Hounds of God

by Tarr, Judith

  “I gave you the words you longed for. I took away none of your essential humanity. Broceliande won’t change that. You’ll grow old there as you would here, and you’ll die. And you’ll die mad. She saw it, your lovely lady to whom you were so cruel. She saw it as clearly as I in all my prophecy.”

  Nikki’s fingers tightened on the reins until his mare jibbed to a halt, protesting this utterly unwonted pain. Alf’s grey stood as if she had never been aught but stone, and Alf’s face was stone, but his eyes—

  Nikki could not meet those eyes. Would not. Must not.

  “Go back to her,” said the quiet voice. “Go now. She weeps for you; she curses you, and she loves you. She will make a world for you.”

  She hated him who had loved her and left her. “Of course she hates you. She loves you to distraction.”

  That, snapped Nikki, driven back to words, is absolutely illogical.

  Alf laughed, merry and sad at once, and bitter to endure. “It’s lovers’ logic, and perfect of its kind.”

  Nikki rounded upon him. Rage was white, white as snow, white as steel in the forge, white as the sun before it struck the eye blind. Why? Why now, when it’s too late? I could have stayed; would have. But you stood. You said no word, but you had no need. You lured, you beckoned. You needed me. I was your only way to get at Gwydion. Now... I’m no use to you, am I? I’m an embarrassment. An old mistake you’d rather forget. A stink of mortality in the perfect air of your Broceliande.

  If Nikki’s words dealt wounds, Alf did not betray them. He only bowed his head and said utterly without anger, “I needed you, yes. I thought you would see sense on your own, once the need was past. I thought you would stop clinging to me like a child and walk as a man.”

  That was manhood? To run straight to a woman’s skirts?

  A smile touched Alf’s eyes. “And she into your arms, and soon a young one between you. That is the way of the world.”

  Nikki clutched at saddle, reins, mane. No—no, that he had not done, please God, he had not got her with child.

  “No?”

  The rage flooded back. You can’t force me that way. Not with lies, not with threats. I go where I must go.

  “Go then,” said Alf, cool and dispassionate. It was not contempt that paled those eyes to silver. The Master of Broceliande, great heretic saint, did not stoop to contempt. “Only remember. Once the gates close upon you, there will be no returning.”

  A shudder racked Nikki to the core. He looked at Alf, and he saw a face as familiar as his own and more beloved, the face of a master, of a friend, of a brother. Its eyes were inexpressibly tender, and utterly alien. They saw no walls before them, but gates opening upon a myriad of worlds.

  Nikki saw walls. He named them gates, he told himself of the worlds. But they were only walls.

  The others were far ahead now, human and unhuman together. Tao-Lin was a flame in her saffron silks. Her thought of him had faded; she had retreated into one of her pagan reveries. Walking the steps of the Way, she called it. When Alf did it, he called it prayer.

  When Stefania did it, it was philosophy. But it was not the same. It was warmer, less perfect in its focus, more perfect in its intensity. Humans were like that; all too easily distracted, but also more conscious of measure, of restraint. There was something almost frightening in the Folk, an absoluteness of concentration, poised forever on the edge between power and madness.

  Alf sat his mare, all silver and fallow gold, and watched Nikki’s mind in its flounderings. He was not cool, after all. He was not dispassionate. He was tearing himself by the roots from this earth which he so loved and so hated.

  Nikki gathered the reins, touched leg to his mare’s side, turned her slowly upon her haunches. Grey earth, grey sky. Grey cold winter-scented air.

  But it was not grey. The sun was palest gold. The earth was russet, brown, wine-red and wine-gold, umber and charcoal and faintest, shyest green, spring enkerneled in winter’s bitter shell.

  The mare scented it. She flared her great Arab nostrils and snorted, pawing the road; it rang with each impatient stroke. In the depths of Nikki’s cloak, the cat began to purr.

