Hounds of God (31 page)

Nikki’s impatience was as fierce as a slap.
It’s Alf. He’s gone. Vanished.
Lost. I can’t find him in my mind at all.

Jehan looked about somewhat stupidly. “He’s not
here. Where—” His brain caught up with his tongue at last. He shook
his sleep-sodden head and yawned until his jaw cracked. “Gone, you say?
What do you mean?”

He’s always in
my mind
, Nikki said,
on the edges,
like a wall. But suddenly, a little while ago, he dropped away. Just like that.
Completely
.

“He was here.” Jehan started to rise, paused.
Mutely Anna handed him his shirt. He pulled it over his head, and stood to put
on his habit. The stranger, who must have been Nikki’s Stefania, regarded
his bulk with a great deal of respect, but she answered his smile with one both
fine and fearless. “Maybe he’s just gone to the chapel. It’s
almost time for Night Office; and you know how absolutely he can concentrate on
his prayers.”

“We looked,” Anna said flatly “He’s
not there.”

And when he prays, he’s
more
there
than ever
. Nikki’s
mind-voice snapped out with sudden force.
Cynan!
Where is your father?

Bright eyes peered from amid a nest of blankets. There was
no sleep in them, nor any alarm.
Gone,
Cynan answered.
He’s looking for
Mother
.

Jehan caught Nikki before he could bolt, and held him fast.
The boy was as quick as a cat, but he was no match for sheer Norman muscle. “Calm
down, lad. You’re not going to get him back with your temper.”

When Nikki had held still for a long count of breaths, Jehan
set him down. The look he shot from beneath his lowered brows promised dire
vengeance. But not quite yet.

Deliberately, carefully, he said,
My brother has gone stark raving mad. Even if he can find Thea, even if
the trail is no delusion, the enemy will surely know he hunts. He doesn’t
have me, and he doesn’t have my art. He can’t make himself
invisible.

“He seems to have done just that,” Jehan pointed
out.

“Then Simon Magus has him.” Anna sank down to
the tumbled bed, rubbing her temples as if they ached. “I was afraid of
this. We were let go too easily. We were bait, I think. Or Cynan was.”

He appeared beside her on all fours and climbed into her
lap. Clumsily he patted her cheek.
Don’t
cry, Anna. He’s strong. He won’t let the other one win
.

He won’t have
any choice
, Nikki said bitterly.

Stefania went to him in silence. He hid his face in her
hair.

A new voice broke the tableau, a faint tuneless voice,
trembling with shyness. “Please,” it said. “Brother Jehan,
please, I—”

Oddone looked like a frightened rabbit, shocked into
immobility by the sight of two strangers. Two women, here, staring at him until
he could hardly think. But he had his own kind of courage. He repeated Jehan’s
name, albeit in a dying fall.

“Brother Oddone.” Jehan spoke gently as to an
animal, careful to betray neither surprise nor dismay. God alone knew what the
man had heard, and God knew what he thought of it. “Come in, Brother, don’t
be afraid. This is Nikephoros’ sister, and this is his good friend, a
lady of your own city. They’ve brought news that couldn’t wait for
morning.”

As if Jehan’s words had been beckoning hands, Oddone
ventured into the room. A step, two, three. A deep breath; he plunged the full
distance, all the way to the brazier with the women on the other side of it.
The color came and went in his face. He kept his eyes fixed on Jehan, who was
solid, male, and blessedly familiar. “Brother, I heard what you were
saying. About—about the Lord Alfred. How he hunts. I saw him when he
went.”

Nikki started forward. Stefania caught him. He stood
stock-still.

The monk blinked. His weak eyes looked dazzled; he smiled,
remembering. “He was a wonder to see. He prayed, and I know God heard
him. I saw him change. Is his the sort of quarry that were better hunted by a
leopard?”

“A
what?
”
Jehan burst out before he thought.

“A leopard,” Oddone repeated patiently. “I
saw a leopard praying in the chapel. Then it was Signor’ Alfred, then it
was a leopard again. He looked deeply troubled, but I think God comforted him a
little.”

“But Alf can’t—” Anna began.

He can now
. Nikki
chewed his lip. He seemed a little calmer
.
It might have worked. It just might.

“What?” Jehan spoke for all of them.

Nikki shook his head, clearing it.
If a person—if a witch changes shape, sometimes, with care, he
can seem a beast to the mind as to the eye. It’s not invisibility, but it’s
close enough.
His face tightened again.
But
it can’t work. A leopard prowling Rome—why couldn’t he have
had the sense to be an ordinary cat?

A cat is too small
,
said Cynan.

