The Harrowing of Gwynedd

by Katherine Kurtz

  Ansel snorted. “That won’t last forever—not once he’s really under Hubert’s thumb. Hubert will break him, given time.”

  “No, I think Javan may break Hubert, given time,” Evaine said, smiling slightly for the first time. “He set some interesting suggestions, after Secorim had left. He doesn’t dare make any drastic changes, for fear the other regents will notice and investigate—just as we don’t—but he’s setting the stage for his own ease, and the easing of Revan’s situation. A time will come, I have no doubt, when he’ll have gone as far as he dares—but meanwhile, at least a few more of our people will have had a chance to survive.”

  Ansel chuckled unpleasantly. “Maybe he’ll dare to go further than you think. Just suppose, for example, that the archbishop should meet with a small accident.”

  “For God’s sake, Ansel!” Niallan blurted. “You’re talking murder. He’s still a thirteen-year-old boy.”

  Ansel snorted, pushing back his chair. “Aunt Evaine just said he was a man. Besides that, he’s a prince. And he has killed before.”

  “In self-defense, yes,” Evaine said coolly. “But I won’t ask him to murder. Besides, if anything were to happen to Hubert, after Javan specifically asked to be taken under his roof, they’d be at him with Deryni sniffers, merasha—you name it!”

  “Which is also why I haven’t simply gone through the Portal while Hubert’s asleep and squeezed his fat neck in two,” Joram told Ansel. “Few things would give me greater pleasure, but few things are also almost guaranteed to make things worse, not only for Javan but for our people.”

  “But—we can’t just do nothing!” Jesse cried.

  “We aren’t doing ‘nothing,’” Evaine said. “Javan is doing something, and Revan is doing something. All of us are doing something, Jesse—even if it’s mainly waiting, just now. So—try to have a little patience,” she finished lamely, gesturing vaguely with her hands. “We’re all doing the best we can.”

  “You were hard on young Jesse, earlier,” Queron told her, when he found her several hours later, poring listlessly over the stacks of parchments and the few artifacts they had brought out of Orin’s tomb. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t you sleep?”

  Sighing as she shook her head, Evaine picked up Orin’s ring and slipped it onto one of the ivory wands. She wore its mate on her right forefinger, as she had since the night they found it. The rings shimmered in the candlelight as she held the wand horizontally and set Orin’s spinning, silver purring silkily against polished ivory.

  “No. I don’t know what’s wrong, Queron. I’m beginning to feel a little uneasy. I—know—that I’m on the verge of finding out what I need to know, but for the first time in my life, my power frightens me. It could kill me—not to mention you and Joram. My children could be motherless as well as fatherless. And we might not even succeed. We could give up our lives for nothing.”

  Queron shrugged and, with a sad, gentle smile, sat down across from her. “You’re the only one who can decide whether the risk is acceptable, Evaine. If you say it is, we’re with you. If you say no, then it’s over, finished. I won’t push you. And God knows, Joram won’t.”

  Nodding, Evaine let the ring slide off the wand and onto the table beside the candle, continuing to turn the ivory staff idly in her hands. “I wish it were that simple. If I could put him out of my mind, perhaps it would be. But I can’t.” She glanced over at the shrouded form which was her father’s body.

  “I have to do it for him, Queron, don’t you see? Even if I can’t bring him back, but only release him, I must do it.”

  “He chose to do what he did, Evaine, knowing what the outcome might be. And I don’t think he’d want you to sacrifice yourself—”

  “Don’t talk to me of sacrifice!” she snapped. “He is the one who made the sacrifice, in the hope that I might be able to bring him back to finish his work. If I can’t—well, could you condemn your own father to be locked in a helpless body, walled up in a tomb, for all eternity? That isn’t an empty shell over there, Queron.” She pointed at the body with the wand. “Rhys’ body is an empty shell. I can’t change that, but I accept it. Oh, Tavis put a preservation spell on it, so it isn’t rotting, but Rhys isn’t in it, and he never will be again. Nor would I put his soul back in that body, even if I could, because that phase of his existence is over, finished. Besides, there’s a part of Rhys that’s always with me—that will always be with me, until I’m also finished with my body and he and I are totally at one again.”

