Hell and Earth pa-4

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Yes, Your Highness,” Salisbury answered. Will stepped to the side. “I am at your command.” With a sideways glance to Will– this is not settled.

  “Ride,” she said. “See to your Romish conspirators. You may find them more challenging to catch than anticipated.”

  “And your royal selves?”

  She smiled, sunlight through the first pale leaves of spring. “We shall see to Richard Baines.”

  Act V, scene xx

  Stand up, ye base, unworthy soldiers!

  Know ye not yet the argument of arms?

  –Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act IV, scene i

  Sir Walter welcomed the raven’s company enough that Kit rather suspected he would have been happy to stage a small escape and come with them. Unfortunately, Salisbury had been reluctant to let the poets go up to see him alone, and so they had climbed the stair–each limping, leaning on one another despite the way Will’s touch still made Kit’s skin crawl–in the company of four of Salisbury’s guard, Kit’s lacerated and blistered foot as painful as if he had roasted it carefully over one of the braziers below. They climbed down again poorer by one mythic raven, who seemed remarkably sanguine about being left behind with Sir Walter.

  When they returned, they found Salisbury no longer in evidence and his men more or less dispersed. Murchaud, Ben, and Tom had all been given Faerie mounts; Kit wondered if they were real fey animals, or if they would disappear into dried leaves and twists of straw with the dawn’s advent. He checked the horizon, catching Will’s bemused expression from the corner of his eye, and the rosy glow over the Tower wall told him if that were the case, they had best ride fast.

  Puck came forward, leading Gin and a soft‑eyed gray mare, but Will looked at the horse askance. “I’d rather ride pillion behind Tom or Ben,” he said, hesitantly stroking her nose.

  “Ride pillion behind me,” Kit offered. Will glanced sideways and grinned, surprised. Kit hid his flinch as Will’s gloved fingers tightened on his own. “I don’t suppose you know where in Hell we’re going?”

  “Not Hell,” Puck said. “Well, perhaps Hell, but I think it unlikely.” He handed Kit the sorrel’s reins, and Kit tugged his hand from Will’s and leaned on the saddle instead.

  “Where then?”

  “We go a‑hunting Richard Baines,” the Mebd said, riding toward them, her horse’s hooves making not a sound. Kit swore he saw her ears prick and swivel. “Welcome, poets. Welcome, bards. Master Shakespeare, I have a task for thee–”

  Kit tightened his grip on the warm, smooth leather, fumbling for the stirrup as the gelding snorted impatiently but stood steady as a menhir. Up, clumsy mortal! Up!

  “How does Your Majesty intend to find him?” Kit asked, pitching his voice in the courtly range. “He’s warded against the power in the Darkling Glass.”

  He stilled his hand with an effort when he found his thumbnail picking flaked blood from his opposite wrist. Instead, he patted the comforting weight of the saber still slung from Gin’s saddle. Will crossed to lay a hand on his boot; Kit reached down to help swing him into the saddle, and paused when the Mebd cleared her throat.

  The Mebd glanced over at her sister Morgan, and the two women shared an enigmatic smile. “Hounds,” the Queen said, and reached out with one pale lily of a hand to touch Murchaud on the thigh. He startled, his clubbed hair bobbing as his head snapped up, his horse fussing at the sudden uncontrolled jerk on her reins. The Mebd let her hand slide down his thigh, turned, transferred the reins as smoothly as a trick rider and leaned perilously far from her sidesaddle to trail the other hand down Morgan’s white‑sleeved arm. “Hounds,” she repeated, and–in a transformation that was over in an eyeblink – a red dog and a black‑brindle crouched in the saddles where Morgan and her son had been.

  Kit reached blindly for Murchaud, stunned, his hand trembling. The black dog showed teeth and laid his ears flat on his head, and Kit let his fingers flex softly and his hand fall to his side. He heard Will’s startled gasp, the long slow rattle of his breath permitted to slide back out. “Your Highness.” Kit raised his eyes to the Mebd’s. “Change them back.”

  Her long nails scrabbling for purchase on the sloped leather of the saddle, the red hound hopped to the ground and wove between the horse’s legs, sniffing intently. And the Mebd smiled. “We shall,” the Mebd answered. “After we have your nemesis in hand, Sir Christofer. Surely thou hast ridden to the hunt before?”

