King Javan’s Year

by Katherine Kurtz

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Observe, and take good heed, for thou walkest in peril of thy overthrowing.

  —Ecclesiasticus 13:13

  Of all the men Javan would have preferred not to meet just then, members of the Custodes Fidei ranked among the very least desirable.

  “Why, Father Faelan, were we planning some late-night assignation?” the taller of the two said coldly, at first noting only that Faelan was accompanied, but not by how many and by whom. He did not see Guiscard melt back into the shadows behind the door.

  “Actually,” Javan said, moving farther into the light, “the good Father’s ‘assignation’ was to accompany me back to my apartments. This close to my coronation, I felt the need of spiritual guidance—which is precisely why I have a personal chaplain.”

  “It’s the king!” the second man murmured.

  Stepping back a pace, the taller one eyed Javan impassively, then favored him with a formal inclination of his head.

  “Your Highness.”

  As the man straightened, and as Javan got a better look at him and his companion, his heart sank. Scarcely could this meeting have been more ill-timed. The tall, gaunt monk occasionally haunted Javan’s nightmares, as he surely must haunt Faelan’s, for Brother Serafin was the Grand Inquisitor of the Custodes Fidei. The priest accompanying him was Father Lior, his assistant, equally dangerous. Peripherally, during his years in seminary, Javan had dealt with both men; both had been involved more recently and more directly in Faelan’s interrogation-cum-torture.

  “So, may I ask what brings you abroad this late, gentlemen?” Javan said pointedly, sending to Guiscard to keep out of sight but be ready to act—for if Javan could not divert the two, and quickly, other measures would be necessary.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, Serafin gazed down his long nose at the king. “Father Faelan may be your chaplain, Sire, but he is still a member of the Order you chose to abandon. Having heard that he was indisposed when he first arrived here yesterday, our superior—and his—instructed that we inquire regarding his health. We anticipated that a late visit would least incommode your Highness. Obviously we misjudged.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Faelan, meanwhile, had been standing mute in the midst of this exchange—still sufficiently controlled that his anxiety did not show, but increasingly aware of his danger, if the two tried to take him away for any intense interrogation.

  “Sire, there is no need to vex yourself over this interruption,” he said to Javan. “And Brother Serafin, Father Lior, I assure you, I am well recovered. It was a fatigue of the journey, nothing more.”

  “Were you seen by the Healer Oriel?” Serafin asked, gimlet eyes fixed on the priest.

  “He saw me briefly, yes,” Faelan said truthfully. “I did not request it, but his Highness thought it prudent.”

  “Perhaps his Highness will not mind if we have a few words in private,” Serafin replied, boldly seizing Faelan’s arm and propelling him toward the still-ajar door, as Lior simultaneously pressed between them and the king. “If you’ll excuse us, Sire. We’ll send him on to your quarters in a few minutes.”

  Javan could not stop him. The captive Faelan was already nearly through the door, Serafin at his side and Lior right behind them—and Guiscard was on the other side of the door!

  Take Serafin as soon as he’s inside, he sent to the Deryni knight. I’ll see to Lior.

  He moved in on Lior even as the startled Serafin was suddenly jerked into the room by one arm. While Javan clapped one hand hard over Lior’s mouth from behind, his other arm reached around for a choke hold. He was not heavy enough to take the priest down on sheer physical strength, but at least he was able to keep him from crying out as he sought either a pressure point or a control that would produce unconsciousness.

  Lior struggled manfully for a few seconds, lifting Javan right off his feet as he twisted and bent sharply forward in an effort to throw off his assailant, but then he went limp. He and Javan collapsed in a confused heap, fortunately mostly inside the room. As Javan hurriedly scrambled to his feet, breathing hard, an appalled Father Faelan grabbed several handfuls of Lior’s habit and helped drag him the rest of the way in, nudging the door closed behind them. Guiscard had subdued Brother Serafin rather more easily and was standing astride the supine figure, bent with one hand clasped across Serafin’s throat.

  “God damn, this man’s a nuisance!” he murmured. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but now we’ve got them, what do you intend to do with them?”

