High Deryni

  “Sweet Jesu!” Duncan exploded under his breath, crossing himself as he remembered he was supposed to be praying, and bowing his head once more.

  “Alaric, we can’t listen for Derry’s call in the cathedral—not after we promised Cardiel that we wouldn’t use our powers. If we’re caught—”

  Morgan nodded slightly. “I know. But there isn’t any other way. I’m afraid something may have happened to Derry. We’ll just have to take the chance and hope we won’t be caught.”

  Duncan buried his face in his hands and sighed. “I sense that you’ve thought about this at length. You have a plan?”

  Morgan bowed his head again and edged slightly closer to Duncan. “Of sorts, yes. There are several places in the liturgy, both in the ceremony itself and in the Mass which follows, when we won’t have many responses to make. I’ll try to listen for Derry, while you keep watch. If it looks like we’re about to be detected, I’ll break off. You can—”

  He broke off and bowed his head deeply as he heard the latch being lifted on the door. Then both men crossed themselves and rose as Cardiel stepped into the open doorway, followed closely by Arilan. Both men were solemnly vested in violet, croziers in hands and jeweled miters on heads. In the corridor behind them stood a long line of black-cowled monks, each holding a lighted candle.

  “We are ready to begin, if you are,” Arilan said. The violet silk of his cope caught the deep blue-violet of his eyes and turned them to sparkling jewels in the candlelight, like the amethyst on his hand.

  With a bow, Morgan and Duncan moved to join the procession. It would soon be quite dark.

  IT was already dark in the Rheljan Mountains when Derry and his captors at last reached Cardosa. Derry had been tied across a saddle like a piece of baggage rather than being permitted to ride upright like a man—an embellishment calculated, he was sure, to further divest the prisoner of any false sense of dignity. Riding up the defile in this position, his head half-way down his horse’s side, had been a wet, cold, and often terrifying experience; for the horses had, at times, plunged through water almost up to their withers. Several times Derry’s head had been under water, lungs strained almost to the bursting point as he tried to keep from drowning. His wrists were numb and raw from the chafe of the rawhide thongs that bound him, his feet like lead from the cold and lack of circulation.

  But these small details seemed to bother Derry’s escort not in the least. As soon as the little band had reined in, just within a small, dark courtyard, Derry’s bonds were cut and he was pulled roughly from the saddle. His wounded arm had gone stiff during the long, cramped ride, and he nearly passed out with the pain as his wrists were roughly bound in front of him once more. The fire of circulation returning to cramped and tortured limbs was almost more than he could bear, and he was almost glad for the support of the two guards who held his elbows to either side.

  Derry tried to take notice of his surroundings, hoping that this would help him to ignore the pain. He was outside Esgair Ddu, the black-cliff fortress that protected the walled city of Cardosa. He could see the stark, barren ramparts looming above his head as he forced himself to remain standing, but he was not permitted a more leisurely inspection of the place. A pair of guards in the black and white Furstán livery came and took him from his original escort, and he was hurried down a flight of rough stone stairs. He tried to force himself to pay attention to the route they took, mentally charting each twist and turn in the dim corridor through which they dragged him. But his feet would hardly obey him, and he was too tired, and his pains too great, to pay heed the way he ought to.

  When at length they came to an iron-bound door, and one man held him up while the other worked the key in the lock, it was all he could do merely to remain conscious. He was never certain how he got from the doorway to the carved armchair in which they sat him.

  The men lashed his wrists to the chair arms and passed leather straps around waist and chest and ankles. Then they left him. Slowly his more immediate pains subsided, to be replaced by a dull, aching fatigue and an even more mind-numbing dread. After a few minutes, he finally opened his eyes and forced himself to take stock of the room.

  The chamber appeared to be one of Esgair Ddu’s better dungeons. By the light of the single torch set in a cresset to his left, he could see that the floor, though strewn with straw, was at least not muddy, and the straw was clean. Nor were the walls dank and dripping—a feature which, in his meager experience with dungeons, he had often dreaded.