  “Nay, “he said. “Surely you have other hounds, my lady… . The black dog joined the red, sniffing, circling, wiry coat undulating in the cold gray predawn. Kit blinked, realizing how bright it had grown. He reached down right‑handed to grab Will’s fingers, still resting on his ill‑fitting boot.

  “No hounds such as these, ” she said. “Master Shakespeare, come forward.”

  Kit clutched Will’s cold gloved fingers, but Will tugged them loose and moved three steps away. Gin shied and sidestepped away from the pressure of Kit’s knee when he would have gone after, and he could only watch skinny, shiny‑headed Will limp up to clasp the stirrup of the Queen. “Will – ”

  “Your Highness,” Will said, quite ignoring Kit. The Mebd nodded to him silently and lifted her chin to stare Kit down.

  He lasted perhaps a minute and a half. “Why these hounds?”

  “They are hounds that have a certain link to thee which will help them find the sorcerer who used thee so badly, Sir Kit,” she said, and smiled. Kit heard Tom’s sudden indrawn breath, the creak of leather as he swung from the saddle of his own Faerie mount. Kit turned to fix him with a withering stare, but it was as if Kit had grown as invisible as Mehiel. The red hound craned her neck up to nose Kit’s stirrup once.

  “Your Highness,” Tom said, raking both hands through his graying auburn hair. “If I understand you correctly, I would serve in this capacity as well.” He looked at Will, as if for permission. Will tilted his head, smiling, and shrugged, and finally both men turned to look at Kit. Who looked down promptly, away from Ben Jonson’s startled cough.

  Kit turned to fix Ben with a glare, but the wry bemusement on the young poet’s face turned a searing glance into a sideways shrug. One that made Ben cough again, and then burst out laughing, both hands over his face.

  The Mebd laid her hands on Will’s head, and Tom’s, and flinched. “You have iron on ye,” she said, leaning back in the saddle. The spare Faerie horses withdrew as she spoke, milling in back of the rest, docile as if led.

  Kit watched as Tom divested himself of various things – boots and dagger and what else came to hand that might have so much as a flake of iron in it. Will did the same, but when he searched his pockets he paused and turned back to Kit. “Hold this for me,” he said. “Safekeeping.” And pressed a silk pouch containing a bit of iron into Kit’s palm.

  “Oh, Will,” Kit said, words forced past a wall of emotion.

  Will just shook his head. And a moment later a tall, wire‑coated gray hound and a blue‑brindled one stood beside the red one and the black.

  “Christ,” Kit said, not caring that the Queen made a moue of distaste and the Puck clapped his hands over his lolling ears. “What sort of hounds are those?”

  “Faerie hounds, Sir Poet,” Puck answered, patting Kit’s boot as he hung the little silk pouch around his neck. “With yawning mouths, sharp teeth, and wet lolling tongues. Fleet of limb, compact of foot, and tireless in the hunt.”

  The dogs circled, casting for a scent. Kit watched, slowly shaking his head, and bit his lip when the red bitch belled in a voice he would have known anywhere. A moment later and all four hounds gave throat, and Cairbre and the Mebd wheeled their steeds around.

  “Come on,” Puck cried to Kit and Ben, giving his heels to his shaggy pony. “Come on! We hunt!”

  If the trail took them through London, Kit never knew it. He crouched low over the gelding’s blond mane and watched the running hounds–their half‑pricked ears, their wiry coats, their long muzzles and longe
r legs stretched out in flight. The gray limped, he thought, but it still outran the blue‑brindle. Kit could not force himself to give them names. Will. Tom.

  The horses’ hooves might have flailed air, for all the sound they made, and Kit thought they ran through walls and buildings as easily as if they coursed along roads. The whole world went to shadows, rosy with the dawn and gray with winter, and all around was the silent rhythm of horses running like ghosts, their breaths and those of their riders trailing back in plumes of white, the pulse of air through their lungs, the creak of leather, the bell of hounds the only sound. Ben’s big bay surged along on Kit’s left; on his right side the Mebd’s leggy black outran the rest. Beyond her Kit glimpsed Cairbre’s mount steady at her flank, nose even with the post of her sidesaddle, and when he ducked his head to glance under his arm, he saw Puck’s strange little pony striving gamely in their wake, almost lost amidst the Mebd’s flock of courtiers.

