The Harrowing of Gwynedd (48 page)

All at once, Javan realized precisely where Murdoch and the others were
not
looking, as Duke Ewan eased slowly to his feet. Ewan was only thirty-seven, but he suddenly looked
old
.

“So, therefore, do we, Earl Tammaron Fitz-Arthur, Earl Rhun of Horthness, Archbishop Hubert MacInnis, and myself, Earl Murdoch of Carthane, expel from our number the noble his Grace the Duke of Claibourne, and name in his stead the Right Honorable the Earl of Culdi, Lord Manfred—.”

“Murdoch, I'll kill you!” Before Murdoch could even finish, Duke Ewan was vaulting across the men and benches separating him from Murdoch, bellowing his outrage, a long highland dirk suddenly clenched in his burly fist. The weapon caught the scroll Murdoch raised instinctively in a warding-off gesture, grazing Murdoch's cheek, but Murdoch's dagger was already in his free hand, darting in to counter Ewan's next blow.

“Stop him!” Rhun shouted.

But the two were already grappling for the weapons, Ewan with murder in his eyes and Murdoch with his long arms and legs wrapped around the heavier, more experienced Ewan as they rolled over and over. Ewan's men leaped in belatedly to help him, only to be taken on by the scores of royal guardsmen who poured into the hall. Javan never quite saw clearly how it happened; only that suddenly there was blood everywhere and Ewan lay dying with several of his men, both hands pressed futilely around the bloody hilt of a long dagger buried in his gut.

A hush fell across the hall as Murdoch staggered to his feet, breathing hard, clutching a nasty gash across one bicep. Blood leaked from between his fingers and dripped on one of the newly presented Kheldish carpets as the injured regent glared an unmistakable summons for Oriel to attend him.

“But no priest for any of those!” Murdoch barked hoarsely, as two
Custodes
priests started to move among the dying men. “No grace for traitors! And you!” His uninjured arm lanced toward Declan Carmody, who was the closest other Deryni besides Oriel. “I want MacEwan broken! You see now why we removed him. He was plotting to overthrow the king. I want the names of his confederates. I want his mind ripped from him before he dies!”

“No, please. Not Declan!” Oriel whispered, catching urgently at Murdoch's sleeve. “Ask Ursin. Ask Sitric. Ask
me
! Carmody isn't well enough yet. He may crack!”

Enraged, his face purple with choler, Murdoch rounded on Oriel. “Are you defying a direct order, Healer?” he rasped. “Are you
asking
to see your wife and daughter die? That can be arranged!”

“Oriel, don't.” Declan's voice was calm and controlled as he moved quite purposefully toward the writhing Ewan, waving back the other two Deryni, who had started forward in alarm. “It isn't necessary. You don't have to fight my battles for me.”

A profound silence fell as he came to kneel by Ewan's side, and the duke made a vague, anguished attempt to flail his pain-wracked body beyond Declan's reach as the Deryni hand was lifted toward him, his face draining of what color remained.

Some unspoken message must have passed between them then, however, because suddenly Ewan stopped trying to squirm away and fixed his eyes on Declan's, hands falling away from the steel impaling his gut. His lips moved in silent words that might have said,
Bless you
, as Declan seized the hilt of the dagger and quickly withdrew it from the wound. In that same instant, Ewan closed his eyes and threw back his head for Declan's coup—a swift, deft slash across the throat that severed both carotid arteries and brought oblivion in an instant.

“What the—”

Before anyone could stop him, Declan drew the bloody blade hard against one of his own wrists, shifting to the other hand even as the first blood spurted, to slash deep into the other wrist. But before he could turn it on his throat and end the matter for good, the soldiers were on him, wrestling the weapon from blood-slick fingers and bearing him to the ground, instinctively trying to staunch the life-blood spurting from his wrists.

“You
dare
to defy me!” Murdoch thundered, scuttling across the hall to glare down at the wounded Deryni. “You
dare
!”

