High Deryni (13 page)

“Remind me to offer a special prayer of thanks for Master Dawkin, Duncan—the next time we visit Saint Torin's officially.”

“I shall, indeed.” Duncan chuckled. “The next time we visit Saint Torin's officially.”

An hour later found the two riders high in the mountains walling Lake Jashan and Dhassa from the rolling plains to the west. After taking the fork in the defile that Dawkin had described, they had made their way down a gentle slope to a grassy meadow beyond, where half a dozen scrawny sheep and goats cropped contentedly at the rich mountain grass. They saw no one in the vicinity, and the animals had paid them little attention beyond eyeing the horses warily for a few minutes. It had taken a while to locate the trail that led from the other side of the meadow, but at last it was found and the two proceeded on their way.

The trail, once found, was little more than the track Dawkin had described, and obviously little used. The new green growth of spring grass had hardly been disturbed, and field flowers seemed to spring in riotous profusion from every patch of earth and rock cranny. The trail worsened as they rode, the ascent steepening and the footing becoming less certain. The horses were still able to pick their way without too much trouble, but far ahead they could hear the sound of rushing water. Morgan, in the lead, chewed at his lip thoughtfully as he listened, finally turning back to glance at Duncan.

“Do you hear that?”

“It sounds like a waterfall. What do you want to bet that—”

“Don't say it!” Morgan replied. “I was thinking the same thing.”

The sound of rushing water grew louder as they rounded the next bend in the trail, and they were not surprised to find their way barred shortly by a rather sizeable stream. A cascade roared down the mountainside to their left and formed a fast-flowing torrent that disappeared into the forest to their right, in the direction of Lake Jashan. There appeared to be no way around it.

“Well, what have we here?” Morgan said, drawing rein to survey the flood.

Duncan reined his horse beside Morgan's and studied the falls dismally. “In case you require a reply, that is called a waterfall. Any brilliant ideas?”

“No brilliant ones, I'm afraid.” Morgan moved his horse a few yards downstream to study the current patterns. “How deep do you think it is?”

“Deep enough,” Duncan replied. “Well over our heads. Besides, the horses could never get across in that current. We'd be swept away and battered to death—if we didn't drown outright.”

“You're probably right,” Morgan said. He reined in his horse once again, then turned in the saddle to peer up at the falls.

“How about going above the falls? We might be able to get across, even if the horses couldn't.”

“It's worth a look, I suppose.”

Swinging a leg over his saddle, Duncan jumped to the ground and shrugged his leather cloak back on his shoulders, letting his mount's reins dangle. As he began scrambling up a fairly easy game track toward the falls, Morgan, too, dismounted and secured his mount, following close behind his kinsman.

They had traversed perhaps two-thirds the distance up the face of the cliff when Duncan froze momentarily, then scrambled onto an outcrop and turned to give Morgan a hand up. The ledge where the two found themselves seemed quite ordinary at first; but then Duncan drew Morgan's attention to what had first caught his eye: a deep cleft in the rock, rising vertically for more than thirty feet until it was lost in a veil of mist from the thundering falls. They needed several treacherous steps to reach a point from which they could both peer into the cleft.

The opening was narrow, no more than five feet at its entrance, but from where they stood they could not see the back wall, lost in the shadows. The side walls, as far as the eye could see, were covered with a verdant growth of lichen and moss, the velvety perfection broken only by an occasional patch of ruby or topaz. In the floor of the cleft, which lay a few feet below the level at which they stood, a thin trickle of icy water welled out of a crack in the stony floor, the water so cold that the air above it condensed into shimmering mist where a narrow shaft of sunlight struck it.

The two of them gazed at the swirling mist in awe for several seconds, neither quite willing to break the mystical mood the place had cast. Then Duncan sighed, and the spell was broken. Together they peered more closely into the cleft beyond, returning their focus to their original concern.

“What do you think?” Morgan whispered. “Could it go all the way through?”

Duncan shrugged and lowered himself gingerly into the cleft to take a closer look, but after only a cursory incursion into the shadows, he turned and came back, shaking his head as he accepted Morgan's hand up.

