The Harrowing of Gwynedd Read online

  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.

  Queron trembled near collapse on the Portal at Saint Mary’s. The knowledge imparted by the medal throbbing in his hand had staggered him, leaving him psychically as well as physically devastated. He had no idea how long he stood there, reeling in the aftershock of what he had just learned; only that, the next thing he knew, he was not alone on the Portal.

  He sensed Evaine’s presence before she could even touch him, before he opened his eyes to see her standing before him, all in black, her two hands catching up his wrists, her blue eyes snaring his as she softly commanded him to relax, to release the medal that was biting into his clenched fist.

  “You’ve cut yourself,” she murmured, as he numbly opened his palm to blood. “I’m sorry. It was harsh to tell you that way, but I thought that getting it over all at once would be kindest, in the end. I’m all right,” she added, as she sensed his concern shifting to her grief.

  He blinked, forcing himself to draw a slow, stabilizing breath, then let it out in a whoosh as he absently wiped his blood off the medal and handed it back to her.

  “I am so sorry, child,” he whispered. “I wish I could say that I brought better news—though at least it is no worse than yours.”

  “Revan?” she asked, with dread in her tone.

  He shook his head, not yet ready to contend with his own grief again.


  “No, Revan was well, when I left him a fortnight ago. This is other news. But, let us go wherever it is you are to take me, before our presence puts the good brothers of Saint Mary’s more at risk.” The wound in his hand was slight, he discovered as he spoke, and he cupped his hand over it and Healed it with hardly a further thought.

  “Very well,” she whispered. Drawing a deep breath, she took his free hand and moved closer beside him.

  I’m taking you to the Camberian Council chamber, she went on, in his mind. In light of what’s happened, you’re certain to become a full member, so I’ll give you the Portal location as we make the jump. Ready?

  He had been ready for that for as long as he had known of the Camberian Council’s existence, though he had never dreamed that so many violent deaths might open the way. But Evaine’s instruction had not invited further speculation at this moment. Best that they be on their way, as he had already urged. Closing his eyes, he dropped his shields and opened to her, feeling the fine controls surround his, balancing all in readiness. In less than the space of an indrawn breath, they were elsewhere.

  The great, octagonal council chamber was essentially as Queron remembered it, from his several visits there as an unofficial observer, but the people were not the same, even the ones who were left. As he and Evaine entered through the great, hammered bronze doors in the north facet, Joram rose to give him silent greeting from across the ivory table; but it was a quiet and subdued Joram, showing every one of his thirty-nine years. Part of it was the dull, dusty black of the monk’s robe he wore, instead of the customary blue of a Michaeline cassock, but the lines on his handsome face had not come from a mere change of habit. Nor could Queron remember the silver dulling Joram’s coin-bright head at the temples.

  And Gregory, rising more slowly in the place to Joram’s left, had weathered the past few months even less well. Though Queron knew that the former Earl of Ebor had moved physically out of harm’s reach the previous October, when he abandoned his Ebor estates and took his family westward to a new, hidden stronghold in the Connait, the forty-two-year-old Gregory looked old. To Queron’s practiced Healer’s eye, Gregory appeared to have dropped perhaps a quarter of his weight from a frame that already had been lean. Now he looked gaunt. His thinning hair, far less of it than Queron remembered, had gone from reddish blond to nearly colorless, and the pale blue eyes burned with an almost feverish brightness beneath the high, noble brow. Queron made a mental note to make Healer’s Reading later on, for Gregory did not look well.

  Gregory’s son Jesse, bending over a cooing basket set on the table at the eastern quarter, also looked up as Queron and Evaine entered. Jesse, too, had changed, from stripling lad to hard, seasoned warrior, though Queron was sure he was barely seventeen. The fingers grasped by the tiny personage in the basket were calloused and still burned nut-brown from the previous summer’s campaigning, the face no longer rounded with the curves of youth. Queron remembered Jesse as husky, still a little gangling, but this young man was trim and muscled, holding himself with the feline grace and precision of an experienced fighting man as he gave Queron a respectful nod and then stepped sideways a few paces to stand between Evaine’s chair and the next—the one that had been Alister Cullen’s.

  “Welcome, Dom Queron,” Joram said, gesturing toward a stool set next to Rhys’ old place in the eastern quarter. “Please join us.”

  Only then did Queron notice Ansel MacRorie, Joram’s and Evaine’s nephew, watching from the shadows to the left of the doorway. His hair gleamed fair again in the light from the cresset set on the wall behind him—it had been dyed a nondescript brown the last time Queron saw him—but otherwise he looked much the same, clad in worn brown riding leathers and with a sword strapped at his hip. Ansel nodded as Queron caught his eye, moving behind him to close the great bronze doors as Evaine also indicated that Queron should sit in the eastern quarter.

  “All’s well at Saint Mary’s?” Joram asked, as all of them sat down.

  Evaine nodded, sliding the baby’s basket a little closer on the ivory table.

  “Yes. However, Dom Queron has other news that he wished not to convey until he could tell it only once. It isn’t about Revan,” she added, forcing herself to glance at the Healer, “but that’s all I know.”

