Deryni Checkmate (37 page)

Kelson pushed himself away from the casement and touched Morgan’s elbow, gesturing toward the state bed in the far corner. “Let’s agree not to worry about that for now. You’re exhausted and you need rest. Why don’t you lie down for a while, and I’ll wake you when it’s time. We can decide what to do later.”

Morgan nodded and let himself be guided to the bed, unbuckling his sword and letting it slip to the floor as he sank down on the edge. Only then did he speak of Bronwyn.

“Dear God, she was so young,” he murmured, letting Kelson unfasten the cloak at his throat and take it from his shoulders. “And Kevin—he wasn’t even Deryni, yet he died, too. And all because of this senseless hatred, this
differentness
. . .”

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes briefly, then gazed up exhaustedly at the brocaded canopy overhead. “The darkness closes in more every day, Kelson,” he murmured, forcing himself to relax. “It comes from every side, all at once. And the only thing holding it back is me, and Duncan, and you . . .”

As he drifted into exhausted sleep, Kelson watched anxiously, easing himself to sit on the edge of the bed when he was sure Morgan was asleep. He studied his friend’s face for a long time, clutching Morgan’s mud-stained leather cloak against his chest, then reached out cautiously to place his hand on Morgan’s forehead. Clearing his mind carefully, he closed his eyes and extended his senses.

Fatigue . . . grief . . . pain . . . beginning with the first news when Duncan had appeared at Coroth . . . The peril of impending Interdict and Morgan’s concern for his people . . . Derry’s scouting expedition . . . The assassination attempt and the sorrow of young Richard FitzWilliam’s death. Derry’s report of Warin and the miracle of healing . . . Remembrances of Brion, of the king’s pride the day Kelson was born . . . The eerie search in the ruined chapel, disclosing nothing . . .

Saint Torin’s . . . deception, treachery, whirling chaos and blackness, dimly remembered . . . The chill fear of awakening totally powerless, in the grip of merasha, of knowing you are the captive of one who has vowed to destroy you and all your kind . . . Escape: a long, numb ride, mostly in a merciful haze of semi-consciousness while mind and powers return . . . And then grief at the loss of a beloved sister, a much-loved cousin . . . And sleep, merciful oblivion, at least for a few hours, secure . . . safe . . .

With a shiver, Kelson withdrew mind and hand and opened his eyes. Morgan slept peacefully now, sprawled on his back in the center of the wide state bed, oblivious to all. Kelson stood and shook out the cloak he had been holding, spread it over the sleeping form, then snuffed out the candles beside the bed and returned to his desk.

The next hours would not be easy for anyone, least of all Morgan—and Duncan. But meanwhile, the business of trying to preserve order in chaos must go on; and he must be strong now, while Morgan could not help him.

With a last glance at the sleeping Morgan, Kelson settled at the desk and pulled the parchment document toward him, turned it face-up, picked up pen and the scrap of paper he and Derry had been working on when Morgan came.

Nigel must be told now: the whole grim business. He must be told of Bronwyn and Kevin’s deaths, of the excommunication, of the impending danger on two fronts, once the Interdict fell. For Wencit of Torenth would not wait while Gwynedd ironed out its domestic problems. The Deryni warlord would take full advantage of the confusion in Gwynedd, the threat of holy war.

Kelson sighed and reread the letter. The news was grim, no matter how one tried to approach it. There was no way to tell it but to begin.

DUNCAN knelt alone in the small vesting chapel adjoining Saint Teilo’s Church and stared into the flame of a Presence light beside the tiny altar. He was rested now. He had applied the Deryni methods of banishing fatigue about as often as he dared, and he felt as fit as could be expected. But though he was clean and shaven now, and had donned his priestly garb again, his heart was not in what he must do next. He no longer had the right to put on the black silk stole and chasuble, the sacred vestments he must wear to celebrate his brother’s requiem.

