The Harrowing of Gwynedd

by Katherine Kurtz

  And when the foreign ambassadors had finished their presentations, Alroy’s vassals came forward to make similar gifts to the royal twins: pouches of golden coins and brooches and clasps of silver most cunningly wrought; falcons, hounds, racing steeds; and even the promise of a breeding to a coveted stallion owned by Lord William de Borgos, whose racing stud was unsurpassed in all the Eleven Kingdoms.

  One of the most popular gifts, given to Alroy and Javan jointly by a southern baron, was a Cardounet board made of ebony and olivewood, inlaid around the edges with mother-of-pearl and semiprecious gems. The pieces, too, were carved of ebony and olivewood, painted with the appropriate livery colors, and with real gems set on the priest-kings’ crowns and the miters of the two archbishops.

  Even Rhys Michael cast covetous eyes at that gift, though his attention and, indeed, that of all the court, were immediately diverted when Bonner Sinclair, the young Earl of Tarleton, presented Alroy and Javan with a wicker cage containing two pairs of sharp, ebon-bright eyes surrounded by sleek brown fur.

  “What are they?” Alroy asked delightedly, as the man slipped the wicker catch on the cage door and let the creatures out.

  “Ferrets, Sire,” Tarleton said, grinning. “They make wonderful pets, if they don’t carry off all the palace treasure. They’re prodigious thieves!”

  The animals were a little skittish at first, and the male gave Alroy a sharp nip on the finger before running inside his tunic and finally settling in his sleeve. The other, intended for Javan, was soon scampering among the piles of gifts arrayed around the throne, filching coins and jewels, and ended up taking refuge in the lap of a delighted Rhys Michael.

  “They do choose their own friends, your Highness,” Lord Tarleton told Javan apologetically. “I can bring you another, if you like, though I can’t guarantee she’d be partial to you.”

  “No, let my brother have her,” Javan said a little sadly. “My studies keep me too busy for a pet anyway.”

  He was to regret his words a little later, for it seemed the regents had already decided he was destined for the cloister. When it came time for the regents to present their gifts, Alroy’s were pointedly princely: new armor, a blunted tournament sword, a set of campaign maps of the border regions, a matched pair of boar hunting spears, and the crowning gift: a fully caparisoned warhorse the color of rich cream.

  “Oh, he’s magnificent! Thank you, Lord Tammaron,” Alroy gasped, as the stallion was led back out of the hall.

  Javan’s gifts were no less sumptuous, but clearly reflected the majority of the givers’ ecclesiastical hopes for the king’s twin. Duke Ewan gave him the bow he had coveted—a beautiful length of hand-rubbed hickory, inlaid along its back with horn—but all the other gifts were far more suitable for a man long in Holy Orders than a boy of thirteen: a richly illuminated Book of Hours, a rosewood and silver crucifix worthy of a cathedral chapel, a relic of the martyred Saint Willim sealed in a crystal reliquary, and from Hubert, a starkly functional silver chalice and paten and a chasuble of creamy wool, surprisingly plain compared to the other gifts.

  “I’m told these were your father’s, when he was a priest at Saint Foillan’s Abbey,” Hubert told him, his tone hinting far more than his actual words. “When you come of age, you’ll want to set up your own household, so I thought you might like these for your own use. It saves a chaplain having to bring his own,” the archbishop concluded, as he laid the folded vestment over Javan’s arm, as if bestowing it on a newly ordained priest.

  Javan tried to look suitably moved, but he knew what Hubert was really trying to convey and he doubted his father had ever even seen the vestments and Mass vessels that Hubert piled onto his lap. After murmuring something noncommital and reasonably gracious, he handed them off to Charlan as soon as he decently could, though he felt that everyone was watching him, even when the court bard read a poem in his brother’s honor.

  The mood shifted almost immediately, however, and made Javan almost forget about the archbishop’s latest attempt to nudge him toward a religious vocation. For Earl Murdoch, after conferring briefly with Rhun, Tammaron, and Hubert, suddenly strode to the center of the dais and bowed perfunctorily to the king.

  “By your leave, Sire, now that the gifts have been presented, we have one item of business that must be completed before we adjourn for your birthday feast. Have I your leave to speak?”

