The Harrowing of Gwynedd (5 page)

With a gesture for Queron to accompany him, the monk turned to lead him across the yard toward the chapel.

“Our abbot is Brother Cronin,” he said easily. “I am Brother Tiernan. And you are—?”

Truth-Reading to confirm, for he had been given the names of several of the brethren of the House, Queron let himself relax a little more, stomping snow from his boots as they mounted wooden steps to the chapel door.

“My name is Kinevan. Queron Kinevan. I believe you've been expecting me.”

The monk turned and set his back against the chapel door, eying Queron speculatively.

“Ah, we
were
told we might expect a Gabrilite by that name,” he said softly, “but I see no Gabrilite before me.”

“I have lately been abbot of—another Order,” Queron murmured, not wanting to mention Saint Camber's name until he knew for certain that all was well. “I have not worn Gabrilite habit for many years.”

“It is my understanding that Gabrilite habit does not consist solely of the garment,” the monk insisted, “and that its putting off is no light matter. Is there not some further proof you might offer, that you are what and who you say you are?”

Queron allowed himself a wry smile. This Brother Tiernan was a bold one. Not all humans would dare to make such a demand of an unknown Deryni. The fellow wanted to know about his braid—not normally a topic of discussion outside the Order, but perhaps it was necessary.

“I think you wish no graphic demonstration of
what
I am,” Queron said quietly, digging in his scrip for the coil of plaited hair, “but I suspect that this should prove adequately that I am
who
I claim to be.” He displayed the coil on his open palm. “Is this what you expected to see? I fear it became a liability, attached to my head. I advise you not to touch it, but I assure you, it
is
mine.”

Tiernan glanced a little nervously at the braid, as if a bit taken aback by his own effrontery, but shook his head and swallowed when Queron would have lifted it nearer.

“Please come inside, out of the cold, Dom Queron,” he murmured, averting his eyes as he turned to open the door. “Instructions have been left for you.”

The inside of the chapel was little warmer than outside. Queron could see his breath pluming on the air before him as he followed Tiernan down the center aisle, tucking the braid back in its place in his scrip. Shadows wreathed the open beams of the simple ceiling, but the walls were whitewashed and made the little building seem lighter and more airy than it actually was. He could hear the sounds of construction going on behind a wooden screen that closed off the north transept, but they gradually ceased as Tiernan led him past the simple transept crossing and toward the altar, where a red lamp burned above the tabernacle.

“Wait here, please,” Tiernan said, when the two of them paused at the foot of the altar steps to reverence the Presence signified by that lamp.

Mystified, Queron watched the monk continue on alone to the tabernacle and fit a key to its lock. From behind several veiled ciboria, Tiernan removed what appeared to be a small, suede leather pouch, no bigger than the palm of his hand. This he tucked into the front of his habit, signing for Queron to rise and come with him toward the screened-off northern transept.

As Queron followed his guide through a doorway in the screen, several more black-robed monks backed off skittishly from a bare patch of earth in front of the transept altar, bowing cowled heads over folded hands as they pressed against the far wall. They had been shifting heavy flagstones back into position to cover the bare patch—which might pass as a grave, to the uninitiated; but Queron recognized it instantly as the probable site of the Portal he knew Evaine and Joram had planned to construct.

“God bless the work,” Queron murmured, declining to speak more specifically until he knew the exact status of the men watching him.

His quick mental cast locked on the Portal's distinctive tingle almost immediately. Cautiously he moved the few steps necessary to center himself within it—to the apparent consternation of several of the watchers. And to his own consternation, a quick stretching of his powers failed to touch any other Portal. Either he was out of range, or all the others he knew about had been destroyed or blocked.

“Interesting,” he murmured under his breath. “Brother Tiernan, I don't suppose anyone left me any more explicit instructions?”

With a quiet hand sign, Tiernan signalled the other monks to depart. Only when they had gone did he move close enough to Queron to hand him the brown suede pouch.

“The Lady Evaine asked that I give this into your keeping only when you had placed yourself where you now stand. I—do not know what it contains or what will happen when you take it out.”

