Deryni Checkmate

DUNCAN lunged and parried, feinted and recovered, as he fought to keep the attackers at bay. Blocking one assailant with the dagger in his left hand, he lashed out with his foot to kick away another man’s weapon.

But there was no time to press the advantage with four other swordsmen to take the place of one disarmed. A chance sword-thrust slipped past his guard on the right and would have finished him, had it not been for the mail, which deflected the blow. And before he could fully recover from that, another swung a flaming torch at his face.

He dodged and slipped on blood—luckily. For as he went down, a broadsword whistled past where his head had been—a blow that surely would have decapitated him, had it connected. He rolled with the fall and came to his feet with a short upward thrust that nearly disemboweled one man, then cut down the wielder of the torch with a desperate slash that also wounded another. Blood pumping from the man’s half-severed neck spattered Duncan and his attackers with crimson. The torch falling from the man’s lifeless fingers set the bloody straw alight.

The stench of burned blood was strong in Duncan’s nostrils as he made an attempt to stamp out the flames—but that was impossible while he was under attack. As he retreated before fire and swords, he nearly tripped over Morgan and a struggling assailant, who were grappling on the floor trying to choke one another, Warin’s man on top. Morgan, in his drug-befuddled weakness, was getting the worst of it.

Duncan shoved an attacker onto the blade of one of his fellows and raised his sword to finish Morgan’s opponent. As he did so, his sword arm was grabbed from behind, and someone else flung an arm around his neck in an effort to pull him over backwards. Wrenching his right arm free, Duncan rammed his elbow back in a short arc that caught Warin full in the stomach and sent him to the floor, sobbing for breath. He felt a dagger slide harmlessly off the mail covering his back, and then he was ducking to flip his second attacker over his head in a heap at his feet. It was Gorony.

Biting back a snarl of disgust, Duncan reached down and grabbed Gorony by the neck of his robe, stomped on the hand still holding the dagger until Gorony released it with an anguished cry. Then he jerked the priest roughly to his feet to shield himself from further attack, left arm across his throat to force obedience. Warin’s two remaining men fell back in confusion.

The men stopped, looked to Warin for guidance, but the rebel leader was still gasping for breath on the blood-drenched straw, in no condition to give orders. The man with the wounded leg had crawled to the side of a more seriously injured man and was trying to stanch his wounds. But there was no other movement in the chamber save for the growing flames behind them. Duncan, his reluctant captive in tow, edged his way back to Morgan and glanced down to see his cousin straddling a dead or unconscious assailant, exhaustedly beating the man’s bloody head against the wooden floor.

Morgan froze and seemed suddenly to regain awareness of his surroundings again. He glanced at Duncan in surprise, then looked down at the battered form beneath him. Reason returned in a rush, and he drew back to wipe his hands against his legs in horror.

“No time for that now. I want to get out of here,” Duncan said, eyeing the flames behind Warin’s men and beginning to edge toward the doors with his human shield. “And these fine gentlemen aren’t going to try to stop us, because killing a priest is very serious business. Almost as serious as killing two.”

“You are no true priest!” Gorony rasped, clawing ineffectually at Duncan’s arm and trying to ease the pressure across his throat. “You are a traitor to Holy Church! When His Excellency hears of this—”

“Yes, I’m sure His Excellency will be suitably horrified,” Duncan said impatiently, keeping a wary eye on Warin’s men as he and Morgan sidled toward the door to the outside. “Stop struggling, or you’re going to get your throat cut! Alaric, can you get that door open?”

The door was heavy, ornate, grilled with iron at the top and barred with a stout oak beam across black iron clamps. Morgan struggled to lift the bar, grunting with the effort, then eased it free. But as he pushed against the door itself, then pushed harder, nothing happened. As Duncan glanced behind to see what was holding them up, Warin climbed shakily to his feet, assisted by his two surviving men-at-arms, and moved slowly toward them.

Warin stopped about fifteen feet from Duncan and smiled as he spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “I can’t open it. Brother Balmoric locked it from the outside, at my order. Gorony may have been your insurance, sir, but Balmoric is mine. I don’t think you’re going to escape after all.”

He gestured behind him at the growing fire, and Duncan’s heart sank. The flames were rising at an alarming rate, singeing the inlaid panels lining the chamber and licking at the ancient paint on the carved cornices and moldings. Once the ceiling caught, which would be shortly, the flames would quickly eat their way up to the shrine itself. The place would become an inferno.

“Oh, splendid,” Morgan whispered, swallowing hard and gripping the bars of the door to keep from losing consciousness. “Duncan, do you remember what I’ve done to other locked doors?”

