High Deryni (11 page)

Vivienne rolled her eyes and looked about to interrupt, but Tiercel shook his head and held up a restraining hand.

“No, hear me out. Perhaps Deryniness is not a cumulative thing at all. Perhaps one either
is
Deryni or one is not, and nothing in between. We know that powers themselves are not cumulative between two people, other than to bring one weakened or untrained individual up to his full potential. If this were not the case, Deryni could band together and the larger, stronger groups defeat the smaller ones every time.

“But, no. We know, at least, that battle doesn't work that way. We keep our duels on a one-to-one basis, and we forbid more than one individual to challenge at a time, and the custom is couched in legend, but why did that become the standard? Perhaps because of the very fact that the powers are
not
additive.

“Perhaps inheritance is governed on much the same principle. Other things are inherited in full from one parent or the other. Why not Deryniness?”

There was silence for a long moment as the Council digested what its youngest member had just said, and then Barrett lifted his hairless head.

“We are well instructed by our juniors,” he said quietly. “Does anyone know the present whereabouts of Morgan and McLain?”

No one answered, and Barrett's blind eyes continued to sweep the table.

“Has any one of you ever touched Morgan's mind?” Barrett ventured again.

Again, silence.

“What about McLain?” Barrett continued. “Bishop Arilan, we understand that Father McLain was an associate of yours for a time. Did you never have occasion to touch his mind?”

Arilan shook his head. “He was a fellow priest, and there was no reason to suspect that he was Deryni. And I should have risked exposing my own identity, had I tried to read him for any other purpose.”

“Well, you may wish that you had,” Thorne retorted. “I am given to understand that he and Morgan are on their way to see you. Something about trying to prove their innocence of the excommunication you and your bishops imposed on them. Personally, I shouldn't be surprised if they tried to kill you.”

“I doubt there is that danger,” Arilan said confidently. “Even if Morgan or Duncan had reason to hate me personally, which they do not, they are astute enough to recognize that this kingdom is on the brink both of civil war and invasion, and that we must resolve the first in order to prevent the second. If the forces of Gwynedd remain divided over the Interdict imposed on Corwyn, we will be unable to repel the invaders. Deryni-human relations will have been set back at least two centuries.”

“Forget that for now,” Thorne said impatiently. “In case everyone else has forgotten, there is still the problem of what
we
must do about Morgan and McLain. The situation appears to have come to a head at King Kelson's coronation, after which Morgan was censured for using magic openly. That is also why McLain was called to appear before the archbishops: the illicit and unpredictable use of powers neither of them should have, either by the standards of Church and state, which declare that they should have none, or by ours, which ought, at least, to be able to predict their capabilities.

“Now, I am not particularly bothered that there are Deryni running around loose who have not been properly trained in the use of their powers. That has been going on for years, and I see no way to stop it. But Morgan and McLain somehow
have
learned how to use their powers, and apparently are learning more every day. We have turned a blind eye in the past, since we always regarded them as immune to formal challenge, since they were half-breeds. Now that this assumption seems no longer valid, I think we should declare them liable to full challenge proceedings, just as though they were full Deryni. I, for one, do not wish to find myself in a situation where I might be forced to disobey a Council injunction in order to stop them.”

“Realistically, I think there is little danger of that,” Arilan said. “Besides, the injunction says nothing about self-defense. It was meant to protect those of lesser training and abilities from being attacked by full Deryni whose powers they could not hope to resist. If a lesser Deryni wished to challenge a full lord and got himself killed in the process, that was his choice.”

“It would be interesting to find out if they
are
full Deryni, though,” Laran mused. “We could limit the challenge to non-lethal combat—except, of course, in self-defense. I think it might be rather interesting to test wits against Alaric Morgan.”

“An excellent suggestion,” Thorne agreed. “I so move.”

“You so move what?” Coram asked.

“I move that Morgan and McLain be accorded full challenge liability—excluding mortal combat save for self-defense. After all, we must clear up this question of the healing.”

“But, is it necessary to
challenge
them?” Arilan asked.

“Thorne Hagen has stipulated that there shall be no mortal challenge permitted,” Barrett said evenly. “I think it not out of order. Besides, the question is largely academic. No one even knows where they are.”

Thorne suppressed a smile and laced his pudgy fingers together. “Then, it is agreed? They may be challenged?”

Tiercel shook his head. “I like it not. I call for a voice vote, one by one. I claim the ancient right,” he added, at Thorne's look of protest. “And let each person state his reasons.”

Barrett turned his blind eyes toward Tiercel for a long moment, touching his mind fleetingly, then nodded slowly. “As you wish, Tiercel. It is, indeed, your right. Voice vote. Laran ap Pardyce, how say you?”

“I agree. Limited challenge is acceptable. And as a physician, I am most eager to find out about this healing ability they may or may not have.”

