King Javan’s Year

by Katherine Kurtz

  Then Javan realized that the Healer was still blocked and was trying to reach the only other man who could restore his powers. He pulled to a full halt and stood in his stirrups, for if Tavis decided to use those powers to strike back—

  Sylvan was knee-deep in the water, a child in his arms, trying to outrun a horseman bearing down on him with a short spear aimed at his back. Tavis reached Sylvan and tried to push him aside just before the horseman forced his mount between them and buried his spear in Sylvan’s chest, also slicing a deep gash in the child’s arm. His killer paid, for a bolt of verdant lightning from Tavis’ hand lifted him clear out of the saddle, dead before he hit the water; but Sylvan’s blood was already blossoming around both bodies like some obscene flower as they sank.

  From the shore, swinging at another blue-clad rider with his staff, Revan screamed, “No!” for he had seen the stab of lightning, as had dozens of others. But rather than loosing more of his magic, Tavis now began searching quite single-mindedly for the child who had been in Sylvan’s arms, probing the bloody water until he brought the weeping, hiccoughing youngster to the surface by a handful of curly dark hair.

  Blood was streaming from a gaping wound in the little girl’s upper arm, and Tavis pressed sleep upon her with his stump even as he gathered her to his breast, holding her close with his handless arm while his Healer’s hand clamped over her wound, already starting to work on the Healing as he began staggering from the water.

  The false Michaelines were backing off all around him, milling uncertainly, for no one had warned them that Revan’s hitherto aggravating but presumably harmless scam down by the river really was a Deryni plot.

  But cringing terror was already shifting to outrage in Revan’s followers, as they realized that the preacher had lied to them. Not all Deryni who came within his sphere of influence gave up their powers. How much else had been a lie? The great Tavis, whose conversion had provided such inspiration for so many, was still Deryni. Deception! Betrayal! The Deryni were the scourge of humankind, and this Deryni must pay—and Revan, for having betrayed them!

  Almost all the bodies littering the corridors of the castle wore Haldane livery. Rhys Michael was cowed and frightened as he was hustled up the main stair and along the corridor toward his suite. Resistance was not possible. Tammaron and Richard flanked him, each with a hand locked around one bicep. The Custodes knight who had murdered Tomais was following them, which made the prince more than nervous, and Hubert and Gideon preceded them, the traitorous archbishop vast in his robes of episcopal purple.

  The prince was still reeling over what had happened just as they left the Council chamber. The gentle and soft-spoken Jerowen Reynolds was dead. Udaut and half a dozen guards had been taking the prisoners away to alleged incarceration when the three made a bold bid for freedom.

  Jerowen had fallen almost immediately in the scuffle, brutally slain by one of the guards—why had he tried it? He was not a warrior. Baron Hildred had taken a dreadful wound. Almost miraculously—or perhaps it was blind luck—Etienne de Courcy somehow had managed to dash into a stairwell and escape, Udaut and his men in hot pursuit. The speed of it all had stunned the prince and left him sick with apprehension despite the drugs blurring his reaction, for he very much doubted that the bookish Etienne could manage to remain free for long—or that his pursuers would spare him, once they found him.

  They rounded the final turn leading to his suite, Rhys Michael stumbling a little as they hurried him along. Ahead, past Hubert’s bulk, he could make out Custodes soldiers where Haldane guardsmen should have been—four of them aimed with deadly little recurve bows, barbed war arrows already nocked to their weapons, lounging casually along the wall as they awaited instructions. An officer and six more men in Richard Murdoch’s livery were drawn up just outside the door.

  All of them came to attention as Gideon trotted ahead to speak to the officer, drawing him slightly aside. As they began to confer in low tones, Richard joining them, the Custodes knight behind Rhys Michael glided in to take Richard’s place on the prince’s right, laying a heavy hand on the royal shoulder.

