King Javan’s Year (68 page)

“Deryni or not, if he
did
escape, he knows what would happen to his wife and child,” Albertus pointed out.

“Yes, I suspect that would be your preference, in any case,” Javan replied.

“In fact, it is, Sire,” Albertus said, to Javan's shock. “If you wish, the problem can be eliminated entirely, once and for all. Neither Ursin nor his family need suffer continued captivity, once they lie in their graves.”

“I won't have him murdered!” Javan snapped. “He's done nothing to warrant that.”

“He is Deryni,” Paulin retorted.

“He
was
Deryni,” Javan replied. “He can't help what he was born. But when ordered by his lawful superior to submit himself to a devotional practice already demonstrated likely to remove the Deryni stigma”—he looked pointedly at Hubert—“he complied. You yourself had him tested on that day, my Lord Archbishop. And since that day, he has continued to react only as a human would. What further proof do you need?”

“The ‘proof' is based on the actions of a self-proclaimed prophet and miracle-worker whose motives we do not know, Sire,” Hubert said. “You were there. You experienced whatever it is that he does.”

“Yes, but I am not Deryni,” Javan replied. “Ursin was, and after encountering the Master Revan, he was Deryni no more. Father Lior tested him. If you trust him and his drugs, then you must trust that they proved Ursin is no longer Deryni.”

“I would be most loath to release him, your Highness,” Hubert murmured. “Despite the drugs, we can never be sure, where Deryni are concerned.”

Javan nodded slowly. He had the beginning of a plan, but its shaping must be done slowly and with great care.

“I wish to interview Ursin O'Carroll,” he said, standing. “I also wish to see him tested for myself.”

As the others also stood, Paulin and Hubert exchanged guarded glances.

“Your Highness,” Hubert said, “I do not recommend this. What do you hope to prove, or to gain?”

“A reassessment of this particular facet of the Deryni situation,” Javan said. “Now, will one of you accompany me to Ursin's quarters or shall I make my own way?”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-EIGHT

Now therefore perform the doing of it
.

—II Corinthians 8:11

The senior clergy were quick to volunteer their company, once they saw he meant to go regardless. Paulin and Hubert flanked him as he left the Council chamber; Father Lior and Lord Albertus fell in with the king's ever-present aides. Down the main stair they trooped, through the great hall and across the garden, then on through a covered passageway and into an inner courtyard overlooked by lesser buildings than the main castle block.

Across this courtyard and up a tower stair Hubert led them, wheezing by the time they reached a landing guarded by two
Custodes
knights, who snapped to attention at the sight of episcopal purple and their own
Custodes
colors on Paulin, Albertus, and Lior. As the party accompanying Hubert spread onto the landing, a few still standing in the stairwell, he beckoned to a liveried warder with a large ring of keys.

“We will see the prisoner Ursin O'Carroll,” Hubert said to the man, gesturing toward a stout-looking door just into the corridor that led from the landing, also guarded by a
Custodes
knight.

At Paulin's confirming nod, the warder bowed dutifully and headed toward the indicated door, selecting a large key from his ring. The lock turned almost soundlessly, the door swinging inward on well-oiled hinges. Paulin and Lior preceded Hubert and Javan in, Lior bearing a torch one of the guards had handed him. The others watched from the corridor outside.

Three years had changed Ursin O'Carroll. He still could not yet be thirty, but ample grey threaded the temples of the mouse-brown hair, grown long and tied back in a queue, and Ursin's beard had grown longer since Javan had last seen him. He was clean and tidy enough, clad in a bulky robe of brownish-black wool, with strips of the same stuff wrapped around his feet, but the once-proud shoulders slumped with the hopelessness of his situation. Bitter but resigned before, yet willing to collaborate to survive, now even the spirit seemed to have gone out of the man.

But of course, Javan reasoned, nothing had happened in the last three years to indicate that the rest of Ursin's life was likely to be anything other than an endless succession of days and nights in captivity, kept largely in solitary confinement, periodically drugged to senselessness for no good reason, and condemned to a living death by a law that allowed no leeway and no mercy.

