Most afternoons found Boniface perched on a stool behind the wide oak table that dominated the window side of the room, the light at his back, carefully copying one of the many valuable manuscripts he borrowed from various sources. An illuminated capital I adorned the sheet pinned to the tilted table top this morning, with Boniface’s quills and brushes and inkpots all neatly laid out to one side. The wall to the left was lined with pigeonholes and shelves for holding manuscripts, a good many of them filled, and a high-backed oak settle was built into the center, wide enough for two people to sit. Toward this seat Javan pushed an unresisting Charlan as he closed the door behind them, exerting control as he often had before.
“Sit down and have a nap, Charlan,” he murmured.
Charlan folded onto the settle and obeyed instantly, chin nodding onto his chest as he folded his arms across his waist. When the gentle buzz of his snoring began to mutter reassuringly in the little room, Javan moved quietly into the shadows at the left of the fireplace, where he could not be seen easily from the door, and flattened himself behind the out-thrust of the massive stone chimney breast and mantel. There he waited.
The firelight continued to dance, flickering patterns on the stones of the floor. In the corner directly opposite Javan, just to the right of the window, the single crimson eye of a votive light shimmered reassuringly on Father Boniface’s prie-dieu. Other than that, nothing else moved in the room besides Javan’s light breathing and Charlan’s gentle snores.
After what seemed like an eternal wait but, in fact, was only a very few minutes, Father Boniface came in, looking neither left nor right and going immediately to the prie-dieu to kneel and bury his face in his hands, apparently oblivious to the following presence of the hooded, grey-clad monk who closed and locked the door by which they had entered. Javan thought it was the same one who had approached him in the basilica earlier, but he could not be certain because the monk kept his back to Javan as he moved quietly to Charlan, laying both hands briefly on the sleeping squire’s head. When the figure finally turned, pushing back the hood from what should have been a black-bearded face, Javan was startled speechless to see that it was Evaine, her bright hair pulled back tightly, blue eyes twinkling with mirth even as she held a forefinger to her lips for silence.
“But, that’s impossible!” Javan whispered, despite himself, as he stepped from his hiding place in the shadows beside the fireplace.
Shaking her head, Evaine came to take him by the shoulders, smiling all the while.
“Not impossible, merely improbable,” she reassured him, staring into his eyes. “But we haven’t much time, my prince. All unwittingly, you’ve set yourself the perfect cover, so long as you remain in Rhemuth, but I see from young Charlan yonder that your presence is expected elsewhere very soon—which means I must be more brief than I had hoped. But, come and let me show you a safe Portal.”
“In here?” Javan whispered, as she gestured toward the panelled wall that ran between the window and fireplace walls.
Not answering verbally, Evaine went to reach around the oblivious Father Boniface, pressing at something underneath the armrest. Instantly a section of panel in the middle of the wall slid back, revealing a cubicle just large enough for two adults to stand in comfortably. Evaine backed in without hesitation, turning to hold out her hand to Javan. She slipped her arm around the prince’s shoulders as he joined her, and he could feel her mind enveloping his with a soft strength that was at once reassuring and a little threatening for its strangeness—for he had never worked with her directly before.
“I’m going to risk taking you back to the sanctuary for a few minutes,” she murmured in his ear, sliding a door closed in front of them with her free hand. “Don’t try to learn this Portal right now; just relax and let me take you through. Can you do that without help?”
Nodding, he closed his eyes and made himself relax, leaning his head against her shoulder and pulling back his shields. He had wanted this for so long that it was hard to accept it, now that the moment was here, but he let her slip into his mind without resistance, pushing back that part of him that still tried to shrink gibbering from such contact. The touch of her other hand across his eyes pushed him deeper, reeling perilously close to the edge of unconsciousness as she reached for the energies and began to bend them to her will.
All fear left him as he suddenly realized that he understood what she was doing, a part of him dazzlingly aware of how and why she did what she did, a part of him exulting in the brief, stomach-churning instant of vertigo that he had come to associate with Portal Transfer. He knew where he was even before he opened his eyes, and the sight of Joram and Queron confirmed it.
Steady! her mind spoke in his, not withdrawing from the controls he had allowed to permit the jump. Unfortunately, I’ve inadvertantly picked a morning when time is at a premium for you. I apologize if this seems brusque or dictatorial. I need to do a very fast strip-read and then ram home a fairly stiff briefing. If you resist at all, it may hurt you, but we need all the information you can give us, and you need everything we can tell you.
Her one arm supported him around his shoulders, and her free hand still was laid across his brow, partially obscuring his vision, but he was aware of Queron and Joram moving in to assist her, and knew that even if he wanted to resist, he could not stand against all three of them. Besides, he had permitted Queron a deep reading, that time when Tavis brought him to the sanctuary. Either he trusted them or he didn’t—and if he didn’t, he might as well give it all up now.
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered, gripping tight as Queron and Joram each took one of his hands.
Relax and let yourself go even deeper than you did for me that other time, came Queron’s reply, directly in his mind. Use everything Tavis taught you, and everything you’ve learned since then. You’re perfectly safe. We’ll be right with you.