  But the walls were still dungeon walls, adorned here and there with iron rings set at strategic locations, with bright, well-used chains, with other instruments whose purpose Derry preferred not to think about. Along similar lines, there was also a rather large leather-bound trunk set against the wall to Derry’s right: a squat, sinister-looking thing that seemed out of place. It bore an engraved crest below the hasp on the trunk: an ornate, vaguely alien badge etched in gold against the dark, polished leather. But the light was too dim, the trunk too far away, for Derry to be able to read the crest clearly. He had the feeling, however, that the trunk was a recent addition to the room, and that he did not want to meet its owner. He forced himself to leave the trunk and continue his inspection of the room.

  There was a window in the place, he realized now. He had almost missed it in the dim light, set deep in the wall opposite him. But almost immediately he saw that it would do him little good. It was high and narrow, several feet wide on the inside, but narrowing to hardly more than a handspan or so at the outer limit. An iron lattice guarded the window rather than the more usual bars, and Derry realized, as he peered at the grille, that even if he could somehow remove it, he could never slip through the narrow window itself. Besides that—if he had not lost all sense of direction—the window looked out over a sheer cliff face, completely smooth. Even if he could get through the window, there would be no place to go once he got there—unless, of course, he chose another sort of escape. The rocks at the base of Esgair Ddu could give release of a kind, if it came to that.

  Derry sighed and turned his attention back to the chamber itself. It served no useful purpose to contemplate the sort of freedom that might lie outside that window, since he could never get through there to begin with. Besides, apart from his personal aversion to the very thought of suicide, he knew that he was of no use to anyone dead. Alive, if he could withstand whatever his captors had in store for him, there was always the possibility that he could somehow escape, however slim that chance. Alive, he might yet be able to tell Morgan what he had learned, before it was too late.

  The thought brought with it the stunning realization that he had the means to tell Morgan, if he could but use it. Morgan’s Saint Camber medallion still hung undiscovered around his neck. As long as they did not take that from him, there was a chance that he could still make contact with Morgan on schedule.

  He did a rapid mental calculation and decided that it was about the time when Morgan would be expecting his call; forced out of his mind what would happen if he were wrong. The spell would work; it must work—though, trussed and helpless as he was, he wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to do it yet.

  Taking a deep breath to calm himself, and praying that he would be permitted the time to do what he had to do, Derry wriggled his torso in its bonds and concentrated on locating the medallion against his chest. Morgan had told him that he should hold the medallion in his hands when trying to establish contact, but since that was out of the question, he would have to hope that the touch of medallion on bare chest would suffice.

  There! He could feel the medallion, warmed to body temperature, resting slightly left of center. Now, if only such a touch were sufficient, as well as the touch of hand….

  Derry closed his eyes and tried to visualize the medallion as it lay against his chest, imagining that he was holding it in his hands, the incised carving sleek beneath his right thumb. Then he calmed his mind and let the words of the spell Morgan had taught him begin to roll t
hrough his mind, concentrating on his memory of how he had cupped the Camber medallion in the hollow of his hand.

  He felt himself verging on the sleep-like trance that accompanied the spell, started to let himself slip into its cool depths—then tensed at the sound behind him of the door bolt scraping in its guides. Hinges creaked as the door swung back, and he could hear booted footsteps approaching. He controlled the impulse to twist his head around in an effort to see.

  “Very well, tell him I’ll take care of it,” said a cool, cultured voice. “Deegan, did you have something?”

  “Only this dispatch from Duke Lionel, Sire,” a second voice replied, an underling by the tone.

  There was a murmur of assent, followed by the brittle crack of a seal being broken, the faint rustle of parchment. Derry’s stomach had begun a queasy churning as the voices spoke, for there was only one man in Esgair Ddu who would be addressed as “Sire.” As he registered this grim fact, someone stepped into the doorway with another torch, casting grotesque, misshapen shadows on the dungeon wall.