  He straightened, wiping his hands against his thighs in distaste, and stepped clear of his unconscious captive.

  “Well, I didn’t want them, but the situation was escalating,” Javan said, making sure Lior was not going to stir. “I didn’t need this, on top of the business with Rhysem.” He sighed. “I suppose we’re going to have to doctor their memories and let them go.”

  “Mmmm, tricky, making sure both sets of memory match,” Guiscard replied. “Are you up to it? I’m not sure I am.”

  “Then we’ll have to take them down to Jesse,” Javan said impatiently, keeping his voice low. “What else was I to do? Serafin’s the Grand Inquisitor, for God’s sake. I don’t know how I would have explained you being here, and I couldn’t have him sniffing around before we’ve at least got a bolt-hole.”

  “Sire,” Faelan interrupted, “he knows who Paulin’s Deryni is.”

  “What?”

  “I said, he knows who Paulin’s Deryni is. Both of them must know. They were there when I was questioned.” He paused a beat, looking at Javan intently. “Can you make them talk, Sire?”

  Javan glanced at the two unconscious Custodes, considering briefly, then nodded. “I probably could, but I think I’ll let experts handle it. This is getting entirely too complicated. Guiscard, bring Serafin. I’ll get Lior.”

  Sufficient control to get the two downstairs was easy enough. Fortunately, no one else was abroad in the king’s corridor at that hour, or on the next level down, as they quietly made their way to the room beside the library. An astonished Etienne de Courcy admitted them, Oriel coming immediately to take the frightened Faelan in tow as Javan and Guiscard shuffled their unresisting charges inside.

  Jesse had been crouching in the center of the room, chalking an octagon on the flagstones around the square space where the center one had been pried up and leaned against a wall. He rose as they entered, dusting off his hands, and Javan went to him fearlessly, holding out his hand in an invitation to make contact and Read details of what his words sketched.

  “Serafin and Lior,” he said by way of explanation, jerking his chin in their direction. “They picked a bad time to try to interview Father Faelan. I had no choice but to bring them. It may be all to the good, though. Faelan thinks they might know who Paulin’s new Deryni is.”

  Jesse drew more detailed information from Javan in the space of only a few heartbeats, then turned a hard-eyed gaze on the entranced Serafin, standing quiet under Guiscard’s hand.

  “I’ll deal with them after we’ve set the Portal,” he said coldly, disdain hardening the usually congenial features. “Meanwhile, we’ll use them. If I had the same kind of scruples they have, I’d derive a great deal of satisfaction from just draining them dry. As it is, I’ll satisfy myself with a little light irony, redirecting some of the power that’s normally turned against us.”

  He glanced around the room, at all of them apprehensively awaiting his direction.

  “All right, I’m reshuffling a few of the pairings, since we now have a surfeit of bodies,” he said. “Charlan, I’ll ask you to keep watch outside with Guiscard, with one or both of you ready to come in if we need more. Etienne, I’ll give you Serafin; Oriel, you take Lior. Father Faelan, you’ll work with his Highness, since you know him best. If you’ll all begin setting up your links, I’ll finish the other necessary preparations and we’ll get started.”

  To spare Faelan any more anxiety, Javan put him under quickly, dra
wing him to a seat in the little window embrasure and taking him deep, reassuring and soothing. As a consequence, he missed some of what Jesse was doing in the center of the room. When he had time to look up again, he was able to see at least the outward evidence of Jesse’s preparations.

  He had noted the chalked octagon on entering, about as large across as the height of a man. It was not complete, he now noticed, for Jesse had not yet drawn in the final facet to the north, though the piece of chalk lay right beside the northwestern end. Fat, fist-size yellow candles were set at each of the angles of the octagon, though they were not yet lit. The room’s sole illumination came from another candle in a holder, set on the empty hearth of the little corner fireplace.