“Thorne Hagen?”

“I proposed it, for the reasons I originally specified. Of course I agree.”

“Lady Kyri?”

The young redheaded woman nodded slowly. “If anyone can find them, I think the test is justified. I accept the measure.”

“Stefan Coram, how say you?”

“I agree that they ought to be tested when the time is right—so long as it is a non-lethal challenge.”

“And Bishop Arilan?”

“I disagree.” Arilan sat forward in his chair and intertwined his fingers, turning at the amethyst on his right hand. “I believe it not only uncalled for, but dangerous here. If you force Morgan and Duncan to use their powers to defend themselves against their own kind, you play them directly into the hands of the archbishops. If anything, Morgan and Duncan must be persuaded not to use their powers under any circumstances—at least that the archbishops find out about. Kelson needs their aid desperately, if he is to hold the kingdom together and keep Wencit on his own side of the mountains. I am in the midst of this controversy; I know the situation; you do not. Do not ask me to go against something I believe in.”

Coram smiled and glanced sidelong at the man beside him. “No one is asking you to challenge them, Arilan. As it is, you will probably be the first to see them in any case. And we all know that no one could force you to give away their whereabouts against your will.”

“I thought you were in sympathy, Coram.”

“Sympathy, yes. I feel for their plight: half-breed Deryni obliged to stand as though they were full, against their kinds of both halves, human and Deryni. But I didn't make the rules, Denis. I merely play by them.”

Arilan glanced down at his ring, briefly bent his head to touch his lips to the stone, then shook his head. “My answer is still no. I will not challenge them.”

“Nor will you tell them of the possibility of challenge,” Coram persisted.

“No,” Arilan whispered.

Coram nodded in Barrett's direction, sending him a mental image of the action, and Barrett returned the nod.

“Lady Vivienne?”

“I concur with Stefan. The young men must be tried to test their mettle.” Her fine, silvery head turned to scan the table. “I wish it understood, however, that this is not out of malice, but in curiosity. We have never had so promising a pair of half-breeds in our midst, despite what I said about them earlier. I, for one, will be interested to see what they can do.”

“A measured observation,” Barrett agreed. “And Tiercel de Claron?”

“You know I vote against the measure. I shan't repeat myself.”

“And I must vote to accept the proposal,” Barrett countered, coming full circle at last. “I think there is no need for a formal count.” He rose slowly to his feet.

“The measure is sealed. From this time hence, until such time as the Council may reconvene and alter its decree, the two half-breed Deryni known as Alaric Morgan and Duncan McLain are to be liable to full challenge proceedings, saving only mortal combat. This injunction against deadly force does not, of course, preclude self-defense, should either of the aforementioned men attempt to answer such challenge with killing strength. But should any member of this Council, or any Deryni who keeps the Council's tenets, be tempted to disregard this decretal, let him be liable to the censure of the Council. So let it be written.”

“So let it be done,” the seven others replied in unison.

Hours later, Denis Arilan paced the carpet of his room in the Bishop's Palace at Dhassa. For him, there was little sleep that night.

MORGAN
peered out the window of the ruined tower and scanned the plain far below. Away and to the southeast he could just discern a lone horseman moving rapidly out of sight: Derry, on his way to the northern armies. Below, at the base of the tower, two dun-colored horses pulled hungrily at the new spring grass, their harness worn and common. Duncan was waiting at the foot of the ruined stairway, slapping a brown leather riding crop against one muddy boot. As Morgan stepped back from the window and began his descent, Duncan looked up.

“See anything?”

“Just Derry.” He sprang lightly across the last few feet of rubble to land in a clatter beside his kinsman. “Are you ready to move on?”

“I want to show you something first,” Duncan said, gesturing with his crop toward the ruins farther back and beginning to lead in that direction. “The last time we were here, you were in no condition to appreciate what I'm about to show you, but I think it will interest you now.”

“You mean, the ruined Portal you found?”

“Correct.”

Walking carefully, Morgan followed Duncan down the broken aisle of the ruined chapel, hand resting easily on the hilt of his sword. Saint Neot's once had been a flourishing monastic school, renowned in its day as one of the principal seats of Deryni learning, but that had ended with the Restoration. The monastery had been sacked and burned, many of its brothers murdered on the very altar steps they now passed. Now Morgan and Duncan crossed the ruined nave of the school's crumbling chapel to view the remains of something else lost from that time.

“There's the Saint Camber altar you told me about,” Duncan said, gesturing with his crop toward what remained of a marble slab jutting from part of the eastern wall. “I reasoned that a Portal wouldn't have been placed out in the open, even in Interregnum times, so I looked further. In here.”

As Duncan pointed, he ducked low to ease his way through a small opening in the crumbling wall, precariously supported by fallen and half-rotted ceiling beams. Mounds of rubble littered the floor on the other side, but as Morgan followed his kinsman through, he could see that this had probably been a sacristy or vestry.

