The Bishop’s Heir

by Katherine Kurtz

  “MacArdry, to me!” he cried.

  His men tried to rally. Ciard got separated from him by a man on a particularly large and nasty bay which kicked and tried to bite, and Tomais darted desperately behind to take his place and shield him. But the strangers cut down the scout with hardly a wasted effort and then crashed their mounts into Dhugal’s, bowling it off its feet. Dhugal fell hard. He lost his helmet, but somehow he still had his sword in his hand as he scrambled to his feet. He glanced around wildly to find himself totally surrounded by the enemy.

  He threw away his targe. Catching at the reins of one of his attackers with his free hand, he jerked and forced the animal to its knees, spilling its rider even as he blocked another man’s sword blow.

  But his astonishment at the Trurill badge on the surcoat beneath the fallen man’s mantle threw him off stride; and before he could collect his wits, the steel-shod hoof of another man’s horse caught him in the thigh with near bone-crushing force. Even as he gasped with the pain of it, trying not to fall under yet another horse’s hooves, another rider kneed him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and cracking ribs. Dimly he recognized his attacker as the Trurill sergeant with whom he had ridden only a fortnight before.

  “Gendon!” he gasped, stunned.

  Wheezing desperately for air, and feeling horribly betrayed, he staggered to his feet and managed to deliver a bloody but shallow cut to the arm of another attacker, but already injured, he was too slow to avoid the hooves of another horse which tumbled him to the ground—or the sword hilt which struck his temple with a solid, sickening thump as the Baron of Trurill himself grabbed him by the neck of his brigandine and yanked him up across the saddle. He tried to struggle through the fog of pain which shrank his vision to a narrow tunnel, but his fingers uncurled from his sword hilt and let it fall as the pain pounded with every heartbeat.

  “Pull back, or I kill the boy!” his captor bellowed, jerking him up straighter in the saddle before him and laying the flat of his sword against Dhugal’s throat. “Will your chief thank you for a dead heir? I swear, I’ll kill him!”

  Dhugal’s eyes would no longer focus, and he could feel the bitter bile burning in his throat as waves of nausea pulsated with the pain. Even drawing breath sent jagged fire lancing through his chest, and his slightest attempt to struggle only made his captor’s arm clamp tighter over his broken ribs, adding to the agony. Dimly he was aware of the sounds of battle ceasing, and then Caball’s voice, breathless and desperate.

  “Yield yer prisoner, sir, in th’ name of King Kelson of Gwynedd! Ye have attacked th’ king’s just representative wi’out cause.”

  “A heretic king!” an irate voice behind Dhugal shouted. “And the heretic king has forfeited his rights by making heretics his allies. Stand aside and let us pass, or the boy dies!”

  Weakly, Dhugal tried again to struggle despite the pain it cost him. He could not think clearly, but instinctively he sensed that to allow these men to escape was a thing which must be prevented at all cost, even his life.

  “No!” he managed to cry out. “Don’t let them—”

  But the sword hilt crashed into his head again before he could finish, and he felt his world going dark around him, his body totally refusing to obey him any longer. He knew more pain as his captor pulled him higher across the saddle to thrust a gauntleted hand through the back of his belt, and he heard Clan MacArdry’s warcry as they tried to answer his command.

  But then consciousness was slipping away even as his captor charged into the fray again, and he knew no more.

  Caball MacArdry and the remnants of Dhugal’s command limped their way back through the gates of Castle Transha just at dusk. They brought two dead with them, and not a man among the living had escaped unscathed. One prisoner they had managed to take, lashed to the saddle of Dhugal’s protesting pony, but only because he had been too badly injured to ride with his comrades. Were it not for the fact that they hoped to question him, Caball gladly would have cut his throat without further ceremony.

  All during the slow, painful ride back from Carcashale, the devastated Caball had rehearsed the possible ways of telling old Caulay that his son was captured. In the end, he could only let Dhugal’s absence speak for itself. He dared not meet the old man’s eyes as he and the five other survivors still able knelt at the foot of the chief’s chair in the great hall. Caulay stiffened as his rheumy eyes searched the faces of the six and did not find Dhugal.

