Hounds of God (6 page)

Anna looked up from the book that she was trying to read by
candlelight. “It often does take a while, especially with first babies.
Your mother was two days with you.”

“Yes, and it almost killed her!” Nikki drew him
into a quieting embrace; he pulled free. “We’re not like you. We’re
strong in everything except this. It’s so frighteningly hard even to get
children, and then we can’t bear properly. As if... we weren’t
meant...”

Jehan grasped his shoulders and held him firmly. “Stop
that now. Alf is there, and your mother, and your father. They won’t let
anything happen.”

Alun drew together. Too thin, too pale, too sharp of
feature, he had not come yet to the beauty of his kind; he was all eyes and
spidery limbs, quivering with tension. “Alf is afraid,” he said.

To his indignation, Jehan laughed. “Of course Alf’s
afraid! I’ve never met a new father who wasn’t. And the more he
knows of midwifery, the more terrified he’s apt to be, because he knows
every little thing that can go wrong.” The Bishop held out his hands. “Here,
children. Let’s sing a Mass for them—and for us, of course, to keep
us from gnawing our nails.”

Alun looked rebellious. Anna frowned. Nikki tilted his head
to one side, and after a moment, smiled.
Why
,
he said clearly in all their minds,
it’s
Epiphany. Twelfth Night. We can ask the Three Kings to help Thea.

“And the Christ child.” Alun leaped up. “They’ll
listen to us, I know it. Come, be quick! We’ve no time to waste.”

oOo

The chapel was small but very beautiful, consecrated to
Saint John, the Evangelist, the prophet, and incidentally, Jehan’s own
name-saint. Long ago, when this had been the Queen’s Tower, this chapel
had been hers. Alf had kept the century-old fittings, adding only new vestments
and a new altar cloth of his own weaving. For that skill too he had, a rare and
wonderful magic, to weave what he saw into a tangible shape. Snow and moonlight
for the altar, sunlit gold for the chasuble, both on a weft of silk.

The children sat close together near the altar, two dark
heads and one red-gold; two wide pairs of black eyes, the third fully as wide
but grey as rain. Alun, in the middle, held a hand of each of his friends.

Only he sang the responses; Anna never would and Nikki could
not. His voice was almost frightening, high and achingly pure, soaring up and
up and up, plunging with no warning at all and with perfect control into a deep
contralto. Even in his trouble, or perhaps because of it, he took a quiet
delight in that skill, smiling at the man on the altar.

Of course, Jehan thought; the boy was Alf’s pupil.
Small wonder that he could sing like an angel—or like a Jeromite novice.
The others were devout enough, but he was rapt. As if there were more to the
rite than words and gestures, a depth and a meaning, a center that was all
light.

What a priest he would make!

Jehan sighed a little even in the Mass. What a priest Alf
had made, and he had had to leave it or go mad. And this was a royal prince,
heir by right to a throne, even without the fact of his strangeness. His
damnation, the Church would decree. Absolute and irrevocable by his very
nature, because he was witchborn; he would not age, he would not die.

The Church is a very
blind thing.

Nikephoros’ voice, distinct and rather cold.

While Alun made a rippling beauty of the
Agnus Dei
, Jehan met the steady black
stare. He did not try to answer. Nikki had heard it all, attack and defense, a
thousand times over. And being Greek, tolerant of Rome but never bound to it,
he could judge more calmly than most.

Nor am I... quite... human.
I was certainly born with a soul; it’s a moot point whether I’ve
lost it since.

Another of Alf’s clever pupils.

And Thea’s
.
Nikki’s head bowed; his eyes lowered. His whole body spoke a prayer.

oOo

Pain was scarlet and jagged and edged with fire. Pain was
something one watched from a very great distance, and even admired for its
perfect hideousness. But one did not mock it. Not after so long in its company.

A most unroyal crew, they were. A slender child in a smock
like a serving maid’s, ivory hair escaping from its plait, lovely
flower-face drawn thin with weariness. A tall young man with his black brows
knit, his shirt of fine linen much rumpled with long labor. And closest of all
to heart and body, a youth as tall as the other, still in his cotte of cloth of
silver, bending over the focus of the pain: a body naked and swollen, gone to
war with itself.