  Revulsion made Rhys Michael stiffen despite the drugs that were supposed to keep him tractable, but he knew he did not have the strength or the will to put up any serious resistance. He could not stop these men; he could barely stay on his feet. He briefly considered trying to cry out, to warn Mika and the men inside, but taking such initiative required far more effort than he thought he could summon. His sigh of numb resignation caused his Custodes minder to slip deftly behind him and lock his shoulders and throat in the circle of his left arm, a gloved right hand coming in to clamp lightly but firmly over the prince’s mouth.

  “Not one move or sound, Haldane, or you’re out,” the man said quietly.

  Though conversational enough in tone, the words sent a chill through Rhys Michael’s body, for he had heard that voice and those very words before. Utter despair seized him; now he knew the truth of the allegations he had scoffed at when Javan made them—that his abductors had been Custodes—for surely the Custodes knight now holding him had been his principal keeper during his captivity. It also meant that his abduction had indeed been part of a larger plan of treason whose full scope only now was unfolding.

  Ahead, Hubert and Tammaron were moving in to the left of the door, Gideon to the right, as the archers ranged themselves directly in front of it, two standing and two crouching before them. Richard’s men filled in crescents to either side with swords drawn—though there was no way that Oriel or Sorle was going to get past the archers. Rhys Michael did not want to watch, but he knew that he must, and that his captors wanted him to watch, and that whatever they did to try to intimidate him, he must remember this when he eventually found a way to pay them for their treachery.

  “Your Highness?” Tammaron called, knocking at the door. “Your Highness, it’s Tammaron. Is Master Oriel with you? There’s been an accident.”

  It was the one appeal that a Healer could not refuse, and doubly treacherous because Tammaron had never before been linked with the active conspirators.

  “Master Oriel, we need your services,” Tammaron called again, after repeating his knock on the door. “The prince has taken a bad fall. They think there are bones broken.”

  The words brought the intended result, as Rhys Michael had known they must. Michaela wrenched open the door. Sir Sorle was trying to keep her from it, sword drawn, and also trying to shield Oriel behind him, for the Healer had sensed the danger. But Richard’s Gideon forced the door wider and surged past, engulfing the screaming princess in his bearlike arms as he rushed her out of harm’s way and the archers let fly.

  Sorle was probably dead before he hit the floor, for three of the first four arrows slammed into him, one of them straight through the eye. The fourth arrow and three of the second flight found their targets in Oriel, who threw up his arms in a futile attempt to ward them off and took one shaft directly through a palm. Two more hit an upper arm and a shoulder—all flesh wounds, so far—but another, buried deep in his chest, looked to be fatal, if only slowly so.

  The Healer bit back a cry of anguish as he sank to his knees, his unwounded hand plucking ineffectually at the arrow in his chest. To Rhys Michael’s horror—and now his captor did not seem to care if he screamed—the archers calmly nocked to shoot once more, placing their shots with precision, one by one, but only to wound, not to kill. The Healer cried out as each arrow thumped home—one in each thigh, another through the hand already transfixed once, upflung in vain entreaty, a final shot to the angle of the groin.

  The force of the hits drove the Healer backward, shattering the shafts through his hand as he vainly tried to catch himself, knees bent back under him, back arching with pain. Movement behind Oriel and slightly to one side brought two of the archers bounding into the room with bows drawn to shoot again, the other two covering them; but it was only Cathan Drummond, Michaela’s younger brother, weeping and shrinking behind an overturned stool wi
th his arms over his head as he cried, “No! No!”

  The two men inside relaxed their draws and seized the boy by both arms, yanking him roughly to his feet and dragging him off to join his sister, whose anguished sobbing could be heard off in the direction of the royal bedchamber. As they disappeared, the remaining two archers eased cautiously around the groaning Oriel and headed off to the right to check the rest of the royal apartment, making way for Richard and one of his men-at-arms to enter.

  Oriel was in agony; that much was certain. Even from in the corridor, Rhys Michael could hardly bear to watch, heartsick with horror, now supported as much as restrained by the arm of his captor around his shoulders. As Richard moved into the room to survey his victim, whose blood was ruining a precious Kheldish carpet, Richard’s man set his hand on his dagger and glanced from Oriel to his master in inquiry.

