Free Hounds of God by Judith Tarr

quiet in the Chancellor’s bedchamber. The
bed was tumbled, empty. The cradle rocked untenanted, the coverlet rent and
torn as if with claws.
    Alf stood over it like a shape of stone. At his feet
crouched Gwydion with a limp and lifeless body in his arms, his eyes flat,
fixed on nothing, dead.
    The Queen wept, huddled by him, stroking Alun’s hair.
The same gesture over and over. Gwydion had no tears. He had nothing at all.
    Nikki tasted blood. Then pain, his own hand caught in his
teeth. It throbbed as he let it fall, stumbling into the room. The air stung
his nostrils as after lightning, the memory of great power unleashed and now
withdrawn.
    With infinite slowness Alf sank to one knee. His lips moved,
and his hand with them, signing the Cross. “ Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison.”
    Gwydion turned his head. Nikki, out of range of his stare,
still flinched. Alf met it fully. The King’s voice was as terrible as his
eyes, flat and stark and cold, emptied of all humanity. “God has no
mercy.”
    “Kyrie,” said Alf, “eleison. Pater noster,
qui es in coelis—”
    “We have no God. We have no souls. Only flesh and the
black earth.”
    “—sanctificetur
nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum—”
    “God-damned devil-begotten renegade priest.” In
the flint-grey eyes, a spark had kindled. Rising, swelling, raging, lashing in
his voice. “What is your God that He should take my son?”
    The Queen reached for him. Lightning cracked; she recoiled,
hands pressed to her face. One of them was red, angry, blistering.
    Alf reached in his turn to the wounded lady. She shook him
off. Her eyes bled tears, but they were hard and fearless. “This is not
God’s work. This bears the stench of His Adversary.”
    “They are the same.” Gwydion rose, the bright
head rolling loosely on his shoulder. “They must be the same. Else it
would be I who lie here in all my pride and guilt, and not—”
    “You in all your folly.” She stood to face him.
She was very tall; she had only to raise her eyes by a little. Yet it was not
to him that she spoke but to the air. “Aidan. Do what must be done.”
    Fire flashed from Gwydion’s eyes, sudden as the lightning.
“I have not yet lost my wits!”
    “No,” she said. “Only your son.”
    He stood very, very still. His face had gained not a line,
yet it showed every moment of his hundred years. “Only my son,” he
said slowly. “Only—” He drew a ragged breath. “Let me
pass.”
    She moved aside. He trod forward. Jehan retreated, leaving
him a clear path. He followed it pace by pace, and the Queen after. Her back
was straight, her head high. Only with power could one know that, even yet, she
wept.
    Nikki ventured cautiously into the room. The crackle of
power was fading, a mingling as distinct to his senses as scents to the nose of
a hound. Maura, Gwydion—grief and hot iron. Aidan startlingly, unwontedly
cool. Alf walled in stone. And dimmer memories: Alun, Thea, the faint sweet
newness of the children.
    Alf had risen by the cradle. All the anguish was locked in
his mind behind his frozen face. “They’re gone,” he said. “Gone
utterly, as if they were dead—but if Thea had died, so too would I. Ah,
God! How can I live with half my mind torn away?”
    Jehan thrust past Nikki, dropping cope and miter, seizing
Alf’s shoulders.
    Alf froze. His eyes were wide and wild, glaring without
recognition. He was as still as a stalking panther, and fully as dangerous. “I
will kill him,” he said without inflection. “Whoever has done this—I
will kill him. Death for death, maiming for maiming—”
    Jehan struck him a ringing blow. With a beast-snarl, he
lunged.
    Jehan fell before the force of him, defending only, with
neither hope nor intention of subduing him. There was nothing of reason in him,
only rage and bitter loss.
    Nikki’s head tossed from side to side. It was all
beating on him. Madness, death; loss and hate and numbing terror; Alf’s
mind that, stripped of all its