Anna could move, if she was very careful. She did not know that she wanted to. Even her eyelids throbbed and burned; she could see only through a blood-red mist.
Simon’s voice spoke. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, soft as a whisper yet echoing deep in her brain. “See, woman. See what your folly has bought you.”
It was like a dream, and it was not. It was too clear, too distinct, too grimly relentless.
It seemed that she stood under the open sky, immeasurably vast after the walls that had enclosed her for so long, and the sun was shining and the gulls were crying. Beneath them like a carpet spread the kingdom of Rhiyana. Dun and grey and brown, white with snow and green with pine and fir, hatched with roads that seemed all to run toward the white pearl of Caer Gwent and the blue glitter of the sea.
That seemed safe, serene, overlaid with a faint golden shimmer, but the borders seethed and smoldered. The shimmer there was dark and shot through with flame, and yet something in it put her in mind of Simon’s eyes.
The land swelled and stretched and grew clear before her. She could have been a gull or a falcon hovering over the untidy circle of a town. Ants swarmed in it, men shrunken with distance and height, brandishing weapons surely too tiny to be deadly. Swords, spears—no. Staves and cudgels, rakes, scythes, here and there a rusted pike.
Something fled before them, a small ragged scrambling figure, white hair thin and wild, weak eyes staring out of the tangle, blood-scarlet and mad with terror. The mob bayed at it. “Witch! Witch! Demon’s get, sorcerer. God’s curse—”
Anna struggled to cry out. But as in a dream, she was voiceless, powerless.
The poor pallid creature stumbled and fell. The mob sprang upon it. A thin shriek mounted to Heaven.
Hoofs thundered. A strong clear voice lashed above the growls of men turned beasts. A company of knights and sergeants clove through the mob, and at their head a flame of scarlet.
Anna could have sung for joy. He rode armored, the Prince Aidan, but for haste or for recklessness he had disdained both helm and mail-coif. His raven head was bare, his face stark white with wrath; he laid about him with the flat of his sword.
At the eye of the storm was stillness. The wretched albino lay twisted impossibly, his colorless hair stained crimson.
The Prince sprang down beside him, knelt, brushed the broken body with a gentle hand. His steel-grey glance swept the gathered faces. “That,” he said with deadly softness, “was no more a witch than any of you.”
He rose. Although one or two came near his height, he towered over them; they flinched and cowered. “Yes,” he purred, “be afraid. Such return you give your King for all his years of care for you; such a gift do you give him, this roil of fear and hate.”
Anna felt it. He could not. Not all his pallor was anger; he was sustaining himself by sheer force of will, and no power. He could not sense the gathering, the focusing, the sudden bitter loosing.
Stone and hate struck him together. His eyes went wide, astonished. He reeled.
He did not fall. Blood streamed down his face, blinding him. He paid it no heed. His hand stretched out. His mind reached, clawing, slipping, failing. The mob closed in for the kill.
oOo
Anna’s throat was raw with outrage. She flung herself at Simon; he held her away with contemptuous ease. “Two,” he said, “are mastered. A third comes to my hand. So.”
She struggled; she fought; she willed her eyes to be blind. No use. Rhiyana unfurled before her, sweeping closer and closer, until Caer Gwent itself grew about her.
The streets were crowded though it was the fallow time of Lent, as if lords and commons alike had chosen to take refuge far from the Crusade. Merchants did a brisk trade in dainties as in necessities. Singers sang; players plied their trade in front of the cathedral.
But the clamor of the schools was muted, the gate of the synagogue barricaded shut, the austere houses of the Heresiarch’s flock empty and silent. Only one man dared preach from the porch of one of the lesser churches, and he was a friar, a Minorite in tattered grey who proclaimed the poverty of Christ.
There were white habits and grey cowls everywhere. How had so many come so deep into Rhiyana in defiance of the ban? How dared they? They walked like lords, secure in their power. People gave way before them.
Anna plunged past them with stomach-churning speed and swooped toward the castle. Abruptly she was within it.