  To keep that light from being seen outside, someone had hung a cloak from the top of the shutters in the window, covering the faceted windowpanes, and another cloak had been twisted into a long, narrow roll and laid across the doorsill after everyone was on the proper side of the door. Guiscard and Charlan had disappeared, one of them probably to take up a lookout post in the library next door and the other, perhaps, to circulate elsewhere in this wing, watching for more intruders like the hapless Serafin and Lior. Those two were seated on the floor to either side of the window embrasure, each with his minder, heads lolling forward on their chests, totally oblivious to what was going on.

  And in the center of the room, Jesse was crouching over a pile of what looked like odd black and white dice, separating out four white ones to set them in a square. The black ones that were left he set at the white square’s four corners, rocking back on his hunkers then to survey what lay before him.

  Javan slowly eased to his feet, for from deep in untapped memory came knowledge of what Jesse was doing, the Haldane legacy asserting itself in useful fashion as Jesse touched a forefinger to each of the white cubes that made the square and softly spoke their names. Javan could not hear those names, but his memory supplied them, “Prime, Seconde, Tierce, Quarte,” as Jesse touched each of the four in turn.

  When he had done, the four glowed softly from within, a pure, milky white glow. As Javan continued to watch, rapt with interest, Jesse drew a deep breath and repeated his fourfold invocation for the black cubes, again whispering names that Javan could not hear with his ears but knew from deep within: “Quinte, Sixte, Septime, Octave.”

  As each black cube was named, it seemed to kindle from within, in an opalescent, blue-black glitter like magpies’ wings. Javan’s breath caught in his throat as Jesse glanced up at him, flicked a wordless query in his direction, then signalled with a nod that Javan should join him.

  “You’ve never seen Wards set this way before, have you?” Jesse whispered as Javan knelt opposite him. “And yet you know what’s happening.”

  “I—do and I don’t,” Javan replied. “The words come, when you name the cubes, but it isn’t anything I’ve consciously known before.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Jesse said, picking up the white cube in the upper left corner of the white square and poising it above the black cube diagonally closest. “Joram told me about the Haldane powers. Have a closer look while I complete this. Say the words with me, if you want. You ought to have this information at conscious levels, not just lurking at the back of memory somewhere.”

  Drawing another deep breath, Jesse returned his attention to the cube in his hand and the one below it. As he set the white cube on the black and whispered its cognomen, the name came to Javan’s lips as well.

  “Primus.”

  Just before the two cubes touched, the black cube seemed almost to jig upward just a little to meet its white counterpart, the two touching with a distinct click and melding to a single oblong unit, glittering grey-black. Smiling as he glanced up at Javan, Jesse set that oblong aside and picked up the next white cube, holding it above its black counterpart.

  “Secundus,” he murmured, with Javan in almost perfect unison, as the process repeated.

  Teritius and Quartus followed in rapid succession, each cognomen producing another of the silvery oblongs. When Jesse had finished, he instructed Javan to set the oblongs at the cardinal points of the octagon, just outside, at the same time summoning Oriel and Etienne to join them in the center.

  “All right, it’s usual to stand, but I think we’ll sit tonight, since none of you have ever done this before. I don’t want anyone keeling over if the draw gets heavy. Sit cross-legged here in the center,” he said, sinking down, directing Javan to his right hand, Oriel to his left, and Etienne opposite. “Stay within the boundaries of the octagon, but try to keep clear of the center square. We’ll eventually focus there, but for now, I want you each to settle down and make certain your link with your secondary is secure.”

  Jesse’s back was to the open side of the octagon, and as the others settled, he reached behind him and chalked in the remaining side. Javan closed his eyes briefly, reaching out for the link with Father Faelan—still, serene, static potential—then looked up again as movement stirred, of Jesse’s hand raising between them to point to each of the tiny Ward towers in succession, invoking Wards Major.

  “Primus, Secundus, Tertius, et Quartus, fiat lux!”

  And there was light. It flared upward in a gently shining canopy of luminance generated by the four rectoids at the quarters. Oriel and Etienne seemed nonplussed and probably had seen such warding dozens of times in the past, but for Javan the experience itself was all new, even though that tantalizing scrap of surfacing memory declared this quite ordinary and expected. Equally ordinary, though not expected, was the way Jesse then passed his hands over the candles nearest him to light them, gesturing for Etienne to do the same on his side.