“No joy there, I'm afraid. It doesn't go much farther than what you can see from here. Let's see what's at the top.”

The prospects farther up were no better than below. The water was fast-moving and tumbled over jagged rocks and enormous boulders in the streambed. It looked shallower here, probably little more than waist-deep, but the current was treacherous. One false step could sweep a man's legs from under him and carry him over the falls to the rocks below. The watercourse farther upstream was even worse, with steep banks sloping sharply upward on either side, with no room for a man to even stand at water level, much less cross it. Some other way would have to be found, perhaps farther downstream, below the falls.

With a quick grimace of frustration, Morgan turned to begin climbing back down the cliff face, Duncan waiting above him to follow. But no sooner had Morgan begun his descent, than Duncan glanced below and froze, reaching to touch Morgan's shoulder in alarm.

“Alaric, get down!” he whispered, flattening himself against the rock and restraining his cousin with a warning hand. “Get down, and then don't move. Look behind you, quietly!”

HUGGING
the cliff face, Morgan turned his head slowly and peered over the edge to where Duncan pointed. At first he could see nothing out of the ordinary: merely one of the horses placidly cropping grass beside the stream bank below.

Then he realized he couldn't see the other horse—and caught a flash of movement farther underneath him, closer to the falls. He leaned out farther to see what the motion had been, then froze in astonishment. He could hardly believe what he saw.

Four children, their heads tousled and damp, homespun tunics plastered close to their bodies, were leading the second horse into the water at the edge of the waterfall. The horse was hoodwinked with what looked like the blanket from the saddle's pack, and one of the children held his hand on the animal's nose to keep it from nickering as they urged it into the cold stream. The oldest of the four appeared to be a boy of about eleven; the youngest could not have been more than seven.

“What the devil?” Morgan murmured, hazarding an astonished glance at Duncan.

Duncan pursed his lips grimly, then moved as though to start down the slope after them. “Come on. The little thieves are going to steal both horses if we don't stop them.” Morgan could only barely hear him above the roar of the water.

“No, wait.” Morgan grabbed Duncan's cloak and halted him in mid-motion, watching as children and horse waded toward the falls in a patch of calm water. “You know, I think those beastly urchins have a way across. Look.”

Even as Morgan spoke, horse and children disappeared behind the falls. Morgan glanced around, then scrambled partway down the side of the cliff, beckoning Duncan to join him behind a rocky outcropping. As they took cover, horse and children reappeared at the other side of the falls, drenched and shivering, but none the worse for wear. The youngest of the four, a girl by the long braids dripping down her back, scrambled up the embankment with some assistance from her companions, then took the reins and led the snorting horse up and out of the water. As the girl calmed the frightened animal, pulling the blanket from its head to begin wiping it down, the other three children disappeared into the falls once more.

With a look of firm resolve, Morgan slapped Duncan on the shoulder as a signal to go, then began clambering down the side of the cliff, keeping to the shadows as much as possible and trusting the roar of the waterfall to cover the sound of their descent. His face was grim but pleased as he and Duncan ducked into cover near the remaining horse, and he controlled the urge to smile again as the three children came out of the falls and hauled themselves dripping onto the bank.

The three glanced back at their friend across the stream, who was letting the captured horse graze while she scanned the cliff far above their heads—looking for
them
, Morgan realized. Then the other three began moving stealthily toward the remaining horse.

Morgan let them all get within touching distance of the animal, one of them actually taking the reins and reaching to stroke the beast's nose. Then he and Duncan broke from cover and started grabbing children.

“Michael!” squealed the lone child on the opposite bank. “No! No! Let them go!”

In a flurry of screams, frantic squirming, and flailing arms and legs, the children tried to escape. Morgan succeeded in getting a strong grip on the first boy, who had been gentling the horse, and had a hold on a second for an instant. But the second boy was also the oldest, and strong, struggling hard; and after a few frantic squirms, he was able to wrench loose to flee shrieking toward the falls.

Duncan, his hands controlling the third child, made an effort to capture the second as he shot past, but ended up with only a handful of wet tunic to show for his trouble. The boy—for there was no mistaking that fact with the tunic missing—streaked for the falls and jumped into the water like an eel, disappearing behind the falls before either of the men could take more than a few steps in that direction.