  “And Camber isn’t with you?” Queron asked quietly.

  “Not in the same way—no. It’s both weaker and more intense. At times, he seems very, very near. But there’s a—a fog that I can’t pierce. It isn’t like the veil that separates the worlds. God knows, I’ve at least glimpsed past that from time to time. What separates Father is—different. That’s all I know to call it. And the answer is in one of these scrolls—I’m sure of it. I just haven’t yet found the key.”

  Queron smiled gently, setting his Healer’s hand lightly across her wrist. “Why don’t you get some sleep, Evaine? You’re exhausted. How long have you slept since you saw Prince Javan?”

  “Not enough,” she whispered, covering his hand with hers and smiling. “But I’m not quite ready to go to bed just yet, and I don’t want you pulling any of your Healer’s wiles to try to make me! Remember, I was married to a Healer.”

  “Yes, and he was a far finer Healer than I’ll ever be, no matter how long I live. Tell me, do you intend to reread all the scrolls again tonight?”

  “I’m sorry, Queron.” She glanced down at her lap, ashamed of her outburst. “No, of course not. I just wanted to check a couple of passages.”

  “Half an hour’s worth?” Queron ventured.

  “No more than that, I promise.”

  “Very well.” Sighing, Queron patted her hand over his, then rose. “Sleep well, when you do sleep. And remember—half an hour.”

  “Half an hour,” she agreed.

  She gazed distractedly into the candle beside her for several minutes after he had gone, finally letting her attention wander back to the stack of scrolls lying on the table before her. Most were still in their protective leather tubes, the colored cords around them coded to their names: the Protocols of Orin. She felt certain the answer had to be here, somewhere, but in which one?

  Not the Green, for that dealt with Healing. Not the very basic and important Vermillion, with its careful instructions for scrying, setting Wards, constructing Portals. The Yellow was equally unlikely, though it dealt with spells connected with the dead: taking a dead man’s shape, reading the memories of one recently dead, and assimilating the memories of same. But Camber was not dead; she was certain of that.

  The Royal Blue, then—the volume to which she had most recently gained access. But while that had been of help to Queron in instructing Tavis and Sylvan on further intricacies of the power-blocking procedure, neither that nor the material on staring patterns and moon-scrying seemed to be applicable.

  That left the Black Protocol, then, whose advice they had used numerous times for placing another shape on the dead—but again, Camber was not dead. By the same argument, the procedure for reanimating the dead would be equally useless—though at least that topic touched closer to the mark than any other they had found. The other subject of the Black Protocol concerned calling up creatures—a practice fraught with dangers to the operator as well as the object of the creatures’ attentions, and one which Evaine had never pursued.

  Sighing, Evaine opened the Black Protocol long enough to skim over its table of contents again, then pushed it aside and pulled out the last possibility: the Codex Orini. She had held high hopes for this one, guessing that it might contain some of Orin’s working notes—as, indeed, it did, except that the material seemed to deal only with meditation, and the difficult and little known esoteric discipline sometimes referred to as the Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It was a subject which, under any other circumsta
nces, would have commanded her keen interest and further study—her father would have rejoiced at the find—but unfortunately, it seemed to have little if any bearing on the problem at hand.

  The Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is one of the most noble and worthy ambitions of the dedicated Servant of the Light, she read, for perhaps the sixth or eighth time since retrieving the scroll. The committed Seeker who perseveres in the quest for this most sacred of contacts with the Spirit will touch the secrets of the functioning of the Universe, gaining inestimable grace in that growth toward union with the Godhead which is the goal of all enlightened and evolving beings.

  Sighing, Evaine let the scroll curl back on itself and close, rubbing weary hands across her face. The temptation to enter the quest that Orin outlined held great allure, but she must not let herself be distracted from her mission. She must find a way to reverse the spell that bound her father between life and death.

