Read Hounds of God Online

Authors: Judith Tarr

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Hounds of God (3 page)

Alf was silent, clear-eyed, unfrightened. Jehan’s
hands fisted on his thighs. “Rome has always walked shy of Rhiyana. It’s
never submitted to invasion, but neither has it encroached on its neighbors,
nor meddled—publicly—where it wasn’t wanted. Its King is
noted for his singularly harmonious relations with his clergy, is in fact a
most perfectly Christian monarch, unstinting in either his gifts or his duties
to Mother Church.

“True, he’s banned the Hounds from his domains,
and he’s been strict in enforcing it. But it’s not the Hounds themselves
who make me tremble. It’s not even the fabric of lies and twisted truths
that they’ve woven around the Pope; they’ve been weaving it since
their founding.” At last he let it go. “They’re preaching a
Crusade.”

“Ah,” said Alf. “It’s no longer a
mutter in the Curia. It’s a rumble in the mob.”

“It’s more than a rumble. It’s a
delegation sent to investigate the Church in the realm, and it’s a gaggle
of preachers mustering men in Normandy and Maine and Anjou. All your neighbors;
not your great allies, but the little men who are their vassals, the barons
with a taste for plunder, the mercenaries with a taste for blood. And the poor
and the pious, who shrink from slaughtering their fellow man—however
doctrinally misguided—but who would be more than glad to rid the world of
a sorcerer king.”

“The delegation we know of,” Alf said. “It’s
to arrive by Twelfth Night. A legate from the new Pope with a train of holy
monks. They will, His Holiness informs us, undertake to ascertain that all is
well with the Church in Rhiyana; that the clergy are doing their duty and that
the King harbors no Jews or heretics.”

“God’s teeth!” cried Jehan. “How can
you be so calm about it? Even without Gwydion’s lineage blazoned on his
face for a blind man to see—even if the Folk can bottle up their magic
and the human folk resist the Pope’s Inquisitors—they’ll all
burn for the rest of it. Rabbi Gamaliel in his synagogue near the schools, the
Heresiarchs debating the divinity of Christ with the Masters of Theology, and
Greeks and Saracens mingling freely with good Christians in the streets. This
kingdom is a very den of iniquity.”

“Monstrous,” Alf agreed. “Like the madman—heretic
surely, and lost to all good doctrine—who proclaimed: ‘There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’”

Jehan realized that his mouth was open, gaping. He closed it
with a snap, and suddenly laughed. “Alf! You’re dangerous.”

“I can hope so. For so are our enemies. Deadly
dangerous; and for all our power, we of Gwydion’s Kin are very few. If I
can hold off the attack by my wits and my tongue, mark you well, I will.”

“But it will come. I’m a mere man and no
prophet, but I know that. I feel it in my bones.”

Alf said nothing. His eyes had returned to Thea. It was as
clear as a cry: the love he bore her and the children she carried; the fear
that he would not—could not—admit. And he was a seer. He knew what
would come.

Jehan seized him with sudden fierce strength. “Alf. Go.
Go soon. Go now. Go where nothing human can touch you.”

His heavy hands should have crushed those fine bones, but
they were as supple as Damascus steel. “You can,” he pressed on in
Alf’s silence, easing his grip a little, but not the intensity of his
voice. “You told me years ago, when Gwydion gave you Broceliande. It’s
only half in this world now—the Wood, the lands and the castles, even
that part of the sea. You can close it off completely behind a wall of magic—”

“Power,” Alf corrected very gently.

“Isn’t it all the same?”

Alf’s face was unreadable, his eyes—slightly but
clearly, damn him—amused.

Jehan persisted doggedly. “Gwydion was born in the
Wood. He’s always meant to go back; to be King for as long as he’s needed,
to withdraw gracefully, to vanish into legend. It’s all very pretty, very
noble, and very much like Gwydion. But even he—he’s wise, the
wisest king in the world, but I think he’s waited too long. If he goes
now, before the delegation comes—if you all go—you’ll be safe.
And Rhiyana won’t suffer.”

“Will it not?”

“How can it? You’ll all have vanished with
perfectly diabolical cowardice. Rhiyana will be an unimpeachably human kingdom.”

“And Rabbi Gamaliel? The Heresiarch Matthias? Hakim
bin Ali and Demetrios Kantakouzenos and Jusuf of Haifa? Not to mention my own
dear brother and sister, the last of the House Akestas—what of them?
Shall we abandon them to the Church’s tender mercies?”