Duncan broke off and lowered his eyes, suddenly realizing what Morgan meant. Their only chance now was for Duncan to use his own Deryni powers to master the lock. And to do so in Gorony’s presence would be to reveal himself as Deryni, beyond question. As the being in the vision on the road had warned, the time would come when Duncan must make a choice. That time was now.

Transferring Gorony to Morgan’s grasp, Duncan gave him his dagger and sheathed his bloody sword. He raised an eyebrow in inquiry as Morgan adjusted his grip, but his cousin seemed to have things under control. Duncan could guess what the effort must be costing Alaric in his weakened condition, but there was no other way. With a sigh of resignation, Duncan turned his attention to the door.

The wood was warm and sleek beneath his fingers, and looking through the upper grating he could see where the lock mechanism must be. Placing his hands lightly over the lock, he closed his eyes and allowed his awareness to surround the mechanism, began feeling out the inner workings. Sweat poured from his brow, and his hands grew moist as he worked; but he was soon rewarded by a click from deep inside the door, followed by another, and then another. With a glance behind at Warin and his men, who had remained spellbound all the while, Duncan gave the door a strong push—and it opened.

“Let’s get out of here,” Duncan muttered under his breath, taking Gorony and pushing his cousin through the door as Warin and his men pressed forward. “Get to the horses and ride. I’ll catch up with you.”

As Morgan began scrambling up a short slope toward the front of the shrine, Duncan dragged the protesting Gorony through the door and closed it behind him, giving the lock a mental nudge to set the pins again. Warin and his men immediately crowded to the door grating to peer out, Warin screaming maledictions as Duncan urged Gorony up the hill.

Almost at the top, Duncan found his kinsman collapsed, staring in horror at a tall stake set in the ground amid piles of kindling. Iron chains hung from the stake, ready to fetter an unwilling victim, and a torch smoked and guttered in the wind before Morgan’s fascinated gaze.

At Duncan’s protest, Morgan had begun to drag himself toward the torch, crawling painfully on hands and knees to reach the flame. With a grimace of indecision, Duncan glanced over his shoulder at the shrine, back at Alaric, then roughly jerked Gorony around to face him.

“I’m letting you go, Gorony. Not because you deserve to live, but because that man needs me more than I need vengeance for what you’ve done to him. Now, get out of here before I change my mind!”

With a shove, he sent Gorony sprawling down the incline, then scrambled the few remaining feet to Morgan’s side. Morgan had reached the torch and was struggling to pull it from the ground, eyes glazed with the effort. With a cry Duncan wrenched the brand out of his cousin’s grasp and flung it into the kindling around the stake, watched for just an instant as the wood caught and began to blaze. Then he set his shoulder under Morgan’s arm and helped him to his feet, and the two began staggering the rest of the way up the slope.

Far to the right, the monk Balmoric and a handful of foot soldiers came running down the incline toward the barred door and Gorony. One made as though to break away and pursue the two escapees, but Balmoric gave a curt hand signal and snarled something Duncan could not catch. The man continued down the slope.

The shrine was burning. Through the confusion Duncan and Morgan finally made their way to the paddock area. As smoke and flames billowed from the shrine, fed by the massive wooden foundations beneath the structure, Duncan boosted Morgan onto his horse and wrapped the reins around his hand, then vaulted into his own saddle. Guiding his horse only by the pressure of his knees, he led the way out of Saint Torin’s yard, flying hooves throwing a shower of mud over travelers passing beneath the arms of the forest saint. Morgan galloped at his heels but a half length behind, clinging to his horse’s neck with a desperation born of the ordeal he had just undergone, eyes tightly closed. As Duncan glanced back, he could see Saint Torin’s in flames, black smoke billowing up against the gray thunderheads; and the furious Warin and Gorony silhouetted against the blaze, shaking their fists at the escaping Deryni. There was no pursuit.

With a mirthless chuckle, Duncan leaned forward on his horse’s neck to retrieve the dangling reins, then pulled up slightly so that Morgan’s horse could draw even. His cousin was hardly in any condition even to ride just now, much less to make critical decisions, but Duncan was sure he would agree that their best plan now lay in getting to Kelson as soon as possible. Once this morning’s news reached the archbishops, Kelson would probably be the next target of ecclesiastical censure. And Duncan knew that Alaric would want to be at the boy’s side when and if that happened.

Of course, any appeal to the Curia in Dhassa was out of the question after this morning’s events. Both he and Alaric would probably be excommunicated and outlawed by nightfall. Nor could they return to Corwyn in safety. Once the Interdict fell—and he had little doubt now that it would—there was a distinct possibility of civil war in Corwyn. Alaric would be in no condition to cope with that for several days at least.