“It was just so with me,” said the girl, who was
no girl at all but a queen. “A battle, Alun’s power against my own.
And here are two, stronger still in their minds’ bonding, struggling to
keep to the womb.”

No
. Thea had no
breath to say it aloud, but her mind had a little strength left.
It’s not only that. I’m too
small. Fighting myself, too. Alf, if you need to cut—

He shook his head, stroking her sweat-sodden hair out of her
face.

Anger flared with the pain
. Damn you, Alfred! I’m
tired.

“Not too tired to rage at me.”

And he was taking the pain, setting her apart from it. But
she was past repentance.
Out!
she
cried to the center of the struggle.
Out
with you!

It had power, and it was stark with fear, all instinct, all
resistance.

Alf’s hands were on her, startlingly cool. “Push,”
he commanded. He reached with his mind, drawing in the others, aiming, loosing.

A cry tore itself out of her.

He was relentless.
“Again.”

Oh, she hated him, she hated his will, she hated the agony
he had set in her. She gathered all her hate and thrust it downward.

Maura was there beside Alf. “Almost, Thea. Once more.
Only once.”

Liar. There were two of the little horrors. She pushed.

Something howled.

Something else tore, battling.

Little witch-bitch. Kill her mother, would she?

“Turn her.” Gwydion, but strange, breathless.
Excited? Afraid? “Alf, turn—”

Like a blocked calf.

That was Alf’s shock and his utterly unwilling amusement.
And his power, stretching and curving, turning—slipping.

Strong little witch.

Holding. Calming. Easing, inch by inch. Down, round.

Ah,
God!

Out.

The world had stopped.

No; only the pain.

Gwydion was grinning, impossible, wonderful vision. Alf was
far beyond that. He laid a twofold burden on her emptied body, red and
writhing, hideous, beautiful, and suddenly, blissfully silent.

She met a cloud-blue stare. That was the little witch. And
the little sorcerer without armor or spurs, only his strong young heels, with
dark down drying on his skull; but his sister had none at all, poor baby.

With great care and no little effort, Thea touched the damp
soft skin. Real, alive, breathing, and strong. Strong enough to put up a
magnificent fight and almost win it. Tired as she was, she laughed a little. “Alf,
look. See what we made!”

If he had shone with joy before when the children moved
within her, now he blazed. His hand brushed them, found their mother, returned
to the small wriggling bodies. They moved aimlessly, lips working, seeking. He
laughed in his throat, soft and wonderfully deep, and eased them round, holding
them without effort as each found a brimming breast.

This too was pain, but sweet, swelling into pleasure. She
curved an arm about each and realized that she was smiling. Grinning rather,
like a very idiot.

Gwydion bent and kissed her brow; bent again to her lips.
She tasted the fire that slept in him.

“Now,” he said imperiously, “name them for
their King.”

She met Alf’s gaze. Her arm tightened about her
daughter. “Liahan, this is.”

“And Cynan,” Alf said, cradling his son more
carefully.

“Good Rhiyanan names,” said the Elvenking.

“They’re Rhiyanan children.” Alf’s
eyes glinted. “Whatever their parents may be.”

“A Greek witch and a renegade Saxon monk. A splendid
pedigree.” Thea yawned in spite of herself. Liahan began to fret; Alf
gathered her up deftly, one-handed. Her mother smiled.

Within Thea, something shifted like a dam breaking.

Her arms were empty. “The babies—where—”

“Maura has them.” Gwydion was death-white, calm
again.

Too calm. Alf she could not see. She had lost her body
again. “I want my children. Why did you take them away? I want my
children!”

Alf came back to her mind first, then to her eyes. His hands—

A gust of laughter shook her—hysteria. “Alf! You’ve
murdered somebody. You’re all blood.”

She could not see properly. Could not think. Horror struck
deep. “You killed them! You killed—”

Strong hands held her down. She fought.

Alf’s voice lashed out.
“Stop it!”

Gentle Alf, who never shouted, who would never even quarrel.
She lay still, straining to see him. “Alfred—”

He spoke quietly again. Very quietly, very levelly. “Thea.
The blood is yours, and only yours. If you love me—if you love life—you
will let me heal you. Will you, Thea? Can you?”

