Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“Some do enter the church to serve God, and do so faithfully throughout their lives. Some see in the church an opportunity for advancement. Others are put in the church against their will.”

As Ivar had been.

“Are all who serve in the church faithful to God alone?” Wolfhere continued. “What of Frater Hugh? You were acquainted with him, I believe.”

Hanna shut her eyes and turned her face away, ashamed to remember so clearly and with still a betraying warmth in her throat. Only Wolfhere’s unheralded arrival had saved Liath from a lifetime of servitude to Hugh. Beautiful Hugh.

Wolfhere grunted, but he might simply have been settling himself more comfortably on the hay. He said nothing more and for once she did not want to ask any more questions. He had an odd, perhaps a deliberate, way of turning questions back on the one who asked them. She set her cheek against the folds of her cloak and shut her eyes. The light snores of the men-at-arms, the rustling of mice scurrying on their nightly rounds, and the quiet noises of the horses stabled below lulled her to sleep.

3

THE rats came out at night to gnaw on the bones. The whispering scrape of their claws on stone alerted him, brought him instantly out of his doze. Most of the dogs slept; one whined in a dream and thumped his whipcord tail against the cathedral floor. The Eika slept, sprawled across the stone as if it were the softest of featherbeds to them. They loved the stone the way a nursing child loves its mother’s breast, and nuzzled near it whenever they could.

Only he did not sleep. He never slept, only napped, caught moments of dream and then bolted awake as a muzzle nudged him, testing, or as Eika laughed and poked him with their spears, or if he heard a human voice cry out in agony and hopeless pleading. That was the worst, the slaves—for he knew the Eika had brought human slaves into the city when summer came and that he could do nothing to help those poor souls.

ia and Heribert walked into the cell. The Brother Infirmarian shut and locked the door behind them and hung the key on a ring at his belt. Two Lions stationed themselves on either side of the door. Wolfhere directed two more Lions to sleep outside on the ground beneath the shuttered and barred window that let air into the cell.

“On no account,” Wolfhere finished, looking sternly at the Infirmarian, “is any person to enter into that cell without me beside him.”

Then he and Hanna and the other six Lions returned to the stables. In the loft, Hanna kicked hay into a pile, threw her cloak over the prickly mound, and pulled off her boots before lying down and shaking her blanket open on top of herself. Wolfhere bedded down in the hay beside her. Already she heard the snores of the soldiers from the other end of the loft.

She waited for a long while but was not sleepy. The loft door stood open to let in air. Through it she saw the black hulk of mountain, a blot against the night, and a single patch of sky brilliant with stars.

“You don’t like her,” she whispered finally, thinking that Wolfhere, too, did not sleep.

There was a long pause and she began to think the old man was in fact asleep, that she had mistaken his breathing.

“I do not.”

“But if I didn’t know what she had been accused of, if I hadn’t heard her speak that one time, at the parley with Lord Villam, then I would never suspect she was—” She hesitated. Wolfhere made no comment, so she went on. “It’s just hard to imagine she could do such terrible things—murder a lackwit in cold blood so she could raise creatures to control Count Lavastine’s will, cast a spell on the guivre to put it under her power, and send her servants to catch living men for it to feed on. It’s just that she seems … such a good and generous soul, so mild and compassionate. And she is a biscop besides. How can the Lady and Lord allow a person with such an evil heart to be elevated in Their church?”

“That is indeed a mystery.”

This answer did not satisfy Hanna, who frowned and shifted on her makeshift pallet. Under the cloak, hay poked through the cloth against her back, tiny blunt pinpricks. She wiped the dust of old hay and last summer’s straw from her dry lips. “But you must have some idea!”

“She is related on her mother’s side to the reigning Queen of Karonne, and her kin on her father’s side had land near the city of Mainni, where she was some years ago elevated to the episcopal chair. Do you suppose the skopos nominates only the most worthy?”

“I thought women and men who entered the church entered to serve God, not their own desires and ambitions. Deacon Fortensia cares faithfully for our small village though she herself resides a half day’s walk farther north, at the church of St. Sirri. The monks at the monastery at Sheep’s Head are—were—” For had not Eika killed them all? “—famed for their devotion to Our Lady and Lord.”

“Some do enter the church to serve God, and do so faithfully throughout their lives. Some see in the church an opportunity for advancement. Others are put in the church against their will.”

As Ivar had been.

“Are all who serve in the church faithful to God alone?” Wolfhere continued. “What of Frater Hugh? You were acquainted with him, I believe.”

Hanna shut her eyes and turned her face away, ashamed to remember so clearly and with still a betraying warmth in her throat. Only Wolfhere’s unheralded arrival had saved Liath from a lifetime of servitude to Hugh. Beautiful Hugh.

Wolfhere grunted, but he might simply have been settling himself more comfortably on the hay. He said nothing more and for once she did not want to ask any more questions. He had an odd, perhaps a deliberate, way of turning questions back on the one who asked them. She set her cheek against the folds of her cloak and shut her eyes. The light snores of the men-at-arms, the rustling of mice scurrying on their nightly rounds, and the quiet noises of the horses stabled below lulled her to sleep.

3

THE rats came out at night to gnaw on the bones. The whispering scrape of their claws on stone alerted him, brought him instantly out of his doze. Most of the dogs slept; one whined in a dream and thumped his whipcord tail against the cathedral floor. The Eika slept, sprawled across the stone as if it were the softest of featherbeds to them. They loved the stone the way a nursing child loves its mother’s breast, and nuzzled near it whenever they could.

Only he did not sleep. He never slept, only napped, caught moments of dream and then bolted awake as a muzzle nudged him, testing, or as Eika laughed and poked him with their spears, or if he heard a human voice cry out in agony and hopeless pleading. That was the worst, the slaves—for he knew the Eika had brought human slaves into the city when summer came and that he could do nothing to help those poor souls.

Gent had fallen, and he would have died protecting her, only he could not die. That was the curse his mother had put on him at his birth: “No disease known to you will touch him, nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.”

He could not sleep, and when he was lucid, he wondered if the periods of madness, the shaking, the fits of insensibility when he would come to suddenly and realize it was night when last it had been dawn, were a mercy set on him by the Hand of Our Lady. An educated man might have known disciplines of the mind with which to combat this prison that was as much of spirit as of chains. But he had only been trained for war. That was his lot, the bastard son of the king, the child whose birth gave Henry the right to be named Heir to the throne of Wendar and Varre: to become a fighter and defend his father’s realm.