Celebrate,
he thought ironically. There was more than one reason he was reluctant to vest. For he knew in the back of his mind that this would likely be the last time, that he might never again be permitted to participate in the sacraments of the Church that had been his life for all his twenty-nine years.

He bowed his head and tried to pray, but the words would not come. Or rather, the words came, but they rolled through his mind as meaningless phrases, bringing no comfort. Who would ever have thought he would have to be the one to consign his own brother and Morgan’s sister to the grave? Who would have thought it would come to this?

He heard the door open softly behind him and turned his head. Old Father Anselm was standing in the doorway in cassock, surplice, and black stole, his head bowed in apology at having disturbed Duncan. He glanced at the vestment rack beside Duncan, at the black silk chasuble hanging there, still undonned, then looked at Duncan.

“I don’t wish to rush you, Monsignor, but it’s nearly time. Is there anything I may do to help?”

Duncan shook his head and turned back to face the altar.

“Are they ready to begin?”

“Very nearly. The family is in place, the procession is forming. But you have a few more minutes.”

Duncan bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Father. I’ll be there directly.”

He heard the door close softly behind him and lifted his head. The figure above the altar was a beneficent, loving God, he was sure. He would understand what Duncan was about to do, why he must defy ecclesiastical authority just this once. Surely He would not judge Duncan too harshly.

With a sigh, Duncan rose and pulled the black stole from its peg, touched it to his lips, and looped it over his head, secured the crossed ends under the silk cord binding the waist of his alb. Then he donned the chasuble, adjusting the folds to fall as they should. He paused and looked down at himself for a long moment, smoothed the silver-outlined cross emblazoned heavy on the front of the black silk. Then he bowed toward the altar and moved to the door to join the procession, a prayer on his lips.

Everything must be perfect this time, all as it should be: a perfect offering for what would, in all probability, be the last time.

Morgan sat numbly in the second pew behind the coffins, Kelson to his right, Jared and Margaret to his left, all of them dressed in black. Behind were Derry, Gwydion, a host of Duke Jared’s councilors and retainers, members of the ducal household; and behind them, as many of the people of Culdi as could squeeze into the tiny church. Both Bronwyn and Kevin had been well-loved in Culdi, and the people now mourned their deaths as did their families.

The morning was sunny but fog-shrouded outside, the air nipped with the last cold of the season. But inside, Saint Teilo’s was dark, solemn, ghostly, with the dim flicker of funeral tapers instead of the nuptial candles that would have burned if things had happened differently.

Heavy funeral candlesticks were ranged to either side of the two coffins set side by side in the center of the transept, and the coffins themselves were draped with black velvet palls. A painted shield of the appropriate family rested on each sable-draped coffin, and Morgan forced himself to blazon each one in his mind, in grieving memory of those who lay within.

McLain:
Argent
, three roses
gules
; on a chief
azure
, a lion dormant
argent
, the whole surmounted by Kevin’s mark of cadency—an
argent
label of three points.

Morgan: (Morgan’s throat constricted, and he forced himself to go on.)
Sable
, a gryphon sergeant
vert
, within a double tressure flory counter-flory
or
—this on a lozenge instead of a shield. For Bronwyn.

Unbidden tears blurred Morgan’s vision, and he forced himself to gaze beyond the coffins to where candles blazed on the altar, their golden glow reflected in the polished silver and gold of the candlesticks and altar furnishings.

But the altar frontal was black, the gilded figures shrouded in black. And as the choir began to intone the entrance chant, there was no way that Morgan could convince himself that this was anything but what it was: a funeral.

The celebrants began to process: cassocked and surpliced thurifer swinging pungent incense, crucifer with black-shrouded processional cross, altar boys bearing glowing silver candlesticks. Then the monks of Saint Teilo’s, with black stoles of mourning over their white habits and choir surplices; and Duncan, who would celebrate the Mass, pale in his black and silver vestments.

As the procession reached the chancel, splitting to either side so the celebrant could approach the altar, Morgan watched dully, made automatic responses as his cousin began the liturgy.