Fear had gone far away. Alf was a white blur, a babble of
words echoing in her brain. Her power throbbed like an ache. He was holding
back the flood. Holding, but no more. Her barriers held too firmly against him.

He could live in her mind. He could set his seed in her. He
could—not—invade her thus. Reaching deep into her body, shaping,
changing, outsider, alien, forbidden—

“Thea!”

His anguish pierced where reason could not, stabbing deep
and deep. Relief like pain; the swelling of that most miraculous of his powers.
Slowly she yielded before him.

oOo

Thea slept. Alf wavered on his feet. Even for one of his
kind, he was far too pale.

Gwydion braced him. He allowed it for a moment only, drawing
himself up, firming his stance. “She’ll live now,” he said,
little more than a sigh. “My lord, if you would, I should bathe her; and
the bed—the servants—what Dame Agace will say—”

“We’ll see to it.”

He stiffened. “I can’t rest now. The embassy
from Rome—”

“Your place,” said Maura, “is here.”
She extricated him from Gwydion’s hands, drawing him with her. “Here,
sit. Water is coming; you can bathe, too. And eat, and then sleep.”

He would take the bath and the food; he could even let his
King and his Queen together clear away the bloodied sheets and spread fresh
ones sweet-scented with rose petals. But he would not sleep, nor would he sit
by while they tended the unconscious body of his lady, washed it and clothed it
in a shift and laid it in the clean bed. “If I need rest,” he said
rebelliously, “then what of you?”

“We’ll snatch an hour,” Gwydion answered, “but
only if you rest now.”

Alf’s eyes flashed with rare ill temper. “Blackmail!”

The Queen laughed. “Assuredly. Lie down, brother. I’ll
watch over you all and keep the throngs from the door.”

“And your husband in his bed.”

“That too,” she agreed willingly, and laughed
again, for the King’s brows had met, his rebellion risen to match his
Chancellor’s. But he knew better than to voice it. Proudly yet obediently
he retreated.

The Queen circled the room. Alf slept twined with his lady
in the curtained privacy of their bed. Their children breathed gently in the
cradle that had been Alun’s and bore still in its carvings the crowned
seabird of the King; but the coverlet was new, embroidered with the falcon of
Broceliande and the white gazehound of Careol.

Maura smoothed it, moving softly, smiling to herself.
Already the children’s faces were losing the angry flush of birth, taking
on the pallor of the Kindred.

By the bed’s head stood a table laden with books.
There were always books where Alf was; he and Gwydion between them had made the
library of the castle a scholars’ paradise, filling it with the rare and
the wonderful.

She took up a volume of Ovid. It was intricately and
extensively written in, in Alf’s clear monkish hand and now and then Thea’s
impatient scribble: glosses, commentary, and acerbic observations.

Maura sat by the cradle, rocking it with her foot, and began
to read.

The door eased open. She looked up. A head appeared, eyes
widening as they met hers. Alun hesitated, drew back, slid around the door
looking guilty but determined.

His mother held out her hand and allowed her smile to bloom.
“You’re somewhat late,” she said.

As he came into her embrace, the room seemed to fill behind
him—Anna, Nikki, Jehan looming over them all. Their expressions mingled
joy, anxiety, and a modicum of respect for the Queen’s majesty.

Alun voiced it all in a breathless rush. “Mother! Are
they well?”

“All very well,” she answered him. “See.”

The young ones crowded around the cradle, silent, staring.
Jehan waited patiently, but his glance strayed most often to the bed. “Thea?”
he asked very quietly.

“Weak, but well.” His worry was a tangible
thing; she smiled to ease it.

He blinked, dazzled, and smiled back. “I understand...
it was a battle.”

Alun turned quickly. “And when I wanted to go and
help, you pulled me down and sat on me.”

“So,” said Jehan, “I committed a crime.
LËse-majestÈ
.”

“That’s only for kings.” Carefully, almost
timidly, Anna set the cradle to rocking. “They’re beautiful
children, these.”

Alun turned back beside her. “They’re all red.”

Nikki grinned. So had Alun been when he was born, shading to
crimson when he howled.

He glared but did not deign to respond. Nikki only grinned
the wider.

Alf’s head appeared from amid the bed curtains,
peering out at the gathering. If it surprised him to see them all there after
Maura’s promise, he gave no sign of it.