Read Hounds of God Online

Authors: Judith Tarr

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Hounds of God (10 page)

We’re all on
guard. Sleep,
Nikki willed him.
Sleep
and be strong.

Little by little his resistance weakened. His eyelids
drooped; his breathing eased. At last, all unwilling though he was, he slept.

9.

Benedetto Torrino hesitated. The chamber was tidy, swept and
tended and strangely empty. A fire was laid but not lit, the air cold.
Something—someone—had lived and loved here. Lives had begun; at
least one had ended. But they were all gone.

He shook himself. It was the endless, damnable storm; the
errand he was coming to hate; and the pall of grief that lay on the whole
kingdom. This was only a room in a tower, rich enough though not opulent, with
a faint scent of flowers. Roses. On the table beside a heap of books lay a bowl
full of petals, dry and dusty-sweet, a ghost of summer in this bleak northern
winter.

His hands were stiff with cold. He found flint and steel on
the mantel. The fire smoldered, flickered, flared. He crouched before it, hands
spread, drinking up the heat.

After a moment he straightened. He had not lit his own fire
in—how long? Years. That was servants’ work, and he was a prince of
the Church. Kinsman to half a dozen Popes, likely to be Pope himself one day if
he played the game of courts and kings, outlasted and outwitted the seething
factions of the Curia.

If he survived this embassy.

He considered Rhiyana as he had seen it, riding through it.
Not a large kingdom, but a pleasant one even in winter. Its roads were
excellent, and safe to ride on. Its people knew how to smile. Had he been in
any other realm in the world or on any other errand, he might have fancied that
he had come to a country of the blessed, without war or famine, fire or flood
or grim pestilence; a peaceable kingdom.

Under a sorcerer king. Gwydion was that, there was no doubt
of it. He breathed magic. One could glance at him, see a tall young man, a
light, proud, royal carriage, a pale eagle-face. But the eyes were ages old and
ages deep.

He was strange; he could be frightening. But he woke no
horror.

None of them did. They were hiding, Torrino knew, as he
could guess why; yet he had seen them here and there at a distance, tall,
pale-skinned, heart-stoppingly fair.

They had mingled with the throng in the guardroom not an
hour past, some close enough to touch, cheering on the two who locked in fierce
mock combat. Anonymous though the combatants were in mail and helms, they were
well enough known for all that, the Chancellor and the Prince. They were of a
height, of a weight, and nearly of a skill; light, blindingly swift, with a
coiled-steel strength. Together they were wonderful to see.

“Imagine it,” he said aloud to the fire. “A
champion born—he learns his skill, he hones and perfects it, he ages and
he loses it and he dies. But if he should not age, what limit then to the
perfection of his art?”

“Why, none at all.”

He turned with commendable coolness. The Chancellor was
still in his heavy glittering hauberk although his helm was gone, his coif
thrust back on his shoulders. His cheeks were flushed, his hair damp on his
forehead.

He looked like a tall child, a squire new come from arms
practice. Even the true squire looked older, the dark boy Torrino had seen
before, moving past Alf with the sheathed greatsword and the helm, shooting the
Cardinal a black and burning glance.

Torrino settled into the single chair. It was not precisely
an insolence.

The Chancellor’s brow arched, but his words were light
and cool. “Good day, Eminence. If you will pardon me...”

He could not have seen the Legate’s gracious gesture,
bent from the waist as he was in the comic-helpless posture of the knight
shedding his mail, with the squire tugging and himself wriggling, easing out of
his shell of leather and steel. When he straightened in the padded gambeson, he
was breathing quickly; the gambeson too fell into the dark boy’s hands.
He was less slight in his shirt than he had seemed in his state robes, less
massive than in his mail, wide in the shoulders and lean in the hips, with very
little flesh to spare.

A pair of servants brought in a large wooden tub; pages
followed them, bearing steaming pails. It all had the look of a ritual. Torrino
could read the faces: skepticism toward this odd unhealthy habit; deep respect
for its practitioner, shading into worship in the youngest page.

For him Alf had a smile and a word or two, nothing of
consequence, but enough to send the child skipping joyfully out the door. The
others followed, save the squire, who had put away all Alf’s panoply and
set his hand to the shirt beneath. The Chancellor let him take it.