He dusted his gloved hands together lightly as he straightened in the ruined chamber, noting the cracked marble beneath his boots, the timber beams still supporting much of the ceiling. Against the far wall, he could make out the remains of an ivory vesting altar, its panels blackened by fire, fragments of chests and moldering vestment presses to either side. More substantial rubble made the footing precarious: blocks of stone fallen from the half-tumbled walls, rotting wood, shattered glass. Footprints of small animals tracked over the heavy layer of dust that covered everything.

“Over here,” Duncan said, motioning him to a spot before the ruined altar and squatting down on his haunches. “Look. You can see the outline of the slab that marked the Portal. Put your hands on it and probe it.”

“Probe it?” Morgan dropped to his knees beside his cousin and rested a gloved hand on the square, glancing at Duncan in faint question. “What am I supposed to feel? You said it had been destroyed.”

“Just probe the slab gently,” Duncan urged. “The brethren left a message.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow skeptically, then let his mind go blank, willing his senses to extend gradually to the slab beneath his hand.

Beware, Deryni! Here lies danger!

Startled by the intensity of the contact, Morgan drew back his hand and glanced at Duncan in question, then briskly pulled off his right glove and placed his hand flat on the slab, fingers splayed, again reaching out with his mind.

Beware, Deryni! Here lies danger! Of a full one hundred brothers only I remain, to try, with my failing strength, to destroy this Portal before it can be desecrated. Kinsman, take heed. Protect yourself, Deryni. The humans kill what they do not understand. Holy Saint Camber, defend us from fearful evil!

Drawing a deep, steadying breath, Morgan withdrew from the contact and looked across at Duncan. The priest was solemn, his eyes intensely blue in the shadowed chamber, but a ghost of a smile played about his lips as he stood up.

“I would say that he succeeded,” Duncan said, glancing wistfully around the chamber. “It probably cost him his life, but he destroyed the Transfer Portal. Strange, isn't it, how we're sometimes forced to destroy the things we hold most dear? We, as a race, have done that. Look at the knowledge lost, the bright heritage tarnished. We are a shadow of the people we once were.”

Morgan got to his feet and clasped Duncan's shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “Enough of that, Cousin. Our Deryni ancestors brought a large amount of their fate upon themselves, and you know it. Come. We'd better ride on.”

They squinted against the brightness as they left the ruined chamber and emerged into the nave once more. The sunlight streaming through the empty clerestory windows set the dust motes dancing in its beams, throwing everything into sharp relief of light and sooty shadow. The two men were just approaching the ruined western doorway, where their horses waited beyond, when the air in the doorway suddenly seemed to shimmer, as if from heat.

“What the—”

The pair pulled up short, gaping as a figure took shape in the doorway, silhouetted against the brightness: the cowled form of a man in gray monk's robes, with a wooden staff in his right hand and a nimbus of golden light around his head that outshone even the sunlight. It was the figure that both men had come to associate with Saint Camber of Culdi, the ancient patron of Deryni magic.

“Dear God in Heaven,” Duncan whispered, crossing himself, as Morgan put out an arm and both of them backed off a step.

The figure in the doorway did not disappear; on the contrary, it stepped through the opening and took several steps toward them. Morgan retreated yet another step, reluctant to contend with the strange being, whoever he might be, then jerked back with a grunt of dismay as his left shoulder encountered something sleek and unyielding, something that had given off a golden flash when he brushed against it.

His shoulder seemed to tingle for several seconds, and he rubbed it gingerly as he eyed the stranger. Duncan moved closer to his kinsman, both hands lifted in a vaguely warding-off gesture, and did not take his eyes from the newcomer either. As both watched in awe, the stranger raised his left hand to push back the cowl from his head. The eyes, at once piercing and caressing, were of the same blued-gray as the sky beyond. The face was both ancient and ageless, the nimbus flaring about his silver-bright head like captive sunlight.

“Do not go against the wards again, or you may be injured,” the man said. “I prefer that you do not leave just yet.”

The lips moved, but the voice was more inside their heads than actually heard. Morgan glanced uneasily at Duncan to see his cousin staring at the stranger in rapt attention, a look of incredulity on his face. He wondered abruptly if this was the man Duncan had seen on the road to Coroth a few months ago, and knew even as he thought it that it had to be the man. Duncan started to open his mouth to speak, but the man held up a hand for silence and shook his head.

“Please. I have not much time. I have come to warn you, Duncan, and you, Alaric, that your lives are in grave danger.”

Morgan could not control a faint snort of derision. “That is hardly a new threat. As Deryni, we were bound to make enemies.”

“
Deryni
enemies?”

Duncan only stared at him numbly, but Morgan's gray eyes narrowed shrewdly.