  Queron, intensely occupied with staring at his hands folded on the table before him, uttered but one word: “Dolban.”

  “Dolban?” Joram murmured.

  “Sweet Jesu,” Gregory breathed. “Not the Servants of Saint Camber?”

  Queron shrugged, his vision blurring, and tried to distance himself a little from what he must tell as he raised his eyes to the blessed darkness of the great amethyst dome arching above them.

  “I’m afraid so,” he said steadily. “Oh, the buildings still exist. I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet, but Saint Camber had his sainthood rescinded at Ramos a few weeks ago. Not only that, they declared him heretic and traitor. On an individual level, that means that all his lands and holdings would be forfeit to the Crown—which hardly makes much difference now, since that already happened when Ansel was outlawed and deprived of his Culdi inheritance.

  “On a wider scope, however, the regents apparently extended their earlier interpretation to include forfeiture of the lands and holdings of those who supported Camber’s sainthood—to wit, the Servants of Saint Camber. So they did spare the buildings and the fields for the next tenants.”

  “But not the people,” Evaine murmured dully. “Well, go on. It can be no worse than Trurill.”

  “No, but no better.” Queron closed his eyes briefly. “Let’s see. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into needless detail. Not counting what I’m about to say, I have now uttered Saint Camber’s name three times. According to the new law recently enacted by the regents, my first offense would merit a public flogging. The second would require my tongue as payment. Writing his name risks the loss of the hand involved.

  “Any further defiance of the new law—and in a religious house dedicated to him, you can imagine how often his name was invoked, in word and in script—places the violator in the same category as our heretical ex-saint—who would have burned, if they’d been able to lay their hands on his body. Fortunately, where Camber was concerned, God took that possibility out of their hands, by bodily assuming him into heaven. The good men and women of Saint Camber’s at Dolban were not so fortunate.”

  “So they—burned them at Dolban,” Gregory muttered. “God help them—all of them!”

  Queron scowled. “Amen—but I pray He also helps the perpetrators swiftly to His justice. I have no fear for those who died, for I know that they reside now in the fullness of His glory, but I pray that those who did this thing may be made to suffer. They were episcopal troops, by the way—not just regents’ men. I hold Hubert MacInnis personally responsible for this one.”

  “He deserves to burn in hell!” Ansel whispered bitterly.

  “Aye, he does,” Queron replied. “And there’s worse yet to tell.”

  “Worse?” Gregory gasped. “What can be worse?”

  “It wasn’t just the fires,” Queron murmured, closing his eyes against the memory. “Simple burning at the stake was not sufficient for Hubert’s men. Before enacting the ultimate punishment, for heresy, they—imposed the first two penalties as well.”

  Young Jesse gasped, going a little white beneath his olive tan. “You mean, they—beat them and—cut out their tongues, and—and then burned them?”

  “No one could be that monstrous!” Ansel stated flatly.

  “Those men were,” Queron whispered, brushing a trembling hand across his eyes. “And I might have ended up the same, had it not been for Revan.” He glanced up at Evaine. “Your young man has guts, I’ll say that for him. He knocked me out, then dosed me with my own drugs to prevent me going down there to try to stop it—as if I could have made any difference, other than maybe to prove that Deryni do, indeed, use their magic to harm humans—even humans who deserve to come
to harm. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless.”

  As Ansel and Jesse continued to mutter, exchanging glances across the empty chair of Saint Camber’s Siege between them, Joram said nothing, and Gregory only buried his face in long, trembling fingers. Evaine, tight-lipped and pale, finally glanced over at Joram and stared at him until he looked up, exchanging her recommendation in the blink of an eye.

  Nodding, Joram drew a deep breath and sat back in his chair.

  “Thank you for telling us, Queron,” he said softly. “We realize how difficult it must have been. However, I think little purpose can be served by dwelling on this any longer. All of this will be filed away for further action, as such becomes possible, but for now, I fear that mere survival remains our overwhelming priority.

  “To that end, I note that only four of us present are sworn members of this Council. That must be remedied. Evaine, Gregory, Ansel, are we still in agreement?” At their affirming nods, Joram went on. “Excellent. We’ve agreed on two additions, then. Jesse, your father has already briefed you on what that involves. Queron, I’ll speak with you privately, but I suspect that, like Jaffray before you, you’ll require time to make additional preparations before taking our oath, to avoid conflict with your Gabrilite vows. Or, are you still bound by them? I know you left active service to the Order some years ago, but I see you’ve also cut your braid now.”

  In an almost reflex gesture, Queron’s hand went to his shorn hair, and he smiled.

  “The braid still would have bound me—yes,” he replied. “But in itself, it is only a symbol, albeit a powerful one. When a symbol becomes a liability, it is time to retire it. So I had Revan cut it off. It—will need to be dealt with in an appropriate manner, in private. I’m sure you understand.”

  Joram nodded. “Of course. We’ll proceed with Jesse’s swearing-in this evening, then, as planned, and hope to do yours tomorrow night. It’s best they were done separately anyway. Jesse, is that agreeable to you?”