A leopard is too
damnably big. Especially that one. All but albino in the middle of the night,
terrorizing the city… Damn him for a lovestruck fool.

“The city isn’t terrorized yet, is it?”
Jehan had to be reasonable. Otherwise he would lie down and howl.

Nikki sat beside his sister. Dropped, in truth, as if he
could no longer muster the strength to stand.
Is that the way we’ll all go? One by one, without hope or help.
Maybe I should simply turn myself in. Simon won’t touch the rest of you,
I don’t think. It’s witches he wants.

Jehan scowled, pulling at his beard. Even Cynan seemed to
have caught Nikki’s despair, drooping in Anna’s lap, shivering
slightly. She gathered her cloak about him with absentminded competence.

“This,” Stefania said clearly, “has gone
far enough. Not that I understand precisely what’s happening, but it
seems to me that you aren’t trying very hard to fight back.”

We can’t,
Nikki muttered.

“Have you tried?” She rounded on Jehan. “Father,
will you tell me what all of this is supposed to mean?”

Jehan hesitated only briefly. She knew too much as it was;
the rest could not hurt. It might even help. She looked like an extraordinarily
intelligent woman. Swiftly and succinctly he told the tale; when he had gone as
far as he could, Anna took his place. None of it seemed to shock her, but then
she had heard the worst of it already.

Stefania had sat down while they spoke, taking Alf’s
customary chair by the brazier. She remained there after they finished. Her
eyes when she pondered were the deepest of blues, almost black; she would have
looked forbidding if she had not nibbled, childlike, on the end of her braid.

“This Simon,” she said slowly. “Anna, did
you ever see anyone else but him and his master? No one ever looked in, or
seemed to be outside when the others were with you?”

“No,” Anna answered. “No.” The
second time she was less firm. “I never saw anyone else.”

Stefania frowned. “That’s very odd, you know.
They held you prisoner for so long even before they let you see them, and then
Simon at least was there almost constantly. But you weren’t held in a hut
somewhere apart from the world. You say the passage was long and full of doors.”

“And with a door at the end.”

“Open?”

“Open.” That struck Anna; she sat up straighter,
her brow wrinkling as she called back the memory. “I saw light beyond. It
looked like daylight, though it was dim. We couldn’t have been in a deep
dungeon. But I don’t see how—”

“The other doors. What were they like?”

“Doors. All on one side, the same side as ours. Only
ours had a bolt. The rest were simply latched. They didn’t look as if
anyone ever used them.”

“You were on the edge of—something. Where no one
else seemed to go.”

“A fortress,” Jehan said.

“Or a ruin.” Anna frowned. “It did look
old. But not decrepit. You’ll bear in mind that the one time I escaped, I
wasn’t noticing much, and the light was bad. And Rome is full of
well-preserved relics.”

Stefania nodded. “So it is. But no relic in that state
of repair can be unclaimed. If we can learn where the Paulines have their
houses—”

“It need not be a Pauline possession,” Jehan
pointed out. “The Order has a number of powerful friends. But we’ve
been exploring every possible avenue for weeks now. If any human being knew
where our people are, if any prince or prelate had given our enemies leave to
keep prisoners in his domain, we’d have known it long since.”

Unless Simon prevented
it
. Nikki straightened.
Isn’t
any of you taking time to wonder what sent Alf out so suddenly, without even
calling me to help? He wouldn’t have gone blindly. He must have known
where he was going.

“Simon let him catch a glimpse of Thea,” Anna
suggested. “Simon hates him, you know. Maybe because they’re so
much alike. Could they be brothers, Father Jehan? Alf’s never known
either of his parents, and Simon never knew his father.”

Jehan shuddered. Somehow he could
not face the prospect of a renegade enchanter roaming the world and begetting
sons and never tarrying to see what became of them. Even if one had grown into
Alf. It was too heedless. Too inhuman.

Nikki’s eye caught him. Inhuman? How many mortal lords
did just that? Not to mention legions of soldiers and wanderers and clerics.
God’s bones, Jehan thought. A wandering wizard-monk without morals or
scruples—now there was a vision to make a strong man quake. “And it’s
useless,” he said roughly. “Wherever they came from, we’ve
got the grown men to contend with, and I think we can assume that they’re
about to come face to face if they haven’t already. So what’s to be
done? How did Alf know where to go?”

He’s in me
,
Cynan said. As they all turned upon him, he flinched, baring his teeth like the
hound he had been.
He follows the
birth-bond. The thread that ties me to my mother. You’re not to go after
him, and you can’t find the bond. It’s down too deep and it’s
much too thin. He says you have to wait here and be patient, and if he needs
you, you’ll know.

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.

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.