  “We met them at Carcashale, sair,” Caball said in a low voice, blood seeping between his fingers where he clutched at a wound in his right shoulder. “Brice of Trurill led them. He has turned traitor.”

  “And my son?” Caulay managed to rasp.

  “Taken,” was all Caball could whisper miserably.

  He tried to tell Caulay that they believed Dhugal still to be alive, though wounded—and that Caball would send out the fiery cross to summon the clan and pursue—but the news was the final blow to Caulay’s already frail health. Without uttering a sound, the old man clutched at his chest and sagged in his chair, eyes rolling up and out of sight. He died within seconds, cradled in the arms of Kinkellyan the bard, his helpless kinsmen able to do nothing.

  Though numbed almost beyond further reaction, and weak from his own injuries, Caball had the alarm rung and summoned the remaining clansmen at Transha to the great hall—young boys and old men, for the most part, though some of the women came to tend the wounded. Stripped to the waist so his own wounds could be cared for, Caball sat on a stool beside the slumped body of the dead chief as the others gathered before him, one hand gripped tight on the edge of the table against the pain: As castellan and next in succession after Dhugal, it had become his grim duty to assume the leadership of the clan until Dhugal’s condition should be learned. He winced as his wife and Kinkellyan began washing out his wound, trying to ignore the bard’s troubled muttering.

  “Young Dhugal is our chief now,” he told the assembled men, “if he lives. I dinnae know what his captors will do wi’ him, but since they didnae kill him when they first threatened, we must hope he is still alive.”

  “We should go after!” one of the men rumbled. “If young Dhugal still lives, then he must be rescued—an’ if he be dead, then he must be avenged!”

  “Aye, an’ where is the prisoner?” another demanded. “Before we gae chargin’ off tae take on rebel knights, we should first find oot wha’ we be dealin’ with.”

  “Ciard, bring him,” Caball ordered, waving off those tending his wound as the gillie and another clansmen went to do his bidding.

  The prisoner’s face was pale as whey, his sword arm splinted and bound to his chest, but he managed to stay on his feet as he was marched roughly to the dais. Though they had stripped him down to woolen singlet and boots and breeches beneath his black mantle, he still wore a rust-stained arming cap on his head. He bit back a groan as he was shoved to his knees before Caball, only barely catching himself on his good hand.

  “On yer knees an’ uncovered before yer betters, man!” Ciard barked, yanking back the man’s coif and shoving his head closer to the floor.

  The man’s lank hair was cut in the bowl-shaped hairstyle favored by many warriors, but a tonsured spot gleamed at the crown. As the significance registered, Caball seized a fistful of hair and yanked the man’s head up look at his face, heedless of the blood streaming down his wounded arm.

  “By the good God, he’s a cleric an’ come armed among us!” Caball breathed. “Look a’ the tonsure! What’s yer name, priest? Wha’ master d’ye serve, who sends priests armed into the king’s lands?”

  The man merely grimaced and closed his eyes as Caball twisted the handful of hair harder.

  “Speak up, priest! I hae little patience t’day.”

  “I have nothing to say,” the man whispered.

  “Dinnae waste yer time wi’ such slime, Caball!” one of the clansmen snarled. “He’s a traitor. Let’s gie ’im a traitor’s reward.”

 
; “Aye, hang him, Caball!”

  “Touch me and your lands go under Interdict the instant my master hears of it!” the prisoner responded, opening blue eyes defiantly. “He’ll excommunicate the lot of you. I claim benefit of clergy and the right to ecclesiastical trial. You have no authority to judge me.”

  “Interdict?” one of the men murmured, as several others crossed themselves.

  Caball gave the man’s hair another vicious twist.

  “Mind yer tongue, priest! Yer traitor master cannae save ye here! Speak up. Who are ye?”

  Consternation flickered across the man’s face for just an instant, but still he shook his head stubbornly.

  “I do not have to answer to you.”

  “No, but ye may well wish ye had,” Caball replied, releasing the man with a shove that overbalanced him into a groaning heap on the floor. “An’ there is one to whom ye will answer.”

  Caball backed off unsteadily and leaned against the edge of the table, catching Ciard’s eye as he let his wife and Kinkellyan return to their ministrations.

