“Twenty-six or twenty-seven, by now,” Evaine replied.
“Gregory, what do you think?” Jaffray asked. “I’m reserving my opinion, for the moment.”
Gregory shrugged. “He does seem a little young for what Alister has in mind—but Our Lord was little older when He started His mission. Besides, who would expect Revan to be involved in such a thing, even if they should come to suspect a subterfuge?”
“Exactly the point,” Rhys agreed. “The very fact that he is so well known to be devoted to Evaine and me will work in our favor, to convince people that his conversion is genuine, when he starts preaching our message.”
“Provided he has someone to work with,” Jaffray said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Jaffray, “that right now, you’re the only one who can do what you can do, as a Healer. Suppose it can’t be taught? What then?”
“Then I’ll simply have to make the sacrifice and do it myself, won’t I?” Rhys said lightly. “We’ll have to figure out a rationale for me to appear to defect and renounce my powers, and go on from there. I’m hoping that won’t be necessary, though. I don’t really think I’m cut out to be a messianic figure.”
“Neither was Camber,” Joram muttered under his breath, “and look what happened to him.”
“What was that?” Rhys asked.
“Never mind. I think you’ll make a fine latter-day John the Baptist, Rhys—running around in the desert, eating nuts and berries and—damn it, this whole thing is too risky!”
“So it’s risky,” Jaffray countered. “So is being wiped out by humans, because we’re Deryni. So unless you have another solution, I think we’ll all thank you to keep your objections to yourself. Evaine, Rhys, I think you should talk to Revan as soon as possible. If he’s willing to do it, he’s going to need all the time we can give him to build his cover with the Willimites. Have you considered what happens if he won’t do it, by the way?”
Evaine sighed. “He’ll do it. He has no more choice than we do. We’ll try to go to Sheele by the end of the week.”
“Good. And in the meantime, I’ll see about setting up Rhys’s and Alister’s meeting with Emrys and Queron.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understand doctrine?
—Isaiah 28:9
A few days later, on a morning bright with sunlight for the end of winter, Evaine and Rhys rode to their manor at Sheele, ostensibly to visit their children. Once there, Evaine pleaded a slight indisposition, leaving Rhys an ideal excuse to take the children riding while she rested at the manor with Revan for company.
Revan’s limp was far less pronounced than usual as they went into the winter-dead garden. Pleasure and contentment lit his eyes as he sat at Evaine’s invitation. Together they watched the seven-year-old Rhysel demonstrate her newly forming riding skills to her father, astride the gentle bay pony her parents had given her at Twelfth Night. Tieg, half her age, had to be content to sit in front of his father, wedged securely between him and the high, tooled-leather pommel. The boy crowed with delight as Rhys’s big chestnut pranced and cavorted. The picture wanted only Aidan, the eldest of the three children, to make Evaine’s pride complete; but Aidan was at Trurill, near Cor Culdi, fostered to his cousin Adrian MacLean, a grandson of Camber’s sister Aislinn, and father of another Camber, called Camlin, who was a year Aidan’s senior. Evaine saw her firstborn mostly at holidays.
With a wistful sigh, she brought herself back to Revan sitting at her side. His fine hands, stained with ink around the nails, cradled a scroll of creamy new parchment—no ancient scrolls for Revan. Though Evaine could not bring herself to ask, she suspected that it was some new verse or song which Revan himself had written. The lame carpenter’s apprentice had become a learned scholar and bard in the years since his rescue by Cathan. A twinge of guilt assailed Evaine as she considered how what she must ask would end so much of that. And yet, there was nothing else to be done.
“How go the children’s studies, Revan?” she asked, trying to delay the inevitable for yet a while longer.
Revan smiled, brushing a strand of light brown hair back from his face. Like many men of the younger generation, he wore his hair long, brushing his shoulders.
“Lord Tieg is too young for much formal training yet, my lady,” he said easily, “though he knows most of his letters and shows great promise. Lady Rhysel is the one who gives me the most delight. She will be another scholar like you, if she continues.”