“Introibo ad altare Dei.”
I will go up to the altar of God.

Morgan sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands, unwilling to witness these last rites for those he loved. Only a few weeks ago, his sister had been alive and brimming with joy over her coming marriage to Kevin. Now, to be struck down in the fullness of her youth by magic, by one of her own kind . . .

Morgan decided he didn’t much like himself just now. He didn’t like Deryni, he didn’t like his powers, and he resented highly the fact that half the blood flowing in his veins came from that accursed race.

Why did it have to be this way? Why should one’s Deryni nature have to be hidden, forbidden, so that one felt ashamed of one’s powers, learned to hide them, perhaps for so long that, generations later, the skill to use those powers wisely was lost, but the power remained? Power that sometimes found its way to the hands of ignorant or deranged practitioners who would use it as something else, not even suspecting that the power came from an ancient and noble heritage, from a people called the Deryni.

And so an ignorant old Deryni woman who had not known, who had been forced, years ago perhaps, to sublimate her powers—or whose parents had—had tried to work simple magic for a lovesick young man—and had killed instead.

Nor was that the worst of it. Of all the problems facing them in the weeks and months to come,
every single one
could be traced in some way to the Deryni question. Deryniness was the issue that had put the Church at odds with magic for over three centuries, now threatening to rend it further in all ill-timed holy war. Deryniness, and the violent hatreds it evoked in ordinary men, had led Warin de Grey to imagine himself called to destroy Deryni, starting with Alaric Morgan. And that had brought them to the disastrous episode at Saint Torin’s, culminating in his and Duncan’s excommunications.

Deryniness had led to the crisis at Kelson’s coronation last fall, when the sorceress Charissa had made her bid to “regain” the throne she believed her Deryni father should have occupied; had led Kelson to assume his father’s Deryni-given powers to defeat her; had made Jehana, fiercely loyal mother of the young king, stop at nothing to try to protect her son from the evil she believed inherent in the Deryni—though she herself was of the high Deryni born, and had not known.

And who could say that the impending war with Wencit of Torenth was not related to the Deryni question, as well? Was not Wencit a full Deryni lord, born to the total power of his ancient race in a land that accepted that magic? And was it not rumored that he was allying himself with other Deryni, that there might be truth to the fears of the common folk that a rise of Deryni power in the east might lead once more to a Deryni dictatorship like the one three hundred years ago?—to the detriment of the human population, it might be added.

All in all, whether or not one believed in the inherent evil of Deryniness, it was a difficult time to be Deryni, a difficult time to have to accept oneself as a member of that magical race. Right now, if Morgan had had the choice, he might very well have been tempted to cast out the Deryni part of himself and be just human, to deny his powers and renounce them forever, as Archbishop Loris had demanded.

Morgan raised his head and tried to pull himself together, forced himself to watch and listen as Duncan continued with the Mass.

He had been very selfish during the past few minutes, he realized. He was not the only Deryni suffering agonies of the soul right now. What of Duncan? What angel must he be wrestling, as he defied suspension and excommunication to appear in the guise and function of a priest?

Morgan was far too distraught to try to catch Duncan’s thoughts as he presided at what might well be his last liturgical function. Besides, he would not have thought of intruding on Duncan’s private grief. But there was no question in Morgan’s mind that his cousin was enduring much as he went through the ritual of the Mass. The Church had been Duncan’s life until today. Now he was defying that Church, even though only Morgan, Kelson, and Derry knew he did so, to pay this last token of respect and love for a brother and an almost sister who were dead. Duncan, too, would be finding it difficult to be Deryni.

“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,”
Duncan intoned. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us . . .

Morgan bowed his head and repeated the words under his breath with the congregation, though the words brought little comfort. It would be long before he would be able to reconcile what had happened two days ago with the will of God; long before he would be able to be as certain again that there was good in the powers he had carried all his life. Right now, responsibility for what had happened to Bronwyn and Kevin weighed heavy on his soul.

Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof. Speak but the word and my soul shall be healed.