The Golden Horn (36 page)

“Monstrous,” Alf agreed. “Like the madman—heretic
surely, and lost to all good doctrine—who proclaimed: ‘There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’”

Jehan realized that his mouth was open, gaping. He closed it
with a snap, and suddenly laughed. “Alf! You’re dangerous.”

“I can hope so. For so are our enemies. Deadly
dangerous; and for all our power, we of Gwydion’s Kin are very few. If I
can hold off the attack by my wits and my tongue, mark you well, I will.”

“But it will come. I’m a mere man and no
prophet, but I know that. I feel it in my bones.”

Alf said nothing. His eyes had returned to Thea. It was as
clear as a cry: the love he bore her and the children she carried; the fear
that he would not—could not—admit. And he was a seer. He knew what
would come.

Jehan seized him with sudden fierce strength. “Alf. Go.
Go soon. Go now. Go where nothing human can touch you.”

His heavy hands should have crushed those fine bones, but
they were as supple as Damascus steel. “You can,” he pressed on in
Alf’s silence, easing his grip a little, but not the intensity of his
voice. “You told me years ago, when Gwydion gave you Broceliande. It’s
only half in this world now—the Wood, the lands and the castles, even
that part of the sea. You can close it off completely behind a wall of magic—”

“Power,” Alf corrected very gently.

“Isn’t it all the same?”

Alf’s face was unreadable, his eyes—slightly but
clearly, damn him—amused.

Jehan persisted doggedly. “Gwydion was born in the
Wood. He’s always meant to go back; to be King for as long as he’s needed,
to withdraw gracefully, to vanish into legend. It’s all very pretty, very
noble, and very much like Gwydion. But even he—he’s wise, the
wisest king in the world, but I think he’s waited too long. If he goes
now, before the delegation comes—if you all go—you’ll be safe.
And Rhiyana won’t suffer.”

“Will it not?”

“How can it? You’ll all have vanished with
perfectly diabolical cowardice. Rhiyana will be an unimpeachably human kingdom.”

“And Rabbi Gamaliel? The Heresiarch Matthias? Hakim
bin Ali and Demetrios Kantakouzenos and Jusuf of Haifa? Not to mention my own
dear brother and sister, the last of the House Akestas—what of them?
Shall we abandon them to the Church’s tender mercies?”

Jehan’s fear turned to sheer annoyance. “Don’t
tell me you haven’t found a refuge for each and every one of them, and
all their goods and chattels.”

“If so,” Alf said, unruffled, “it’s
not this way that we would go, like a flock of frightened geese.”

“Not even for your children’s sake?”

Alf went stark white. His eyes were truly uncanny, vague yet
piercing, seeing what no other could see.

Abruptly they focused. Jehan saw himself mirrored in them,
pale and shocked but set on his course. “Go,” he said. “Take
a day if you must, settle your gaggle of friends and infidels, and leave. Or do
you want to see Rhiyana laid waste around you, and your people under Interdict,
and a stake on a pyre in every marketplace?”

Alf smiled. But the color had not returned to his face. “Jehan,
my dearest friend and brother, we know exactly what we do. Trust us. Trust Gwydion
at least, who rules us all. He’s known for long and long what must
finally come to be, the payment for all his years of peace. He will not leave
it to his poor people, who love him and trust him and look to him for
protection. Only when they are truly and finally safe will he leave them.”

“But he is their danger. You all are. Without you—”

“Without us and with all our infidels gone to haven,
the Crusade loses it target. Or does it? This is a land of fabled wealth, soft
and fat with long idleness. A splendid prize for an army of bandits, far more
splendid than poor ravaged Languedoc. Where, I remind you, my lord Bishop, the
Cathari have been the merest of pretexts.” Gently, with no perceptible
effort, Alf freed himself from Jehan’s grasp. “I grant you, the
Crusade is our fault, for existing, for tarrying so long in the mortal world.
But Crusades have a way of outgrowing their makers, like the demons in the
tales, destroying the sorcerers who invoked them.”

Jehan knew that as well as Alf. He had been to Constantinople.
He had helped to shatter that city in a war that had begun in order to free the
Holy Sepulcher; had twisted and knotted and broken, turning from a Crusade
against the Saracen into the gaining of a throne for an exiled Byzantine
prince, and thence into an outright war of conquest.

“Yes,” Alf said, following his thoughts. “But
this will be no Byzantium. Not while Gwydion is King.”

“Or while Alfred is Chancellor.” Suddenly Jehan
was very tired. He had ridden all the endless way from Rome into the teeth of
winter, striving to outrace the Pope’s men. He was not old, but neither
was he so very young; and he had a long battle ahead of him in his own country,
a bishopric to claim and defend, a kingdom to aid in ruling. And this was no
land and no people of his—by his very vows he should have shunned them.

And yet, like the great, half-witted, ridiculously noble
fool that he was, he loved them. Alf, Thea, the two young Greeks they had
brought out of the fallen City; Gwydion and his Queen and his fiery brother and
all his wild magical Kin; even the land itself, the prosperous towns, the green
burgeoning farmsteads, the woods and the fields, the windy headlands and the
standing stones.

Certainly he was a bad priest and very probably he was
damned, but he could not help it. He could not even wish to.

Alf’s hands were warm and firm upon him, Alf’s
eyes as gentle as they were strange. “God knows,” he said softly, “and
God is merciful. Nor has He ever condemned love truly and freely given. To do
that would be to deny Himself.”

So wise, he, to look such a boy.

Alf laughed. Jehan flushed, for that was a thought he had
not meant to be read. “Didn’t you, brother?” The thin strong
hands drew him up. “Come. It’s a bed you need now, and a long
sleep, and a day or two of Rhiyana’s peace. That much at least is left to
us all.”

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