The two children the men had managed to hold onto continued to struggle and scream, and Morgan was forced to silence his with a hastily applied touch. The girl on the opposite bank had scrambled into the saddle of the stolen horse and was guiding it toward the falls, reaching a hand down for her escaping comrade as he scrambled from the water in the buff.

Morgan had no choice but to call up a spell. Magic would but terrify the children more at this point, but he could not permit them to escape and tell tales of the two men trying to ford the stream. Morgan let his child slip limply to the ground and raised his arms.

As the two on the other side tried to flee, drumming thin, bare legs against the heavy saddle in an effort to make the big horse move, a wall of incandescence suddenly sprang up before them, blocking their way. The children pulled their mount to a plunging halt, their eyes wide as saucers as the light extended to a semi-circle hemming them against the bank of the stream. Duncan calmed the child in his grasp and laid his limp form across the saddle of the remaining horse, then nursed a bloodied hand to his lips, bent to plunge it into the rushing water.

“One of the little beggars bit me!” he murmured, as Morgan put his child across the saddle beside the first and glanced anxiously across at the other two children.

“Just stay where you are and you won't be harmed,” Morgan called, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the falls, and brandishing a finger at the two. “I'm not going to hurt you, but you can't leave yet. Just stay where you are.”

As the children watched, wide-eyed and terrified despite Morgan's reassurances, Duncan took the reins of the remaining horse and led it toward the falls, hooding it with the tunic he had pulled from the fleeing boy. Morgan walked beside the animal, steadying the two sleeping children in the saddle and watching the other two warily. He gasped involuntarily as he entered the icy water, nearly losing control of the restraining light-ring for an instant, then inched along beside the animal and into the falls. There was a narrow ledge behind the roaring wall of water, waist-deep and covered with green slime and treacherous, stream-polished pebbles that slid under a man's boot or a horse's hoof. But they were able to pick their way across without serious incident.

As the nervous horse lurched up the bank, Duncan caught the two children as they slid from the saddle and laid them gently on a patch of grass in the sunshine. Morgan calmed the horse, then raised one eyebrow and strode toward the two children on the other horse. The pair sat stiff in the saddle, petrified but defiant, as Morgan walked through the wall of light and reached a wet hand to the bridle. As he looked up at them, the light behind him died.

“Now, do you want to tell me what you intended to do with my horse?” he asked calmly.

The front child, the girl, glanced behind at her partner and whimpered, then looked wildly back. The older one's arms tightened around the girl's waist reassuringly as he returned Morgan's gaze, a hard gleam flashing through the fear.

“You're Deryni, aren't you? You're spying on my lord bishops.”

Morgan suppressed a smile and pulled the first child from the saddle, without resistance from the boy. The girl went limp as Morgan touched her, from fear rather than any manifestation of Deryni power, and the boy sat a little straighter in the saddle, indigo eyes going cold in the tanned young face. Morgan handed the little girl over to Duncan, exchanging his human armload for a handful of wet tunic, which he tossed to the boy. His gray eyes were slightly amused as the boy took the tunic without a word and slipped it over his head.

“Well?” the boy demanded, tugging his tunic into place with a defiant gesture. “
Aren't
you Deryni? Aren't you spying?”

“I asked you first. What were you going to do with my horse? Sell it?”

“Of course not. My brothers and I were going to take it to our father, so that he could ride with the bishops' army. The captains told him that our cart horse was too old, and couldn't keep up on a long march.”

“You were going to take it to your father,” Morgan said, nodding slowly. “Son, do you know what they call people who take things that don't belong to them?”

“I'm not a thief and I'm not your son!” the boy retorted. “We looked around and didn't see anyone, so we thought the horses must have strayed from the encampment down below. They
are
fighting horses, after all.”

“Are they, now?” Morgan mused. “And you thought it quite likely that such horses would be wandering loose.” The boy nodded gravely.