  Alroy signalled his assent with a nod and a half-raised hand—as if withholding it might have made any difference—but it was clear to Javan that his brother had no notion what Murdoch was going to say. Javan thought he did, though. The chief regent had a scroll stuck through his belt next to a serviceable-looking dagger, and he made Alroy and then his brothers another, more formal bow before taking out the scroll, though he did not unroll it yet.

  “My Liege, your Highness, my lords and ladies,” he said, half turning toward the hall. “I speak for my fellow regents in this matter, to acquaint you with a point of law. As some of you may recall, it was the decree of our late beloved King Cinhil, in setting up a regency council to govern his sons during their minority, that it would be the prerogative of any four of those regents to expel and replace a fifth of their number if they unanimously adjudged him to be incompatible with the majority. I regret to inform the King’s Grace and this court that it has become necessary to exercise that prerogative.”

  All at once, Javan realized precisely where Murdoch and the others were not looking, as Duke Ewan eased slowly to his feet. Ewan was only thirty-seven, but he suddenly looked old.

  “So, therefore, do we, Earl Tammaron Fitz-Arthur, Earl Rhun of Horthness, Archbishop Hubert MacInnis, and myself, Earl Murdoch of Carthane, expel from our number the noble his Grace the Duke of Claibourne, and name in his stead the Right Honorable the Earl of Culdi, Lord Manfred—.”

  “Murdoch, I’ll kill you!” Before Murdoch could even finish, Duke Ewan was vaulting across the men and benches separating him from Murdoch, bellowing his outrage, a long highland dirk suddenly clenched in his burly fist. The weapon caught the scroll Murdoch raised instinctively in a warding-off gesture, grazing Murdoch’s cheek, but Murdoch’s dagger was already in his free hand, darting in to counter Ewan’s next blow.

  “Stop him!” Rhun shouted.

  But the two were already grappling for the weapons, Ewan with murder in his eyes and Murdoch with his long arms and legs wrapped around the heavier, more experienced Ewan as they rolled over and over. Ewan’s men leaped in belatedly to help him, only to be taken on by the scores of royal guardsmen who poured into the hall. Javan never quite saw clearly how it happened; only that suddenly there was blood everywhere and Ewan lay dying with several of his men, both hands pressed futilely around the bloody hilt of a long dagger buried in his gut.

  A hush fell across the hall as Murdoch staggered to his feet, breathing hard, clutching a nasty gash across one bicep. Blood leaked from between his fingers and dripped on one of the newly presented Kheldish carpets as the injured regent glared an unmistakable summons for Oriel to attend him.

  “But no priest for any of those!” Murdoch barked hoarsely, as two Custodes priests started to move among the dying men. “No grace for traitors! And you!” His uninjured arm lanced toward Declan Carmody, who was the closest other Deryni besides Oriel. “I want MacEwan broken! You see now why we removed him. He was plotting to overthrow the king. I want the names of his confederates. I want his mind ripped from him before he dies!”

  “No, please. Not Declan!” Oriel whispered, catching urgently at Murdoch’s sleeve. “Ask Ursin. Ask Sitric. Ask me! Carmody isn’t well enough yet. He may crack!”

  Enraged, his face purple with choler, Murdoch rounded on Oriel. “Are you defying a direct order, Healer?” he rasped. “Are you asking to see your wife and daughter die? That can be arranged!”

  “Oriel, don’t.” Declan’s voice was calm and controlled as he moved quite purposefully toward the writhing Ewan, waving back the other two Deryni, who had started forward
in alarm. “It isn’t necessary. You don’t have to fight my battles for me.”

  A profound silence fell as he came to kneel by Ewan’s side, and the duke made a vague, anguished attempt to flail his pain-wracked body beyond Declan’s reach as the Deryni hand was lifted toward him, his face draining of what color remained.

  Some unspoken message must have passed between them then, however, because suddenly Ewan stopped trying to squirm away and fixed his eyes on Declan’s, hands falling away from the steel impaling his gut. His lips moved in silent words that might have said, Bless you, as Declan seized the hilt of the dagger and quickly withdrew it from the wound. In that same instant, Ewan closed his eyes and threw back his head for Declan’s coup—a swift, deft slash across the throat that severed both carotid arteries and brought oblivion in an instant.

