by Judith Tarr
Henry bowed to him. “Go. Do what you can. Keep them alive.”
The man looked hard at him. “Christ’s bones. You do care. God will reward you, I’m sure.”
“What use is heaven,” Henry demanded, “if the earth is a wasteland behind me?”
The physician bowed low, and only half in mockery. Then he was gone. Henry sent a prayer after him, wrapped in a working: for strength, for skill, and for the healing of the sick.
For that he had to lower his wards—which he did without stopping to think. He was not sorry, either, though as soon as he had done it, he knew it had not been wise at all.
He reeled against the wall. Power—terror—desperation. She was—he saw—
Brick was rough against his cheek, still cool from the night. It was old: Roman brick, salvaged and built into this house in Salisbury. He could see through it. And there she was, the lady to whom he had given his mother’s name.
It was not the sort of battle he was used to fighting, with men and weapons, but a battle it most certainly was—and she was losing. His eye that had been trained in combat saw quickly how it was and what he faced. All too well he remembered that dread abbess. She had found a most delectable prey, long awaited and much desired; and she was savoring it slowly.
He reached through the wall into that other place and caught hold of Mathilda’s hand—for that was all he knew to call her. There was something wound in her fingers. As his own locked about it, he felt the lightning fall.
CHAPTER 47
Edith was dying. Her body did not know it yet, was still standing upright, but the soul was being sucked out of her.
There was nothing she could do. The bonds had been laid on her with the water of baptism. Her mother’s teaching and the abbess’ tutelage had only bound her the tighter.
She was the vessel, the chosen one. She would contain all that they had wrought. Through her, the rest would fall.
Abbess Christina had given up all hope of restoring a mortal kingship. Her whole desire now was for death and destruction, and for an end to this travesty that the invaders had made of England.
Despair was potent, and seductive. Edith caught herself on the brink. She could not hold; she was not strong enough. With all her magic, all her training, all the power of the Isle that had poured into her, she still could not resist that headlong emptiness.
Something caught her hand, grinding the jewel into her palm. The pain was vivid, immediate, real. So was the warmth of human flesh, and the strength of a mortal grip.
It was a man’s strength, with power behind it—magic at least the equal of hers. Even as she understood that, she knew whose magic it was. No one else fit so well into her empty places.
Henry. His name invoked his face. He was with her, side by side, hand locked in hand.
She felt the power rising. Some remote part of her quailed. It was too much—too strong. Stronger even than the greyness that was swallowing Britain. So strong that it might destroy where it meant to heal.
There was no choice. She had to take the risk. She raised the power like a sword, and struck the greyness down.
It yielded like fog. Like mist, it slipped away, only to gather its formlessness together and stand before her again, as whole as before.
There was solidity at its heart. The abbess still had mortal substance, though the malice of two dead queens was in her. She was still bound to mortality.
Henry saw it even before Edith. While she flailed to find enough magic to do she hardly knew what, he drew his sword in a blur of steel.
The air between the worlds shrieked with the agony of cold iron. The greyness swirled. The living thing in its heart turned to run, but Henry was too swift. He stepped through and inabout, into the cold air of the abbey’s chapel, and thrust the blade between the fleeing shoulders.
Through their linked hands, Edith felt the force of the blow: sharp steel piercing flesh, cracking bone, transfixing the shuddering heart. Henry’s feet were braced. The strength of him went deep into the earth: even this earth that had been stripped of life and spirit.
Abbess Christina twisted as she fell, wrenching the sword out of Henry’s hand. The cloud about her writhed and boiled.
It had drawn the Hunt. The chapel’s roof was no impediment to Edith’s sight. She could see through it to a sky as grey and tormented as the fog of nothingness below.
The Hunt hovered above the abbey, waiting as it had waited when her father died. A soul was a soul, however black or corrupted—and this gathering of souls was threefold, which was a great number in the Otherworld.
Edith looked up. Amid the skeletal hunters and the milling, baying hounds, she searched for her father, but they were all shadows, with no faces that she could see.
She never even stopped to think. Henry was bending to retrieve his sword. The nuns in the choir were still chanting, but the chorus had gone somewhat ragged. Edith stood astride her aunt’s body.
She was still not quite in the world. The Hunt was clear to her sight, even through stone—but stone was solid enough underfoot and in walls around her. The body beneath her was more real than any of it.
The smell of blood wreathed her, and the reek of voided entrails. But the Hunt cared little for that.
“Let them take her,” Henry said.
Their hands were still linked as if bound. He had cleansed the sword somewhat on the abbess’ skirts, but not yet sheathed it. His face was at once deeply familiar and profoundly strange. “This is justice,” he said. “Don’t stand in its way.”
“You have a cold heart,” said Edith. “Is it also wise?”
The Hunt stooped even lower. For the flash of an instant Edith knew why her kinswomen had so hated all that was Norman.
This Norman was wise. And practical. And there was Britain, which had nearly fallen because of this thing beneath her feet—this creature who had spread its ruin through the whole of Britain. People were dying because of it—children were dying, their souls eaten away by the blight in the earth.