  “Ciard O Ruane, as gillie to our young laird, I give ye the charge o’ tellin’ the king what has occurred. Spare neither self nae steed, sae lang as ye reach Rhemuth quickly. If the king is nae there now, he will arrive shortly, so wait.”

  “Aye, Caball.”

  “As for the prisoner,” he smiled menacingly as he turned his eyes back on the defiant captive, “a suitable escort shall follow ye tae Rhemuth on the morrow. ’Tis only for this that we spare ye, priest. An’ know that th’ king is bloodkin to our young laird, an’ will be greatly wroth if any further harm should come to him. Ye’d best pray that yer master does nothing rash. Take him out.”

  As the prisoner was jerked to his feet and led none too gently from the hall, a grim Ciard following, Caball collapsed back against the edge of the table. Behind him, a gillie handed Kinkellyan the cloth-wrapped end of a glowing iron.

  “Devlin, send out the fiery cross to summon the seven chieftains,” Caball said to the clan’s gleeman, who stepped forward at his name. “An’ let th’ piper sound the corranach tae speed Th’ MacArdry on his way.” He steeled himself as Devlin and another man moved in to hold him for Kinkellyan’s work.

  “An’ let the women prepare The MacArdry’s body for his final rest,” he went on. “Until we hear otherwise, young Dhugal is our new chief, an’ I shall direct the clan only in his—”

  The hiss of the hot iron searing flesh cut off further speech, and Caball’s body arched with the agony, though he uttered not a sound. He slumped into merciful unconsciousness before it was done, so he did not hear the lone piper begin his lament for the dead chief, or the women keening as they drew around the body to take it away.

  Those who had ridden with the new chief heard it, however; and Ciard O Ruane, as he mounted a fast horse to ride for Rhemuth, hoped desperately that the corranach was not for the young laird as well as the old.

  Dhugal MacArdry would have deemed the piper’s lament wholly appropriate in the days which followed, though he stubbornly refused to die. Nor, it seemed, did his captors wish him dead. He vaguely recalled shouted threats to do him harm, when he first had been taken, but he sensed that his captors considered him a hostage of some value. When he first regained consciousness, they were bandaging his head, though nothing was done about his cracked ribs.

  He passed out again when they made him stand to put him on a horse of his own, however, and he drifted in and out of consciousness often in the days which followed. Even when he was awake, swaying groggily in the saddle of the rough-gaited mount they had given him, his head throbbed and his broken ribs burned with every breath and jolt. Sometimes, the very effort of trying to focus on the world around him made him pass out.

  Unconsciousness was something of a blessing initially, for there was no part of his anatomy which did not hurt. He could not fall off his horse, for his feet were bound to his stirrups and lashed beneath the animal’s belly, but whenever he fainted, which was all too often, his already battered body sagged limply against the ropes and strained tortured muscles anew.

  But his head was the worst. As often as not, when they roused him from one of their infrequent rest stops and made him stand, he passed out again. No matter how he reckoned that, it meant a serious concussion—for which the only cure was rest. And so long as his captors continued to press onward toward their unknown destination, he knew he would simply have to endure.

  In such manner did the days pass—four since his capture, so far as he could calculate. He had learned the identity of the men his captors escorted, but that was hardly more reassuring than his condition. That the notorious Archbishop Loris had somehow managed to escape his sea-girt prison was chilling. He wondered whether Kelson knew. He suspected Loris’ escape somehow had to do with the Mearan question Kelson had been worrying about, but he could not seem to put it all together. His head started aching anew everytime he tried to think about it.

  He worried about his head and about Loris as they rode through the snow on that fourth day. The first snowstorm of the season had swept down upon them with the morning’s first light, and he shivered with the cold of it, despite the extra mantle they had wrapped around him. Exhausted and bordering on delirium, wrists chafed raw from days of riding with his hands tied in front of him, he laced his fingers in his horse’s mane and concentrated on staying conscious as they seemed to float in a sphere of silence through the still-falling snow. When their pace eventually slowed and he weakly raised his head far enough to see why, they were approaching the ghostly blackness of city gates.

