The Harrowing of Gwynedd (64 page)

C
HAPTER
O
NE

And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them
.

—Isaiah 3:4

King Alroy was dying. The Healer Oriel had tried to persuade himself otherwise for days, but the sweat-drenched sixteen-year-old fretting feverishly under even a single layer of limp sheeting was no longer even conscious much of the time—though there were occasional lucid moments.

It was during one of those lucid moments, earlier in the day, that Alroy had rallied enough to ask that his bed be moved into one of the ground-level rooms opening onto the castle gardens, where the windows might admit a little breeze. A breeze
had
come, with the setting of the sun, spilling the heady perfume of roses into the room, but there still was little enough respite from the heat, even this late at night. Summer had arrived early this year, and with uncharacteristic harshness. These first weeks of June had seemed more like August at its worst, the air still and stifling, heavy with humidity. Even the usually proper Oriel was stripped down to breeches and a thin linen shirt, open at the throat, the full sleeves pushed well up above his elbows.

A young squire offered a basin of cool water, and Oriel wrung out another cloth in it, touching the back of one hand against his royal patient's cheek before laying the cloth across the brow. Alroy Haldane had never been robust, and fever had burned away what little spare flesh there once had been on the boy's slight frame, so that what remained resembled all too closely the stark planes of the effigy even now being prepared to lie beneath Rhemuth Cathedral. The sable hair, cut short around his face, was plastered to his skull like a glistening ebon cap.

The king moaned and stirred a little, teeth clenched as if against a chill, even though the fever burned still, and the heat of the summer night as well. The court physicians had given him syrup of poppies earlier in the evening, when even Oriel's feared Deryni powers had not been able to stop a particularly bad bout of hacking that seemed actually apt to end in the king coughing up part of his lungs. He slept now, but his breathing was labored and liquid-sounding; Oriel, like the king's human physicians, knew that the king's illness and his life were drawing inexorably toward their close.

“He—isn't getting any better, is he, sir?” the squire whispered, turning worried eyes on the Healer as Oriel wrung out another cold compress. The boy's name was Fulk Fitz-Arthur, and he was two years younger than the king. His father was one of the lords of state waiting for word in the anteroom outside.

Oriel sighed and shook his head as he changed the compress, pausing then to set his fingertips to the king's sweat-drenched temples. Though he had no doubt what he would find, he sent his Healer's senses deep into the ailing king, reading again what he already knew, to his heart's despair—that the boy's lungs were nearly eaten away with disease and filling with fluid. Court gossip had it that the boy's father had perished of a similar ailment, with Healers far more skilled than Oriel helpless to save him.

Somehow that knowledge did little to ease Oriel's sense of helplessness, of failure, the cosmic injustice that, even given the almost godlike powers that condemned him to the servitude of the lords of state, else he suffer death the first time he used them unauthorized, those powers were not sufficient to save the boy beneath his hands.

Alroy stirred and moaned as Oriel withdrew, the grey eyes flickering and then opening in another of those increasingly rare lucid moments. His pupils were wide from the drugs they had given him, but he made a gallant effort to focus on Oriel, one fragile hand shifting from under the sheet to reach toward the Healer's wrist.

“Oriel, what time is it?” he whispered.

“Near midnight, Sire,” the Healer replied, taking the king's hand and leaning closer to hear. “You should go back to sleep. If you talk too much, you'll set yourself coughing again.”

“I want to see my brother,” Alroy murmured. “Have they called him?”

Setting his lips, Oriel gently chafed the royal hand between his own, knowing that the brother the king's ministers had called was not the brother Alroy wanted to see. The Haldane Ring of Fire shifted under his fingers, for Alroy had refused to set it aside, even in his illness, even though loss of weight had made it loose on his hand and likely to fall off—though somehow, it never did.

“Prince Rhys Michael is without, Sire,” Oriel murmured, choosing his words with care, lest young Fulk relay it back to his father as some criticism of the royal ministers' handling of the situation. “Shall I ask him to come to you?”