Ursin had been sitting in the room's single chair when the door opened, enveloped in a thick mantle that was more like a piece of rug than actual fabric and huddling over a charcoal brazier not nearly large enough to heat the entire room. The chamber was similar in size and appointments to the one Father Faelan had occupied, but without the little oratory opening off it.

The faint light coming through the barred window at this hour was bleak and grey, matching Ursin's expression as he came to his feet and then sank quickly to his knees, head bowed, upon seeing the array of high-ranking clergy. From his reaction, Javan guessed that Ursin might not have seen him, wrapped in a grey mantle over his Haldane crimson today. It occurred to Javan to wonder whether Ursin even knew that Alroy was dead and a new king crowned.

“Ursin, the king wishes to speak with you,” Hubert said.

Slowly Ursin raised his head, the hazel eyes flicking apprehensively among the clergy as they parted slightly to let Javan ease forward. Lior had passed his torch to Albertus and was already fingering a long, narrow metal tube the length of his hand, ready to administer the requisite dose of
merasha
when instructed. Ursin glanced at the priest with ill-masked dread, but as he turned his gaze dully to the figure in crimson, the hazel eyes widened in surprise.

“Prince Javan?” he murmured.

“Silence, unless you're spoken to!” Hubert warned, raising the back of his hand to Ursin.

Instantly the man cringed closer to the floor, instinctively protecting his head with his arms. The reaction suggested that physical abuse probably was a regular part of officialdom's dealings with the unfortunate Deryni hostages.

“That's enough!” Javan said sharply, moving between Ursin and the archbishop. “Ursin, look at me. You've done nothing wrong, and I won't allow you to be mistreated. Straighten up, man, and look me in the eyes.”

Remaining on his knees, Ursin slowly obeyed, carefully folding his hands before him with the fingers intertwined in entreaty—or in illustration that he was helpless to give physical resistance—before he dared to look up. Javan made a quick probe for shields, but there were none, and no hint of anything to suggest that the man once had been Deryni.

“That's better,” he said quietly. “How long has it been, Ursin, since we both went down into a pool near Valoret and received cleansing of the Master Revan?”

“More than three years, Sire,” Ursin whispered.

“And has the taint ever returned?” he asked.

Gravely Ursin shook his head, his expression mixed of resignation and sorrow. “No, Sire.”

Breathing a perplexed sigh, Javan glanced aside coolly at Lior. “I would see him tested, Father.”

Ursin's head jerked up with a start, dull betrayal sparking in his eyes for just an instant, and several of the men with Javan murmured among themselves. An expression of smug self-righteousness was on Lior's face as he almost sauntered over to where Ursin was kneeling, unlimbering his Deryni pricker from its vial of
merasha
. The twin needles glistened with the drug, a shimmering droplet caught between them.

Stoic resignation writ across his bearded face, Ursin sank back on his heels and pushed back one loose sleeve, extending his bared arm to Lior and turning his gaze away. The needles were slender, and not very long, but Ursin bit back a gasp as Lior plunged them into the tender flesh of the inner forearm. He made no attempt to pull away, though, perhaps having learned from three years' experience how to avoid any needless further discomfort.

When Lior had jerked the needles out, Ursin let fall his arm and mechanically pulled the sleeve back down, obviously schooling any show of his emotions before raising his eyes. Though Javan had known generally what must happen in response to his command, he had not expected the sheer inhumanity of it; and realized now, by Ursin's resigned compliance, that this indignity must have been a regular part of the man's life for all these three years past.

“What are you feeling?” Javan asked, watching Ursin closely as they waited for the drug to take effect. He thanked God that no one had thought to use it on him when he was at
Arx Fidei
, the way they had used it on Faelan. It also occurred to him how vulnerable he was right now, if Lior were suddenly to turn the Deryni pricker on him.

Ursin's eyelids were already starting to droop over dilating pupils, the tension leaving his taut shoulders as his head started to loll forward, and then he caught himself. He was displaying the usual sedative effect of
merasha
on humans, but none of the symptoms one would expect of a Deryni.

“Ursin?” Javan said. “What are you feeling?”

