Hounds of God (34 page)

The hour of Matins had come and gone. Jehan had not gone to
sing the Office, nor had Oddone. Anna and Stefania had quieted at last, Anna
drowsing, Stefania seeming to drowse by the cooling brazier. Nikki knew that it
was only a seeming; that she watched him, oblivious as he feigned to be, and
brooded. Considered what she had fallen into; wrestled with flat incredulity.
It could not be as she imagined. There was Anna asleep, the monk and the priest
all but asleep, Nikephoros pretending to sleep.

But there was Cynan wide awake, playing on the floor with a
shadow and a bit of string. The shadow in his hands had substance, although
when he let it go it was merely shadow. And when he turned toward the lamp, his
eyes caught its light and flamed.

Nikki left the bed without thinking, went to her, sat at her
feet. She could not muster a smile, but she touched his cheek with a fingertip.
He laid his head in her lap. So simply he did it; so simply she accepted it.
But she did not cease her brooding, nor did her touch linger.

Nikki snapped erect. Cynan too had heard it, that cry of
unspeakable anguish. The child’s form flickered. Nikki flung himself at
it. Dimly, distantly, he knew the shock of a great weight falling upon him.
Then weight and world were gone, swept away.

Cynan struggled, protesting.
Why do people always fall on top of me?
Nikki, crushed, had neither
breath nor wits to answer.

The tangle sorted itself. The weight was Father Jehan,
staggering up and shaking his head groggily. The world was strange, but
familiarly strange, Anna’s old prison. Between the newcomers and those
who were there before them, it was full almost to bursting. Alf and Thea, clad
alike in voluminous white, lay side by side with a stranger who bore Alf’s
face. Over them all and regarding the arrivals with surprise stood Brother
Paul, with Liahan struggling in his grip.

She won free, scrambling round the still bodies. Cynan met
her in mid-flight. Their bodies twisted and blurred and mingled. An alaunt, a
manchild; a womanchild, an alaunt; twin alaunts, twin children side by side,
her hand upon her mother’s brow, his upon his father’s. The scent
of power was chokingly strong.

Jehan, never one to reflect when action was wiser, launched
himself at Brother Paul. Nikki had not long to watch the battle royal. Power,
the power he had met twice before and to his sorrow, had risen against him. The
fourfold will of witch and witchling offered no such tempting target as one
lone, bemused human creature, given power himself but never born to it, marked
and sealed with mortality.

It was immeasurably strong and immeasurably cruel.
Human
, it mocked him.
Mortal man
. It showed him himself as in
a mirror, but realer than any image cast upon glass: a shape of earth and clay,
ill-made, incomplete, brother to the mute beast. But even a beast had five full
senses.

His image cowered. It was rank with filth. A strangled moan
escaped it, an unlovely sound bereft even of human music; and he himself less
lovely still, a scrap of bone and hair, a lingering stink, a hint of the death
that waited to claim him.

Far down in the hollow that had been his soul, something
stirred. It looked like himself, yet not the sorry creature the mirror had
shown him; the Nikephoros Stefania had dreamed of. It lifted its head; shook it
slowly, then more firmly. Its jaw set, stubborn. Little by little, with effort
that drew the lips back from the white teeth, it stood erect. Raised its arms.
Refused
.

The power over him, vast ebon hand, paused in its descent.
He was conquered. How dared he resist?

He was human. He could not help but resist. Poor impotent
half-cripple that he was, he hurled himself upon the hand, upon the mirror it
held, upon the lying image.

The mirror shattered. The image hung in the mocking air, but
it withered and shrank, melting away.

Wrath rose in a blood-red tide. He flung back his tangled
hair; he turned half-crouched, searching, nurturing his fury. Father Jehan had
his knee in the back of the stranger-monk, the man choking out a plea for
mercy. The rest had not moved at all.

He was forgotten. His victory had been no true victory; he
had been discarded in favor of a stronger opponent. In the moment of
distraction the fourfold mind of his kin had drawn Simon in, had beset him with
power even he could not despise.