Duncan reached across and took Morgan’s reins, touching spurs to his mount as thunder rumbled ominously. Alaric must rest before too long. Perhaps at Saint Neot’s, where they had camped last night. In fact, if they were lucky, Duncan might even be able to locate a working Transfer Portal in the ruins. Alaric had mentioned an altar to Saint Camber. A Portal might not be far away. And it could save them more than a day’s ride to Rhemuth and Kelson, if they could find it.

Large raindrops began to fall, and lightning flared across the darkening skies. Resigning himself to traveling in the rain, Duncan settled into his saddle to ride hard and keep a watchful eye on Morgan.

They would be riding into the storm in more ways than one now. In a very short while, Gorony would be telling the archbishops about Morgan’s capture and escape, and how one Duncan Howard McLain had come to the rescue; and how that same Monsignor McLain, King’s Confessor and one-time promising star of the lower ecclesiastical hierarchy, was also a Deryni sorcerer.

Loris, Corrigan, several of their assistants and clerks, and a fair number of Gwynedd’s bishops had been informally assembled in the Bishop of Dhassa’s drawing room when the news came. Monsignor Gorony, his robes bloodied and dripping with mud, had come staggering into the room at mid-afternoon and flung himself to the floor at Loris’s feet. As the clergy listened with growing horror, Gorony had gasped out the story of the morning’s ordeal: the thwarted capture, his personal peril, the perfidy of the two Deryni called Morgan and McLain.

Yes, he was sure Morgan’s companion had been Duncan McLain. The suspended priest even knew he had been recognized, had known Gorony, called him by name, had actually threatened him with sacrilegious murder if he did not obey!

With that Loris had exploded, venting his spleen on Morgan, Duncan, the Deryni, and circumstances in general. Corrigan and the others had followed suit, indignation so heavy on the air that one could almost taste it. Now the dispute went on, in small, vehement groups. Though degrees might differ, there was little question that terrible things had happened at Saint Torin’s, and that appropriate action must be taken.

Bishop Cardiel, in whose chambers the debate raged, cast a sidelong glance across the room at his colleague Arilan and then returned his attention to a side argument between the aging Carsten of Meara and Creoda of Carbury. Arilan nodded to himself and suppressed a small smile as he continued to study Loris and Corrigan in action.

Thomas Cardiel and Denis Arilan, at forty-one and thirty-eight respectively, were Gwynedd’s two youngest bishops. Next youngest after them came the fifty-year-old Tolliver of Coroth, Morgan’s bishop, with the rest of the episcopacy grouped predominantly in their late sixties.

But besides age, there was at least one other important difference between Cardiel and Arilan and most of the other bishops present. For the most junior members of the Curia were finding Loris’s unseemly outburst almost amusing. They were not amused by the threats Loris was making; both were secretly in sympathy with the Deryni Morgan, who had protected their young king so ably during the coronation crisis last fall. And Duncan McLain had, for a time, been a rather promising protégé of the fiery Bishop Arilan.

Nor were they happy about this Warin person whom Gorony had mentioned. Neither liked the idea of an anti-Deryni religious fanatic running around loose in the countryside, and they were decidedly offended that Loris had presumed to sanction Warin’s movement on his own, even if unofficially.

On the other hand, it was quite satisfying that the ineffable Morgan had once again managed to make Loris out an idiot. Cardiel, a relative outsider by dint of being Dhassa’s traditionally neutral bishop, had only an academic interest in whether or not Loris was, indeed, a fool. But Arilan knew it was so and relished this public proof of the fact. The young Auxiliary Bishop of Rhemuth had had to put up with what he considered fanatic foolishness far too many times to be impressed just because Loris was Primate of Gwynedd. Perhaps what Gwynedd needed was a new primate.

Not that Arilan had any delusions that he might be that new man. He would be the first to admit that he was far too young and inexperienced. But the scholarly Bradene of Grecotha, or Ifor of Marbury, or even de Lacey of Stavenham would be much superior to Edmund Loris as Archbishop of Valoret.

As for Loris’s colleague and Arilan’s immediate superior, the blustering Patrick Corrigan—well, perhaps the Archbishopric of Rhemuth could stand some new blood, too. And that was not necessarily out of Arilan’s reach.

Loris finally managed to curb his temper and stop shouting. As he stood at his place and raised both hands for silence, his clergy gradually ceased their railing and took their seats. Younger priests and clerks in the service of the bishops pressed closer to their masters to hear what the archbishop would say. Total silence descended, save for the raspy breathing of old Bishop Carsten.

“My lords, we beg your indulgence for our recent outburst. As you are doubtless aware, the Deryni heresy has been a special interest of ours for many years. Frankly, we are not surprised at Morgan’s actions. Indeed, we could have predicted them. But to discover that one of our own clergy, a nobleman’s son and a member of the monsignori, at that, is a”—he forced himself to say the word without embellishment—“is a Deryni—” He paused to swallow his anger before continuing.