At the same time, he set the psychic suggestion that Alroy should make his request of Rhys Michael, for Oriel dared not—and Rhys Michael was the one person who might be able to insist that the king's wishes were carried out.

Alroy gave no outward sign that the suggestion had registered, but he gave a weak nod. “Yes. Please. I should like to see Rhys Michael.”

Bowing over the royal hand, Oriel pressed his lips to it briefly, then laid it gently at the king's side.

“Stay with the King's Grace, Fulk,” he said to the squire, “and continue changing the compresses. I'll summon his Highness.”

He braced himself for almost certain unpleasantness as he withdrew, at least pulling his sleeves into place and doing up the wrists before he went into the anteroom outside the king's bedchamber.

Lord Tammaron, young squire Fulk's father, was there, along with Archbishop Hubert and one of Hubert's nephews, Lord Iver MacInnis. Rhys Michael, the king's younger brother, was standing before the dark opening of an empty fireplace, one arm laid along the cool stone of its mantel and chimney breast, and looked up anxiously as Oriel came in.

“How is he?” Tammaron demanded, before the prince could speak.

“He's resting as peacefully as may be expected, my lord,” Oriel replied. “However, he's asked to see his brother.” He turned his gaze pointedly toward Rhys Michael, three months short of his fifteenth birthday, but already nearly grown to the adult stature his elder brother would never live to achieve. “If you'd care to come with me, your Highness?”

Before any of his elders could forbid it, Rhys Michael was bolting toward Oriel and the door, slicking his sweat-damp hair back over his ears and tugging at a fold of his long, belted tunic of royal blue. The wide sleeves were rolled to his elbows against the heat, and Oriel could see the clean-limbed flash of long, bare legs and sandals through the high-slit sides—sensible attire in the heat, even for a prince. Archbishop Hubert looked to be stifling in a cassock of purple silk buttoned right up to his multiple chins, sweat darkening a streak down the center of his chest and extending crescent-wise underneath both heavy arms.

“Your Highness, please allow me to accompany you,” Hubert began, the edge to his voice quite belying the formal words of courtesy—though he did not manage to set his own bulk into motion until Rhys Michael was already halfway across the room.

A cringing look of apprehension flashed across the prince's face at the words, though only Oriel could see it, but Rhys Michael did not turn until he had reached the Healer's side.

“Actually, I'd prefer to see my brother alone, if you don't mind,” he said, lifting his chin in an uncustomary show of spirit. “I—may not have many more chances.”

He turned away at that, eyes averted, anxiety for his brother clouding the handsome Haldane face. Oriel made a point of not meeting the eyes of any of the others in the anteroom as he stood aside to let the prince pass—though he expected he would answer for the defiance later—only following close behind and closing the door.

The prince was already at the royal bedside as Oriel turned, picking up Alroy's slack left hand to kiss it. The king's eyes opened at the touch, his grey gaze locking on his brother's as Oriel slipped in on his other side—unobtrusive as possible, but knowing he must remain nearby, for Alroy almost certainly would begin coughing if he said very much. The Healer had no need to resort to Deryni perceptions to perceive the brothers' genuine love for one another. The squire Fulk had withdrawn to a side table with the basin of water and cool compresses, trying not to look as if he were watching and listening.

“Alroy?” Rhys Michael whispered.

The king managed a thin, taut smile.

“You're here,” he said weakly. “I'm glad. But where is Javan? I have to see him.”

Rhys Michael swallowed once, the sound almost startling in the still, heavy night, and ducked his head over the hand he held cradled to his chest.

“He's at
Arx Fidei
, in the seminary,” he murmured. “You know that.”

“But he's my
heir
,” Alroy insisted, wide, drug-dilated eyes searching his brother's face. “I'm dying—”

“No, you're not!”

“Rhysem, I
am
,” Alroy went on, reverting to the pet name that had developed between them these last few years. “I'm going to die, and there's nothing that the stupid court physicians or even our good Master Oriel can do to prevent it.” His eyes flicked briefly to Oriel, who hung his head in helplessness. “Don't you remember how our father went?”