“The duke died before he could be questioned, my lord,” Declan said almost dreamily, already far from his own pain. “I have not defied you. I simply choose not to live under your conditions any longer. I believe I've done too good a job for Oriel to save me,” he added, flexing his slashed wrists in the blood-slick hold of his captors and grimacing. “Not that I'd let him, in any case—or that
you'd
let him, with your own wound bleeding so badly. You'll pass out, if he doesn't do something quickly, you know. You could even die.”

Murdoch gritted his teeth as he sat down hard on a stool and let Oriel start tearing away the sleeve from his wound, and Archbishop Hubert came halfway between Murdoch and Declan.

“You know, of course, that suicides are condemned straight to Hell,” Hubert said softly. “And
I'll
not give you absolution.”

“Nor would I ask it of you,” Declan whispered, letting his head lie back and relaxing in the hands of his captors. “I have
some
pride left.”

“We'll see about pride, when you watch your wife and those little boys die before your eyes!” Murdoch said, stirring under Oriel's hands.

“No! I have not disobeyed!” Declan struggled to sit up, but now his captors would not let him.

“Bring them!” Murdoch ordered coldly. “And neutralize
him
.”

Merasha
was coursing through Declan's system before he could even fathom his own danger, so horrified was he at what Murdoch threatened for his family. One of the
Custodes
monks was responsible, calmly wiping off a long, sharp bodkin after he had darted in to crouch by the stricken man's side and stab it into his neck.

“Th-the guards call it a ‘Deryni pricker,'” Rhys Michael whispered breathily, clinging to Javan's arm in stunned disbelief and starting to shake as guards marched out to do Murdoch's bidding. “The
Custodes
invented it. B-but, Javan, they aren't
really
going to k-kill Declan's family—are they?”

For answer, Javan could only hug his younger brother closer, himself shaking, all too aware that the regent could and would do exactly what he threatened.

Nor could any entreaty swerve Murdoch from his intentions—not Alroy's nor his brothers' nor even the uneasy protests of Tammaron and a handful of the courtiers whose appearance at court had begun so lightheartedly. While the court waited for the guards' return, the drugged Declan's wrists were tightly bound to slow the bleeding, and Ursin and Sitric were also dosed with
merasha
. The heartsick Oriel was spared long enough to Heal Murdoch's wound—a procedure over which he dawdled until Hubert threatened
his
family—but then he, too, was made to submit to the drug that made further resistance impossible. Murdoch intended that all of them should witness the consequences of Declan's defiance, and would brook no possibility of further insurrections in the Deryni ranks.

Only the regents' wives were allowed to withdraw to the room behind the dais, to spare them actually witnessing what was about to happen. For the rest, the guards secured the hall to ensure that no one else shirked his or her duty to see justice done to a rebellious Deryni and his family.

Alroy said not a word after that, only sitting trembling and whey-faced on a throne that suddenly seemed like a torture chamber to him, the sharp-eyed Hubert at his side. Manfred broke up the embrace of the two younger brothers and stood by Rhys Michael, who looked as if he wished he was anywhere but where he was. Rhun guarded Javan, forbidding him to turn away. When the guards finally brought in Honoria Carmody and her two little sons, Javan felt that he was going to be sick and actually swallowed down bile, not wanting to believe Murdoch was actually going to do it.

To the undying relief of all present, Murdoch did relent a little—to the extent that the execution of those innocents was mercifully quick—bowstrings knotted swiftly around three slender necks, over almost before it began. Still, a communal gasp rippled through the court as the deed registered, capped by Declan Carmody's faint, drugged groan of anguish.

But Declan himself was to be permitted no such merciful end. An example must be made of him, to ensure that no other Deryni got ideas above his station and tried to turn against his masters. To screams which the doomed Deryni could not keep back, he was stripped and spread-eagled right on the floor before the throne, first castrated and then slowly disemboweled, his entrails dragged from his belly even as he shrieked out his agony yet could not end it. Loss of blood from his many wounds let him slip into unconsciousness before they could tear his heart, still beating, from his opened chest; and when they could not rouse him to continue their sport, they unbandaged his wrists, so that it could be claimed that the actual cause of death had been his own violence against himself. By the time they beheaded and quartered his mutilated body, Declan Carmody was long past knowing or caring.