  “No, indeed,” Richard said softly, but loud enough that neither Oriel nor Rhys Michael could fail to hear. “Master Oriel doesn’t approve of the coup de grace. I heard him tell my father so.”

  Rhys Michael bit at his lip, for now he understood exactly why Richard had been given the job of eliminating this particular obstacle to their plans. The Healer’s pain-filled eyes drifted dazedly to Richard’s, almost all pupil, and it was clear that he, too, understood.

  “I only regret,” Richard went on coldly, “that the merasha on the arrowheads will kill you before you die of your wounds—and my archers were so careful … But I couldn’t risk that you’d use your foul magic to escape your just reward. For as long as you have, Deryni, I hope you suffer!”

  He spat in the Healer’s face with deliberate contempt, then stepped clear of the writhing body to head off to the left, out of sight, where the sound of hysterical weeping from behind a briefly opened door suggested that Michaela, too, had seen and heard far too much of what had just occurred.

  “Someone had better get a physician in here quickly,” Hubert’s voice came above the weeping, just before the door closed.

  “Mika?” Rhys Michael whispered numbly.

  But they would not let Rhys Michael go to his wife—not until he had witnessed Richard’s vengeance to the end. Numb with grief and horror, the prince did not even try to resist as his minder walked him into the room and thrust him to his knees between the dead Sorle and the dying Deryni. Even with the merasha, it seemed to take Oriel a very long time to die, and just before he slipped into an unconsciousness from which he would never wake, Rhys Michael took the Healer’s bloody hand in his and held it to his breast.

  “I’m sorry, Oriel,” he whispered, before his minder could pull him away. “I didn’t believe. God give you peace—”

  He was weeping as he collapsed back onto his knees, forbidden to touch the dying man but not permitted to leave. He was still weeping when Oriel finally drew his last breath, and could not seem to stop, even when a royal physician came and led him into another room, now nearly as concerned for the prince’s well-being as for that of the young woman going into premature labor in the royal bedchamber.

  Heartsick, Javan tried to shake off his last glimpse of Revan and Tavis as he spurred on with Charlan and Guiscard, heading for where the lancers were successfully pushing the Custodes knights back on their own line. Revan’s followers had turned on both preacher and false disciple like wild animals, once they realized their betrayal, and the bogus Michaelines had stood by and let them tear the two to pieces. It had been over almost before Javan could even comprehend what was happening.

  He saw Revan overwhelmed, to be seen no more; and he would never forget the sight of that bloody, handless arm being thrust aloft from within a teeming mass of humanity—and then a bloodspattered, wild-eyed man triumphantly brandishing that arm like a club, gleeful and laughing as he and several of his fellows now turned their battle lust on the blue-clad riders.

  It bought them the extermination the false Michaelines had probably intended all the while—a savage killing orgy that cut down men, women, and children alike, for their masters would never risk future dealings with a people who could turn so savage, even in the zeal of a cause they all espoused.

  And Javan could spare no men to try to stop the carnage, because the Custodes knights must be contained. A shout went up from his own men as he joined them, and the lancers lit into their traitorous opponents with redoubled efforts, making serious inroads into the ranks of the rebel knights despite being more lightly armed and mounted.

  Javan saw action almost immediately and found that his past months of training served him in good stead. There was almost an exhilaration to it—laying about him with the Haldane sword, quick and agile on the back of the brave cream stallion; Charlan guarding his back, cheerful and competent, always there when he needed to be; and Guiscard, not far away, joyously slaying any Custodes warrior who dared to threaten the Haldane standard or its king.

  They were winning, slowly but surely, the Custodes forces now reduced by more than half, Albertus himself now in serious peril of being overrun, when new riders suddenly began to appear back on the ridge where Paulin and Rhun still watched—fifty or sixty of them. Many of the fresh troops carried wicked little recurve bows, and their commander rode under the banner of Manfred MacInnis, Earl of Culdi. He was too far away for Javan to tell whether it was Manfred himself, but the man stood in his stirrups to raise an arm toward Albertus as he drew rein at the edge of the field; and Albertus raised an exultant arm in reply.