Pleased, Evaine plucked a dead twig from the hem of her gown and twirled it absently between her fingers.
“A family trait,” she said with a smile. “She favors her grandfather, too.” She studied her twig as if she had never seen one before, searching for the words. This was not going to be easy.
“Revan, you have served my family for many years now. Do you enjoy your work?”
He smiled, a quick, sunny grin which was typical of his nature, then dropped his gaze a little shyly.
“My lady, you know I do. You and Lord Rhys have been very kind to me. The children are almost like the brothers and sisters I never got to know. In fact, I—sometimes like to think I am more than just a tutor to your children—that I am a part of the family, if only a poor cousin.” He dared to glance up at her. “You’re not angry, are you?”
“Angry? Of course not! You are a part of this family. With you here, Rhys and I have never had to worry that we must spend so much time away from the children. We have always known that they were in good hands.”
He did not reply to that, though he looked pleased, and Evaine knew that she could no longer delay the inevitable.
“Revan—Rhys and I did not come here today only to see the children. Nor am I at all unwell. I wanted to discuss the nature of your service with us and to ask whether—you might be willing to consider a different kind of service, much more difficult than anything which you have done hitherto. If we did not consider you as family, I would not dare to ask you what I must.”
“What different service, my lady?” Revan murmured. Suddenly his face had become more serious, the lights of laughter fading from his eyes. Laying aside his scroll, he turned his full attention on Evaine, waiting, fearing.
“We—Rhys and I—have a problem.” She broke off a piece of the twig she still was holding and let it fall to the ground. “No, there is nothing wrong between the two of us,” she added, catching the look of concern which flashed across Revan’s face. “Rhys and I are mated in our souls, as well as hearts and bodies. We could not ask for closer union in this life.”
Questing out with her mind, she caught Revan’s relief at her assurance, knew as she had never realized before just how much the young man idolized Rhys, worshipped her. Firmly she forced herself to withdraw.
“No, this has to do with Rhys as a Healer,” she continued, worrying at a strip of bark on her twig with one snagged thumbnail. “In the past few weeks, Rhys has discovered an important new facet of his Healing powers, and we feel that it could benefit all of our Deryni people. But it’s an odd sort of talent. It enables the Healer to block out the powers of a Deryni, to make those powers disappear so completely that they cannot be used, detected, or even remembered. So far as we know, no one has ever been able to do that before.”
As she glanced at him, sidelong, Revan shook his head slowly, confusion showing in his pale brown eyes.
“But, why would you want to take away a Deryni’s powers, my lady? Give them, maybe, but take them away? I don’t see the point.”
“Neither did we, at first. But—” Sighing, she rose and began pacing back and forth in front of the bench, gestured for Revan to remain seated when he would have stood, too.
“Revan, you’re surely aware of the way people feel about Deryni, especially since the death of the king.”
“Well, some people, my lady,” he admitted, with a disparaging shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t, and the others of th
e staff here at Sheele don’t.”
“But many do,” Evaine replied. “And what is more important, at least four of the five regents do. With the young king guided by such men as Murdoch and Rhun and that despicable Bishop Hubert for the next two years, who is to say what the official policy on Deryni will be in the future? Remember, when Imre was toppled, it was a Deryni regime which fell with him. Deryni have been tolerated in the new government only because Cinhil personally felt an attachment to such particular Deryni as gave him comfort and support. The regents have no such attachments, and long memories for what Deryni did to their kin during the Interregnum.”
“Archbishop Jaffray still sits on the regency council, my lady, and he is Deryni,” Revan said.
“Aye, but it is not by choice of the regents. Jaffray is tolerated, for the present, because he must be. It is the undeniable right of the Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of Gwynedd to sit on the council of Gwynedd, whether it be a regular council or a regency. But Jaffray could very easily meet with a convenient accident, and be replaced, too. And other Deryni, such as Bishop Cullen and Earl Jebediah and Rhys himself, have already lost their appointments at Court. By coronation, we must all be gone from Valoret. We fear that this may be just the beginning, that lost appointments may be only the prelude to lost lives. What if there is another Nyford?”