Torrino caught his breath. Someone, somewhere, had taken a
whip to that back. Taken it and all but flayed him from nape to buttocks,
leaving a trail of white and knotted scars. It was shocking, appalling—the
worse for that, even so marred, it was still as fair a body as the Legate had
ever seen.

He forced his eyes away from it. He was not like many in the
Curia, or outside of it, either. He had kept his vows; he had refrained from
women and disdained that other expedient, so easy if one were a cleric, so
simple to explain away.

The squire’s brown hands moved over the white skin.
Alf stood still, head bent as if in weariness, letting the water wash away the
battle.

“I see,” Torrino said slowly. “I begin to
see.”

Alf did not move. The squire looked hard at the Cardinal,
who found himself staring back and shivering. This was a boy in truth, human if
strikingly foreign, dark, slight, quick.

Italian, Greek, Levantine—he had never been born in
this cold and windy country. And yet he had a look, as if he saw more, or more
clearly, than any mortal man should see.

Torrino found himself nodding. “
There
is all the fear. Not evil, not even witchery. But by your
very existence you make the world waver. There is no place for you in our
philosophy.”

Alf stepped out of the tub and let himself be rubbed dry. He
was indeed too thin. One could count his ribs, follow the tracery of veins
beneath the translucent skin. But there was strength in him, more visible now
than when he wore armor.

“Only regard yourself,” said Torrino. “You
have it all: youth, beauty, great magic. Anything mere men can do, you can do
better. And you never age or die.” He sighed. “Angels we can bear—they
are pure spirits, invisible and intangible. Saints we love best if, born to all
human imperfections, they come through struggle to their victory. Heroes are
best and most conveniently dead. You…you are here and solid, and hence
triply bitter to endure.”

“Envy is a deadly sin.”

“Deadly,” the Legate said, “yes.”

Alf was clad, white shirt, black cotte and hose, black hood,
somber as a monk, his face the paler for the starkness of his garb. “Will
you call your Hounds upon us then?”

Torrino inspected his hands. They were clean, well kept, without
mark or scar. On one finger burned the ruby of his rank. “Several of my
monks have been…escorted elsewhere. At, I understand, the King’s command.”

“It is contrary to every monastic rule for a monk to
claim a habit other than his own. And,” Alf added coolly, “the King
has forbidden his realm to the Order of Saint Paul.”

“The temporal authorities may not interfere with the
sons of the Church.”

“But the Church may contend with its own, and invite
the secular arm to assist.”

“Or be compelled to do so.”

Alf sat on the hearthstone. His eyes, catching the fire,
burned ember-red. “The Archbishop of Caer Gwent needed no compulsion.
Indeed he had to be persuaded to leave his captives both alive and unmaimed.”

“And unensorceled?”

Beneath the terrible eyes a smile flickered. “Our arts
leave no trace on the body or on the soul.”

“You found nothing.” Torrino’s voice was
flat, taking no joy in the knowledge.

“By then,” Alf said, “there was nothing to
find.”

“Nor ever had been.”

“No?”

Torrino leaned forward. “I regret deeply the death of
the Prince. He was cut down most cruelly and most untimely. But, my lord, it is
no secret that he died by sorcery. And Rome has naught to do with such arts.”

Alf was silent, his gaze steady. A shiver traced Torrino’s
spine, a sensation like a touch yet without flesh, brushing him, moth-soft.

The ember-eyes lidded. “It is from Rome that Prince
Alun’s death came.”

“From Rome, it may be. But not from the Lateran. The
Pope does not oppose sorcery with sorcery.”

“The Pope, perhaps. Elsewhere... if the end were good,
would not some care little for the means?”

Carefully Torrino sat back. “It is possible. I cannot
say that it is so.”

Alf turned his face to the fire, and after a moment, his
hands. The flames bent toward his fingers, licking around them, harmless as
sunlight. Gathering a handful, he plaited it idly, reflectively, drawing in a
skein of shadow, a shiver of coolness.

Torrino watched, sitting very still. “Your King has
bidden your people to conceal themselves and by extension their witcheries. Yet
you work open magic. Were I merely clever, I might think that you were the
murderer, intent on Rhiyana’s destruction.”

