Deryni Checkmate (25 page)

“Yes, lord.” Paul bowed.

“And once His Excellency leaves, I shall not wish to be disturbed again unless it is absolutely vital. Is that understood?”

Paul bowed again and slipped out of the tent to do Warin’s bidding, but Loris’s expression was perplexed as Warin turned to face him again.

“I am not certain I understand,” Loris said, taking his seat and preparing to wait until he received some explanation. “Surely you don’t intend to attack Morgan?”

“I have been awaiting such an opportunity to confront the Deryni for many months,” Warin said softly, staring down at Loris through hooded eyes. “At Saint Torin’s, through which he must pass if he is to reach Dhassa, there is a way I might be able to surprise him, even take him captive. At worst, I think he will be dissuaded from interfering with your Curia. At best—well, perhaps you will not have to worry about this particular Deryni again.”

Loris scowled, troubled, then began pleating folds of his robe between uneasy fingers. “You would kill Morgan without a chance to repent his sins?”

“I doubt there is hope in the Hereafter for the likes of him, Archbishop,” Warin said sharply. “The Deryni were spawn of Satan from the Creation. I do not think salvation is within their grasp.”

“Perhaps not,” said Loris, standing to confront the rebel leader with his hard blue eyes. “But I do not think it is our place to make that decision. Morgan must be given at least a chance to repent. I would not deny that right to the Devil himself, despite the many reasons I have to hate Morgan. Eternity is a very long time to doom a man.”

“Are you defending him, Archbishop?” Warin asked carefully. “If I do not destroy him while I have the chance, it may be too late. Does one give the Devil a second chance? Does one deliberately expose oneself to his power if one has the chance not to? ‘Avoid the
occasion
of sin,’ I believe someone once said.”

For the first time since they had entered, Gorony cleared his throat and caught Loris’s eye.

“May I speak, Excellency?”

“What is it, Gorony?”

“If Your Excellency will permit, there is a way that Morgan could be made helpless so that one could ascertain the worth of his soul. He could be kept from the use of his powers while it was decided how best to deal with him.”

Warin frowned and stared at Gorony suspiciously. “How is this to be?”

Gorony glanced at Loris and then continued. “There is a drug—merasha, the Deryni call it—which is effective only against those of their race. It muddles their thinking and renders them incapable of using their dark powers while under its influence. If some of this merasha could be procured, might it not be used to immobilize Morgan?”

“A Deryni drug?” Loris’s brows furrowed in concentration, and he frowned. “I like not the sound of it, Gorony.”

“Nor I!” Warin spat vehemently. “I will have no traffic with Deryni trickery to trap Morgan. To do so would make me no better than he!”

“If your lordship will permit,” Gorony said patiently, “we are dealing with an unorthodox enemy. Sometimes one must use unorthodox methods to defeat such a one. It would, after all, be in a good cause.”

“This is true, Warin,” the archbishop agreed cautiously. “And it would materially reduce the risk to you. Gorony, how do you propose to administer this drug? Morgan surely will not stand by while you drug his drink or use some other subterfuge.”

Gorony smiled, and his benign and nondescript face suddenly took on faintly diabolical overtones. “Leave that to me, Excellency. Warin has spoken of the shrine of Saint Torin as an ambush spot. I concur. With Your Excellency’s permission, I shall ride immediately to procure the merasha, and then on to rendezvous with Warin and his men at the shrine at dawn. There is a certain brother there who will aid us in setting the trap. You, Excellency, should return to Dhassa with all haste, so that you may prepare for the meeting of the Curia tomorrow. If, by chance, we should not succeed, you would then be obliged to continue with the Interdict proceedings.”

Loris considered the proposal, weighing all the ramifications, then glanced sidelong at the rebel leader.

“Well?” he asked, raising an inquiring eyebrow. “How say you? Gorony stays to aid you in Morgan’s capture, stands by to hear his confession, should he decide to recant, and then he is yours, to do with as you see fit. If either of you succeeds, there will be no need to lower the Interdict on Corwyn. You would be able to claim the credit for averting disaster in Corwyn—would, in all probability, be acclaimed as their new ruler. And I—I would be free of the necessity to subject an entire duchy to the censure of the Church because of the evil of one man. The spiritual well-being of the people is, after all, my chief concern.”