He let himself sink in response to their encouragement, floating briefly in a tingling, euphoric state that was not at all frightening or unpleasant. But then he was a vessel being emptied, his very essence not only draining through massive holes someone had punched through his shields, but being sucked from him with increasing force, verging on real pain as the pressure grew.
Then the process reversed, so quickly that a wave of nausea threatened to fill his throat with bile, and he felt as if his head were being filled with molten lead, heavier and heavier, burning through all the orifices of his skull, permeating every fiber of his being. He was trembling as he surfaced, though control was his again, and his head felt as if the top might come right off if he moved his eyes too quickly. He groaned as he tried to focus on Queron’s face, instinctively flinging his mind into the Healer’s soothing, letting Queron take him briefly away from the pain, deep into Healing trance. When he came out, it was better, but he still felt a little queasy.
“A full Deryni couldn’t have done better, my prince,” Queron said softly, speaking aloud rather than in his mind, to spare his bruised psychic senses. “If your head still hurts in an hour or two, try to take a short nap. A good night’s sleep should take care of the rest. All right?”
A little dazedly, Javan nodded, trying to sort out the new information that started sifting into his consciousness if he was not thinking about anything else.
“What about future contacts?” he murmured. “Do I bring my reports here?”
Joram shook his head. “No more written reports, if you can avoid it. They’re too dangerous, if you should be caught. For regular contacts, make an excuse to see Father Boniface after Mass on a Tuesday; someone will join you shortly. Or leave that medal Evaine gave you in the Portal chamber, and someone will come the next day.”
“I can’t just come through?”
“No, because this site may not always be secure,” Evaine replied. “Besides that, you might not be able to cover things alone at your end—and we might not always be available. We’re—ah—working on several projects that may take us away from the sanctu
ary for a day or two at a time. No one else here knows that you can use a Portal on your own. Nor should they know.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Evaine, you’d better take him back now,” Joram murmured. “If he doesn’t show up back at the castle when he’s expected, someone’s apt to come looking for him.”
“It does get easier, son,” Queron assured him, just before Evaine engulfed him in her shields once again and took him back to the study Portal.
Once they were there, she held his shields open while he learned the Portal coordinates, making sure he had them memorized before she let him go. Both Deryni senses and visual inspection through a spy hole revealed that nothing had changed in the study, and Evaine gave him a reassuring hug before letting the door slide open.
“The good Father will remember a brief conversation about a text by Saint Ruadan,” she said, moving across to rummage briefly through the top row of pigeonholes. “Ah, I was sure he’d have a copy here somewhere. This is what he’s shown you, and he’ll put it away when you’ve gone. All you need to know, if he should later question you about this conversation, will sort itself out while you’re asleep tonight.”
“Liber Sancti Ruadan,” Javan read, unrolling the top of the scroll. “As a matter of fact, we did discuss this text once. That was the same day he showed me one by someone called Leutiern.” He grinned. “Poor Boniface seemed almost scandalized when he told me that Leutiern was Deryni. In fact, he’s got texts by several Deryni mystics here. He’s shown me a few. He used to collect them, before the Custodes cracked down on Deryni scholarship. He lives in mortal terror that they’re going to find him out, one of these days.”
“I don’t suppose he’s got anything by MacDara,” Evaine said, heading back toward the Portal cubicle. “Or the Liber Ricae. That’s what I really need.”
Jaw dropping in surprise, Javan tossed the Ruadan scroll on the writing desk and squatted beside the range of pigeonholes closest to it, skimming a finger impatiently across the ends of the scrolls closest to the floor as he bent to read their titles.
“I never heard of that second one, but MacDara—I’ve seen that name. Some of these are really old. He keeps them on the bottom here, so most people won’t notice the titles. Here. I don’t suppose this is what you’re looking for?”
He continued to scan the other scrolls as he held the MacDara manuscript for her perusal, and she glanced at it and then did a doubletake.
“Dear, gentle Lord!” Her eyes widened as she glanced through the others Javan kept producing. “Are there more of these?”
“I think so. He has some locked away, too. One by a fellow called—” The prince’s eyes unfocused as he tried to recall the unfamiliar name. “I think he was a Gabrilite. Something like Dom Edwin—no, Dom Edouard.” He grinned at her look of surprised excitement. “Is that important?”
“Important? Javan, these are some of the classic mystical texts of the past two centuries,” she whispered, clasping the scrolls to her breast. “Tell me, does anyone else know what Boniface has here?”
“Well, not right now, I don’t think.”
“Oh, thank God. And can you cover the absence of these, at least while I go through them?”
“Certainly. It will be one less thing for him to worry about.”
“How about getting me access to those ones he’s got locked up?”
“Easy. I can get them tomorrow at this time and put them in the Portal for you to collect whenever you want.”
For answer, she only gave him a radiant smile and touched his cheek in gratitude before stepping back into the Portal to pull its door shut before her. As their eyes met a final time, just before the door closed her from sight, Javan thought he might do just about anything for her, and unaccountably, for several seconds, found himself entertaining quite titillating thoughts about this most remarkable woman—who was quite old enough to be his mother!