Revan frowned, nodding slowly. “I see what you’re saying.” He paused. “But, what does all of this have to do with taking away Deryni powers? It seems to me that a Deryni would want even more power, to protect himself, if you truly fear that the regents will move against all Deryni.”
“So one would think,” Evaine admitted, both pleased and heartsick that Revan should understand so well. “But we Deryni have limitations, too, you know. And when it comes to a contest between Deryni powers and a dozen swords, or arrows, or spears—well, magic takes time, and force breeds force. It isn’t always a very good defense.”
“Is lack of magic a good defense, then?” Revan asked, almost to himself.
“Well, no—not if it’s known and can be proved that the person is a Deryni. However, I ask you to consider this: if even another Deryni could not discover whether a person is or is not Deryni and if a Deryni himself cannot remember that he once was Deryni, then perhaps lack of magic would be a good defense.”
While Revan pondered that, Evaine sat down again and willed her racing heart to slow. After a few moments, Revan raised his head and stared out across the meadow. Close by the oak grove which lay at the other side, they could see Rhys and his daughter leading their mounts, young Tieg now sitting proudly alone in his father’s deep saddle. Quickly Revan looked away, but not before Evaine realized that he suspected, in some as yet inarticulated way, that she was about to ask him to give up the children.
“My lady, you haven’t yet said how this affects me or the children.”
She sighed. “Aidan should be safe enough with his cousins for the present. Rhysel and Tieg would stay here, for the time being—we’d have to engage another tutor—but arrangements are being made for them to go to a Michaeline establishment with my brother, if that becomes necessary.”
“I see.”
“For yourself, we have an idea how you might aid us in using Rhys’s discovery to protect at least some of our people. You would become a prophet, in the style of John the Baptist, and a follower of Saint Willim. We would make it appear that you were removing the powers of Deryni, neutralizing their magic to save them from the evil against which the Willimites preach—though, in fact, you would be working with a Healer, who would be blocking those powers. You would do this to as many nonessential Deryni as possible, especially women and children, who are not likely to be well known in their own rights. Such folk could relocate in places of safety and make new lives, disassociated from the stigma of being Deryni, until times were safer and they could be restored.”
Revan was shaking his head by the time she finished.
“It’s incredible! It could never work! I’ve been in the service of Deryni all my life. Who would believe it? Who would believe me?”
“We’ve thought of a way. Would you like me to tell you?”
By the time she had outlined further details of their plan, Revan’s disbelief had been transformed to awed discipleship.
“I think it could work, my lady,” he said, hardly daring to speak aloud. “And—you really think that I could do it?”
“I do.”
Revan swallowed noisily, his throat working with emotion, then awkwardly slipped to his knees at her feet, took her hand, and pressed it to his lips in homage.
“Then, I am your man, my lady, as I have always been,” he whispered.
“Thank you, Revan,” she breathed, touching her free hand lightly to his head and reaching with her mind. “Now, come and sit beside me again, and we shall talk further. We have many preparations to make.”
His eyes took on a glassy look as he rose and moved back onto the bench, still clasping her hand.
“That’s right,” she murmured. “Relax and let me hold your mind, as we have done before. And for your own safety, remember nothing consciously of what we shall discuss unless you are with Rhys or me.”
Later that evening, Evaine and Rhys returned to Valoret, well pleased with what had been started at Sheele that afternoon with Revan, instrument of their plan, though their hearts ached for Revan the man. Their progress was duly reported to the Camberian Council, and further plans were set in motion as the days wheeled on.
And at Sheele, young Revan almost overnight found himself violently enamored of a young woman of the village named Finella, who mysteriously sickened within weeks of when Revan first met her, and whose health steadily declined, even under the ministrations of Rhys, who came at Revan’s urgent call.