“Again we must apologize for our excess of emotion, my lords. Now, as reason returns, and we further contemplate what this discovery of deception in our midst means to the Church in Gwynedd, we realize that there is but one way to proceed from this point, at least with the heretic priest McLain. That is excommunication: excommunication, degradation from the priesthood, and, if the Curia will allow it, execution as the treacherous Deryni heretic that he is.

“We recognize that the second and third sanctions require time-consuming legislation by this august body, and we are prepared to accede to the proper procedures.” His sharp blue eyes scanned the room. “But it is within our jurisdiction as Primate of Gwynedd to declare that Duncan Howard McLain and his infamous cousin Alaric Anthony Morgan shall be declared anathema. Archbishop Corrigan, our brother of Rhemuth and McLain’s immediate superior, supports us in this declaration. We trust that as many of you as see fit will join us for the rite of excommunication after Compline tonight.”

Uneasy discussion rippled around the room, but Loris cut it off sharply. “There surely can be no question of conscience in this matter, my lords. Morgan and McLain have this day most foully murdered good and loyal sons of the Church; have threatened the life of our servant Monsignor Gorony, an ordained priest; have used vile and forbidden magic in a consecrated place. Looking back, we must even surmise that McLain was probably responsible for much that occurred at the coronation of our beloved King Kelson last fall. For that, he and Morgan share double blame.” His gaze swept the room once more. “Is there any dissension? If so, feel free to speak.”

“Very well, then.” Loris nodded. “We shall expect all of you to assist in the rite of excommunication this evening. Tomorrow we shall decide what further action, if any, is to be taken in this specific matter. In addition, we shall again discuss what is to be done with Morgan’s Duchy of Corwyn. It may be that we shall yet be obliged to lower the Interdict we discussed earlier. Until this evening, my lords.”

With a short bow, Loris took leave of his clergy and glided out of the room, followed by Corrigan, Corrigan’s clerk, Father Hugh de Berry, and a half-dozen other assistants and scribes. As soon as the door had closed behind them, the rest of the occupants broke into heated debate once more.

Bishop Arilan, at first following the discussion between Bishops Bradene and Tolliver, looked up at the sound of his name above the din and saw Cardiel signal from across the room. Taking his leave of the two more senior bishops, he made his way through the throng of railing prelates and clerks surrounding his host bishop and inclined his head in question.

Cardiel returned the bow without a hint of emotion. “I had thought to retire to my private chapel to meditate on this grave crisis that has come upon us, my lord Arilan,” he replied, leaning closer to Arilan’s ear, trying to make himself heard. “It occurred to me that you might care to join me. As our elder brethren retire to their own deliberations, I expect the Curia chapel will become somewhat crowded.”

Arilan controlled a smile and inclined his head graciously as he waved dismissal to his attendants. “I should be most honored, my lord. And perhaps our joint prayers will be of some use in assuaging the anger of the Lord against our brother Duncan. To damn any priest of God, even a Deryni one, must needs be a serious matter. Do you not agree?”

“We are in complete accord, my brother,” Cardiel replied, as they slipped out through a private door. “I believe we might also meditate on the merits of this Warin person whom the good Monsignor Gorony mentioned in his somewhat hysterical report.”

Guarded nods were exchanged with a pair of monks passing in the corridor, and then they were entering the secluded and sound-proofed private chapel of the Bishop of Dhassa. As the doors closed, Arilan finally allowed his smile to escape without restraint, leaned easily against the doors as Cardiel struck light to a candle beside him.

“Warin is only part of the issue, of course,” Arilan said, squinting as the candle fire flared. “But while we’re discussing him, I would suggest a careful study of this Interdict notion that Loris seems determined to foist upon us. I don’t see how we can fail to support the excommunication and remain in good standing with the Curia. The facts are there, and Morgan and McLain appear to be at least technically guilty as charged. But I totally reject the idea of Interdict unless the people of Corwyn should refuse to honor the Curia’s excommunication of their duke.”

Cardiel snorted as he took his candle to the front of the chapel and lit a pair of candles on the altar. “I am not certain I could support the Interdict even then, Denis. Frankly, I am not convinced that Morgan and McLain did anything but defend themselves. And even the inherent evil of Deryni magic is highly questionable, to my way of thinking.”

“But you do,” Cardiel said confidently. He glanced at the red Presence lamp hanging from the ceiling and nodded toward it. “And He for whom that light burns understands. We three are enough for now.”

Arilan smiled again and settled back in the front pew. “We are enough,” he agreed. “So let us discuss how to make us more than three; what things might be done and said to change Loris’s plans when the time is right.”