  He thought it was Culdi at first, for the guards who admitted them wore the Bishop of Culdi’s livery. But even as he thought it, he realized it could not be Culdi. Culdi was loyal to Kelson; Loris would never go there. They had ridden west and south. He decided it might be Ratharkin.

  They rode for what seemed like hours through the silent streets, pulling up at last in a darkened courtyard where he was unceremoniously hauled from his horse and half-dragged, half-carried inside a formidable-looking stone building. Being supported under his arms put excruciating pressure on his cracked ribs, but worse by far was the jolting of his head. He passed out as they manhandled him down a narrow, ill-lit stair.

  The next thing he knew was the warmth of a fire not far away and the play of firelight on his closed eyelids. He lay curled on his left side with his bound hands partially shielding his face. There was fur underneath him, besides the fur lining of his cloak. Voices buzzed low in the background, occasionally discernable as words and phrases, punctuated by the muted clank of men disarming and the snap of mantles being shaken out. He caught the scent of mulled wine behind him, but the sound of others arriving warned him to feign continued unconsciousness. Cautiously he eased his eyes open to the merest slits to see two men in clerical attire entering the room. The elder he recognized as Creoda, Bishop of Culdi.

  “Your Excellency,” Creoda murmured, bowing to kiss Loris’ ring. “Welcome to Ratharkin. May I present Father Judhael of Meara, whose family is responsible for arranging your escape.”

  As Creoda stepped aside, a younger man with silver hair came forward to bend in homage before the renegade archbishop, remaining on one knee when he looked up and Loris did not release his hand.

  “So, Father,” Loris said, “I see I must thank you for my freedom.”

  “In truth, it is not I, personally, who am responsible, Excellency,” Judhael replied, gazing up at him raptly. “My Lord Creoda felt it wisest if I knew none of the details of my family’s involvement. Apparently that was a wise precaution. When General Morgan questioned me about the attempt on Duncan McLain’s life last week, I was honestly able to say that I knew nothing. ’Tis said the Deryni can make a man speak the truth whether he will nor no.”

  “The Deryni. Aye.” Loris’ eyes took on a dangerous, preoccupied glint. “They also say the traitor archbishops plan to make McLain a bishop at Eastertide. A Deryni bishop! Blasphemy! Blasphem
y!”

  “Yes, Excellency,” Judhael murmured meekly.

  His tone seemed to remind Loris where he was, and the archbishop’s expression softened as he looked down at Judhael again and smiled, raising him to his feet.

  “But, more of the Deryni and their accursed race later. ’Tis also said that your bishopric has been given to another, my son. Do you intend to stand for that?”

  Judhael looked a little taken aback. “I am not certain I have any say in the matter, Excellency. I am eager to serve, of course, but Henry Istelyn now holds the See of Meara directly from Archbishop Bradene and the king. What of him?”

  “What of him?” Loris replied. “I am Primate of Gwynedd—not Bradene. Are you willing to accept a slightly less pretentious title than Bishop of Meara, to unsettle these dissident bishops who have usurped my position and yours?”

  Creoda’s brow furrowed in question. “What title did you have in mind, Excellency?”

  “Bishop of Ratharkin,” Loris said. “Because the Meara you know today is not the Meara which will exist when we are finished. We will take back the ancient Mearan lands when I confound the heretic Duncan McLain—who shall never enter into his lands as prince and prelate while I breathe—and you, Creoda, shall be Patriarch of the new Mearan state,” he finished pointedly. “Does that please you?”

  Creoda flushed with pleasure. “A promotion for all of us, my lord. Of course I am pleased. And allegiance to the rightful queen upon the throne of Meara?”

  “Perhaps to a queen of far more than only Meara,” Loris said softly. “It is not only in the episcopate that the Deryni taint has cast its pall.”

  Creoda blanched. “The king?”

  “He is Deryni, is he not?”

  Dhugal, following their conversation with growing horror, nearly gasped aloud at the implications. It took all his strength simply to close his eyes and force his body not to tense in outrage. The three clerics continued to discuss minor details of the flight to Ratharkin for several minutes, while Dhugal lay there numbly and tried to think what he could do to stop them. The clink of goblets jarred through the buzz of their further discussion, almost directly behind him, and suddenly he knew that their eyes were on him.