The Harrowing of Gwynedd (4 page)

“And if you do weave magic against them, what then?” Revan said, grasping Queron's sleeve and jerking his face closer. “Can't you see that you'd be doing exactly the thing that the regents say Deryni do? Is that what you want?”

“How dare you presume to instruct
me
?” Queron snapped, icy anger keeping his words all but inaudible. “Take your hands off me and stay out of my way. Do it
now
, Revan!”

Wordlessly Revan had released him, apparently cowed. But as Queron sank back on his heels, preparing to unleash magical retribution, Revan had shifted the olivewood staff hitherto nestled in the crook of his arm and cudgeled Queron smartly behind the left ear. Queron crumpled into the snow without a sound, his vision going black, and Revan's voice had seemed to come from a long way off.

“Sorry, m'lord, but throwing your life away is
stupid
!” Revan had murmured, as he rooted in Queron's scrip for a Healer's drug kit. “Gabrilite or not, I can't let you do that.”

That had been the end of their quarrel. With the sedative Revan gave him in melted snow, Queron had drowsed the afternoon through, never quite unconscious, but too groggy to offer further resistance of any kind. He had dreamed then, too, haunted by the images of his brethren being tortured and killed, the nightmare embellished and intensified by the sounds that floated up from the yard beyond.

Gradually, the winter shadows lengthened. Slowly the heart-wrenching screams and the gabble and gurgle of dying gave way to the hungry crackle of the flames and then the softer whisper of a rising wind and the feather of new snow falling, mercifully muffling some of the horror.

More wind wailed somewhere outside Queron's present dream, and he bit back a groan as he stirred in his haystack hollow. Again he tried to claw his way up to consciousness, out of the nightmare, but still it held him fast. He whimpered a little as it dragged him into its depths again, not wanting to remember what he had learned from Revan when he woke that other time, there on the slope above Dolban.

“It's over now,” Revan had said softly, leaning heavily on his olivewood staff and looking for all the world like some latter-day John the Baptist—which was precisely what Revan intended. Suddenly Queron had found himself wondering whether that made any more sense than what the men below had done.

“I know it doesn't make any sense,” Revan had said, when Queron did not speak—as if he somehow had caught Queron's very thought, though the Healer knew that was impossible. “What possible sense could there be, much less any modicum of justice, to burn to death more than three-score men and women simply because they chose to honor and revere the memory of a man they believed holy?”

“Is
that
why they did it?” Queron had whispered, his vision blurring anew as he gazed down at the blackened stakes in the yard, and the soldiers moving among them.

“More or less.” Revan had turned his head to look Queron in the eye. “I spoke with several of my Willimite ‘brethren' while you were asleep,” he said quietly. “They, in turn, had spoken with several of the soldiers down below. Apparently, the orders came directly from the bishops in council at Ramos. Go ahead and read the details for yourself. I'm not afraid.”

And Revan was
not
afraid, though a lesser man might have had ample reason to be, after physically assaulting a Deryni of Queron's ability. As Queron lightly touched the younger man's wrist and began to focus, trying not to make the physical contact too obvious to anyone watching, he was surprised and humbled by the younger man's fearless trust. Though Revan could not have stopped his doing anything he wanted, Reading was always easier with the subject's active cooperation.

But the wonder of that discovery was blunted almost immediately by what Queron had learned—that the abbey's own patron saint was at least indirectly responsible for the attack. The men now gaining ascendancy in Gwynedd, regents for the twelve-year-old King Alroy, had declared Dolban's patron, the Deryni Saint Camber, to be no saint at all, but a heretic and traitor—and therein lay Dolban's fate.

Nevermore was the name of Camber MacRorie to be spoken in Gwynedd, on pain of consequences almost too terrible to comprehend. Henceforth, a first offense would merit public flogging, with the offender's tongue forfeit for a second utterance—which accounted for the pincers and knives Queron had seen. And only that special death reserved for heretics would answer for further intransigence.