This thing had been her kin. Her enemy, yes; it would have destroyed her without a qualm. But blood was blood.
She looked up into the Huntsman’s fleshless face. “Her own God will judge her,” she said.
“We are her judgment,” said the Huntsman.
“I think not,” said Edith.
“That is twice,” the Huntsman said, “that you have defied us. There is a price for it. In the end you will pay.”
“I’m willing,” she said steadily. “Let this one go. There’s torment enough ahead for her, I’m thinking, even without your pagan damnation.”
“And you call my heart cold,” Henry said beside her.
That was admiration. Edith was not sure she welcomed it.
She must not let it distract her. She kept her eyes level on the Huntsman, just as she had done when she was much younger and even less wise.
He bowed to her. The fire of his eyes promised a reckoning, but she had won—again. The darkness at her feet dissipated into the earth that it had blighted, leaving the body cold.
The Hunt withdrew. The fog in the chapel melted away. Light shone through the high windows, slanting golden on the floor.
The nuns stirred and murmured. They had faces. Their eyes were alive. They stared at Edith, and at the man who stood at her back, sword drawn as if to guard her from an assault of holy women.
Edith set her hands together and bowed to them, even as she slipped sidewise out of the world.
Henry had never seen such casual power. His sister was strong, and so for that matter was he, but they were always aware of what they were. She simply was.
She was like the Old Things. She passed from world to world as he would walk from one room to the next of one of his castles—and somehow, by some magic, she had him doing it, too. She had brought him from an alley in Salisbury and herself from the gods knew where, then through her power he had taken them into Wilton Abbey where it seemed all the blight had begun—and when they we
re done there, she stepped with him onto a greensward under misty sunlight, beside the silver glimmer of a lake.
She had brought him to the Isle of Glass, where they had met at Beltane. There were people there, standing in a circle, staring—much as the nuns had. He recognized his sister, and the Lady of the Isle, and Robin FitzHaimo.
The Guardians of Britain were gathered here to defend the isle. He was standing with his nameless lady at the fourth corner, the pillar of the east: facing the lake. And that was right and proper, and as it should be.
She lifted her hand. The jewel was still in it, but the silver was blackened and crumpled, and the stone had gone grey and dead.
Its light was inside them both. They were the fourth pillar of Britain, both of them together.
She flung the spent jewel far out over the lake. It rose in an arc, then fell in a blur of swiftness. The water closed over it. There was not even a ripple to betray where it had been.
The whole of the land sighed. Life was coming back to it. The power that had drained its strength was gone. The sun’s light was clean again. He could feel the earth healing under his feet.
His sister bowed with only a faint hint of irony. “Welcome,” she said, “to the heart of Britain. It seems we have a new Guardian.”
“Guardians,” said his Mathilda. She frowned. “It’s not over yet, is it? The cause is gone, but the sickness is still there. It’s mending, but too slowly.”
“The blight is deep,” the Lady said. “Healing needs time.”
Mathilda shook her head, but she did not argue with that. She turned back to Henry. “Do you know what I’ve got you into?”
“I rather think I got myself into it,” he said.
“Blame it on the gods,” Cecilia said. She slid in between them, took a hand of each, and tugged them away from the water. “It’s over. It’s done. The Saxon rule—it’s ended, finally; there’s nothing left of it. We have a victory to celebrate.”
Mathilda looked as if she might have begged to differ, but again she held her tongue. Politic as well as wise, Henry thought. He was enchanted.
The feast was hasty and some of the guests were rather late, but it was a grand celebration nonetheless. The Old Things came, one by one while the daylight lasted, but once night had fallen, they came flocking, from feys and airy spirits to the Great Ones of the Otherworld.
Henry must have danced with every female thing on the Isle. Some of them were very alluring indeed, but none was the one he wanted. She had disappeared somewhere between the feast and the dance.
At last there was a lull in the music. Even immortal musicians, it seemed, needed to rest now and then. Henry escaped before they struck up the dance again.
He found her just as he had concluded that she was not in the Isle at all, but had slipped away to God alone knew where. But there she was, close by where they had appeared that day, sitting by the lake with her knees drawn up and a striped cat curled around her feet.
He moved in quietly and sat beside her. The waves lapped softly on the shore. Faintly over the water, a night bird called.
The cat abandoned her to curl purring in Henry’s lap. She astonished him with a smile.
“You weren’t in the dance,” he said.
“I needed to think.”
He reached for her hand, just as she reached for his. It was quite different, and quite pleasant, without the jewel caught between. The cat’s purr rose almost to a growl; it sprang out of his lap and disappeared into the dark.
As soon as it was gone, he forgot it in the wonder of her face. “Are you always so solemn?”
“I suppose,” she said. “I can’t help thinking . . . there’s more to come. We’ve won something, but not enough.”
He nodded. “The Hunt is still out there. It should have gone back where it belonged. It’s still harvesting souls.”
“You understand,” she said. “The others, they all say it will run clean again, like a river after a flood—we only need to be patient. I don’t think patience is going to help us. They’ve been running free for too long. They don’t want to go back to order and limits and the gate only open for the great rites.”