  The hackles rose at the back of Derry’s neck, and he felt his heart begin to race. He told himself that the shadows did not reflect their owners’ true appearance, that it was a trick of the torchlight that struck such a note of mortal fear. But another corner of his mind whispered what he already knew: that one of the men had to be Wencit of Torenth. Now he would never get through to Morgan.

  “I’ll deal with this later, Deegan. Leave us now,” the smooth voice said.

  There was the rattle of parchment being folded, of leather creaking and harness jingling as someone withdrew. Then the door hinges were rasping closed, the bolt being shot into place. The torchlight began to intensify to his left, though he was certain that someone came from the right as well.

  The faint rustling of the footsteps in the straw set frantic alarm bells clanging in Derry’s head.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.”

  PSALMS 22:11

  IN the cathedral in Dhassa, the ceremony of reconciliation for the two repentant Deryni was underway. After entering the cathedral in full procession, in the company of eight bishops and untold numbers of priests, monks, and other assistants, Morgan and Duncan had been solemnly presented to the presiding Bishop Cardiel and had formally declared their desire to be received back into the communion of Holy Mother Church. After that, they had knelt together on the lowest step of the altar and listened while Cardiel, Arilan, and the others intoned the prescribed formulae to accomplish their purpose.

  It had been a time of concentration and of danger, for the two were required to respond often and intricately to the liturgy so sung and spoken. At last a portion approached when there would be little for the penitents to outwardly say or do. The two avoided looking at one another as each was led by two priests to the wide riser before the final approach to the altar and assisted to lower himself to the carpet, there to lie prostrate while the next portion of the ceremony continued.

  “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” the bishops chanted, “and forget not all His benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee…”

  As the psalm droned on, Morgan shifted his position from where his head rested lightly on his clasped hands and moved them slightly so that he could see his Gryphon ring. Now, while the bishops were absorbed in their sacerdotal function, he must try to contact Derry, even if only fleetingly. For if all were well with Derry and he could make contact, it would be a relatively simple matter to arrange for another contact later this evening, when circumstances were not so dangerous.

  He opened his eyes a slit and saw that Duncan was watching him covertly, that no one seemed to be paying much attention to them for the moment. He would have perhaps five minutes. He prayed that it would be enough.

  Closing his eyes, he felt the brief touch of Duncan’s presence signaling ready, then slitted his eyes open once again to use his Gryphon as a focal point. Slowly he permitted his senses to close out the candlelight, the drone of the bishops’ voices, the pungent incense smoke swirling around him, the rough scratch of wool carpeting under his chin. Then he was slipping into the initial levels of trance, his mind reaching out for some fleeting contact with the mind of Sean Lord Derry.

  “…Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight, O Lord,” Cardiel sang, “that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest…”

  But Morgan did not hear.

  DERRY tried to mask any hint of his very real fear as the two men stepped from either side of him in the narrow dungeon. The man on the left was tall and hawk-visaged, with a terrible scar knifing down the aristocratic nose until it disappeared in the neatly trimmed moustache and beard, the dark hair touched with silver at the temples, the eyes pale as silver in the torchlight. He it was who bore the torch whose fire-fled shadows had sparked such dread in Derry minutes before, who terrified Derry anew as he turned casually to set the torch in a wall bracket not far from the one already there.

  But this was not Wencit. Derry knew that instinctively, after only a glimpse of the second man. For the man who glided past his right side to pause directly in front of the chair was as different from the tall, scarred stranger as two men could be: trim and angular yet graceful, red of hair and moustache, pale blue eyes gazing unblinking at the frightened captive who sat immobilized before him. Wencit’s attire was informal, a flowing robe of slubbed amber silk pulled on over rich satin damask of the same golden hue. A wide, linked belt of gold girdled his narrow waist, with a jeweled dagger thrust carelessly into the top. Rings glittered on the long, ascetic fingers, but other than those, Wencit wore no jewels. Tawny velvet slippers with pointed toes showed beneath the hem of the long tunic, the fabric gold-embroidered across the instep. So far as Derry could see, the dagger was Wencit’s only weapon. Somehow the thought did little to put his mind at ease.