Jehan’s fear turned to sheer annoyance. “Don’t
tell me you haven’t found a refuge for each and every one of them, and
all their goods and chattels.”

“If so,” Alf said, unruffled, “it’s
not this way that we would go, like a flock of frightened geese.”

“Not even for your children’s sake?”

Alf went stark white. His eyes were truly uncanny, vague yet
piercing, seeing what no other could see.

Abruptly they focused. Jehan saw himself mirrored in them,
pale and shocked but set on his course. “Go,” he said. “Take
a day if you must, settle your gaggle of friends and infidels, and leave. Or do
you want to see Rhiyana laid waste around you, and your people under Interdict,
and a stake on a pyre in every marketplace?”

Alf smiled. But the color had not returned to his face. “Jehan,
my dearest friend and brother, we know exactly what we do. Trust us. Trust Gwydion
at least, who rules us all. He’s known for long and long what must
finally come to be, the payment for all his years of peace. He will not leave
it to his poor people, who love him and trust him and look to him for
protection. Only when they are truly and finally safe will he leave them.”

“But he is their danger. You all are. Without you—”

“Without us and with all our infidels gone to haven,
the Crusade loses it target. Or does it? This is a land of fabled wealth, soft
and fat with long idleness. A splendid prize for an army of bandits, far more
splendid than poor ravaged Languedoc. Where, I remind you, my lord Bishop, the
Cathari have been the merest of pretexts.” Gently, with no perceptible
effort, Alf freed himself from Jehan’s grasp. “I grant you, the
Crusade is our fault, for existing, for tarrying so long in the mortal world.
But Crusades have a way of outgrowing their makers, like the demons in the
tales, destroying the sorcerers who invoked them.”

Jehan knew that as well as Alf. He had been to Constantinople.
He had helped to shatter that city in a war that had begun in order to free the
Holy Sepulcher; had twisted and knotted and broken, turning from a Crusade
against the Saracen into the gaining of a throne for an exiled Byzantine
prince, and thence into an outright war of conquest.

“Yes,” Alf said, following his thoughts. “But
this will be no Byzantium. Not while Gwydion is King.”

“Or while Alfred is Chancellor.” Suddenly Jehan
was very tired. He had ridden all the endless way from Rome into the teeth of
winter, striving to outrace the Pope’s men. He was not old, but neither
was he so very young; and he had a long battle ahead of him in his own country,
a bishopric to claim and defend, a kingdom to aid in ruling. And this was no
land and no people of his—by his very vows he should have shunned them.

And yet, like the great, half-witted, ridiculously noble
fool that he was, he loved them. Alf, Thea, the two young Greeks they had
brought out of the fallen City; Gwydion and his Queen and his fiery brother and
all his wild magical Kin; even the land itself, the prosperous towns, the green
burgeoning farmsteads, the woods and the fields, the windy headlands and the
standing stones.

Certainly he was a bad priest and very probably he was
damned, but he could not help it. He could not even wish to.

Alf’s hands were warm and firm upon him, Alf’s
eyes as gentle as they were strange. “God knows,” he said softly, “and
God is merciful. Nor has He ever condemned love truly and freely given. To do
that would be to deny Himself.”

So wise, he, to look such a boy.

Alf laughed. Jehan flushed, for that was a thought he had
not meant to be read. “Didn’t you, brother?” The thin strong
hands drew him up. “Come. It’s a bed you need now, and a long
sleep, and a day or two of Rhiyana’s peace. That much at least is left to
us all.”

2.

It was all silence and a splendor of light.

If Nikki chose, he could enclose it in words. High cold sun
in a blue vault of sky; waves crashing, sea-blue and sea- white, and the White
Keep glowing upon its headland. But closest, within the reach of his eyes, the
city in festival.

Bright as its houses always were, carved and painted and
gilded, they shone now in the winter sun, hung with banners, looking down on a
vivid spectacle. Lords and ladies with their trains, mounted or afoot or borne
in litters, brilliant with jewels, gleaming in precious fabrics; knights in
glittering panoply; burghers robed as splendidly as princes; free farmfolk in
all their finery; whores dressed as ladies and ladies dressed well-nigh as
shamelessly as whores, laughing at the cold. Jugglers and tumblers; dancing
bears and dancing dogs and apes that danced for coins; a rope-dancer on high
among the rooftops, actors mimicking him broadly below; jesters in motley and
friars in rags, and now and then an eddy where a minstrel sang or a musician
played or a storyteller spun his tales.

