And Less Than Kind

by Mercedes Lackey

  However, interest in marrying off Elizabeth was declining—a subject to be considered in more quiet times—as renewed war between France and Spain became more imminent. France had hesitated to engage Spain while Philip, at his wife's side, could easily draw England into the conflict. Now France had a new and powerful ally: in 1555 a new pope had been elected and Paul IV was ready to add the might of Rome to that of France.

  This alliance made essential Philip's rapprochement with his wife. Now he wrote to her of his sorrow at being unable to return to her, that the defiance of the pope and the threats of France were keeping him on the Continent. He urged her to bring England to his assistance.

  Mary did her best. She forced loans in the amount of 150,000 ducats and she bedeviled her councilors into agreeing to send the six thousand foot and six hundred horse soldiers agreed in the 1546 treaty to defend the Netherlands. What she accomplished, however, was little more than a drop in Philip's very large bucket of trouble and Mary could do no more. She wrote in February that if he came to England, his presence would sway the councilors who only argued with her.

  Chapter 39

  Susan Clarencieux told her chairmen to stop on the Fleet where it met the Strand. She walked down the Strand past the Imperial ambassador's residence and to a modest house beyond. The door opened for her as she reached the top step and the servant, who always made her shudder because he looked like a dead man walking, opened the inner door of Master Otstargi's parlor. She went in smiling and sat down in the comfortable chair opposite Otstargi's.

  "I am so glad that you were able to supply me with an extra flask of the potion," she said, after the customary greetings were exchanged. "My lady has had word that her husband, King Philip, will soon return to England and she is that overjoyed and overset she cannot eat or sleep. I asked if she would again wish to share my calming potion and she was most eager to have it."

  "So the king is to return," Master Otstargi said. "I suppose there will be great entertainments. When is this to be?"

  "Oh, I must not say. There are some lunatics who blame poor King Philip for all . . ."

  The woman's voice faded and her eyes fixed on Otstargi's. Vidal was careful as he entered her mind. He gleaned the facts he needed from it gently; it was easy because Philip was all she was thinking about. No one in the queen's service had thought or talked about anything else for days. When she left, Susan carried with her the flasks of calming potion and a clear memory of a pleasant but unimportant conversation.

  She made two more visits to Otstargi, only one of which she remembered. With Philip's arrival at Greenwich on the eighteenth of March, Mary's need for calming potions was no longer necessary and Vidal had to set into Susan's mind a compulsion to visit Otstargi every second week. At first she had no news to interest Vidal. Mary was not well, suffering a bad cold and toothache. Philip too was ill, possibly lingering effects of the passage or simply roiled guts from knowing he needed to couple with his unappetizing wife.

  Still, by mid-April they were settled in Westminster and Philip had been several times in Mary's bed. Susan had reported, resentment coloring her thoughts, that Philip was growing more attentive as resistance stiffened to his intention of drawing England into his war with France. He had discovered that pillow talk was more convincing to Mary than any other argument, and the day after he coupled with her she became almost as fierce as old Henry VIII in her treatment of her Council.

  Now Vidal became less gentle, ruthlessly extracting from Susan's mind everything she knew about the arrangement of the king's and queen's apartments and about who and how many would be on duty and the mortal hours when the royals made ready for bed. Susan became a little vague and forgetful, a little quieter. Twice during April Rhoslyn asked if Susan were ill or worried, but Susan laughed and shook her head.

  Then in early in May, Vidal decided to act. Routines were well set and Vidal felt he should wait no longer. He did not like Rhoslyn's questioning Susan; he did not trust Rhoslyn, and would take no chance on her discovering he had meddled with Susan's mind or interfering in what she thought might hurt Mary. Thus when Susan last visited in the first week in May, he probed deeper into her mind than before. He gave Susan an amulet that would mask her into a cloudy shadow and a compulsion to place the ruby ring she wore by the back door of Philip's set of rooms.

  Susan went back to Westminster and went on with her life. On the night of May seventeenth Susan believed she went to bed and to sleep when the queen had retired. What she actually did was steal into the servants' passages and make her way to the door of Philip's valet. There she laid her ruby ring on the floor and stood back against the wall.

  A black point formed in the air. Susan stared into nothing. She did not see the point widen and widen again until within was a large room hung in black velvet with trimmings of dark crimson flecked with gold. She did not see Vidal in his own form, taller and broader than a mortal man, with dead black eyes and dead black hair, step from that black velvet room into the corridor, towing behind him another.

  Brimming with power, Vidal had no trouble building a Gate from Underhill to the mortal world with the ruby ring as a guide. With Vidal came Dakari, bespelled in a reflective cocoon from without and controlled by the Evil within. As long as Dakari was docile, Vidal knew the Evil would follow his plan. Vidal's long ears tilted forward as he listened. Someone was in the room, a single person doing something quiet. Vidal smiled and opened the back door to Philip's valet's room.