  Pushing aside the rolled scrolls, the wands, the medallion and ring they had taken from Orin’s body, and the torque Jodotha had worn, she rose and moved to the bier where Camber’s body lay. They had draped the net of shiral crystals over his lower body, but they had not activated it. Blinking back tears, Evaine laid her right hand over his—the fine, aristocratic hands curved just—so—at waist level, as if cupping something precious, that must not be spilled.

  His flesh was cool beneath her touch, but never as cold as she expected. Even when they recovered him from the snow, beside the slain Jebediah, he had not been really cold. Both she and Joram had been too numb with grief to notice it at the time, or perhaps attributed it to the recency of death, but they had noticed it since. Its reality haunted both of them, a continuing reminder that it was not death that bound him, but something else—something that, with care and love and, perhaps, sacrifice, might be reversed to bring him back to carry on his work.

  “I’ll do whatever I must,” she whispered to him, searching the calm, expressionless face with tear-dimmed eyes. “I’ll try to bring you back—or release you, if that’s what’s meant to be—but you’ve got to help me. I can’t do it by myself.”

  After a few minutes, when she got no more response than she had all the other times she had talked to him this way, she sank to her knees and then to a cramped sitting position beside the bier, letting her hand trail down the side to catch in the net of shiral. The crystals were cool against her cheek as she leaned her head against the net-covered side of the bier. After a little while, she slept—and dreamed.

  She seemed to be standing in sunlight, on some vast, windswept plateau high above the world. The sky was closer here, but the air was no less sweet. The warm, comforting smells of growing things surrounded her—dew-kissed grass and nodding grain and flowers and sun-warmed soil—and she gloried in the miracle of life, of love, lifting her palms heavenward in wordless, joyful thanksgiving as she twirled and threw back her head to drink the blessing of the sunlight, laughing.

  The twirling brought a heady, gladsome giddiness that stayed with her as a profound sense of peace when she stopped. The peace persisted as she lowered her eyes to the horizon, intensified as her eyes picked out movement, awe catching in her throat as she made out an approaching shape.

  Across a grass-fragrant carpet spangled with tiny white and yellow flowers, a noble form advanced toward her, indistinctly robed in a greenish shimmer of rainbow and sunlight that did not declare the being either male or female. Softly curling hair the color of ripe chestnuts, tumbling shoulder-long, framed a face of such indescribable beauty and strength that Evaine wept to see it. The being halted a few strides beyond reach, gazed at her sympathetically for several seconds, then drew its hands apart, one above the other, to let a shower of palm-sized silvery rings pour from one to the other in a sweet, musical trill of chiming metal that seemed to echo the ringing of tiny, silvery bells.

  But, what does it mean? she was conscious of thinking, a part of her observing from outside the dream.

  Again, the being parted its hands before her, raining silvery rings from one hand to the other—and again, and again, until her senses pulsed to the music of their ringing and she fell to her knees, one hand pressed to her reeling head while the other lifted half in warding off and half in entreaty.

  Show me again. I don’t understand, she pleaded. What is it you want of me?

  With an expression of infinite patience, the being parted its hands once more, starting the shower of rings all over again—only this time, the rings seemed to interlock like a chain, still chiming musically into the lower hand, but linked still when the upper hand lifted the topmost of them, stretching and releasing, stretching and releasing. Three times the being repeated this mysterious action, then closed the pile of rings between its hands and held them out to her.

  Trembling, daring to trust, Evaine lifted her hands to accept what was offered, cupping her palms to receive it, putting all thought of possible consequences from her mind. The touch of those otherworldly hands was cool, but what they laid in her right hand seared like fire. She gasped and jerked back her hand, jolting from sleep to consciousness in less than a heartbeat, opening her eyes to the very real, thumb-sized imprint of something circular on her right palm—and the metallic tinkle of something bouncing on the floor and rolling.