Nikki did not try his own bruised power. His anger was
growing, honing itself into perfection. Human, was he? Crippled, was he? But he
had hands. And he had a weapon. No named blade, no sword of heroes, only the
little silver-hafted knife he used at meat, but it was Damascus steel, slim and
deadly sharp. Alf had given it to him when he grew from page into squire; it
had a falcon graven on its blade. He drew it, seeking neither silence nor concealment,
advancing upon Simon.

No lightnings drove him back. No mighty force of power
struck him down. He knelt beside the still body. It might have been asleep. So
Alun had seemed to be upon his bier, but Alun’s breast had not risen with
a slow intake of breath. Alun had died by this man’s will, for no more
reason than that he was there to be slain.

Nikki raised the knife. Lamplight flamed on the polished
blade. He narrowed his eyes, shifted his grip upon the hilt. This was a just
execution. This was Rhiyana’s salvation. With all his strength he struck.

Steel fingers snapped shut about his wrist. Simon regarded
him coolly, eyes focused full upon him. The power waged its war upon Rhiyana;
shielded itself from Rhiyanan retribution; toyed with the little creatures who
had bearded it in its lair. But it was losing patience. Its prey had learned
not to confront it; teased it, eluded it, made itself four and two and one and
greater-than-one.

Strength mattered little in such a battle. Subtlety it had
never studied. It had never needed to.

Nikki, caught, struggling vainly, saw Simon’s focus
sharpen; felt the power shake off a score of trivialities—a dozen forays
against Rhiyana’s walls, a handful of spies in Caer Gwent, a thought
maturing in a cardinal’s mind. Here was an anomaly. A human with power. A
living being who dared to bring steel against the hand of God. Dared, and had
not died.

He would die. Slowly. With effortless, ruthless strength,
Simon snapped the boy’s wrist.

And screamed. Nikki’s mind, white with agony, had
opened wide; and the eye of Simon’s power was fixed upon him. The dart of
pain plunged deep and deep and deep. Simon fell writhing, all his myriad magics
crumbling, no room for aught in mind or body but the reverberation of pain.

Nikki won the mercy of unconsciousness. Not so Brother
Simon. The pain had caught him and bound him in its ceaseless circle. He could
not escape. He could not heal it. The body was not his own; Nikki’s will,
unconscious, still repelled him with blind persistence.

Alf fought free of the nightmare. They were all in a heap,
he and his lady and his children. Gently but firmly he pried Liahan’s
arms from his neck. Witch-children were never beautiful; that came with
blossoming into man or woman. Yet she was a lovely child, great-eyed, with a
cloud of spun-silver hair about a solemn face. Poor infant, she had never
learned to smile. He kissed her and set her with her brother in her mother’s
lap.

They were all in his mind, interwoven, as he knelt above
Simon.
Now we can take him,
Thea
said, and Cynan who was fully as fierce as she. Liahan was a wordless
reluctance. Alf looked down at the body of the one who had wrought so much havoc,
and considered justice. Considered vengeance. Remembered compassion.

He can’t live!
Thea cried.
Can’t you feel it? He’s
working loose. The earth is trembling. The stars are beginning to wobble in
their courses. When he’s free, our deaths will be the very least of it.

He knew. He was a seer again; he saw clearly what she could
only guess. Simon’s wrath, maddened beyond all hope of healing, would
make do with no small revenge. It would reach. It would strike. What it had
done to Alun, it would do to the sun itself. And then, in a storm of fire,
world’s end.

He shook his head. He did not know what he denied. It was
too much—it was too horrible. He was not strong enough to do what he must
do. Even the simplest way…Nikki’s dagger lay abandoned on the
floor. He could not take it up.

Thea’s will lashed him. Fool that he was; he had done
justice before, long ago in Saint Ruan’s, for the murder of a single man.
Why was he so slow now, when the crimes were so much blacker?

That other criminal had been pure enemy, and human.
This…this could have been himself. If he had grown up as Simon had; if he
had not known the mystical peace of Ynys Witrin, that could sanctify even
elf-blood, defending it from human hatred.

He had been stoned in the streets of the village, he had
faced more than one Brother Radbod, but he had always had that rock, the surety
that he was loved. His nurse had loved him in her fashion; after her a Brother
or two, a teacher, a very wise abbot; and a red-haired fellow novice who became
fellow monk and fellow priest, who rose above him as abbot and died at the
hands of a madman, and that madman had died in his own turn by Alf’s
hand. But Alf had not gone away desolate; he had had Jehan, he had had King
Richard, and Gwydion, and Thea. He had always been rich in friendship; in love.