  They would not dislike one another, she and Arlecchina.

  No. No, he could not go back. Not how. Creeping, blushing, begging forgiveness for what could never be forgiven.

  “Why not?”

  Nikki opened his mouth, closed it.

  “Yes,” Alf said, “it’s time you taught yourself to talk. To be a man in all senses.”

  Never. Never, while he had no ears, while he had power.

  “You have Stefania.”

  No.

  Alf was silent.

  Stefania. Sunlight. Laughter and pain, quarreling, loving, growing and breeding and birthing and dying. Beauty flawed; squalor flawed, because there was beauty in it. He of all men, he had eyes to see. That fear, like the rest, had been purest folly. He would always have them.

  If he stayed to use them.

  Stefania.

  It burst out of him. Laughter, tears. Alf was laughing, weeping. They did not touch, hand or body. Their minds met, embraced, clung. Tore free, bleeding a little, pain as sweet as it was bitter.

  Lovers’ logic. Brothers’. Nikki’s will gathered, though it trembled, though it yearned to turn coward and run. Now, it bade Alf. Now!

  They were gone, cat and mare and boy who would learn now to be a man. Alf’s power returned to itself, with yet a vision of a rider upon a hill and all Rome below; and a woman in it, and a sister, and a world that he would make his own.

  But it was Alf’s no longer. He let the wind scour the tears away. He would not weep again upon this earth.

  The company had ridden out of sight if never out of mind. Alf turned his mount back toward the road they had taken, and gave her her head.

  oOo

  Broceliande grew slowly before them. A shadow at first over the stony hills, no more substantial than a tower of cloud. Little by little the shadow swelled. On the third morning even human eyes could see that the darkness was the massing of trees, a mighty wall of bole and branch that had stood since the shaping of the world.

  Jehan knew what lay within. Trees and winding tracks, glades that were glorious in spring and summer and autumn, a veining of streams that gathered into a small swift river; open meadows rich for tilling; and a lake like a jewel, and on its shore a mound and on the mound a castle, the House of the Falcon. And beyond that, deep wood and grey moor and the pounding of the sea. It was a wider realm than one might think, more varied and more beautiful.

  Yet riding toward it under a grey sky, in a bleak raw wind, he saw only the looming shadow. Once the last exile had passed within, the barriers would close. Mortal men would shrink from them in sourceless horror, or if for daring or folly they ventured in, would wander the maze until it cast them out again, starved and very likely mad.

  “It’s necessary,” he told himself. “It has to be.”

  Already the first of them had ridden under the trees. Tao- Lin in gold and vermilion, sparing no grief for the lover who had abandoned her, no glance for the world she was forsaking, her back straight and stiff as she spurred onward. The shadows retreated from her; a shimmer lay upon her, a moonlight sheen. Gwydion, Maura, Aidan, Morgiana, followed side by side, and the sheen grew to a spectral splendor, embracing the wolves that trotted in the Queen’s wake, and the lady who rode her dun stallion behind.

  Cynan, perched on her saddlebow, gazed steadily back. She fixed her eyes firmly ahead. She had never been one for backward glances, had Thea Damaskena.

  Jehan’s horse halted of its own accord, snorting, tensed to shy. Alf’s tall grey continued unruffled. Jehan would not, could not move or speak.

  Yes, let them go this way, calmly, without a word. No tears, no foolishness. Simply a man on a chestnut destrier, watching, and an enchanter on a grey mare with a moon-pale child peering out of his cloak, riding away into the luminous dark.

  On the edge of it, as it began to
reach for him, Alf paused. His mare half turned; he looked back. His hand raised, sketched a cross in the air. His smile was sudden and shining and laden with all there had never been time to say, and all there had.

  Jehan cried out, he hardly cared what, kicking his mount into a startled, veering gallop. The mists thickened. The stallion bucked, plunged, fought. Jehan cursed and wept and hauled the great beast back upon its haunches under the very eaves of Broceliande.