Its familiarity tore at her heart. There was the Chancellor’s Tower where she had lived whenever she was in Caer Gwent. There was the stable where champed her fiery little gelding, Alf’s gift to her only this past name-day. And there was the Queen’s garden, so wrought that it seemed far larger within than without, touched with her magic.
Roses bloomed; small bright birds sang spring songs without care for the beasts that lazed on the ground below. Some were gifts from far countries, such of them as chose to sacrifice freedom and homeland for love of the Queen. Some had come of their own accord: a white hind and her red fawn, a sow and her piglets, badgers and coneys and sleek red foxes.
And the wolves. Not grey wolves of the wood but white wolves of the Wood, great as mastiffs, he and she, and their boisterous half-grown cubs.
The Queen sat on the grass with the she-wolf’s head in her lap. They were wonderfully alike, the lady in her white gown with her ivory skin and her ivory hair and her eyes the color of amber, the wolf all white and golden-eyed.
“Sister,” said the light childlike voice of the lady, “you are not being wise. The rest of the wildfolk will go back to their proper places with the next sunrise. You must not linger, not you of them all, whom humans call my kin and my familiars. They will destroy you as gladly as they destroy me, and no whit less cruelly.”
Anna heard the response as a voice, husky like a man’s yet somehow distinctly feminine. We came when you came. We go when you go.
“Then your children at least—”
They stay.
Maura’s fingers buried themselves in the thick ruff. Her eyes had the hard glitter of one who refuses to weep. “Do you remember,” she murmured, “when Alun was playing just where your cubs play now? And when we looked, the three young wolves were four and my son nowhere to be seen, but the largest and most awkward cub looked at us with startled grey eyes. He had that gift from me, the wolf- shape, yet his talent was greater. Like Thea’s, limited only by his knowledge.” She shook her head and mustered a smile. “Such mischief it led him into. When he walked as a cat and he met a she-cat in heat... his wounds were nothing, but his shock was all-encompassing. Cats, after all, are creatures of Venus, and when one takes a shape one takes on its nature as well.”
The wolf’s gaze was wise and strangely compassionate. He hunted well. We mourn him under the moon.
“I mourn him always. Always. But I must be strong. I must hold up my head under the crown. It is so heavy, sister. So monstrously heavy.”
She drooped even in speaking of it, but stiffened with a visible effort of will, rising to her feet. Her heavy braid uncoiled to her heels, rich as cream; she took up the somber pelisson she had discarded, the wimple and veil suited to a matron and a queen.
Slowly she put on the dark overgown with its lining of marten fur. As she began to fold the wimple, a disturbance brought her about. The animals were agitated, the more timid already hidden, the hunters alert, growling softly. Yet even without them she would have known that human feet had trodden in her garden.
The Pope’s Legate walked among the roses, vivid in the scarlet of his rank. He moved slowly, breathing deep of the cool clear air, but under the joyous peace of the garden his face was grim.
As he saw the Queen, both joy and grimness deepened. He bowed low before her.
She bent her head to him, all queenly. “Eminence,” she acknowledged him.
“Your Majesty,” he responded. He looked about him as if he could not help it, his eyes coming to rest where they had begun, upon her. The grimness filled his face, yet he spoke gently. “Majesty, I beg you to pardon my intrusion.”
“It is pardoned.” She sounded cool and remote, unmoved by any trouble.
Silence stretched. The beasts had settled; the wolves sat or lay in a broad circle about the Cardinal and the Queen, even the cubs still, watchful.
Benedetto Torrino sighed faintly. “I know how few are your moments of peace,” he said. “The crown is heavy even for one well fit to bear it; and what we have brought into this kingdom… Lady, I regret that we have caused you suffering and must cause you more.”
“Must, Lord Cardinal? Is it the law of God that the Church must hound us to death and our realm to ruin?”
“It is the law of the world that a will to good must often turn all to evil. His Holiness wishes only that the world be cleansed of stain and brought back to its God. His servants labor to work his will, and His will, as best they may.”
She laughed, cold and clear. “You believe that? Then you are an innocent. We suffer and die so that one small circle of venal men may hold more power in the Curia than any of their rivals.”