  “Dear God, now we are betrayed!” Javan said to Charlan, as the latter rallied half a dozen lancers closer around the king and they prepared to meet this new threat. As the new arrivals charged into the fray, well armored and freshly mounted, Rhun and his knights also fell in.

  The tide was turning. The royal lancers now were well outnumbered. Javan was suddenly fighting for his life in earnest, slowly beginning to realize that he was not likely to get out of this. Manfred’s fresh troops moved in well-disciplined units, the archers sweeping in, eight or ten at a time, to fire withering volleys of arrows into the midst of the royal lancers. Half a dozen went down practically in front of Javan in the first pass, and several arrows grazed his horse. Robear went down with eight or ten shafts protruding from his body, dragging a Culdi man down with him, bright steel flashing in his hand just before the dust of battle obscured his end.

  All around Javan, rebel treachery was taking its toll. Not far away, beneath the Haldane standard, Guiscard was being engulfed by at least eight men in Manfred’s livery, fighting like a madman, an arrow protruding from the back of one shoulder and several in his horse. The Haldane standard faltered but did not fall. The Culdi men cut his horse out from under him, and then Guiscard himself went down, flailing and slashing, bloodied sword keeping at least some of them at bay. He managed to pass the standard to another man in Haldane livery before he vanished under a flashing glitter of blades, but almost immediately Culdi livery overwhelmed that man, too, and the Haldane standard disappeared from sight.

  Javan caught a sob in his throat, for he knew the Deryni knight must be dead, but he must wait until later to mourn Guiscard. He was fighting for his own life. The Culdi archers were firing again, and the cream stallion sank under him with a muffled squeal, four or five arrows buried in its silken flanks and chest. Javan landed on his feet, sword still in hand, but now he was hampered by his foot, unable to move as nimbly as he had on horseback. Charlan spurred nearer and tried to pull the king up into the saddle behind him, but their attackers cut down his horse as well.

  More arrows were whining through the air all around them, and Javan cried out as he took one in the shoulder and another in his bad leg. Charlan was hit as well, but only once, in the thigh, and he laughed in the grim desperation of a battle going sour as he snapped the shaft off close and kept on fighting, guarding his king’s back.

  But it was no good. Javan managed half a dozen exchanges with a never-ending succession of assailants, sheer will keeping him on his feet, but soon it was no longer possible to deny his gr
owing weakness, and the unmistakable waves of vertigo, of nausea. To fall to traitors’ arrows was bad enough, but merasha on the arrowheads—

  Another arrow struck him in the calf, then another slammed into his chest. He felt himself falling, the Haldane sword spinning from numb fingers, and he knew with a briefly blinding instant of clarity that it was a moot point whether his wounds or the merasha would kill him first. Somewhere he had lost the coronet of running lions.

  Charlan caught him as he fell, letting fall his own sword and weeping as he gathered him in his arms. Time seemed to slow almost to a stop, and he could not seem to hear properly. More arrows bit into the ground beside Charlan, kicking up dirt; but then, all around them, the fighting seemed to die away, though farther off he could vaguely hear the sounds of battle continuing.

  “My liege,” Charlan whispered, rocking Javan to his breast and not even trying to hold back the tears. “God, what have they done to you?”

  Through the narrowing tunnel of his fading vision, Javan could just make out Charlan’s face—and beyond him, the dark silhouettes of booted legs drawing near, the swirl of Custodes mantles all around them, blocking out the light. He could see Albertus looming over him with bloody sword in hand, gazing down at him in cold appraisal, and another dark-cloaked form moving in behind Charlan, a heavy broadsword held point-downward by the hilt, dripping blood on Charlan’s back.

  He knew what was about to happen. He saw that Charlan knew it, too, and chose not to acknowledge it. He managed to tighten his fingers on a handful of Charlan’s surcoat, wanting to tell him how sorry he was …

  Above him, the Custodes Grand Master merely smiled coldly and gave a nod to the man behind Charlan. Helpless to stop it, Javan watched the sword-hilt rise inexorably in leather-clad hands and then descend in a vicious downward thrust—and felt Charlan’s mortal gasp as the blade pierced his back and into his vitals.