Warin stared at the floor thoughtfully for a long moment, then slowly nodded his affirmation.

“Very well. If you say I shall suffer no taint by using the Deryni drug to trap Morgan, I am obliged to accept your word. You are, after all, Primate of Gwynedd, and I must accept your authority in such matters if I am to remain a true son of the Church.”

Loris nodded approvingly and got to his feet. “You are very wise, my son,” he said, signaling Gorony to withdraw. “I shall pray for your success.”

He held out his hand with the amethyst signet, and Warin, after a slight pause, dropped to one knee and touched his lips to the stone. But the rebel’s eyes were stormy as he got to his feet again, and he kept his eyes averted as he escorted Loris to the tent’s entrance.

“The Lord be with you, Warin,” Loris murmured, raising his hand in benediction as he paused in the entry.

Warin bowed his head and crossed himself in response to the archbishop’s blessing, watching him leave, then turned and scanned the inside of the tent: rough tan walls, the wide camp bed covered with a gray fur throw, the folding camp chair and stool beside the fire, the hide-bound chest against the other wall, the stark wooden prie-dieu in the corner, its kneeler gleaming hard and well-worn in the dancing firelight.

Warin walked slowly to the prie-dieu and touched a heavy pectoral cross and chain draped across the arm rest, then let his hand tighten convulsively around the mass of silver.

“Have I done right, Lord?” he whispered, clutching cross and chain to his breast and closing his eyes tightly. “Am I truly justified in using Deryni aids to accomplish Your purpose? Or have I compromised Your honor in my eagerness to please You?”

He dropped to his knees on the hard wooden kneeler and buried his face in his hands, let the cold silver slip through his fingers.

“Aid me, O Lord, I beseech You. Help me to know what I must do when I face Your enemy tomorrow.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

PROVERBS 1:27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT had been light for nearly three hours when Morgan and Duncan rode through the northern limits of the Gunury Pass. The day was clear and bright, if still cold, and the horses picked up their feet smartly in the crisp morning air. They could smell water ahead, for Lake Jashan lay just beyond the trees surrounding the shrine of Saint Torin but a half mile ahead. The riders, rested after their long journey of the day before, surveyed the countryside idly as they rode, each immersed in his private speculations of what the day might bring.

That portion of the Marcher highlands where Dhassa nestled among the mountains was a forest area, covered with great trees and plentiful game, with teeming streams and lakes, but with little native stone. To be sure, the highlands rested on a backbone of rock, and there were some areas where stone ruled and nothing would grow. But these were in the high peak lands of the mountain country, far above the timber line, and such places were not suitable for men.

Hence the people of Dhassa built their homes and towns of wood; for wood was plentiful and in great variety, and the dampness of the mountain air all but precluded the danger of fire. Even the shrine before which Morgan and his kinsman would shortly draw rein was built of wood—wood in all the myriad hues and textures the country could provide. It was altogether fitting and proper in this particular place, for Torin had been a forest saint.

Just how Torin had managed to earn his sainthood was a matter of conjecture. There were few facts available about Saint Torin of Dhassa, and many legends, some of dubious origin. He was known to have lived about fifty years before the Restoration, at the height of Deryni power in the Interregnum. It was believed that he had been the scion of a poor but noble family of great hunters whose males had always been hereditary wardens of the vast forest regions to the north. But little else was known for certain.

He was said to have had dominion over the beasts of the forests he guarded, to have performed many miracles. It was also said that he had once saved the life of a legendary king of Gwynedd when that monarch was hunting in the royal forest preserves one stormy October morning—though no one could recall just how he had managed to do this, or which king it had been.