“Not entirely, Lady. Not entirely.”
“Enough.” The wimple was crushed in her hand; she let it fall. “I am weary, Lord Cardinal, and it seems I am to have no rest even here where none but my dearest kin may come. Why have you braved the wards and the ban?”
“I had no choice.” From his sleeve Torrino took a folded parchment. “This has come to me. I think you should know of it.”
She held it, looking at it. Her fingers tightened. She opened the missive, read slowly.
Nothing changed in her face or her bearing, yet the air darkened and stilled as before thunder. She looked up. Her eyes were the color of sulfur. “Your embassy is ended forthwith. You are to return to Rome. A man of firmer will and greater devotion to God and to Mother Church will fill your place. He will, of course, be a monk of Saint Paul.”
“That is not the... precise... wording of the letter.”
“That is its import.” She turned it in her hands. “Pope Honorius never saw this.”
“He signed it. There is the seal.”
“And its secret mark, the exact number of points in Saint Peter’s beard.” She shook her head slightly, almost amused. “My lord, there is an old, old trick. A heap of documents, a high lord in haste, the crucial and betraying writ so concealed that only its margin is visible, ready to be signed. Men have been done to death in that fashion, as we may well be. For I have little doubt that with this His Holiness signed another addressed to the new Legate, granting God’s Hounds full power and full discretion in the harrowing of Rhiyana.”
“I cannot believe—” Torrino broke off. More slowly, more softly, he said, “I can. God help me; God help us all.”
“You move too slowly to sate the bloodthirst of a Hound. You have not even lowered the Interdict; not by your command have innocent folk been burned in the markets and before the churches. The Hounds and the Crusade have advanced without you.”
“I have made no effort to stop them.” Torrino’s voice was harsh.
“You have been powerless. So too have I. Did I enforce the ban when the grey cowls appeared all at once and with brazen boldness in every hamlet, even in my own city?”
“But not in your hall or before your court.”
“They will not defile their sanctity with my presence. Not until they come triumphant to demand my life.”
“Lady,” he said. “Lady, believe. I came armed with righteousness to search out a tribe of devils. I found order and peace, a just king, a people no more evil than any other in this world. I do not believe that you have deceived me, or that I have deceived myself. Your sorceries, the infidels among you…they have not earned death or even Interdict, least of all without proper trial. I would have your people tried, given time to speak in their own defense, dealt with thereafter singly and with justice, without peril to your kingdom.”
“What one would have and what one will have do not often meet. Will you obey your false orders, my lord?”
He took them from her hand. With a sudden fierce movement he tore the sheet asunder.
The shards rattled like leaves as they fell. But he said calmly, “I may have no choice, although I shall fight with what skill I have. Letters can be delayed or mislaid; the kingdom is in chaos, the roads beset with mud and brigands.”
“As they have not been since my King was young.” Her fierceness like his was a flash of blade from the sheath, but she held it so, drawn and glittering. “Benedetto Cardinal Torrino, you know that your very presence here is a betrayal of your office.”
“My office is that of judge and emissary; my calling is that of a priest of Christ. I will not surrender it all for a lie.”
“The lie may be in us.”
He regarded her. She stood as tall as he, but slender as a child, with the face of a young maiden. Her eyes, unveiled, were utterly inhuman. “And yet,” he whispered, “not evil. Never so.”
“They will say I have ensorceled you.”
“Perhaps you have. You are all beautiful, you Kindred of the Elvenking, but you most of all, Lady and Queen. I have never seen a woman fairer than you.”
“The White Chancellor surpasses me, Lord Cardinal, and well I know it.”
He smiled with surprising warmth. “But, Lady, he is a man; and even at that I would not set him above you. I grieve that we meet only now and amid such havoc, but I cannot regret that we have met.”
“Nor,” she mused, “after all, can I.” Her smile nearly felled him. He reeled; she caught him in great dismay. “My lord, pardon, I took no thought—”
The Queen had gone. In her place stood the maid who had loved two princes, but who had chosen the one for his gentleness—not knowing then that he would be King.