“But I am to open it here,” Queron said, gingerly feeling at the contents of the pouch through the leather. It seemed to be something flat and round, perhaps of metal, possibly a medallion of some sort.

“Curious,” he murmured. “Did she give you any other caution?”

Tiernan shook his head. “No, my lord. I watched them all leave through this Portal, though. I know what happens, and I am not afraid.”

“And you are rare among humans for that,” Queron replied. “Did you know that, Brother Tiernan?”

Tiernan shrugged. “I am only an ignorant monk, Domine. But I trust the Lady Evaine and Father Joram. Ah—he said that you would recognize what lies inside and that you would know what to do.”

“Father Joram said that?”

“Aye, Domine.”

“Then, we must not make a liar of him, must we?” Queron loosened the strings of the pouch and peered inside.

“Well, what's this?” he said, beginning to pull out part of a narrow, green silk cord, along with what was attached to it. “It's—a Healer's seal. It's Rhys' Healer's seal!” he breathed, as he caught the dull, silvery medallion in the palm of his hand.

Rhys' name and the year of his matriculation from Saint Neot's were cut into the side facing Queron; and if he turned it over, he knew it would bear Rhys' personal coat of arms augmented with the star-pierced hand that was a Healer's badge of vocation.

“But—Rhys would never give this up. Not to anyone. Not unless—”

Convulsively he clutched the medal harder in his hand as the implication registered. Now he thought he knew why Evaine had wanted him to stand precisely here, in the center of the new Portal, before he opened the pouch. For something had happened to Rhys—he feared the younger Healer was dead—and reading that tragic message here, in this place, would send up a psychic beacon for one of them to come back to get him.

He had to blink back tears as he tucked the empty pouch into the top of his scrip and then smoothed the silk cord over the back of his hand, trying not to look at the medal, now that he had an inkling of what it bore. Just in time, he realized that Tiernan was still watching, awed even by Queron's reaction thus far; and he signalled with an impatient gesture that Tiernan should leave.

The monk backed out without demur, quietly closing the door through the screen before padding off through another door that probably led to the sacristy. Only when Queron was certain he was alone did he allow himself to look at the medallion again.

Rhys Thuryn's Healer's medallion. This time, the arms and badge were uppermost, but that did not change the foreboding now lurking all around Queron's consciousness. Nor would further delay soften the medal's message.

Drawing a deep, centering breath as he laid his hand over the silver, Queron closed his eyes and triggered the spell set there. It was even worse than he had dreamed. Briefly, he sensed the psychic signatures imprinted there at the time Rhys received it—Dom Emrys and another, unknown to Queron.

But then, all the psychic impact of Rhys' death—plus the slaughter at Trurill and the slaying of Alister Cullen and Jebediah—came punching through any resistance he might have tried to raise, relentless in all the detail he must know, in order to survive.

Evaine nibbled at the end of her quill and glanced aside as the infant sleeping in the basket at her elbow stirred. The list she had been working on all afternoon was mostly complete—well, it was a good working draft—but she wished again that Rhys were here to help her. She missed him more and more with every day that passed.

God, what a splendid team they had made! Looking across the table to the chair that once had been his, she could almost see him gazing back at her, the amber eyes a little amused at her acclaim, the fingers of one tapered Healer's hand lifting in a light-hearted gesture of self-deprecation. The scholar's training and the eye for detail had been hers—and the skill with languages—but it was he who had brought that unique gift of intuitive logic, that knack that often cut through layers of artifice that might have taken her weeks or even months to fathom. Sifting through the ancient records on her list would have been a joy, with Rhys at her side.

But Rhys was not at her side; nor would he ever be again, except in her dreams. The little daughter beginning to squirm and coo in the basket would never know her father, for he had died a week before her birth. Though he had been among the greatest Healers of his age, Rhys Thuryn had died for no better reason than any of the others they had laid away last night in the Michaeline chapel, fated never to see the daughter who, like his younger son, bore the sacred gift of Healing. Nor, in his final moments, had his gift been able to save
him
.