Not that Saint Camber's Servants at Dolban could have known in time how they transgressed the law—or would have cared, had they known, for their devotion to the Deryni saint had been unswerving for more than a decade. The edict rescinding Camber's sainthood and declaring the penalties for defying that edict had only been promulgated the day before, many miles away in Ramos. Their enemies had never intended to give them any advance warning. The first inkling of their plight would have been when the regents' soldiers—episcopal troops, at that—swarmed into the abbey yard and began taking prisoners.

All surely had heard the edict read as the floggings began, however, and had ample time to contemplate the full measure of the edict's horror as the executioners began their grisly work with pincers and knives. Tongueless, the condemned could not even plead ignorance of the law, or recant, or beg for mercy, as the soldiers piled the kindling high around the rows of stakes and passed among them with their torches.

Stunned at the legalism behind the savagery he had witnessed, tears streaming down his cheeks, Queron had withdrawn from Re-van's mind, burying his face in his hands to weep silently.

“Forgive me for my earlier lapse,” he finally had whispered, mindful that the breeze had shifted upwind of them and would carry sound down to the guards below—though at least it no longer brought them the stench of burned flesh. “You were entirely correct that magic would not have been the answer.”

Wiping at his tears with the back of his hands, he had summoned the courage to look up at Revan humbly.

“Rhys taught you well,” he went on quietly. “If I'd been thinking clearly, I suppose I should have expected you might hit me over the head. But I never thought to be drugged from my own Healer's kit.”

Revan managed a hint of a bitter smile, turning his light brown eyes on Queron only briefly. “Be thankful I didn't dose you with
merasha
. You'd still be out of action. I couldn't let you go to certain death, though, now could I?”

“I suppose not.”

Sighing, Queron fingered the end of his grey-streaked Gabrilite braid where it had escaped from under his hood, knowing that a painful decision was approaching.

“I think I've been away from my Gabrilite Order far too long,” he had whispered. “It becomes all too easy to forget that I swore never to kill. I suppose that goes for killing myself as well as other men—though there are a few down below who could do with killing.”

He glanced at the dimming yard below, at the torches moving among the burned-out stakes as the guards patrolled the last of the dying fires, then looked back at Revan thoughtfully.

“It will be dark soon. I think it might be healthiest for both of us if I went on alone.”

“Why?” Revan had asked. “No one suspects who you are.”

“Not
who
, no.” He held up the end of his braid. “But if anyone were to see this, they might suspect
what
. It isn't necessarily true that only Gabrilites and the Servants of Saint Camber wear braids more or less like this, but in this vicinity, given what's just happened down there, it strikes me that such a symbol might cause—ah—dangerous questions to be asked. I wonder, are your barbering skills as good as your medical ones?”

Revan had blinked and looked at him strangely.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“I want you to cut it off for me, Revan.” Queron pulled the braid over his shoulder. “I've had this a long time, and losing it will not be without cost, but I'm afraid it's become more of a liability than an asset. Our founders never meant it to be a betrayal unto death—mine or yours.”

Revan shifted uneasily, but he pulled from his belt the little knife he used for cutting bread and cheese, fingering its edge uncertainly as Queron turned his back.

“Go ahead,” the Healer murmured. “Don't worry about finesse. Just hack it off. We haven't got all night.”

He tried to make himself relax as Revan gingerly took hold of the braid and worked his fingers up toward the base of Queron's neck where the plaiting began, sensing Revan's surprise and curiosity when he discovered that the braid was composed of four strands rather than the more common three—though Revan did not ask about it.

“We call the braid a
g'dula
,” Queron said quietly, taut as a catapult as Revan began sawing across the wiry mass with his knife. “The four strands have a special symbolism for us. I mayn't tell you what it is, beyond the obvious connection with the four Archangels and the four Quarters, but since I'm sure you noticed, it seemed only fair to tell you.” He sighed heavily and suppressed a shudder. “No blade has touched my hair since I took my first vows—it's been nearly twenty-five years ago now. The braid will have to be ritually burned, when time and place permit.”