“What Deryni enemies? You, sir?”

The stranger chuckled with a silver laughter, as though pleased with the reply, and for the first time seemed to relax slightly.

“I am hardly your enemy, Alaric Morgan. If I were, why would I come to warn you?”

“You might have your reasons.”

Duncan nudged his kinsman in the ribs and cocked his head at the stranger. “Then, who are you, sir? Your appearance is that of Saint Camber, but…”

“Come, now. Camber of Culdi died two centuries ago. How could I be he?”

“You answer a question with yet another question,” Morgan persisted. “
Are
you Camber of Culdi?”

The man shook his head, slightly amused. “No, I am not Camber of Culdi. As I told Duncan on the road to Coroth, I am but one of Camber's humble servants.”

Morgan raised a skeptical eyebrow. Despite the disclaimer of sainthood, the stranger's manner did not suggest that he was anyone's humble servant. On the contrary, he exuded a decided aura of command, an impression that this was a man far more accustomed to giving orders than to receiving them. No, whoever the man was, he was not a servant.

“You say that you are one of Camber's servants,” Morgan finally repeated, unable to keep a slight edge of disbelief out of his voice. “Would it be impertinent to inquire which one? Or do you not have a name?”

“I have many names,” the man smiled. “But I pray you not to press me on this point. For now, I would rather not lie to you—and the truth could be dangerous to all of us.”

“Then…you're Deryni,” Morgan guessed. “You would have to be, to do all of this—to come and go the way you do.” He considered further as the man merely gazed at him in faint amusement. “But no one knows that you're Deryni,” he continued after a slight pause. “You've been in hiding, like Duncan was all these years. And you can't let anyone know.”

“If you wish.”

Perplexed and at a loss, Morgan frowned and glanced at Duncan, suspecting that the man was but toying with him, but the priest shook his head slightly.

“This danger you speak of,” Duncan said, edging slightly closer for a better look at the man. “These Deryni enemies: Who are they?”

“I regret that I cannot tell you that.”

“You can't tell us?” Morgan began.

“I cannot tell you because I do not know myself,” the stranger interrupted, holding up a hand for silence. “What I
can
tell you is this: Those whose business it is to know these things have become convinced that you may possess the full spectrum of Deryni powers, some which even they were not aware still exist.”

The two could but gape incredulously as the man moved back into the sunlit doorway once more and pulled his cowl back into place.

“Remember, however, that regardless of your true powers, there are those who would test the theory I have just recounted, and would challenge you to duel arcane to discover your strength.” He turned slightly to regard them one final time. “Think on that, my friends. And take care that they do not find you before you are secure in your powers—whatever those powers may be!”

With that, the man gave a curt nod and walked briskly to where the horses were grazing. The animals did not seem to notice his approach; and as Morgan and Duncan moved into the doorway to stare after him, he raised a hand as though in benediction, walked behind the horses, and disappeared.

Stifling an oath, Morgan raced around the animals and searched anxiously for some trace of the stranger, but he could find nothing. Duncan remained in the doorway for several seconds, his blue eyes focused on some distant memory, then joined Morgan and absently began stroking one of the grazing horses.

“You won't find him, Alaric,” he said softly. “No more than I could find him after he disappeared on the Coroth road a few months ago.” He glanced at the ground and shook his head. “No footprints, no sign to mark his passing. It's as though he was never here. Perhaps he wasn't.”

Morgan turned to glance sharply at his cousin, then went back to inspect the doorsill, the gritty floor beyond. There might have been footprints besides their own, but if they had ever existed, they had been effectively obliterated when Morgan and Duncan went in pursuit. Nor was there any sign of the man's passing on the damp, grassy earth.

“Deryni enemies,” Morgan breathed, returning to stand quietly by Duncan's side. “Do you realize what that implies?”

Duncan nodded. “It implies that there are far more Deryni than we ever dreamed; Deryni who know what they are and who know how to use their powers.”

“And we don't know who any of them are except Kelson and Wencit of Torenth,” Morgan murmured, running both hands distractedly through his windblown yellow hair. “God's Blood, Duncan! What have we gotten ourselves into?”

Just what the two had gotten themselves into was to become more and more apparent as the day wore on.

SEVERAL
hours later, Morgan and Duncan guided their horses into a dense thicket just off the Dhassa road and drew rein to listen. Bearded and mud-bespattered as they were, mounted on common horses of no certain ancestry, they had aroused no suspicion from the travelers they encountered on the well-traveled highway. They had passed farmers and soldiers and merchants with pack trains, and once even a pair of mounted messengers wearing the badge of the Bishop of Dhassa himself.

But they had not been challenged. And now, as they made their final approach to the valley that led to Dhassa, the road was momentarily deserted. Beyond the ridge ahead lay the valley and Saint Torin's, and both men sobered as they remembered their last journey to this place.