Rhys tended the young woman diligently, aided by his wife and overseen anxiously by Revan, who had stated his intention to marry the girl at Pentecost; but despite all that Rhys could do, his efforts wrought little change in Finella. And on the day when poor Finella’s coffin was lowered into the ground—filled with rocks, the girl having been spirited away the night before with new memories and enough money to make a start in another village—something seemed to snap in Revan’s mind.
“You could have saved her!” Revan screamed, in front of several dozen guests who had gathered at Sheele with Rhys and Evaine to celebrate the Feast of Easter. “You let her die, you Deryni monster! You could have saved her, but you let her die! You killed her!”
Ripping off the badge of his service to the household of Rhys Thuryn, he trampled it on the floor at his master’s feet and ran weeping from the hall. Evaine tried lamely to explain to her dinner guests of mixed humans and Deryni that it had not been at all as Revan claimed; that he had become increasingly deranged as Finella’s illness progressed, despite Rhys’s efforts to effect a cure of either the girl or Revan himself—but the mood was ruined, and so was dinner. What had started out as a festive celebration ended very early, almost as the last course was removed from the table.
By the following week, news of the incident had spread through all the Court—for Evaine had made certain to include among her Easter guests certain minor personages of the Court who could be counted upon to repeat what they had seen and heard. By Lady Day, the story had been embellished to the point that Rhys was now being rumored to have deliberately let Revan’s young lady die, perhaps for motives of jealousy. Rhys had feared that Revan would leave his service, if he married Finella and started a family of his own. No, Rhys had himself wanted Finella, but had been spurned by the girl in favor of Revan—and that was why Rhys had let her die. After all, was Rhys not Deryni, for all that he was a Healer? Had not Bishop Hubert preached in a sermon of only a few weeks ago that Deryni were treacherous, that eventually, even the truest-seeming of them would revert to type, like Imre?
As the coronation approached, word began to trickle in of Revan. By mid-May, it was learned that he had surfaced with a band of neo-Wi
llimite brethren in the hills east of Valoret. Rumor had it that he was being viewed by his new colleagues as something of a madman; that he spent a great deal of time alone on a mountaintop conversing with a large bluestone boulder; that he ate but sparingly and spoke hardly at all, save in his meditations. No one seemed to have any doubt that Revan’s defection was anything other than the action of a man driven to dementia by the persecution of his Deryni masters.
Bishop Hubert, on hearing the news, preached a sermon in the chapel royal on the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus, and hinted very strongly that humans who still served Deryni should pray for a conversion such as Paul’s.
And while Revan was establishing his cover with the Willimites, readying himself to become a new voice in the wilderness, his temporarily disremembered allies were continuing to develop the Deryni facets of this jewel of race salvation. To that end, Jaffray pursued the contacts for arranging the required meeting of Rhys with Emrys and Queron.
For the site of their meeting, he chose Saint Neot’s, the Gabrilite monastery and school where Dom Emrys ruled as Abbot, famed for uncounted generations as a center for Deryni learning and Healer training. Since Saint Neot’s was part of the old ecclesiastical Portal network established by the Deryni clergy centuries before, it was easily accessible not only to Rhys and Camber, who would be coming from Grecotha, but to Jaffray, who must make the initial arrangements with Emrys and, through Emrys, with Queron. Most of the cathedrals and major religious houses with present or former Deryni connections had at least one Transfer Portal on the premises, even if their current communities did not always know of their existence or whereabouts.
Jaffray took advantage of that network, winking across the Portal link from his own chapel at Valoret to the semi-public Portal which any Deryni clergyman might use, in the sacristy of Saint Neot’s abbey church, at an hour when he had a fair expectation of finding Emrys alone at meditations. The Gabrilites kept perpetual vigil before their famous shrine of Saint Gabriel and the Lady, in a rear chapel of the abbey church which was accessible to outside visitors as well as the brethren and students. Emrys had kept the midnight vigil as the week turned to the Sabbath for as long as Jaffray had known him, and he had not changed his routine in the intervening years, as Jaffray discovered.
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