Nonetheless, Saint Torin had been adopted as the patron of Dhassa soon after his death, and his veneration had become an integral part of the life of this mountain people. Women were exempt from service to this particular cult; they had their own Saint Ethelburga to intercede for them. But adult males of whatever country, desiring to enter the city of Dhassa from the south, must first make pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Torin, there to receive the burnished pewter cap-badge identifying them as one of his votaries. Only then, after paying their respects to Saint Torin, might they approach the ferrymen whose task it was to shuttle travelers across the vast Jashan Lake to Dhassa itself.

Not to make the pilgrimage was to court unwelcome attention, to say the least. For even if a boatman could be bribed to provide lake crossing—there was no other way to get around the lake—no innkeeper or tavern master was likely to serve any man not wearing the prescribed pilgrim badge. And it was almost a certainty that attempts to carry on more serious business in the city would be met with similar resistance. Dhassans were very militant about their saint. (An ancillary shrine guarded the approach from the north.) Once it was learned that there were travelers in the city who did not exhibit the proper degree of piety, pressure could and would be brought quickly to bear. As a consequence, travelers rarely ignored the amenities at one of Saint Torin’s shrines.

The waiting area to which Morgan and Duncan guided their horses was grassy and damp, a small, partially enclosed plot of ground just off the main road where travelers might rest themselves and their horses or prepare to pay their respects to Saint Torin. A rough, weathered wooden statue of the forest saint guarded the far side of the enclosure, its arms outstretched in benediction, and huge, dripping trees spread their gnarled branches over the heads of the pilgrims.

There were several other travelers in the enclosure that morning, their cap devices indicating that they had already made the pilgrimage and were merely pausing here. Across the yard, a slight man in hunter’s garb similar to that of Morgan and Duncan doffed his cap and entered the outer door of the shrine.

Exchanging glances, Morgan and Duncan dismounted and secured their horses to an iron ring set in the low stone wall, then settled down to wait their turn. Morgan loosened the chin strap of the close leather cap he had pulled over his bright hair and bent his head to relieve the crick in his neck. He longed to remove the cap, but to do so would be to risk revealing his identity—a chance he could not afford to take if he hoped to reach the archbishops’ Curia in time. Few men of Morgan’s stature sported golden hair, and he dared not be recognized.

Duncan glanced at the travelers on the opposite side of the enclosure, then allowed his eyes to flick back to the shrine as he leaned slightly toward his cousin.

“Strange, the way they use wood in these parts,” he remarked in a low voice. “That chapel almost seems to grow from the ground itself, as though it weren’t fashioned by human hands at all, but just grew up overnight like a mushroom.”

Morgan chuckled, then glanced around to see if any of the other pilgrims had heard him. “Your imagination is running rampant this morning,” he chided mildly, hardly moving his lips as he continued looking around. “The Dhassans have been renowned for woodcraft for centuries.”

“That may be,” Duncan said. “Still, there’s something eerie about this place. Don’t you feel it?”

“Only the same aura of sanctity that surrounds any holy place,” Morgan replied, glancing sidelong at his cousin. “In fact, there’s perhaps less of that than usual. Are you sure you aren’t suffering pangs of priestly conscience?”

Duncan snorted softly under his breath. “You’re impossible. Do you know that? Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Quite often, and with startling regularity,” Morgan admitted with a smile. He glanced around the enclosure to see if they were attracting undue attention, then moved closer to Duncan, his face taking on a more serious expression.

“By the way,” he murmured, not looking at his cousin, “I neglected to tell you about the fright I had last night.”

“Oh?”

“It seems that the side altar at Saint Neot’s was once sacred to Saint Camber. For a few moments there, I was afraid I was going to have another visitation.”

Duncan controlled the impulse to turn and stare. “And did you?” he asked, keeping his voice low only with an effort.

“I surprised a rat,” Morgan quipped. “Other than that, I’m afraid it was just a case of nerves. So you see, you are not alone.”

He glanced at a movement down the road that had caught his eye, nudged Duncan in the ribs.

Two horsemen had just rounded the bend—a commonplace enough event that probably had first caught Morgan’s attention because the men wore uniform livery of royal blue and white. As he and Duncan watched, the men were joined by a second pair, and then another and another.