But the Queen knew what the maiden had never suspected, that her face itself was an enchantment and her smile laden with power. She looked on this newest victim in visible distress, holding him by his two hands as if the body’s strength alone could undo what she had done.
He steadied quickly enough. He was a strong-willed man; his vows protected him after a fashion. But he remained a man. He swallowed hard. “Your Majesty, I must go.”
“Yes,” she said, “you must.”
They both looked down. Their hands were locked together. Neither could find the power to let go.
“Your King—” It was a gasp. “Your husband. He is mending, I have heard; one of your Kindred—she told me where you were—I thank God that he will not die.”
“It is not yet certain that he will live. But we pray. He will allow no more. Even I—he will not let me come to him, and I cannot go as our people go. And there is the throne to hold for him. Ah, God, I hate these shackles of queenship!”
“You love him.”
“Most sinfully, with body and soul.” At last she could loose one hand, only to touch his pectoral cross. “I have never felt it as a sin. I gave him the only child I could give; I would joyfully give him another, a pair, a dozen. As he would give me—but wounded, walled against me—I fear that he is hiding—that he may be—”
His arms closed around her, inevitable as the tides of the sea. “He took an arrow in the thigh, but not so high and not so dreadful as you fear. I have it from witnesses; I know it for truth. He may come back lame, but he will come back a man.”
“Or dead.” Her head drooped on his shoulder; he clasped her close. His face was rapt, brilliant, a little mad. He buried it in the silken masses of her hair.
oOo
“Three,” Simon said, “or more likely, four. Who would have dreamed that a prince of the Church would fall so easily? I hardly needed to bait the trap.”
Anna did not know how she could hate him, pity him, fear him, scorn him, all utterly, all at once. It choked the breath from her; it left her blank and staring, shaking her head slowly, unable to stop.
He had no eyes for her. Thea lay flattened at his feet, hackles abristle, lips wrinkled in a snarl. “The world shall be clean of all your kind,” he said. “One by one they shall fall. Even those you deem safe in your forest—I have counted them; my power has marked each one. It grows, you see. With use, with mastery, its strength waxes ever greater. No wall may hold it away, no magic stand against it, no power overcome it.” He reached as for something he could touch, smiling with terrible gentleness. “How beautiful, like a tower of light. How fragile; how easy to cast down.”
Thea tensed as if to spring. He raised his hand. She froze. Her snarl died. The blaze of her eyes died into ashes. She shrank down and down.
“Your demon lover,” he said, “is dead. He dared advance against me; I struck, and cast him down. He lingered for a little while; he struggled; he betrayed your people to the Pope’s Legate. But at last he fell into the darkness that waits for those who have no souls.”
“No,” Anna whispered. “No.”
Simon turned to her. “Yes. Great prince of devils that he was, masked in piety, he was no match for me. The world is free of him.”
“No,” she repeated. “He can’t be dead. He promised me. A long time ago in Constantine’s city, he promised. As long as I needed him, he wouldn’t—” She could not finish. Not for grief, not yet; for rage. She faced her jailer in a white fire of it. “How dared he die? How dared you murder him?”
He fell back. She did not deign to be astonished. “Damn you. Damn you, Simon Magus. What right have you to make us suffer? Who gave you the power to ordain life and death? How dared you kill my brother?”
“God,” he gasped. “God—”
“God damns you, you hound of Hell. Murderer, your power is so mighty—raise our dead. Do yourself to death in their places.”
“It is forbidden. God forbids—”
“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. Who slays with power must die of it. That is the law of your kind.”
“No law binds me but God’s.”
“Just so.” Anna raised her clenched fists. “I curse you, Simon Magus. I curse you by your own power.”
He backed away. “No. No, I beg, I command—”
“Monster. Coward. You dread death. You know what waits for you. Hellmouth. The Lord Satan. The fires unending. If,” she said, “you have a soul.”
He struck at her feebly, white with terror, all the glory gone and only the craven madness left to rule him. Until he paused; his hands froze, warding. His eyes blazed with sudden lightnings. Again he struck, a sweeping blow that hurled her from her feet.