Simon had nothing. Terrible as that was for a mortal man,
for his kind it was beyond endurance. No wonder he was mad. No wonder he had
tried to destroy his own people.

“But,” Alf whispered as the long body convulsed,
“
I
love you.” Somewhat to
his surprise, he knew it for the truth. He stretched out his hands. He knew
quite clearly that when he touched Simon, he would raise the power; he would
die, they would both die, but the war would be ended.

Thea stood aghast within his mind. With all gentleness he
nudged his children’s awareness toward hers and shut them out. How lonely
it was without them; how empty. The power was a warm tingling in his fingers.
He laid them on Simon’s breast.

Jehan saw him kneel, saw him gaze down as if in thought; saw
him reach, and knew surely what that must mean. As hands touched white-habited
heart, Alf’s body arched like a bow. His flesh kindled blindingly bright;
shadows of bone stood stark within.

Thea was already moving, beating against potent barriers.
But Jehan had no power to hinder him. He braced his body, aimed it, and let it
go. It lunged toward the dagger, snatched it up, took an eternal moment to
measure its target. Swift as a serpent’s tongue, neat as a viper’s
fang, the thin blade sank itself into Simon’s throat.

The world rocked. The stars reeled. The moon was born and
slain and born again.

Silence fell, the silence that comes after a whirlwind.
Jehan was flat on his back, but unbroken, only bruised and winded. He sat up
dizzily. He was all over blood; he wiped it from his eyes. More dripped down—his
own. He had cut his forehead.

He could have howled. The monster was still alive. Alf
likewise, glory be to God. They locked in a struggle as intimate as love, as
frozen-fluid as a marble frieze. Waves of levin-power surged between them, and
that was all that moved; all that mattered.

Someone, perhaps God, perhaps Thea, gave Jehan eyes to see.
It was life for which and with which they battled. Simon’s ebbed low with
the pulsing of blood from his throat, too low for any miracle of healing. But
Alf’s flickered ember-feeble, all the rest burned to ash in the flare of
his enemy’s power. What remained between them sufficed, just barely, for
one alone.

And they, mad saints, fought each to die that the other
might live. Alf’s hands that seemed to strangle strove to heal; Simon’s,
fisted, drove life and strength into a failing body. Drove relentlessly, drove
inexorably, against a resistance that hardened as the life burned higher. Smote
at last, low and brutal, with the faces of two children against a ruined land.

With a wordless cry Alf tore free, only to catch the falling
body of his brother. By blood indeed or simply by face and spirit, it did not
matter now. Grey eyes looked up into silver, death into life. For one last,
utterly illogical time, Alf reached out with healing in his hands.

Too late now
,
Simon said in his mind with the last of his power.
Which is well for you and most well for me. The power has fled, but not
as far as death. I must go while I can help myself.

“Brother—”

A smile touched the white lips, half gentle, half bitter.
What a good priest you are. You love your
enemy as yourself.

“Because he is myself.”

Simon shook his head just perceptibly.
You are too wise, my brother. See—I admit it. We are kin. I would
have destroyed you, and you foremost, but when the time came, I too was
powerless. It took a pair of mortal men to break the deadlock.

Alf spoke swiftly, urgently. “Simon, you can live. We
can heal you. You can be one of us. The past doesn’t matter; only the
present, and the power.”

The power
, Simon
repeated,
yes. For that I must die.
Believe me, brother in blood, there is no other choice. Close the eyes of hope;
unbind your prophecy. Let me go before I shatter the world.

Alf bowed his head. But he said stubbornly, “I can
heal you.”

Proud, proud saint.
Bless me, brother. I shall need it. I go murderer, suicide, very probably
soulless.

“You go forgiven.” Alf signed him with the
cross: eyes, ears, nostrils, lips and cold hands, each gate of the senses
sealed and sanctified. Simon’s eyes closed as Alf blessed them; he
sighed. As easily as that, as hardly as if he would indeed rend worlds, he let
his spirit go.