  She was after it by its sound, pouncing on it like a cat on a mouse, before it could come to rest. It was Jodotha’s ring, she discovered, to her surprise, as she held it to the meager candlelight and then conjured handfire to stare at it in amazement. But the ring had been on her hand; she could still see its indentation around her right forefinger.

  But she could also see another indentation on her right palm—a stark white circle that was not the mark of pressure, but something else—more like the burn she remembered from her dream, except that there was no pain. And it fit the ring exactly.

  Thoughtful, Evaine sat back against the side of the bier and turned the ring over and over in her fingers, studying the tiny crosses and other symbols engraved around the outside—noticing, for the first time, that there were odd, irregular marks along the edge of the ring.

  Curious. Now, why had she never seen those marks before? And what did the dream mean? Silver rings. She closed her eyes to conjure up the images again.

  Silver rings, strung in a chain. Silver rings, interlocking. Rings. More than one ring. Jodotha’s ring and—

  Orin’s! Her eyes popped open as she remembered the other ring, that had been there all along. Orin’s ring, twin to the one in her hand. As she scrambled to her feet, to stagger back to the work table, she knew that she would find markings on the edge of Orin’s ring, too. Again, she could not think why none of them had ever noticed before.

  Holding the pair of them to the light, she saw that she was right. There were markings on the edge of Orin’s ring! And held thus, beside Jodotha’s smaller one, she knew that the rings would interlock—not linked, like the rings in her dream, but one inside the other, a perfect match!

  Trying to stop her hands’ shaking, she turned the two circles in the light, trying to decide which way they went. When matched correctly, she now had no doubt that the marks on the edges of the rings would line up to form writing of some sort—and that she would only have one chance to make the match. If she got them wrong way round, the marks would disappear—and who knew what might be necessary to bring them back to try again.

  But the rings provided no visual clues. The symbols carved around the outsides of the bands were similar, but no direct match—all of the symbols present, but in different order. Nor could she gain any insight from trying to match the markings on the edges, without being able to put the rings together.

  Very well, then. She would have to rely on something besides visual evidence. Some clue in the rings themselves, perhaps. Maybe—something to do with polarities—a not unlikely possibility, given the balance inherent in nearly every example she had found of the sort of magic that Orin and Jodotha favored.

  Polarities.
Opposites. Positive and negative. Black and white. Left and right. Male and female …

  Nodding to herself, Evaine shifted the rings’ positions, taking Orin’s ring in her right hand and Jodotha’s in her left, weighing more than physical substance, settling into a cool, dispassionate meditative state.

  Polarities. Hold Orin’s ring unmoving and feel its orientation. Project into its structure and sense the balance of the individual who had worn it.

  She closed her eyes to sense it better, eliminating mere physical sight, which knew nothing of the ultimate balances.

  Now hold that first balance and concentrate on Jodotha’s ring. Different. Balanced in its own way, but different. The same, but different. Turning the second ring in her fingers, she knew they would only match one way.

  Turn it like a coin—crowns or shields? One way was right, the other was not. If Orin’s was the shield, should Jodotha’s match, as shield, or complement, as crown? Where was the balance point? How did they balance? Crown … shield …

  And suddenly, the two were balanced—an unshakable certitude. Inhaling deeply, she opened her eyes and let the breath out slowly, gazing at the two rings resting on her palms. Then, without further hesitation, she picked up the smaller, lighter circlet of Jodotha’s ring and placed it on top of Orin’s, prodding it gently with her forefinger to make it nest inside the larger band. Their union made no sound, but she felt the faint snick of the one seating in the other, and she slid them both onto the table and then onto the edge of the Codex Orini, where the silver would show up better against the creamy parchment. The marks on the edges of the rings were still visible, and as she slowly turned the outer ring against the inner, the marks became letters, spelling out four words in Latin.

  Domine, fac me vitrum. Lord, make me a glass …

  Turning the rings over, she found the rest of the words on the other edges.… ut tibi incendam. That I may burn for Thee.