“What do they do?” Henry asked. “On the other side—what are they? What are they for?”
She frowned slightly, as if searching her memory. “They’re the hunters of souls—of course. They cleanse the skies of dark spirits. Their king is a great lord of the Otherworld. He rules the Beltane rite, and restores the land from its winter death. He makes life, rather than destroying it. Even the souls he takes, or took before he was twisted, are given a just punishment.”
“You should have let him take the abbess,” Henry said after he had considered all the angles of that. “If he is a bringer of justice, and you refused him that, his purpose is unfulfilled. He can’t go away until that is somehow undone.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “She wasn’t for him. Something else keeps him here. Some other task undone. Something . . .”
Her voice trailed off. Henry was strongly tempted to let his hand slide softly down her back from the white curve of her neck to her rounded buttocks.
That would have been very ill-judged. Her fingers, laced with his, were warm. She sighed and bent her head and kissed the back of his hand, then turned it palm up and kissed his palm; then the inside of his wrist, where the pulse beat quick and shallow.
He had never known a woman to do such a thing—as a man would, as he would: turn to the body’s pleasure and free the mind to find answers where it would.
It was a peculiar sensation to be used so. He had to be fair: when her eyes rested on him, they saw him. She knew who and what he was, and if he knew women at all, she was quite sufficiently pleased with it.
He took the challenge. He set out to make her forget everything but him. How well he succeeded, he was not absolutely certain. But when she cried out, it was his name that burst out of her.
He was pleased out of all measure—and almost out of his own pleasure. By the gods, he was in love. It had never been like this before; never so strong.
It was the magic. They were so very like, so very well matched. The land had known. It had brought them together. Maybe it had made them for each other.
Coldhearted prince he might be, but in the aftermath of loving, wrapped in her arms as she was in his, he was as giddy as a boy—drunk with the scent and the nearness of her. Then he was glad of this night and this victory, however incomplete it might seem once the light of morning was on it.
CHAPTER 48
Well, daughter,” Malcolm said. “That was cleverly done. Britain’s free of the Saxon yoke now. Your mother’s turning in her grave. Are you content with what you’ve done?”
Edith was awake, lying on the grass by the lake. Henry slept beside her. The moon was westering, the mist lying low. The last of the revel had died down some while since.
Her father was standing between Edith and the lake. His feet were grounded in mist. The rest of him was much as it had been in life. She saw no mark on him of the Wild Hunt: no naked skull or corpse-lights. He was a perfectly ordinary apparition, speaking in his familiar voice.
She was glad beyond words to see him so. Even that he seemed to be reprimanding her—he had a right, just as she had a right to say, “I am content. I’ve preserved this land from the jaws of the sea, and put an end to the plagues and famine.”
“That you have not,” Malcolm said. “It had already gone beyond the old woman in the abbey, however many souls she had living in her body. Britain may stay above the wave, but the Hunt will still ride, and the children will still die. When all the children are dead, and the old begin to fall, what will the rest do? How long will the kingdom endure?”
Any warmth that Edith had felt in her father’s presence was gone. He had set in words what she knew in her bones. “What, then?” she demanded of him. “What more can we do?”
“You know,” he said.
“Bind the king to Britain,” sh
e said—sighed, rather. “He won’t. He flat refuses.”
“This needs more than a binding,” Malcolm said. “To heal the land and shut the gates of the Otherworld and restore the Hunt to its old nature and purpose—each of those is a great working.”
“You need a sacrifice,” Edith said. Her voice had gone flat.
“King’s blood,” said Malcolm. “On sacred ground with a blessed weapon, in the old way and the strong way. There is no other choice.”
“Must it be a crowned king?”
Henry was awake, sitting up, and clearly focused on Malcolm. They must have met, Edith thought. Or he knew because she knew.
Malcolm took him in at leisure. “So. You’re the youngest. You look like your mother.”
“So they say,” said Henry. “Is there an answer to my question? Do you know it?”
“It must be a true-born king of Britain,” Malcolm said.
“Born to the blood?” Henry asked. “Is that what it needs?”
“It needs the blood,” Malcolm said.
Henry nodded. “So it does. I can feel it. The land is in me, spirit. Will that be enough—that, and a willing sacrifice?”
“No,” said Edith. She had not even been aware she was speaking until the word was out. “No, not you. You can’t—”
She knew that expression. William had it when he refused to be king, Anselm when he would not be Guardian. Henry refused to be the youngest brother, the one whom no one counted, the prince who would never be king.
“They told me I was the year-king,” Henry said. “The land claimed me. The power is in me. If I give it up—if I offer my life and blood and even my soul—will the kingdom be saved? Will the people live?”
“That would be a great offering,” Malcolm said.
“I forbid it,” said Edith. “You cannot do it, and you,” she said fiercely to her father, “cannot accept it.”
“What other choice is there?” Henry asked. He sounded resigned, as if his mind was entirely made up. “My brother won’t give way. It’s too much a matter of pride for him now. He’s a good enough king. He’ll find an heir who will do—another of Robert’s bastards, or for that matter one of mine. The kingdom will do well, once the burden of magic is lifted from it.”