  “Master Oriel, I’ll bring you into the master link first,” he said then, laying his left hand palm upward on his knee and inviting Oriel’s contact. His voice seemed to have taken on new authority as he spoke, potent as the flash of restrained anger that had surfaced when first confronting their unwelcome captives, but untainted by any hint of rancor. No longer the intent but easygoing young knight of Javan’s earlier acquaintance, he was now the master magician coolly crafting his sorcery.

  Oriel set his right hand on Jesse’s left and closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath and exhaling softly. Fascinated, Javan watched the Healer’s face relax, noting the telltale signs as he slipped into trance. Beyond Oriel, the two Custodes slumbered on, but Javan knew that Father Lior, at least, was now bound into the linkage. Javan could sense it, like a faint flavor of heightened potential in the air, focusing around Jesse, and watched in fascination as Jesse calmly shifted his attention to Etienne.

  “Etienne?” he said softly, holding out his right hand.

  Drawing a deep breath, Etienne reached across the space separating them and gave his right hand to Jesse, closing his eyes as he exhaled heavily. Javan could almost see the linkage this time, knowing what to look for, and perceived the potential channeling through each man as strands of blue-white light clasped lightly in Jesse’s hands. Jesse bowed his head momentarily, apparently consolidating his control, then brought Etienne’s hand to Oriel’s, lightly retaining both right hands in his left as he turned his attention to Javan. In the light of candles and warding circle, a nimbus of faint white light seemed to play about Jesse’s head.

  “Are you following this?” he said softly as he held out his right hand. “If you like, I’ll keep you conscious in the link for as long as I can, so you can see how this is done.”

  Drawing a steadying breath, not taking his eyes from Jesse’s, Javan set his right hand in Jesse’s and nodded.

  “I’d like that,” he said. “And don’t think you have to hold back for my sake. I’m not afraid.”

  “I know that,” Jesse said with a slight smile. “Nor need you be. Close your eyes now, and we’ll go subvocal. There won’t be anything to see, anyway. Not with eyes, at any rate.”

  Javan obeyed, rolling back his shields and feeling the gentle insinuation of Jesse’s controls creep softly into place
behind them, testing and teasing at the link with the slumbering Faelan, drawing out the strand that was the combined energy source of Javan and Faelan, shifting now to bring that strand into hand with the two from Oriel and Etienne.

  Jesse began plaiting the energies then. Javan knew that was not really what Jesse was doing, but it was the closest analogy he could envision to describe the way Jesse began his slow draw, out the top of Javan’s head, and then seemed to intertwine that strand with the ones he was pulling out of Oriel and Etienne.

  After a few seconds he could feel it up through his spine and all the way up from the tips of his toes, the pressure increasing until it was almost a sensation of being turned inside out—somewhat disturbing, but not altogether unpleasant. Nonetheless, as the pressure increased, he felt his awareness telescoping down to only the knot of energy Jesse was now weaving with the plaited skein he had made.

  He was aware of Jesse’s focus now, centered on the square of bare earth bracketed by their four sets of splayed knees. Instinctively he braced himself for a final push as Jesse centered the knot of power, symbolically contained in the locked link of their four right hands.

  The release, when it came, was accompanied by a flash of light that dazzled him even behind closed eyelids, the wash of power around him momentarily stunning all perception. He recovered to find himself slumped slightly sideways, collapsed over Jesse’s right knee, still gripping his hand. Still a little dazed as Jesse disengaged himself and banished the Wards, directing Oriel to douse the candles, Javan quickly recovered enough presence of mind to get his feet under him and stagger over to where Father Faelan lay very still. Reducing the candles from nine to one seemed to plunge the room into darkness at first, but Javan found his eyes quickly adjusting as he bent over Faelan. Oriel and Etienne were likewise returning to their charges, and Jesse was lurching to his feet on the patch of earth.