Cutting the braid had been a psychic wrench as well as a physical one, and Queron, reliving the trauma in his dream, twitched in his sleep and startled awake at last, all at once, one hand automatically groping toward the scrip at his waist. His heart was pounding, his breathing rapid and alarmed, but the braid was still there, wound in a tight coil the size of his fist.

Thank God!

Gradually, the panic past, his heart rate and breathing returned to normal. After a while, very cautiously, he began burrowing out of his haystack, squinting increasingly against the glare of the early morning sun on snowdrifts, for the “barn” sheltering the hay was a roof only, supported by four stout posts, and the roof itself was none too sound. He knew he must deal with the
g'dula
soon—which probably would stop the nightmares—but right now, his first priority was to find Saint Mary's Abbey. The goodwife who had given him beggar's fare of bread and hot, thick stew, the previous noon, had said she
thought
there was a small monastery in the hills not far from here, but she had not known its name. It
might
be Saint Mary's.

God willing, it would be the
right
Saint Mary's this time, Queron thought, as he emerged stiffly from his fragrant cocoon, pulling his mantle more closely around himself and brushing off bits of hay. The name seemed all too popular in this part of the world, notwithstanding Queron's personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin. He had had enough of false alarms since arriving in these hills above Culdi, several days before—and of dodging mounted patrols of the new Earl of Culdi's men. Far more often than he had hoped, in the two weeks since leaving Dolban, he had had to abandon perfectly good lodgings to avoid a possibly fatal confrontation with men sympathetic to the regents' most recent atrocities.

Nor had he dared to be too blatant in the use of his powers to improve the situations. In these troubled times, simply
being
Deryni seemed likely to bring about one's death, whether or not one actually used his or her magical powers.

But perhaps today would be different. At least the storm seemed to have blown itself out. His hood had slipped back from his head while he fretted and squirmed in the grip of his nightmare, and he combed stiff fingers through his shorn hair as he surveyed the morning. Nothing stirred to break the pristine silence of the new snowfall on this cold winter's morn.

So then, briefly lamenting the past month's lack of a razor, he covered his head again and knelt to make his morning offering of praise and thanksgiving, as he did each day on rising. And today, as always, he raised defiant prayers to Camber of Culdi, whose lands these once had been, and who was and would remain a saint, so far as Queron Kinevan was concerned.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

They were killed, but by accursed men, and such as had taken up an unjust envy against them
.

—I Clement 20:7

Snow began to fall again by midafternoon, but the sky stayed bright. Queron drew his hood closer as he approached the gate of yet another tiny abbey, raising a numb, mittened hand to shade his eyes against the snow glare and study the thin curls of smoke eddying upward from several sets of chimneys.

At least no horses appeared to have been this way today—a fair indication that he would find no soldiers about. And the smoke meant that he might hope for a hot meal and a chance to warm himself in the abbey's parlor. His booted feet were near frozen after another day's trudging through the snow, his cloak and hood rimed with ice. With any luck, this might even turn out to be the Saint Mary's he was looking for—though he had had enough disappointments in the last few days not to expect too much.

No horses stood in the yard of this new abbey, either—another good sign that the place was safe. As Queron paused at the open gate, cautiously casting out with his mind for danger, a middle-aged monk in a black habit and mantle came down off the catwalk over the gate arch and made him a deferential bow, hands tucked into sleeve openings, as was seemly.

“The blessings of God Almighty be upon you, good traveler,” the monk said. “May I offer you the humble hospitality of Saint Mary's?”

Mentally allowing himself a tiny sigh of relief—for at least this was
one
of the local Saint Mary's—Queron swept back his hood and returned the man's bow, hoping his tonsure had not grown out so far as to be totally unrecognizable.

“Thank you, brother,” he murmured. “Who gives charity unasked gives twice. God will surely bless this house. May I ask the name of your abbot?”