  Kit pulled his eyes away, rocking with the motion of the horse, wincing when his weight hit his injured foot in the stirrup and fresh blood oiled the inside of the dead man’s boot, wetness soap‑slick on the glassy surface of sweat‑cured leather.

  The hounds ran on, and the horses ran behind them, and the sun rose from behind the ghosts of houses and trees. Glimmerings moved among the city’s landmarks: Gin ran through the shadow of a girl who stood one moment golden‑haired and garbed in blue, laughing – and the next sodden and dark, clad for mourning. It was a dream of London, Mehiel told Kit. A dream of England: not quite Faerie, but a place that was neither quite Faerie nor real. So this is how Baines hides himself so well.Except… how did he come here? How did he know of this place? What is it, a shadow world, world of the half‑told stories?Kit glanced sideways to catch Ben’s face over the lofting mane of his bay, saw the wonder and the bitten lip and the big hands steady in concentration on the reins.

  Five hounds now, not four, Kit saw, and the fifth one white as starlight on snowdrifts, running strongly alongside the others, close as if teamed. The fifth dog was larger and more beautiful than the others, like an idealized alabaster statue rather than any real hound, even a transformed one, Kit felt Mehiel’s wings flutter, cup air almost strongly enough to tear him from the saddle, more real here in this place of half dreams than elsewhere. A caution, my friend.

  Kit’s scars flared with pain, subsided. «He hunts with us,» Mehiel said, wondering. «Can the Devil serve two masters?»

  And Kit blinked, and raised his head to look at the red dawn spilling over the shifting landscape they ran through, sure‑footed fey horses clearing withy hurdles that were jumbled stone‑crowded stream courses when they landed beyond, charging up hills that turned into houses, and he understood. Of course.

  «Kit, I do not understand.»

  Mehiel would not. For Mehiel was a creature of service, a creature under will, made to obey: a moral imperative made flesh. He could have no doubt, no hesitation, no regret, no hope. Except. Except he had stayed his hand when he could have struck Lucifer down. When Lucifer, mocking, had spread his arms wide and offered himself like a sacrifice. Like Kit. When Lucifer had come at the summons of those who had held Kit, who had treated them as a lord with servants, had sworn–

  Had promised them everything they had asked him for.

  And then … led Kit’s rescuers among his own servants, interrupted the ritual that would remake God in the image they desired? It made no sense, and Kit worried at it, shredding it like a falcon shreds a rabbit haunch. Because, because, because.

  Because Lucifer was a legend too. A legend like any other, a construct, a fable, a myth.

  And Morgan had had hair as golden as straw once, and she had been a goddess then.

  «A11 stories are true,» Mehiel said, comprehending. «He can be both things at once.»

  Not if Lucifer can help it,Kit answered, and crouched back in the saddle as Gin collected himself to scramble down a slope that was gravel, was slick mud, was traprock, and scree. The five hounds ran before them; the fey steeds strove beneath. The light shifted gold for crimson as the sun broke free of the horizon, and Kit leaned closer to Gin’s neck and held on for dear life. Mehiel, my brother, I dare say the one thou lovest doth care for thee, as well.

  Act V, scene xxi

  Be thy mouth or black or white,

  Tooth that poisons if it bite;

  Mastiff, grayhound, mongrel grim,

  Hound or spaniel, brach or lym;

  Or bobtail tike or trundle‑tail;

  Tom will make them weep and wail:

  For, with throwing thus my head,

  Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.

  –William Shakespeare, King Lear,Act III, scene iv

  The scent is hot wine, acidic and intense. Spicy, irresistible. His legs move tirelessly, tremors stilled by the willow‑being’s magic, only a slight limp affecting his stride. The quarry lies ahead, the pack lies behind; the grass and gravel and tramped earth lie steady under his feet.

  He follows that scent–that hated, enticing, bittersweet scent–to its inevitable conclusion. A man, a man who does not serve. A man who threatens something the hound holds dear. A man who will not be permitted to continue.

  Close. So close. Running feet, the jostling shoulders of brothers and a sister beside him. Sweet motion, hot scent, follow it down – fox to his lair, wolf to his den, badger to his burrow. The scent hot, metallic as blood, bitter as the sap of monkshood dabbed against the tongue. The red bitch whines low in her throat, levels her strong, slender body. On his other side, a smoke‑and‑gold brindled dog bends low to the ground, hard into an angle, and runs.