“And on the destruction of my lady, of my sister, and
of my newborn children.”

“Concealment merely, to lend verisimilitude to the
deception.”

Alf laughed, startling him. “Oh, clever indeed, Your
Eminence! But all your speculations shatter on a single rock. You do not know
my lady Althea. She could never vanish even in seeming, and leave me to effect
a knightly rescue.”

“Nor,” said the Cardinal, “would you do
vile and secret murder.”

With a sudden movement Alf rose and flung his plaited cord
into the fire’s heart. “Your false Cistercians knew nothing. Not
one thing. They were blank, innocent, scoured clean. And yet, when Alun died, I
knew the power had used them as its focus. Listened, spied, and chosen its
target, and struck with deadly force. Leaving its instruments as it had found
them, mere frightened men, taught to hate what they could not understand.”


Were? Could?
Are they dead?”

“No,” Alf said. “We sent them away where
they can do no more harm.”

“You will pardon me if I ask you where.”

“You will pardon me if I do not tell you. They were
used and discarded. So too might you be; and what you do not know, you cannot
betray.”

Pride stiffened the Cardinal’s back. “No one would
dare—”

“That one has dared to murder a royal prince.”

“A witch and the son of a witch.”

Alf bowed with graceful irony. “Well and swiftly countered,
Eminence. Yet if the enemy is of our blood as I fear he must be, then he is
certainly mad, a madness that cries death on all witches yet despises your kind
as mere and mortal beasts. As easily as he would destroy me, he would use your
eyes and your brain, nor ever ask your leave.”

Torrino sat erect and haughty. But horror darkened his mind.
Used, wielded like a club, dropped when the moment passed—

Hands gripped him, bracing him, as the clear eyes met his
and the clear voice shored him up. “We will do battle as we can, and not
only for ourselves. Believe that, Lord Cardinal. We are not of mortal kind; we
are true and potent witches; but we do not traffic with Hell. No man or woman
or child in this kingdom will suffer for what we are.”

Torrino looked at him with great and growing sadness. “By
your own mouth are you betrayed.” He shifted; Alf let him go. He stood. “When
I was sent here, I had hoped that the tales would be false or unduly
exaggerated, or that you would conceal what must be concealed for the sake of
the peace. But you have been truthful; you have let me see what you are. You
have left me no choice.”

“Have I?”

This was the Chancellor’s place, his squire at the
door, barring it, hands on the hilt of the sheathed greatsword. Torrino looked
up into Alf’s face. “You do have a path or two of escape. All your
folk may give themselves into our hands to be judged without harm to the human
people of the kingdom; or you may take flight.”

“And if we stand and fight?”

“Interdict. With, inevitably, the loosing of the
Crusade.”

Alf nodded once. “I understand. You must be bound by
the Canons and by His Holiness’ command. Poverty, chastity, those fade
and are lost. But obedience holds fast still.”

“What God commands, man must perform.”

“God!” Alf’s voice cracked with sudden
bitter anger. “You obey the Pope, who obeys the whisperings of fools, men
twisted with hate and with lust for power. There is no God in any of it—unless,
as with Job, He has left His Enemy to work His will.”

“You are not evil,” Torrino said steadily, “but
law—Scripture— It may well be that the evil lies not in you but in
what you are and in what you do to us. The wolf in himself is an innocent
creature, faithful to his nature, which is to hunt and to kill. Yet when he
kills the sheep, so in turn must he die, lest all the sheep be lost.”

The anger was gone, leaving Alf cold and quiet. “How
are Rhiyana’s sheep lost? They are all faithful children of the Church.
They confess their sins; they hear Mass; they are born and they marry and they
die as Christians should. What harm has it done their souls that their King is
the Elvenking?”

“They suffer a witch to live.”

“They also eat of unclean beasts, travel on the
Sabbath, and forgo the rite of circumcision. Are we all then to go back to that
old and vanished Law?” Alf laughed without mirth. “But my back remembers—some
laws are more convenient than others. I was to be burned once, until a certain
bishop recalled that I had a king’s favor. So I was suffered to live,
though not with a whole skin.”

Torrino struggled to breathe quietly, to be calm. This—man—had
endured much. He must endure more, because he was what he was. And there was no
way…

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