.

  This was Anna’s corridor. The blank wall would face the outer world, the rim of the Circus. The doors would open upon chambers and new passages.

  There were not as many doors as she had remembered, perhaps at Simon’s connivance—three or four at most, and the one, the one that mattered, set with a grille that scattered golden light against the wall.

  Alf’s heart hammered. His palms were cold, his head light. If this was all a grim deception, if they were gone, or if they had never been there at all—

  The cell, the vaulted ceiling, the cluster of lamps: he had seen them through Anna’s eyes. The pallet lay as she had recalled. On it...

  He never remembered the door’s opening. Perhaps he had simply willed himself through it. She was asleep or unconscious in her own beautiful shape, her white skin glimmering, her hair a tangle of silk, bronze and gold. Slowly he drew near. His mind uncurled a tendril, poised for any sorcerous assault, meeting none. With infinite delicacy it touched her.

  Her eyes opened, all gold. “So early?” she murmured, still half in sleep, reaching drowsily to draw him down. As their lips touched, all sleep fled. Her grip tightened to steel; her warmth turned to fire. She clutched him with fierce strength, yet no stronger or fiercer than he, as if one madly joyous embrace could wipe away all the days apart.

  Neither knew who cooled first to sanity, he or she. They were body to body still, flesh to burning flesh, but eye met eye with passion laid aside. He was above her, stroking her hair out of her face. She traced his cheek; frowned; followed the long beloved line down neck and shoulder and breast to count each jutting rib. “Alfred of Saint Ruan’s,” she demanded sharply, “what have you done to yourself?”

  She did not wait for an answer, if answer he could have given. She thrust him from her, rising in her turn above him, glaring down. “Look at you. A skeleton. And here. You idiot. You utter, hopeless idiot.”

  For all her wrath, and it was wrath indeed, her eyes had filled and overflowed.

  He kissed the tears away. She slapped at him; he kissed her palms. “You fool! This is exactly where he wants you.”

  “And where I want you.” Not all the tears were hers. He laughed through them. “Thea. Thea Damaskena. I was dying, and now I live again.”

  “Not for long,” she snapped. “He laid the bait, and you took it, royally. And all you can think of is the fire between your legs.”

  “Of course. It maddens him.” Alf cupped her breasts in his hands. They were fuller than ever he remembered, infinitely sweet. “He’ll be here soon. Shall we give him something to watch?”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m challenging him.”

  “You’re suicidal.” He laughed; she struck him again, not lightly. “He has Liahan. He came, freed me from the hound’s body, took her away.”

  That killed his laughter, if not his ardor. “When?”

  “After he flung Anna out and Cynan with her. Baited his hook, I should say. Liahan is his hostage. He’ll kill her if you threaten him.”

  “Maybe not.” He caught her hips, eased her down upon him. She gasped, half in resistance, half in desire. Resistance died as desire mounted. In the joining of their bodies she saw what he saw, weaving into his mind, filling all his emptiness as he filled hers, body and soul. They were whole again, both, in high and singing joy, nor could even his power of prophecy, reborn, cast it down to earth.

  Joined, they held Simon at bay; their loving repelled him more completely than any shield of power. But even witch- strength could not suffice to prolong their union much beyond the mortal span. They lay entwined, the aftermath made sweeter for that there might never be another, and smiled at the one who had come to destroy them.

  “Whore.” Simon’s voice did not sound in Alf’s ears as his own did, but that proved nothing. It was certainly light for a man’s, and it was purer than a human’s would have been, even raw with outrage. And yes, the face was like the one he met when compelled to face a mirror, yet older, stronger, less girlish-fair. This one had grown to full manhood, had not frozen just on the verge of it, caught forever between boy and man.

  In body, perhaps. In mind…

  Alf rose, setting himself eye to eye. Simon’s nostrils thinned and whitened. He flung something in Alf’s face, a tangle that sorted into twin robes of unbleached wool. They were considerably finer than pilgrim’s garb. Alf donned the larger, which fit well, and waited as Thea slipped into the smaller. “The last of God’s Hounds who jailed me,” he observed, “would not besmirch his habit by clothing me in it.”

  “The rules have relaxed,” said Thea coolly, “since one of our kind found his way more or less legitimately into the Order.” She circled Alf’s waist with her arm, leaning against him with easy intimacy, stroking the soft wool that clung to his thigh. “Delicate skins, the Paulines must have. This makes the Jeromite habit feel like sackcloth.”