  Over hedgerow and ditch, down bank and through privet–it is not his concern how the horses will stay with them. That’s a worry for the horses and their masters. His concern is to hunt, and to run.

  The scent’s hotter now, fresher. Borne on the wind as well as the earth. It’s not a scent, precisely, more a contagion, a trace of the passage of the one they hunt. The one they hunt. And the ones they hunt forride behind–

  There!he shouts joyously. There! There! There! There!The quarry turns, a broad figure on a dark‑colored horse, floppy brim of a thing on his head, gray cloak wrapped tight. A rogue wind swirls it about his shoulders, about his thighs.

  The gray hound collects himself for the leap. His brothers, his sister, they gather themselves. The white hound who runs before them is gone, vanished, tattered and blown apart by the freshening breeze as if he had no more substance than a twist of smoke. The gray dog can already feel the panicked horse shying from his scrabbling nails, the way they’ll furrow saddle leather and flesh, taste the man’s blood hot over his tongue, muscle stretching and tearing between ripping teeth –

  “Hold!”

  Somehow he stops the killing leap, braces front feet hard enough to furrow turf, trips on the black‑brindle dog who likewise struggles to a stop before him, and they go down yelping, tumbling one over the other, coming to their feet again almost under the horse’s belly. It shies and dances a step, and the rider gentles it; deftly, not harshly, but the motion unseats his hat, and pale hair glitters in the strange sunlight.

  The gray dog whines and crouches low, his limbs tingling uncomfortably, baring his teeth in a silent, warning snarl. Behind him, a woman’s voice rises, fluid and mellifluous on words he does not understand, until Will pushed himself upright with both hands flat on the dew‑wet grass and got his feet under him in a crouch. Around him, Morgan and Murchaud and Tom all stood as well, Murchaud rubbing a wrist that Will thought he might have rolled over when they tripped into each other.

  Will stood, scrubbing his earth‑stained hands on the front of his breeches, unmindful of a little more muck on the ruined cloth, and tilted his head back at Richard Baines. “Your master’s thrown you to the wolves, Dick,” Will said mildly as the horses came up behind him, their hooves that had been ghost silent clopping on the strangely solid turf. “Or perhaps I should say, the hounds. I suppose it’s too much
to ask that you would come quietly? ”

  “For the sparing of my life?” Baines chuckled, spreading his hands. Something glittered between them. Will stepped back. “Somehow, Master Playmaker, I do not think that is a vow you can make on their behalf–”

  “Will!” Kit’s voice, a startled shout as Baines moved suddenly. Will threw himself backward hard, scrambling to get out from under the gold‑shot shadow that flared from Baines hands like a fisherman’s high‑spun net.

  He was not fast enough. What settled over him felt like the brush of a silk sheet down his skin. What followed that touch was blackness, utter and complete.

  Act V, scene xxii

  Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart.

  –Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act V ,scene ii

  The saber hung useless from Kit’s hand as Baines spun light over Will and yanked it tight, his gestures efficient. Will didn’t fall. He raised his hands and froze there, still as an oil painting, posed like a man shielding his face from divine light.

  The same radiance that netted and shrouded Will twisted around Baines as well, knotted in his hands, drawn up to his chest. The dark bay gelding he rode stood steady, one white‑stockinged forehoof cocked but not lifted. Kit froze where he was, half standing in the saddle, one hand upraised, the hilt of his borrowed saber warm in his palm, the red horse breathing convulsively beneath him.

  He’d outridden the others on Gin’s game back, just by a stride or two, and now he could feel Cairbre, the Mebd, Ben Jonson, the Puck, and the rest of the fey courtiers drawing up in a half circle. Murchaud had been standing closest to Will; both he and Tom stepped up beside the paralyzed poet, flanking him and facing down Baines while Morgan dusted her hands on her riding breeches and fell back to stand at Kit’s stirrup. “Dick,” Kit said, without lowering the saber. “Let Will go.”

  Morgan laid a hand on Kit’s boot. Gin sidestepped, mouthing the bit, Kit’s tension flowing down the reins like cold water.