  “What the—”

  Before anyone could stop him, Declan drew the bloody blade hard against one of his own wrists, shifting to the other hand even as the first blood spurted, to slash deep into the other wrist. But before he could turn it on his throat and end the matter for good, the soldiers were on him, wrestling the weapon from blood-slick fingers and bearing him to the ground, instinctively trying to staunch the life-blood spurting from his wrists.

  “You dare to defy me!” Murdoch thundered, scuttling across the hall to glare down at the wounded Deryni. “You dare!”

  “The duke died before he could be questioned, my lord,” Declan said almost dreamily, already far from his own pain. “I have not defied you. I simply choose not to live under your conditions any longer. I believe I’ve done too good a job for Oriel to save me,” he added, flexing his slashed wrists in the blood-slick hold of his captors and grimacing. “Not that I’d let him, in any case—or that you’d let him, with your own wound bleeding so badly. You’ll pass out, if he doesn’t do something quickly, you know. You could even die.”

  Murdoch gritted his teeth as he sat down hard on a stool and let Oriel start tearing away the sleeve from his wound, and Archbishop Hubert came halfway between Murdoch and Declan.

  “You know, of course, that suicides are condemned straight to Hell,” Hubert said softly. “And I’ll not give you absolution.”

  “Nor would I ask it of you,” Declan whispered, letting his head lie back and relaxing in the hands of his captors. “I have some pride left.”

  “We’ll see about pride, when you watch your wife and those little boys die before your eyes!” Murdoch said, stirring under Oriel’s hands.

  “No! I have not disobeyed!” Declan struggled to sit up, but now his captors would not let him.

  “Bring them!” Murdoch ordered coldly. “And neutralize him.”

  Merasha was coursing through Declan’s system before he could even fathom his own danger, so horrified was he at what Murdoch threatened for his family. One of the Custodes monks was responsible, calmly wiping off a long, sharp bodkin after he had darted in to crouch by the stricken man’s side and stab it into his neck.

  “Th-the guards call it a ‘Deryni pricker,’” Rhys Michael whispered breathily, clinging to Javan’s arm in stunned disbelief and starting to shake as guards marched out to do Murdoch’s bidding. “The Custodes invented it. B-but, Javan, they aren’t really going to k-kill Declan’s family—are they?”

  For answer, Javan could only hug his younger brother closer, himself shaking, all too aware that the regent could and would do exactly what he threatened.

  Nor could any entreaty swerve Murdoch from his intentions—not Alroy’s nor his brothers’ nor even the uneasy protests of Tammaron and a handful of the courtiers whose appearance at court had begun so lightheartedly. While the court waited for the guards’ return, the drugged Declan’s wrists were tightly bound to slow the bleeding, and Ursin and Sitric were also dosed with merasha. The heartsick Oriel was spared long enough to Heal Murdoch’s wound—a procedure over which he dawdled until Hubert threatened his family—but then he, too, was made to submit to the drug that made further resistance impossible. Murdoch intended that all of them should witness the consequences of Declan’s defiance, and would brook no possibility of further insurrections in the Deryni ranks.

  Only the regents’ wives were allowed to withdraw to the room behind the dais, to spare them actually witnessing what was about to happen. For the rest, the guards secured the hall to ensure that no one else shirked his or her duty to see justice done to a rebellious Deryni and his family.

  Alroy said not a word after that, only sitting trembling and whey-faced on a throne that suddenly seemed like a torture chamber to him, the sharp-eyed Hubert at his side. Manfred broke up the embrace of the two younger brothers and stood by Rhys Michael, who looked as if he wished he was anywhere but where he was. Rhun guarded Javan, forbidding him to turn away. When the guards finally brought in Honoria Carmody and her two little sons, Javan felt that he was going to be sick and actually swallowed down bile, not wanting to believe Murdoch was actually going to do it.

  To the undying relief of all present, Murdoch did relent a little—to the extent that the execution of those innocents was mercifully quick—bowstrings knotted swiftly around three slender necks, over almost before it began. Still, a communal gasp rippled through the court as the deed registered, capped by Declan Carmody’s faint, drugged groan of anguish.