“I feel—dizzy, Sire,” Ursin said haltingly, in response to Javan's question. “Waves of sleep …” Then, whispered almost against his will: “Dear God, how many more times …”

As he buried his forehead in one hand, Javan briefly clasped a comforting hand to his shoulder. After a few more seconds, the king glanced at the others, then back at Ursin.

“All right, that's what I was expecting,” he said. “Now I think it's time we resolved the matter of his family. Ursin, your wife is human, is she not?”

Ursin lifted his head in dull incomprehension, then nodded yes.

“And what about your son?”

He watched Ursin's reaction closely, for he remembered that Tavis had identified the man as a “failed Healer.” Javan did not know precisely what that meant, but it certainly meant that Ursin had been fairly well trained and ought to have been able to tell whether his own son was Deryni. Javan hated putting him on the spot this way, but there was no way that Hubert and Paulin were even going to consider what he had in mind, without knowing for certain about Ursin's son.

“What's your son's name, Ursin?” he asked quietly.

Even drugged, Ursin obviously guessed where at least a part of this conversation was headed—and that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“His name is—C-Carrollan, Sire,” Ursin managed to whisper. “He is named for his grandsire.”

“And do you know whether he's Deryni?” Javan asked. “Ursin, I know you've had a good deal of training. I'm sure you've evaded this question before, to protect him, but I have to know. If Father Lior tests the lad with
merasha
, is he going to react as a Deryni?”

Ursin's head bowed, shoulders slumping in dejection, and then he slowly nodded. His apparent betrayal by the new king swept away any remaining resistance he might have offered.

“He was—only a baby when—when last I saw him, Sire. But the signs were there. I was to have been a Healer, but the—gift failed in me. I lacked the ability to focus it properly. I—had hoped it might be perfected in my son. But now I wish I had passed on no part of my powers at all.”

His sob held both fear and sorrow as his head sank lower on his chest, and Javan had to strain to hear his next words.

“He would not have been much of a Deryni,” he murmured. “And now—” He sighed and seemed to wilt even more. “Now, it seems less and less likely that he will even grow to manhood …”

As the distraught voice trailed off, Javan turned to Charlan, waiting expectantly in the doorway.

“Fetch Master Oriel,” the king said. “And have him bring his medical kit.”

As Charlan bowed and withdrew, Hubert regarded Javan suspiciously, and Paulin looked decidedly indignant.

“I had assumed that Father Lior would test the child,” Paulin said.

“Oriel can give the lad a lighter dose of
merasha
than can be administered with Lior's Deryni pricker,” Javan replied. “The lad's only four or so. An adult dose could kill him.”

“And if he doesn't react?” Paulin said. “Oriel
could
substitute something else, you know, once he learns what you intend. He's Deryni. There's nothing he might not do, to protect one of his own kind.”

Javan shot the Vicar General a withering look. “The boy's father has admitted that he believes his son to be Deryni! That means he'll react. If he doesn't, I'll—I'll have Oriel drink from the same cup as the boy, to prove that it was indeed
merasha
. Will
that
satisfy you?”

Grudgingly Hubert and Paulin agreed, Lior standing silent and sullen, not daring to contradict his superiors. When Oriel arrived and was told what Javan wished him to do, his agreement was even more grudging. The appalled and drug-dulled Ursin listened in despair, knowing that his cooperation had committed his son to face a dreaded trial that could only end in his condemnation and aware that there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

Numbly he held out his wrists for the shackles that Paulin required. It placed him even more at their mercy, but at least it appeared he was to be permitted to be present when his son's fate was decided. That softened the betrayal a little.

It was even a victory of sorts. For more than three years, Ursin had not been out of his quarters save for the times they re-tested him with
merasha
. On those occasions, he was drugged and then shackled before being moved to another room nearby, exactly like the one he had left.

Javan caught the memory as he came to check Ursin's shackles after the warder snapped them in place. For three long years, Ursin had endured this treatment on a regular basis, lent strength to carry on only by the hope that his son might be spared even a little longer—though he had never known for certain whether the boy was even still alive. After a few hours, though still groggy, he was always dosed again before being brought back to his own quarters, which had been cleaned during his absence. Usually, but not always, he made it back to his own bed before passing out from the second dose added to the first.