  “So,” the man said. It was the same voice that Derry had identified as Wencit’s earlier, and this but confirmed his growing fear. “So, you are the illustrious Sean Lord Derry. Do you know who I am?”

  Derry hesitated, then permitted himself a curt nod.

  “Splendid,” Wencit said, much too amiably. “Tell me, have you made the acquaintance of my esteemed colleague? Permit me to introduce Rhydon of Eastmarch. The name may be familiar to you.”

  Derry glanced instinctively at the other man, who was leaning casually against the wall to his left, and the man dipped his chin in acknowledgement. Rhydon was dressed much like Wencit but in midnight blue and silver instead of the amber gold. The more somber attire, the shadow-side of Wencit’s sunlit hues, seemed to suggest that it was Rhydon who should be more feared, made Wencit seem almost a trifle soft and even effeminate by comparison.

  But, no! Derry sharply reminded himself that he must not allow himself to be lured into that illusion. Wencit was to be feared more than ten Rhydons, regardless of Rhydon’s reputation as a Deryni of the highest powers. Derry must not let them throw him off his balance. It was Wencit who was to be feared.

  Wencit gazed at his prisoner for a long moment, noting Derry’s reaction to the darker man, then smiled faintly and crossed his arms on his chest. The soft rustling sound of the long silk robe instantly brought back Derry’s attention. Wencit’s broadening smile worried Derry even more than had his sterner countenance.

  “Sean Lord Derry,” Wencit said again. “I have heard much of you, my young friend. I am given to understand that you once served as Alaric Morgan’s military aide, that you now sit on the Haldane kinglet’s royal council. Well, not precisely now, I suppose.” He watched Derry bite his lip at that.

  “Yes, indeed, I have heard a great deal about the derring-do of Sean Lord Derry. It appears that we shall soon be in a position to learn whether that sterling reputation of yours is merited. Pray, tell me about yourself, Sean Lord D
erry.”

  Derry tried not to let his consternation show, but he feared he was not succeeding. Very well, let Wencit know that it was not going to be easy. Why, if Wencit thought he was going to give in without a fight, he was sadly mistak—

  Very suddenly Wencit moved a step closer. Derry tensed and froze, but he forced himself to meet the sorcerer’s gaze defiantly, hardly daring to breathe—and was surprised when Wencit drew back slightly, was a bit dismayed to see that the sorcerer had dropped one hand to the hilt of the dagger at his waist.

  “I see,” Wencit said, casually withdrawing the dagger to turn it between his two hands. “You presume to resist me, eh? I think it only fair to warn you that I am delighted. After everything I had heard about you, I was beginning to fear you would disappoint me. I so dislike disappointments.”

  Before Derry could react to that declaration, Wencit suddenly crossed the remaining two paces to Derry’s chair and laid the edge of his dagger hard against Derry’s throat. Derry’s eyes closed briefly as he braced himself for death, but he knew this was not yet his time—as did Wencit. The Torenthi sorcerer watched Derry’s face carefully for some sign of yielding as he exerted pressure, but there was none, and none expected.

  With a slight smile, Wencit withdrew the blade and set its tip under the top lacing of Derry’s leather jerkin—and cut the thong. Derry started as the leather gave, but he forced himself to remain impassive as Wencit continued moving slowly down the row of lacings, cutting each in turn.

  “Do you know, Derry,” cut, “I have often wondered what it is about Alaric Morgan that inspires such loyalty in his followers,” cut. “Or Kelson and those other rather strange Haldane predecessors of his,” cut. “Not too many men could sit here silently as you do,” cut, “refusing to talk, though they surely can guess what unpleasantness awaits them,” cut, “and still remain loyal to a leader who is far away and can never hope to help them out of this, even if he knew.”