  Almost he could have touched the one he loved most in any world. Almost Alf could have touched him. Their eyes met. Jehan’s blurred.

  The white figure shimmered and faded. When at last he could see, they were gone, all of them, and all their light with them.

  “The magic has gone out of the world,” he said. He threw back his head to rage at Heaven, dropped it to rage at earth and its fools of priests, and found his fist clenched upon something. With all his will he forced it open. And laughed in wonder through the flooding tears. In his palm lay a brooch of marvelous work, ivory and carnelian, malachite and silver: a white hound, red-eared, with wickedly merry eyes, and dancing with her among woven leaves a proud-winged falcon. Its eye glinted upon him, now silver-gilt, now ember-red. All the magic, Jehan de Sevigny?

  He laughed again, with a little less pain. “Not if you can help it.”

  He saluted the silent wood, a sweeping, exuberant, triumphant salute made all the stronger for its leavening of grief, and wheeled his stallion about. Now that he thought of it, he had a bishopric to take in hand. He rode toward it; and as he rode, though still he wept, he began to sing.

  Copyright & Credits

  The Hounds of God

  Volume III: The Hound and the Falcon

  Judith Tarr

  Book View Café Edition July 3, 2012

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-182-5

  Copyright © 1986 Judith Tarr

  First published: February 1986

  Cover design by Dave Smeds

  Volume I: The Isle of Glass

  Volume II: The Golden Horn

  Volume III: The Hounds of God

  v20120610vnm

  v20120627vnm

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  About the Author

  Judith Tarr holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for The Isle of Glass and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.

  About Book View Café

  Book View Café is a professional authors’ cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.

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  Sample Chapter: Alamut

  Alamut

  Judith Tarr

  I. Aqua Bella

  1.

  The sun was gentle in the first hour of its rising. It lay lightly upon the hills of Jerusalem; it washed with gold the walls of Aqua Bella castle, and the village huddled beneath them, and the green that was the great wealth of the demesne: the oaks that were holy, the olives that were more than holy, and the glorious tangle that traced the track of the stream. Women were washing in it, singing sweet and high, with here and there a ripple of laughter.

  He came by the road that led to the sea, riding all alone, all his armor and his weapons borne on a dove-grey mule. His destrier was a fine blood bay, and he a fine high-spirited creature himself, his grey cloak flung back from a flame of scarlet, and gold about his brows, and a ruby in the pommel of his sword. He sang as he rode, setting the charger’s pace.

  Chevalier, mult estes guariz,

  Quant Dieu a vus fait sa clamur

  Des Turs e des Amoraviz,

  Ki li unt fait tels deshenors….

  The women’s singing faltered and died. Safe in their veils of greenery, they stared out at the wonder: a knight in gold and splendor, unguarded, unattended. He was a mad one, surely, or one of God’s protected.

  His voice was both deep and clear, free and glad and fearless, calling the air to arms for a battle thirty years won.

  Ki ore irat od Loovis

  Ja mar d’enfern avrat pouur,

  Char s’alme en iert en pareïs

  Od les angles nostre Segnor.

  No fear of hell had ever troubled him, nor any fear of mortal steel. His stallion danced, shying from the flutter of a veil; he laughed and bowed to the eyes staring wide or shy or brightly fascinated from the thicket, and never lost the rhythm of his song.

  Alum conquère Moïsès,

  Ki gist el munt de Sinaï;

  A Saragins nel laisum mais,

  Ne la verge dunt il partid

  Le Roge Mer tut ad un fais,

  Quant le grant pople le seguit;

  E pharaon revint après:

  El e li suon furent perit.