Javan cared desperately, though. Nor would he let himself shrink from any sickening detail, filing away each crime to be charged against Murdoch when the time came, his thoughts racing the while through prayers for the dying man's soul. (Had he tried
not
to watch, Rhun would have held his head like an undisciplined infant—unspeakable liberty! But that, at least, was something over which Javan had some modicum of control.)

He was handling himself rather well, he thought, until Hubert formally announced that the dead man would not be afforded Christian burial, having died by his own hand. When the executioners' assistants began gathering up the pieces in wicker baskets to dump them into the river, Javan was finally and unashamedly sick all over Rhun's highly polished boots.

Alroy and several far older courtiers already had fainted by then—as had Oriel, for whom the lesson was really intended. And Javan was but the youngest—by no means the only—person to retch up his guts at the horror of what they had witnessed. Rhys Michael managed to keep his stomach and head under control, but had started shaking halfway through. Even now, one of the royal physicians was giving him a strong sedative and ordering him taken to his rooms.

There was no birthday feast that night, and Alroy cancelled all his appearances for three days thereafter, against all possible entreaties and wheedlings of the regents. Javan gave all his gifts to the
Custodes Fidei
, for he would not have them tainted with Declan Carmody's blood. Following his lead, his brothers also gave away their gifts—though, in fact, many of them ended up in the hands of the regents themselves. From that moment on, Javan vowed his vengeance for what had been done—and on Murdoch in particular.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
FOUR

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath annointed me to preach … deliverance to the captives
.

—Luke 4:18

The information networks that had always served the clans carried word of Ewan's death northward with a speed almost suggestive of Deryni magic. Less than a fortnight later, backed by his two uncles and over a hundred armed clansmen wearing black cockades in their bonnets, Ewan's son and heir rode into Rhemuth to claim his titles. The show of force was real, in that his uncles, the Earls of Eastmarch and Marley, had brought along an additional escort of fifty handpicked knights, but the duke himself was counted as of little real consequence. For Graham Donal Angus MacEwan, now the Duke of Claibourne and hereditary Viceroy of Kheldour, was an eleven-year-old boy.

To alienate that eleven-year-old any more than he already had been was to court disaster, however. The titles that the boy bore were of immense consequence—so immense that the regents dared not even consider refusing to confirm the boy in his new rank. The holdings comprising Kheldour represented fully a quarter of the land area of Gwynedd. The regents could ill afford to lose that land. That young Graham was even willing to come to the capital and do public homage and fealty for his holdings, after all that had happened, bespoke much of the good judgment of his uncles, who would be
his
regents until he came of age—for neither Kheldour nor Gwynedd would be the better for a split, with the threat of an eventual Festillic reinvasion ever in the offing.

Besides that, public reaction to the manner of the old duke's death was already vocal and highly negative, even though the official accounts emphasized that Ewan
had
been trying to murder the regent Murdoch, which
could
be construed as an act of treason. However, even Murdoch finally admitted, albeit grudgingly, and only in the bosom of his fellow regents, that perhaps he had overreacted to Ewan's altogether justified anger at being so summarily dismissed. Certainly, Murdoch had failed to predict what Ewan would do, on learning of the dismissal. To attaint the son for the supposed sins of the father—and attainder was the only legal way to bar Graham from his ducal titles—was to add insult to injury and court even greater public outcry—and possibly even force the kingdom into civil war.

So young Duke Graham was permitted to assume his titles. The presence of his uncles was allowed at his recognition and swearing in, but both were warned to hold their peace, lest some angry outburst again escalate matters beyond anyone's intentions. Hence, when young Duke Graham swore his oaths, his small hands between Alroy's not much bigger ones, his uncles knelt sullenly to either side of him, each with a hand on his shoulder, since he was a minor. Hrorik of Eastmarch, the elder, said little, but his younger brother Sighere, Earl of Marley, smoldered with resentment; the borders knew quite precisely how the late duke had met his death, and would not forget. Only with notable forbearance did the two endure the ceremonies, as Graham finally was invested with the coronet, the sword, the banner, and the cauldron. But neither brothers nor grieving son had reckoned on the fact that the regents were not yet finished with the slain Duke Ewan, though his body had gone home to Kheldour many days before.