  The valet froze in the act of preparing to lay away Philip's shirt. Vidal, towing Dakari by a line of force, opened the door to Philip's bedchamber slightly but did not enter. There were five men in the room: Philip, the duke of Feria, two secretaries, and a groom. Philip was already dressed for bed, the secretaries were turned toward the door on their way out, the groom had gathered up gloves, Philip's sword and belt and several other small articles. He, too, was turned toward the outer door. Feria looked over his shoulder and then at Philip; he was waiting for the others to leave before he spoke. Vidal waited too.

  As soon as the door shut behind the groom, Vidal struck at both Feria and Philip. Both men simply stopped. Vidal drew Dakari forward and swiftly painted onto and into him Philip of Spain's appearance. Then he directed Philip to lie down in his bed and pull the covers over himself right over his head so he was completely covered. Feria, whom he had recognized as a nobleman, not a servant, he directed to close the bedcurtains and to sit in a chair in the shadow, close by and concealed by the bedcurtains.

  Susan then led Vidal, now wearing the illusion of the duke of Feria, and Dakari/Philip to the short corridor that connected the apartments of the king and queen. At the entrance, Susan stopped; Vidal and Dakari went on alone.

  As soon as Philip appeared at the end of the corridor in Mary's chamber, Mary dismissed her ladies. When they had made their curtsies and gone, Vidal froze the queen, but only momentarily. Only until he negotiated the most dangerous part of this whole enterprise.

  Vidal now needed to release Dakari and the Evil that invested him from the prison that had held them so long. He thought the Evil intended to impregnate Mary with itself and the mortal seed and grow in Mary's womb. However, if the Evil had deliberately deceived him—a thing as likely as not, considering the Evil's nature—It might try to seize him instead of following the plan.

  Dropping the illusion of Feria, Vidal drew up his most impervious shields and layered them one atop another. He did not think even the Evil at Its greatest power could penetrate those shields, and the Evil's power had diminished greatly while in Dakari's body. There was no other living thing in the chamber but Mary; Vidal hoped the Evil would invest the child because that would mean many years of misery for those of Logres, but if It took Mary instead It could likely prolong her life and still keep the Dark Court rich with power.

  "Couple!" Vidal thrust the thought into Dakari with all the power he had left from his shields. "Couple with the woman!"

  As the command left his min
d and seared into Dakari's, Vidal broke the paralysis on Mary and thrust Dakari/Philip forward toward her bed.

  Mary was considerably surprised by the rapidity and intensity with which Philip seized her and coupled with her. She was also greatly surprised by his silence. Usually as he caressed her, Philip spoke to her about what to say to her councilors, what promises and what threats to make to induce them to declare war on France. Tonight, for once, he seemed totally immersed in what he was doing.

  After his long isolation in Vidal's cocoon of force, Dakari's own desire was simply to flee away before Vidal seized him again. He did not have that choice. Vidal's compulsion, even now that the shell around him was dissipated, was stronger than his own will. He had a brief moment of doubt whether the woman in the bed would resist him, but she was obviously welcoming and he climbed into the bed, took her in his arms, and pushed her down.

  She looked surprised and mouthed mortal words at him, but she did not push him away. He made no attempt to understand or to answer her, searching urgently with his hands for her nether mouth. She was speaking more intensely, saying the same word over and over. Dakari simply muffled her words with his lips and pushed himself inside her.

  Pleasure flooded him. Instinct bade him withdraw slightly and then press forward again. An increase in the pleasure made him hasten his withdrawal and his thrust and then repeat the movements even quicker.

  Something stirred inside him. Dakari knew that thing was dangerous and had an unbreakable grip on his life force. But the pleasure, mounting with each stroke higher and higher until it was coming to a crescendo nearly pain, would not let him stop. He drew and thrust, groaning and writhing, until the dam that had held in the pleasure burst. More pain/pleasure as all that Dakari was seemed to flow out of him. He felt the pleasure ebb and groaned softly; he tried to stop, to swallow back the last few pulses of his life, but he could not.

  "Philip!" Mary cried.

  And Vidal froze her again. He had felt Dakari die and knew the illusion had died with him. It was imperative that he remove the Sidhe's body, but first it was imperative that he discover whether or not his plan had worked. Was the Evil set in Mary's womb? Was it loose in the chamber? His shields were so dense that he could not sense it.

  Little by little Vidal reabsorbed the power of the shields. He felt nothing, no attack, no sense of imminent doom. He drew more of the shields back into himself. Still nothing. Smiling he went forward to the bed.

  Mary lay under Dakari's body, but she did not look crushed. Dakari, who had never been much, was now barely a shell. Vidal grasped the body by the shoulder, pulled it from under the cover, and dropped it on the floor. Then he turned his attention to Mary.

  There was no evil in her mind. Vidal paused, drew up a memory of the time before this that Philip had coupled with his wife. Adding only a slightly greater intensity and the reason for it that Philip had to leave early to finish some work, Vidal had the memory replayed for that night. Slowly, and very, very carefully—he did not want the Evil to seize his probe and ride it back into him—he extended his scrutiny along Mary's body.