  But Declan himself was to be permitted no such merciful end. An example must be made of him, to ensure that no other Deryni got ideas above his station and tried to turn against his masters. To screams which the doomed Deryni could not keep back, he was stripped and spread-eagled right on the floor before the throne, first castrated and then slowly disemboweled, his entrails dragged from his belly even as he shrieked out his agony yet could not end it. Loss of blood from his many wounds let him slip into unconsciousness before they could tear his heart, still beating, from his opened chest; and when they could not rouse him to continue their sport, they unbandaged his wrists, so that it could be claimed that the actual cause of death had been his own violence against himself. By the time they beheaded and quartered his mutilated body, Declan Carmody was long past knowing or caring.

  Javan cared desperately, though. Nor would he let himself shrink from any sickening detail, filing away each crime to be charged against Murdoch when the time came, his thoughts racing the while through prayers for the dying man’s soul. (Had he tried not to watch, Rhun would have held his head like an undisciplined infant—unspeakable liberty! But that, at least, was something over which Javan had some modicum of control.)

  He was handling himself rather well, he thought, until Hubert formally announced that the dead man would not be afforded Christian burial, having died by his own hand. When the executioners’ assistants began gathering up the pieces in wicker baskets to dump them into the river, Javan was finally and unashamedly sick all over Rhun’s highly polished boots.

  Alroy and several far older courtiers already had fainted by then—as had Oriel, for whom the lesson was really intended. And Javan was but the youngest—by no means the only—person to retch up his guts at the horror of what they had witnessed. Rhys Michael managed to keep his stomach and head under control, but had started shaking halfway through. Even now, one of the royal physicians was giving him a strong sedative and ordering him taken to his rooms.

  There was no birthday feast that night, and Alroy cancelled all his appearances for three days thereafter, against all possible entreaties and wheedlings of the regents. Javan gave all his gifts to the Custodes Fidei, for he would not have them tainted with Declan Carmody’s blood. Following his lead, his brothers also gave away their gifts—though, in fact, many of them ended up in the hands of the regents themselves. From that moment on, Javan vowed his vengeance for what had been done—and on Murdoch in particular.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath annointed me to preach … deliverance to the captives.

  —Luke 4:18

  The information networks that had always serv
ed the clans carried word of Ewan’s death northward with a speed almost suggestive of Deryni magic. Less than a fortnight later, backed by his two uncles and over a hundred armed clansmen wearing black cockades in their bonnets, Ewan’s son and heir rode into Rhemuth to claim his titles. The show of force was real, in that his uncles, the Earls of Eastmarch and Marley, had brought along an additional escort of fifty handpicked knights, but the duke himself was counted as of little real consequence. For Graham Donal Angus MacEwan, now the Duke of Claibourne and hereditary Viceroy of Kheldour, was an eleven-year-old boy.

  To alienate that eleven-year-old any more than he already had been was to court disaster, however. The titles that the boy bore were of immense consequence—so immense that the regents dared not even consider refusing to confirm the boy in his new rank. The holdings comprising Kheldour represented fully a quarter of the land area of Gwynedd. The regents could ill afford to lose that land. That young Graham was even willing to come to the capital and do public homage and fealty for his holdings, after all that had happened, bespoke much of the good judgment of his uncles, who would be his regents until he came of age—for neither Kheldour nor Gwynedd would be the better for a split, with the threat of an eventual Festillic reinvasion ever in the offing.

  Besides that, public reaction to the manner of the old duke’s death was already vocal and highly negative, even though the official accounts emphasized that Ewan had been trying to murder the regent Murdoch, which could be construed as an act of treason. However, even Murdoch finally admitted, albeit grudgingly, and only in the bosom of his fellow regents, that perhaps he had overreacted to Ewan’s altogether justified anger at being so summarily dismissed. Certainly, Murdoch had failed to predict what Ewan would do, on learning of the dismissal. To attaint the son for the supposed sins of the father—and attainder was the only legal way to bar Graham from his ducal titles—was to add insult to injury and court even greater public outcry—and possibly even force the kingdom into civil war.