He had not even
looked
dead, Evaine recalled, angrily casting down her quill and turning tear-brimmed eyes to the dome of dull amethyst above her head, trying
not
to remember. Preserved under a stasis spell set shortly after he died, he might merely have been asleep—though he had been dead for a fortnight by the time she actually saw his body. Not a mark or wound had he borne upon him—only a faint indentation at the back of his skull, padded by the wiry, reddish hair—surely not enough to kill a man such as he!

But it
had
killed him—had killed his body, at any rate, though Rhys himself no longer resided there. That some eternal part of him still survived elsewhere was a firm cornerstone of her belief, too profoundly affirmed by what her father had told her of others' passing ever to be questioned. The body was a temple of the soul during life, but no more than an empty shell, once the soul passed on.

Still, she had loved the body as well as the soul and the brilliant mind it housed; so before consigning that body to its cold and lonely tomb, she had covered him tenderly with the cope her father had wrapped around him where he first fell—a princely vestment of ivory silk and rich embroidery work, stiff with bullion, fit for a king. In fact, it had been the gift of a king—Cinhil Haldane, for whom most of the suffering of the past decade and more had been endured.

Now Cinhil was nearly a year dead himself, along with the others who had joined him since: Archbishop Jaffray, and Bishops Davet Nevan and Kai Descantor, and Jebediah—and Rhys. Evaine had not cried as they laid him away, but she cried now. She told herself that crying did no good, that she but squandered energy better hoarded for the living, but the tears still came, runneling silently down her cheeks to drip off her chin and splash on the list she had written, blurring the ink.

The destruction brought her back to reason, though, for in the words she had written lay hope for at least one of the men she mourned.

The Annales of Sullen
, she read.
The Protocols of Orin. The Liber Sancti Ruadan. Tomes by Leutiern and Jorevin of Cashel
. And she knew that Camber himself had written commentaries on some of the texts. She even knew where some of them were.

Wiping her tears on the edge of her sleeve, Evaine picked up her quill again and dipped it, making several more notations. When the tiny Jerusha stirred and began to fuss a little, demanding to be held, Evaine gathered her to her breast, continuing to tick off items on the list.

All of the texts were likely sources of information. Copies of a few of the documents lay hidden beneath the flooring in the Portal at her and Rhys' former manor house of Sheele, where she had left them for safe-keeping when she and Ansel fled with the children. Some of the rarer texts might be available through the Varnarite library at Grecotha—though gaining access to the library might be a problem, since the nephew of one of the regents was now Grecotha's new bishop.

Other clues perhaps lay in the ancient ruins underneath Grecotha itself. She had never been there personally, but Joram had. Perhaps the ancient Deryni who built and then abandoned the site had left information. The chamber where she now sat was their work—though she suspected that she and her family had hardly begun to plumb the depths of the secrets hidden just in this one place.

One other consideration must come before even these, however—and that was one of the reasons she kept watch now in this chamber. The Healer Queron Kinevan was expected—an odd ally, he, for it had been Queron who pressed so earnestly and so effectively for Camber's canonization, so many years before, to Joram's enduring dismay. What irony that they now should be considering Queron for a rôle that would surely shatter his faith in the cause to which he had devoted this latter part of his life.

Sighing, Evaine put her list aside and pushed her chair back from the table, laying little Jerusha in her lap, head on knees, and echoing the baby's smile as she ran a gentle fingertip along the downy cheek.

“How are you, little darling?” she whispered to the child, slipping a hand under layers of blanket to check the diaper. “Shall Mummy feed you some more before the others come back? You seem to be dry enough.”

But she had no more than started to pick the baby up again when she was nearly staggered by a wave of grief and shock—not her own, this time, but someone else's.

Queron
, she confirmed, as she raised her eyes to the great crystal sphere suspended above the table, locking through it to the ripple that continued to reverberate through the link she had set. “And about time, too,” she breathed, shifting her focus to Call the others.