“You're lying, of course,” Morgan said flatly, grasping the boy by the bicep and swinging him down to the ground. “But, then, that's to be expected. Tell me, are there any more obstacles between here and the Dhassa gates, or—”

“You
are
spies! I knew it!” the boy blurted, starting to fight as his feet hit the ground. “Let me go! Ow, you're hurting me! Stop it!”

Shaking his head in annoyance, Morgan deftly twisted one of the boy's arms behind his back and held it, increasing his pressure until the boy doubled over with the pain. When he had ceased struggling, his attention wholly on the hurting arm—which he had discovered did not hurt if he stopped struggling—Morgan released him abruptly and swung the boy around to face him.

“Now, relax!” Morgan commanded, turning his gray gaze on the boy to Truth-Read. “I haven't time to listen to your hysterics.”

The boy tried to resist, but he had no chance against Morgan's compulsions. Blue eyes met gray ones defiantly for just an instant; but then the young will yielded and the blue eyes blinked and went a little glassy. As the boy calmed enough to be Read, Morgan straightened and released the boy's arm, letting out a relieved sigh as he tightened his belt and brushed a drying strand of hair back from his face.

“Now,” he said, again looking the boy in the eyes, “what can you tell me about the rest of the trail? Can we get through?”

“Not on horses,” the boy said calmly. “You could probably get through on foot, but the horses—never. There's a slide area ahead: mud and shale. Not even the mountain ponies can get across.”

“A slide area? Is there any other way around?”

“Not to Dhassa. The way you came leads back to Garwode. Hardly anyone ever uses this trail, because you can't get through with pack animals or baggage.”

“I see. Anything else you can tell us about the slide area?”

“Not really. The worst part is about a hundred yards across, but you can see the other end of the trail before you start across. It'll be muddy this time of year. You'll just have to pick your way across as best you can.”

Morgan glanced at Duncan, who had moved to his side during the interrogation. “Anything else?”

“How about the gates at Dhassa?” Duncan asked. “Will we have any trouble getting in?”

The boy glanced at the Saint Torin badge pinned to Duncan's cap, then shook his head. “Your badges will pass you. Just mingle with other people who get on the ferries. There are scores of strangers in Dhassa these days.”

“Excellent. Any more questions, Duncan?”

“No. What are we going to do with them, though?”

“We'll leave them here with the horses and a few false memories to explain how they got them.”

“You're going to let them
have
the horses,” Duncan said incredulously.

Morgan touched the boy's forehead lightly and caught him as he crumpled, then picked him up to move him beside the other children.

“We can't take them with us, it seems.”

“But—you're encouraging their thievery!” Duncan began.

Morgan shrugged as he laid the boy beside the other children. “You heard what he said about why he was stealing the horses.”

“Yes. So that their father can join the bishops' army and maybe kill us later on!”

“Not if we win over the bishops.” Morgan smiled as he smoothed a lock of hair off the boy's forehead and straightened up.

“Feisty little devil, isn't he?”

Duncan gave a grudging smile. “I wouldn't be surprised if he were the one who bit me.”

“Humph, I'd probably have bitten you, too,” Morgan said. He touched the boy's forehead again for just an instant, setting the memories straight, then pulled the saddlebags from his saddle and slung them over his shoulder with a grin.

“Ready to go sliding, Cousin?”

THE
sliding about which Morgan joked so lightly came very near to costing them their lives. The portion of trail affected by the slide, though shorter by a third than they had been led to expect, was also at least twice as treacherous and steep. Besides being slick with sand and shale, it was also muddy.

Nor was this a thick mud, which might impede motion, should a climber start to slip. Instead, it was a viscous quagmire, capable of turning semi-liquid in the twinkling of an eye. Duncan's saddlebags were lost in the crossing, and very nearly Duncan himself. But once the slope had been traversed, the way onward was as easy as the boy had predicted. When, around midafternoon, they reached the Dhassa side of Lake Jashan, they found it a comparatively easy task to slip through the gates among a group of new arrivals just off the ferries. Today and the next were market days, and there were, indeed, many strangers in Dhassa. Dhassa's newest arrivals had little difficulty making their way from the gates to the crowded market square outside the Bishop's Palace.