  There! Vidal had to press his lips tight together to keep back a shriek of satisfaction. There to the back and upper part of her belly there was a little spot of blackish red within a tiny, sick yellow, flaccid sack. It was an angry thing, a greedy thing. Even as Vidal let his sense rest there, the blackish red pulled something into itself and expanded. Vidal sighed with pleasure. Years, maybe eons, of Evil would be loosed on Logres.

  Reminding himself severely that he must not spoil his success by slipshod work that would warn anyone there was something wrong with Mary, he scooped up Dakari's body. It took no time at all to go back through the passage, out into the corridor where Susan still stood, and thrust Dakari through the Gate.

  Last Vidal returned to Philip's bedchamber and inserted into Philip's mind that he had done his duty and begged off from lying with Mary longer by saying he had work to do. In Feria's mind he inserted only the thought that everything was as usual. Then grinning with satisfaction Vidal freed the valet as he went out the door, scooped up the ruby ring, set it back on Susan's finger, and sent Susan back to her bed with the knowledge that she had slept very well, undisturbed.

  When Vidal stepped through the Gate and closed it behind him, he was still replete with power. He hardly needed to suck in more but did so for the pure pleasure of touching so much fear and misery. In fact, his sense of satisfaction was so strong that it seeped through to Aurilia, who always kept a tendril of watchfulness aware of Vidal.

  A quick check in the full-length cheval glass to be sure she looked her best, and Aurilia slipped out of her suite and along the corridor to Vidal's. She opened the door with modest caution and shields ready. It was not unknown for Vidal to set a trap for the unwary with signs that he was unusually benign. But this time the signs were true.

  Vidal greeted her with a broad smile and when she asked what had given him so much satisfaction replied that, unlike her, he had completed a complex and delicate operation in the mortal world without a single problem. "Forethought and careful planning are necessary," he taunted her, smiling with half-lowered eyelids, and described how he had begun planning three months earlier and brought the plan to fruition just this mortal night.

  "Oh, excellent," Aurilia praised sycophantically. "That was indeed a flawless working."

  Delighted with the flash of rage she had failed to conceal completely under her praise, Vidal felt magnanimous; he would ask her for advice. Let her feel superior about her knowledge as a female.

  "And when may I expect to see results from it?" Vidal asked.

  Aurilia could not resist trying to rub the shine off his satisfaction. "Assuming Mary will carry the infant to term—"

  "Why should she not?"

  Now Aurilia smiled sweetly as she knew how, lips covering her sharp-pointed teeth. "Because her mother failed to do so many times. The Spanish women were not good breeders."

  Vidal frowned, but then the expression of anxiety cleared. "No, I do not think I need to worry about that. The Evil is bound into the child growing in Mary's womb and I think it will take good care that that child not be expelled too soon. But how long will it take for the young to be birthed?"

  Aurilia uttered a giggle. "Three-quarters of a mortal year."

  "What?" Vidal was indignant; even ogres did not take so long.

  "A Sidhe takes longer."

  Vidal thought back, but he could not remember a breeding in the Dark Court. "There has been no Sidhe born since Llanelli invoked death magic to make her lover Kefni fertile."

  "He was not her lover," Aurilia put in. "That was how the two sets of twins were conceived. Kefni broke Llanelli's compulsion and rushed back to his life mate, who also conceived."

  "Bearing those accursed protectors of Elizabeth, Denoriel and Aleneil."

  "And Rhoslyn and Pasgen too," Aurilia said thoughtlessly. Pasgen had been on her mind since she had killed Albertus. It had been Pasgen who had brought her Albertus, and she missed her cringing and sometimes useful pet.

  Vidal made an ugly sound deep in his throat. Kefni's blood was very strong. Despite all his effort to make Llanelli's twins true members of the Dark Court, Pasgen had broken away completely and, though Rhoslyn gave him lip service, he had never trusted her. She had not been to his Court for a long time, most of her constructs were gone from the empty house, and he suspected that she had dissolved her true domain. Where she had gone, he had no idea . . . Let her go. She was near useless. He had many new adherents since the Bright Court had begun to fade.

  Aurilia was sorry now that she had distracted Vidal from his satisfaction. She had intended to ask him to arrange for her to have a new mortal physician—since he was so skilled in dealing with the mortal world. Now was not the time.

  "Oh well, it is not so long, really. Mary's Evil will be born in a mere nine mortal months. Scarcely more than an eyeblink for us. Are you planning to bring It Underhill for teaching or g
o to the mortal world yourself?"

  "I am not sure yet," Vidal said. "It depends on how much It can influence Mary without teaching. Likely it will not be needful for me to do anything." He laughed briefly. "After all, Mary has managed to do enough evil without prompting."

  "Hmmm, yes. Perhaps it would be unwise to make her reign worse. The rebellions provide us with much rich power, but we do not want so great a dissatisfaction that she is overthrown and executed."

  "True enough. True. And I have some work in hand in Caer Mordwyn. Let Logres go its own way until the Evil is of an age for me to direct and instruct."