  “Saint Jerome’s Brothers tend to be a shade austere.” Alf regarded Simon with the suggestion of a smile. “Saint Paul, however, was the champion of moderation. In all things.”

  “You are abominable.” Simon looked as if he were fending off violent sickness. “How could you do—that—”

  The smile grew clearer. “Quite easily after such a parting; and for a long while before it, my lady was too great with the children to—” Alf stopped; he flushed faintly. “Ah, Brother, your pardon. I’ve been in the world so long, I’ve forgotten proper priestly discretion.”

  “You have forgotten nothing.”

  “Maybe, after all, I have not.” The smile was gone. Alf’s eyes were cool, his voice level. “I forget very little. Forgiveness is another matter.”

  “Do you think you can challenge me?”

  “I do. I am. I challenge you, Brother Simon of the Order of Saint Paul. I bid you release my lady and my daughter. I command you to cease your harrying of my people.”

  “‘Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bonds of Orion? Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?’”

  Alf’s eyes glittered; he laughed. “Are you so mighty then, kinsman? ‘Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?’”

  “I am the voice of God.”

  “Pride, my brother, has cast down greater powers than yours.”

  “I shall cast you down, demon, mock me though you will.” Simon stepped away from the open door. In it stood Brother Paul, languid as ever, and in his arms the still form of Liahan. Her eyes were open but dull. Her alaunt’s body was limp. The monk stroked her steadily, a smile growing as Alf stared. “Good morning, my lord Chancellor,” he said.

  Alf stood taut, seeing him hardly at all, only his habit and his intent and the creature he cradled with such deceptive care. “If you have harmed my daughter—”

  “Yes,” Brother Paul cut him off lightly. “If we have. What then, my lord? What can you do? It won’t be as it was before, I can assure you. No mere mortal men hold you captive; no king will ride to your rescue. This time, at last, the Order will have its revenge.”

  “You have a most un-Christian memory for slights.”

  “Slights, sir? Is it so you reckon it? By your doing we are banned from the whole isle of Britain; with your aid we were forbidden to enter Rhiyana. You’ve had no small part in the quashing of our Order, Alfred of Saint Ruan’s.”

  “I’d lie if I professed remorse.” Alf focused above the habit upon the florid face. Anna had been unduly prejudiced; it was a handsome face, if not at all in the mold of the Kindred. The accent, he noticed, was Anglian, but as for the man: “Surely you’re not old enough to have been one of my inquisitors.”

  “I admit, I never had the honor. But I was there.” B
rother Paul’s smile was rich with malice. “Brother Reynaud gave a good account of himself with the whip. He’s still alive, you know. Still laughing, save now and then when he howls like a beast. When our postulants need to know what would become of humanity under your people’s sway, they’re taken to see him. It’s very effective. The weak flee our walls in dread of a like fate. The strong grow all the more determined to destroy your kind.”

  “If you were there, you know that that was none of my doing.”

  “No? I ventured a test once. I drove a man to attack Simon. He went mad likewise. He died; but after all, Simon is stronger than you. Also, I think, more honestly merciful. I certainly would prefer death to the life Reynaud has lived since he ran afoul of you.”

  Alf’s eyes had narrowed as the monk spoke. Memory was stirring, stripping away years. Evading the horror of a truth he had never known or wanted to know, that in return for the scars on his back he had broken a man’s mind.

  It was a trap, that truth, meant to break his will. He made himself see, made himself find the name this monk had had. He had been a youth then, dark and slender, languid-eyed, all sweet malevolence. “Joscelin. Joscelin de Beaumarchais.” He shook his head, not incredulous, not precisely, but much bemused. “You had chosen the Benedictines, I thought. For the wine and the women and the boys when you wanted them. Whatever made you turn to Saint Paul?”

  Brother Paul, who had once been a squire of the Lionheart, smiled the smile Alf remembered. The years had done nothing to abate its malice. “The wine and the women turned out not to be so forthcoming, and I lost my taste for boys. Your fault too, sir sorcerer. A beautiful boy was never quite so beautiful after I saw your face, and no man could ever come up to the king you robbed me of. At last I had to conceive a new lust. I went in search of power. What Saint Benedict had, seemed to me to lack spice. Saint Paul, on the other hand, offered power of a very peculiar kind, power to judge men’s souls; and he didn’t ask me to be a barefoot fanatic.”

  “And he led you to another beautiful boy,” Thea said.