His nose struggled to match his eyes. Humanity, yes, from
rank villein to rank-sweet noble. Incense—a procession had gone by with a
holy relic, drawing much of the crowd after it until some new marvel caught
their fancy. Perfume and spices, roasting meat, bread new baked and wine well
aged, and manifold delights from the sweetseller’s stall a pace or three
upwind.

A hand shook him as if to wake him from sleep. He looked
into a laughing mischievous face, nearly on a level with his own although it
was much younger: the face of a boy, a page, a tall slight gangle of a child
with hair like ruddy gold. “Dreaming, Nikephoros?”

With the words came understanding, and with understanding,
all in a flood, the clamor of the festival.

Nikki reeled. Alun held him up, still laughing, but chiding
him through the mirth. “You shouldn’t do that.”

No, indeed he should not, but the silence made the rest so
wonderful.

“Maybe,” Alun said, speculating.

And Alun should not do it either. Nikki put on his best and
sternest frown. It would have been more effective if he had been larger or his
eyes smaller, or his mouth less tempted to laughter. At least he had the advantage
of age—a good six years’ span—and, just barely, of wisdom.

“Just barely.” Alun was alight with mockery, but
he was obedient enough. For the moment. He linked arms with Nikki and drew him
forward. “Come, cousin! This is no day for dreaming. The sun’s high
and the city’s wild, and Misrule is lord.” He leaned close,
laughing, grey eyes dancing. “Why, they say the King himself has put off
his crown and turned commoner—or maybe that’s he in cap and bells,
dispensing judgments from Saint Brendan’s altar.”

Nikki laughed and ran with him, eeling through the crowd. To
watch—that was wonderful. To be in it was sheer delight.

They cheered the rope-dancer on his lofty thread. They
devoured meat pies—paid for with kisses because the buxom seller would
not take money from such handsome lads; and Alun blushed like a girl but paid
up manfully, to Nikki’s high amusement. They heard a minstrel sing
mournfully of love and an orator declaim of war. They whirled into a street
dance and whirled out of it again, breathless, warm as if they had stood by a
fire.

Near the gate of the cathedral, a conjurer plied his trade.
They watched him critically.
Brave man
,
Alun said in Nikki’s mind,
to bring
his trickery here.

He was very clever, but he had not gathered much of a crowd.
A fool, Nikki decided, to think his cups and apples and scarves would earn him
a living in the city of the Elvenking. But yes, brave, and good-natured too,
although he looked as if he had not eaten well in a long while.

Nikki’s eyes slid, to find Alun’s sliding
likewise.
Should we?

Nikki set his lip between his teeth. Alf would be appalled.

So would Father.

They stood still. Those were names of power and terror. And
neither would be so unsubtle as to deal out a whipping.

Oh, no. The Chancellor and the King were much more deadly.
They flayed not with the rod but with the mind and the tongue.

And yet.

It was the Feast of Fools. The one day in all the year when
the world turned upside down.

Alun laughed aloud and Nikki in silence.
You first,
the Prince said, magnanimous.

Nikki bowed assent. The conjurer had not marked them. They
were only a pair of boys amid the throng, and he was making a scarf vanish into
the air.

It was to come back as a sprig of holly. Nikki began to
smile.

The scarf melted as it was meant to. The man’s hands
wove in intricate passes. At the height of them, Nikki loosed a flicker of
power. There in the man’s hand lay a newborn rose, pink as a maiden’s
blush.

Brave indeed, was that poor conjurer. He paused only an
eyeblink and continued as if nothing had gone amiss.

Alun bit down on laughter. The holly—now a rose—
should become a cup of water. A cup indeed it was, but it steamed, giving forth
a wondrous fragrance of wine and spices. That attracted a passerby or three.
Particularly when the wine, cooling, sprouted the leaves of a vine, growing and
twining in the air, blossoming, setting into cascades of purple grapes.

The conjurer knew he had gone mad. Knew, and laughed with
the wonder of it.

The vine faded dreamlike. But the cup was full of coins.
Copper mostly; neither Nikki nor Alun had gold to spend. Still, it was more
than the mountebank had earned in a month of traveling; and more had clinked
into the bowl at his feet. People in Caer Gwent knew when they had seen real
magic.

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