But then the urgency of the hour seized him more strongly than the stirrings of his first adolescent infatuation, and he set himself to the tasks remaining at hand. After unlocking the door, he took up the scroll he and she had agreed should be his excuse for the morning’s diversion and tapped it against his hand as he walked over to where Father Boniface still knelt. The priest startled awake as Javan tapped him lightly on the shoulder with the scroll.
“I’m sorry, Father, I just realized how late it’s getting, and I’m supposed to attend court this morning. The regents will be furious if I don’t show up. May I come back tomorrow?”
“Why, of course, my son,” Boniface said, rising creakily from his knees. “I must have dozed off while you were reading that passage. It really isn’t that boring.”
“Certainly not,” Javan agreed. “I’ve always liked Saint Ruadan. I’d like to continue our discussion tomorrow. Good God, Charlan’s gone to sleep, too.” He used the scroll to swat Charlan just a bit more vigorously than he had Boniface. “Wake up, man! Rhun will have your hide for letting me stay so long!”
The squire startled awake and knuckled sleep from his eyes as sheepishly as usual, not thinking it odd at all that he had dozed off after a perfectly good night’s sleep. After suitable leave takings, he and his royal master were on their way back through the yard and into the inner ward, arriving in the great hall just ahead of Rhys Michael.
“Been praying again, eh, Javan?” the younger boy quipped, as they took their places on stools to the left of the throne. “You’ll wear out your knees.”
Rhys Michael’s sarcasm bothered Javan more than usual that morning, perhaps because his head had settled into a dull, regular throbbing as he and Charlan climbed the hill to the inner ward, but he made himself only shrug and smile as everyone rose for the entrance of their royal brother.
Oddly enough, the exercise in forbearance seemed to soothe his aching head, so that, by the time court recessed for a midday repast, only a nagging vestige remained—and that all but disappeared when he had eaten. The afternoon saw Javan the model of a dutiful and biddable prince, even Regent Murdoch smiling and agreeable about Javan’s performance, when they adjourned at the end of the day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Foursquare shall it be being doubled.
—Exodus 28:16
Prince Javan’s performance did not stop with the court of Gwynedd, though his greatest performances were still to come and would mostly go unappreciated by any but his Deryni allies. He was as good as his word, when it came to producing the manuscripts Evaine asked for, and laid three precious scrolls in the Portal chamber after Mass the very next day. Two more followed, a day later.
The documents were not precisely what Evaine had hoped for, but piecing together information from them and from the other sources already at her disposal put Evaine onto another line of speculation that had not occurred to her before. By the night of Good Friday, she was ready to share her findings with Joram and Queron. She gathered them in the keeill, after everyone in sanctuary had retired for the night, and warded the keeill doors against intrusion before taking them to crouch around the white-gleaming slab of the sunken altar’s mensa. They watched expectantly as she undid the ties of a soft leather pouch and upended its contents onto her hand.
“This new material seems to deal with advanced warding techniques,” she told them, laying out the four white and four black cubes that made a set of Wards Major. “A lot of it was veiled in allegory, as these things so often are, but I think I’ve isolated at least one new configuration. Now, most Deryni with any training at all know the basic spell for constructing Wards Major.”
She had been moving the four white cubes into a solid square in the center, and now set the four black ones at the diagonals. “This is the starting point for it—and for half a dozen other configurations of varying complexity, the most powerful of which, as we know, can raise this altar slab to reveal the black and white cube altar that supports it.”
“What we’ve usually called the Pillars of the Temple,” Joram
said.
“That’s right.” Without bothering to name the cubes or activate them magically, she placed her first and second fingers on the first white cube and the black one at its diagonal and switched them, then did the same with the two diagonally opposite, so that the central square ended up checkered black and white, with cubes of opposite colors at the four corners.
But when she would have gone on to the next step, Queron suddenly seized her wrist.
“Wait! Don’t do that yet!”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Just wait!”
“Queron, the cubes aren’t even activated,” Joram murmured, stealing a startled glance at Evaine, whose wrist Queron still held. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
“I know that.”
Queron’s voice was strained, intense, forbidding further conversation, and both Joram and Evaine fell silent, only watching as the Healer-priest continued to stare at the cubes. When, after a few more seconds, he softly exhaled and released Evaine’s wrist, he looked a little sheepish, and brushed a hand self-consciously across his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I certainly hadn’t expected that memory to surface.”
“Can you tell us about it?” Evaine asked quietly.
“I—that’s what I’m not sure about.” He swallowed uncomfortably. “Good God, I never really thought I’d be put into a situation where I’d seriously consider violating my vows.”
Joram cocked his head curiously. “Your priestly vows or the seal of the confessional?” he asked.
“Not exactly either.” Queron drew a deep breath and exhaled it as fully as he could, as if steeling himself for something either unpleasant or dangerous. “This—ah—has to do with that—ah—other tradition besides Gabrilite, that we talked about, some time ago. You’ll remember that I mentioned in passing that I hoped I wouldn’t have to make a choice.”
“You don’t have to tell us,” Evaine said.
The Harrowing of Gwynedd Page 31