As the king paused to stifle a cough with his free hand, his exertion already stirring up his illness, Oriel let his left hand ease unobtrusively to the royal shoulder, where young Fulk hopefully would not notice, daring to extend his powers just a little to give the king ease. At the same time, Rhys Michael tightened his grip on the hand he held, trying to will strength across the link of their fraternal love. Whether from that or from Oriel's ministrations, Alroy did manage to stop coughing.

“I must see our brother before I die, Rhysem,” the king continued, when he had caught his breath. “You must make them send for him.”

“But I can't. They'll never listen—”

“They'll listen if you insist,” Alroy said. “You're not a child anymore. You're nearly a year past your legal majority. And if they
should
manage to bypass Javan and make you king—as is certainly their intention, if you let them—then they'll have to answer to you in your full authority, without recourse to regents. Remind them of that—and that Haldane memories are long!”

As Alroy had spoken, increasingly fighting to get each word out, a kind of hope had begun to light Rhys Michael's eyes—for he truly did not want the crown that, by rights, should pass next to the king's twin.

“You're right,” he murmured. “I
am
of age. They
aren't
our regents anymore. And if I did become king, I could really make them sorry they'd disobeyed me!”

“Whereas, if they send for Javan,” Alroy rasped, “
as is my deathbed wish
, the new king may be inclined to be clement, whoever he may be.” Alroy coughed again, and Oriel knew he could not control it much longer.

“Go now,” Alroy gasped, around another cough. “If a rider leaves now, he can be back by dawn. I don't know that I can last much past then.”

As coughing took him again, so that Oriel had to roll him on his side and then into a sitting position, motioning for Fulk to bring more of the extract of poppies, a moist-eyed Rhys Michael gave his brother's hand a final squeeze, then turned on his heels and fled. He drew himself up just before he got to the door, pausing with both hands on the latch and head bowed for just a moment to draw deep breath and gird himself for the confrontation ahead. Then he raised his head like the Haldane prince he was and pushed down the latch, moving through and closing the door behind him before the three men waiting could even get to their feet.

“The king commands that our brother Javan be summoned,” he said, his face taut but composed. “This is my command, as well. And before you consider defying the command of a dying king,” he added, holding up a hand to still the objection already forming on the lips of young Iver MacInnis, “consider whether you also wish to defy the man
you
desire to have as your next king. For if I
should
ever become king, gentlemen—though that is not
my
desire—I assure you that I shall not forget this night.”

As he looked pointedly past Iver at Earl Tammaron and Iver's uncle the archbishop, the rotund Hubert bit at his rosebud lips and made a short little bow.

“The king's wish is our command, of course, your Highness, but is it altogether wise to drag your royal brother from his studies? The king is not yet in danger of death; he has not requested the Last Rites. With all due respect, these final days could drag on for weeks or even months, as was the case for your Highness' sainted father. Time enough, in due time, to send for Prince Javan, if that is still the king's desire.”

“It is the king's
command
,” Rhys Michael said evenly, fighting back the panic he dared not allow himself to show—for it frightened him that Alroy himself had indicated that he might not last much past dawn. “Furthermore, it is the king's command that our brother be summoned
now
. If you are unwilling to do it, then I shall do it myself. Guard!” he called.

He was already moving toward the door to the outer corridor before any of the three truly believed he was going to do it. Only just in time did Earl Tammaron grab young Iver's arm and stop him from trying to physically prevent the prince from leaving, earning the earl a sparse nod of acknowledgment from Rhys Michael and Iver a raking glance of disdain.

“I suggest that you tread very softly, Iver MacInnis,” the prince said in a low voice, as the outer door opened to admit a guard liveried in Haldane crimson. “And if
ever
you dare to lay hands upon our royal person, I promise that you shall not live long to regret the impertinence.”

Eyes as cold as only Haldane anger could make them, he turned back to the guard before giving Iver a chance to reply, pushing past when he saw who it was, for he doubted that most of the ordinary guards would take important orders from him without confirmation of one of the lords of state. He needed one of the younger knights.