Read Online Hounds of God by Judith Tarr - Free Book Online

mind was wrong. Nothing human should be all hate. Nothing
sane; nothing natural.
    His throat burned with bile. Nikki laid his hand on Alf’s
shoulder, opening the merest chink of his power.
    Through it shone Alf’s reassurance: He can’t touch us here.
    He had no need to. There was something in him. Something
strong. Something with power, but not the power Alf had, the white wizardry of
the Kindred. This was black and blood-red.
    You needn’t stay ,
Alf said.
    Nikki thought refusal, with a touch of temper.
    Alf shrugged invisibly against his hand. That choice was his
to make. But let him listen and be firm and not be afraid.
    This time the flare of anger made Alf start. Nikki muted it
in sudden shame, but he could not entirely quell his satisfaction. He was
alarmed, not craven; certainly he was no weakling.
    oOo
    Alun shook himself hard. His long sleepless night was
creeping up on him. Anna sat where the Queen had been before, reading the book
Maura had left behind. Thea drowsed in the bed with Cynan curled against her
side.
    In his own arms, Liahan hovered on the edge of sleep. By
witch-sight she glowed softly, power as newborn as herself, flickering a little
as he brushed it with his own bright strength.
    Sometime very soon, she was going to be hungry. He could
feel it in his own stomach, which in truth was newly and comfortably filled. He
smiled and touched a finger to the small round belly with its knot of
birth-cord.
    She stirred. She was startlingly strong, adept already at
kicking off her blankets, as at objecting when the cold air struck her skin.
Her lungs were even stronger than her legs.
    “Here,” Thea said, rousing and holding out her
arms, “let me feed her.”
    Alun surrendered her with great reluctance, to Thea’s
amusement. Which deepened as he backed away, blushing furiously, looking
anywhere but at the swell of bare breast, white as its own milk.
    He clenched his fists. She was laughing. Of course she
would, who had made an ardent lover of an Anglian saint.
    He pushed himself toward her, even to the bed at her side,
where Cynan was waking to his own sudden hunger.
    “This could get inconvenient,” Thea observed as
Alun settled her son into the curve of her free arm. He banked her with
pillows. Twofold mother though she was, her smile was as wicked as ever. “Greedy
little beasts. No wonder sensible ladies put their babies out to nurse.”
    He perched on the bed’s edge and tucked up his feet.
His blush was fading. “I think you’re sensible. As long as you’re…able...
I mean, two of them—”
    “I mean to be able.” Her expression was pure
Thea, both tender and fierce. “I went to a great deal of trouble to have
these two little witches. I’m not about to hand them over to someone else
to raise.”
    “You did it for Alf, didn’t you?”
    “I did it for myself.” She softened a little. “Well.
For him, too. Rather much for him.”
    “I remember when he first knew.” Alun grinned. “That
was something. The whole castle shook with it. Drums and trumpets and choruses
of alleluias; you could have lit a chapel with his smile.”
    She laughed. “Only a chapel? No; a whole cathedral.”
    “He’s still as happy as he was then,” Alun
said. “Happier.”
    “Sometimes I think we’re all too happy.”
But Anna smiled as she said it, exchanging her book for a milkily sated Cynan. “Though
I remind myself that bliss is never unalloyed where there are children.
Especially witch-children.”
    “When have there ever been—” Alun stopped
and swung at her, mock-enraged.
    Thea deposited her daughter in his outstretched arms. “Oh,
yes, sir, we all suffered with you. Now you can pay back the debt. Put her to
your shoulder. Yes, so. And have at her—thus.” She clapped her
hands. “Bravo! You’ll make a mother yet.”
    Alun rose, wobbling a little. Cynan lay already in the
cradle and already asleep. Carefully the Prince laid Liahan beside him. Her
eyes were shut, her mouth folded