  His eyes asked no pardon of Saracen women, nor ever thought to need it. Among the leaves a smile flashed, or two, or three. The charger snorted. Its rider bowed again and wheeled about, cantering up the road to the castle. The women watched him go. One by one, slowly, they went back to their washing. In a little while they were singing again. A new song: of morning and of sunlight, and of a spirit of fire on a Frankish charger, singing the conquest of their people.

  oOo

  The road and the song ended together. The knight hailed the guard at Aqua Bella’s gate, light and glad, offering his lone and splendid and most assuredly Christian self to a stare both narrow and wary. The wariness was Outremer, embattled kingdom that it was, with the Saracen snapping at its throat; and people always stared at him. “Tell your lord,” he said, “that his kinsman comes to greet him.”

  The eyes narrowed to slits. The bay charger stamped, tasting darkness under the morning’s splendor. The knight shivered in the sun. His gladness was gone, all at once, irretrievably.

  “Brychant!” Young, that voice within, but breaking with more than youth, though it tried to be steady. “Brychant, who comes?”

  No one, the guard was going to answer. The knight watched the thought take shape. Now was no time for guesting fools, fresh off the boat from the look of this one, white as a lily in this sun-tormented country, riding alone and all begauded like a lure to every bandit in the east.

  The guard’s mouth was open, the words coming quick and harsh. But the speaker within had come up beside him. A boy, slender, dark as a Saracen, with eyes like a wounded fawn. They took in the stranger, once, quickly, and again more slowly, going impossibly wide. “Prince?” the boy whispered. “Prince Aidan?” He gathered himself with an effort that shook his narrow body, and bowed, all courtesy. “Your highness, you honor us. You must pardon Brychant, we are all amiss, we — ”

  Prince Aidan was out of the saddle, Brychant still glowering, suspicious, but bellowing for lads to tend the stallion and the mule. The prince spared no thought for anything but the child who was so perfect a courtier, and who struggled so fiercely against the flooding tears. “Thibaut,” said Aidan, taking him by the shoulders. “You would be Thibaut.” He was shaking. Aidan stroked calm into him. “What has happened?”

  The tears burst free, and knowledge with them. “No,” said Aidan very softly. “Oh, no.”

  The boy was past hearing. The guard and the servants were nothing and no one. Ai
dan’s arms gathered the child; his mind followed where the darkness led.

  oOo

  They had laid him out in the hall. A priest muttered over him. People hovered. They were not, Aidan noticed, either milling or keening. Their grief smote him, but their fear was stronger. It choked him.

  He thrust through it. Somewhere he disposed of the boy. His arms were empty as he stood over the bier: a table in truth, with a silken cloth on it, and another over the one who lay there. A man no longer young but not yet old, sun-dyed as they all were here, but fair under it, bone-pallid now; black hair early going grey, long nose carved to match the long chin, the face that had always been so mobile gone suddenly and hideously still.

  “Who killed him?” Aidan heard himself say it; he shivered to hear it. So soft, and so calm, and so very deadly. “Who cut him down?”

  “Who are you to ask?”

  He spun. Others flinched. This woman did not. He hardly saw the shape that held the soul. Here was fire to match his fire, grief to rival his own, and a will as implacable as all heaven. His body thought for him. It lowered him to one knee, bowed his head. “My lady.”

  “Who are you?”

  She knew. But she needed to hear him say it. “He was my sister’s son.” He looked up, into dark eyes. “Who has done this thing?”

  “If you are what he said you are,” she said, “you do not need to ask.”

  She was not afraid of him. Even when he stood, tall even for a westerner, with all the names on him that Gereint had told her of. He went back to the bier, bent over it, laid his hand on the cold cheek. “Child,” he said in the tongue of their own people, richer and darker than the rattle of the langue d’oeil. He stroked the silvered hair. “Gereint, child, what was it that could not wait for me?”

  His hand slid from the head to the stiff shoulder to the silenced heart. Ten years. So little a time. The boy had gone because he must. As Aidan had lingered, because he must. Cares; a kingdom; a little matter of wars and embassies. Gereint had wanted glory, and Jerusalem.