CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

An enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips, but in his heart he imagineth how to throw thee into a pit: he will weep with his eyes, but if he find opportunity, he will not be satisfied with blood.

—Ecclesiasticus 12:16

In a dim underground passageway deep beneath Caerrorie, Rhys had his hands full trying to comfort the devastated brother of Davin MacRorie. From Camber to Joram the word of Davin’s death had gone, shattering Joram’s composure all the way in Argoed, where he and Jebediah had waited for Camber to join them for Michaelmas. The two Michaelines had returned to Camber, via Portals, as quickly as they could decently make their excuses to their vicar general. The details of the tragedy they read from a still-stunned Camber before deploying to gather the others, Joram to bring Rhys and Evaine from Sheele and Jebediah to try to find Gregory. To Rhys it befell to bring back the next MacRorie heir.

Ansel had known, of course. Rhys found the seventeen-year-old Ansel huddled miserably in the passageway outside the Portal chamber, arms clasped around his knees, tear-bright eyes lifted in dread expectation as the panel slid aside to disclose Rhys. He scrambled to his feet as the Healer emerged, stumbling blindly into the older man’s arms and weeping bitterly as Rhys’s hand stroked the silver-gilt hair in futile comfort. Several minutes passed before Ansel regained sufficient composure to speak, but Rhys did not try to hurry him. The bond Ansel had shared with his older brother had been far stronger and of longer duration than even Camber’s tie.

“Oh, God, I felt him go, Rhys!” Ansel finally managed to choke out. He sniffled and swallowed with difficulty, a loud, painful gulp. “I couldn’t tell exactly how it happened, but I knew! The master of horse must have thought I was having a seizure or something.”

“I know,” Rhys murmured, keeping an arm around Ansel’s shoulders as the young man smeared an already damp sleeve across his eyes.

“What—what did happen?” Ansel asked, after a few more deep breaths to regain better control.

“There was a hawking expedition,” Rhys said quietly. “The princes’ party was ambushed by Deryni, at least six or so. We don’t yet know who they were or why they did it, but Davin took an arrow apparently meant for Rhys Michael. It—entered in the lower back, damaging his spine in passing, and lodged against one of the major blood vessels, Alister says.”

Ansel winced and bit at his lip to keep from groaning, but he did not interrupt as Rhys took a deep breath and continued.

“The injury was—very severe, and Davin knew it. He assessed the damage, and his chances of surviving, while still keeping his shield integrity from Tavis, and decided not to allow Tavis to try to Heal him. After the initial wound, there would have been very little pain. He was even able to receive the last rites through Alister before inducing an unwitting guard to ease him on his way.”

“You mean, he—let himself die?” Ansel whispered incredulously.

Rhys sighed. “Ansel, try to understand. He knew that trying to remove the arrow would almost certainly kill him. He also knew that Tavis would discover that he was Deryni, the instant the Healer tried to work on him, and that he would try to force his shields. There was also the probability of drugs being used to force his cooperation.”

“Oh, God!” Ansel moaned.

“So he set mental triggers to prevent Tavis from being able to work a death-reading,” Rhys continued softly, “and then he reached into the mind of the guard who was supporting him from behind and—had him jar the arrow, just slightly. Do I—have to go into the medical details of what happened next?”

Ansel shook his head quickly and swallowed.

“Was it—quick?”

“He would have lost consciousness within seconds.”

Ansel rubbed a shaking hand across eyes bleary from weeping, then shook his head when Rhys would have touched his temple to read his mental state with greater accuracy.

“It’s all right. I’ll be all right.” He sniffed and swallowed, finally managing to raise a more composed face to Rhys.

“So, what now? Will we at least be able to get his body back for burial beside Father?”

Rhys sighed and shook his head, remembering Cathan’s grave in the little village churchyard only a few hundred yards from here.

“I doubt it, Ansel. His own shape will have come back upon him when he died. Those who were there will have seen it. By now, the regents surely know. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll hold Davin just as much to blame as the others.”

“But, he didn’t—”

“You know that, and I know that,” Rhys agreed, “and the regents may even know that—but do you really think they’re going to pass up an opportunity like this to accuse a high-ranking Deryni of treason?”

Ansel heaved a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping in dejection. “No. You’re right. For that matter, they’ll probably be after me, next, as the brother and heir of a traitor.”

“I fear they will.” Rhys glanced at his feet, then looked up at Ansel again. “The Council is gathering to make plans. We’d like to include you. It will help to take your mind off what’s happened.”

Drawing a deep breath, Ansel squared his shoulders and then raised his head.

“I’ll come.”

In the keeill, the others were gathering as the word spread. Evaine and Joram sat cross-legged to Camber’s right beside the white slab in the center of the dais. A single sphere of silvery handfire rested at the center of the slab, the only illumination in the vast chamber except for torches burning in the four bronze cressets.

In the hour since Evaine’s and Joram’s arrival, the three of them had been sharing Camber’s experience of Davin’s death and remembering his short but valiant life, trying to find some meaning in those last minutes for which he had died. Davin’s final suspicion about the unpredictable Prince Javan had provided only bittersweet soothing to their sickness of heart. Evaine had wept, and Camber, too, but now the tears were past. Joram had not cried at all, but perhaps he would have been better off if he had, for every line of his body, huddled inside the heavy Michaeline greatcloak, spoke of grief and anger only barely contained. His face, lit mainly from below by the glow of Camber’s handfire, was a mask as cold as the white marble before them.

After a while, Jebediah and Gregory joined them, with Gregory’s son Jesse, all three haggard and drawn-looking in the crimson light which Jebediah brought. The Michaeline took his place quietly at Joram’s right and extinguished his handfire, knowing the extra measure of grief which was Camber’s at losing a grandson as well as a young and promising colleague.

But Gregory did not know, and did not fathom the depth of mourning of the three others already assembled there. Outrage was his overweening emotion.

“Has Rhys gone for Ansel?” he asked.

Evaine gave a brief nod.

“And Jaffray?” Gregory pursued.

“Still at Court,” Joram said, his words clipped with his own emotion.

A little subdued by the sparseness of their responses, Gregory sat down in his accustomed place between Joram and Evaine, hands propped belligerently on his thighs. Jesse settled quietly and to his father’s right.

“I’m sorry,” Gregory said gruffly. “I know how much Davin’s death must have shocked you. I didn’t mean to seem callous, but I’d like to know the circumstances. Alister, you were monitoring when it happened?”

Camber nodded and held out his hand.

“Go ahead and read it,” he whispered, opening the Alister part of his mind to the other man. “We lost another of our people to our own kind.”

Gregory, who had started to take Camber’s hand, jerked back his own as though he had encountered red-hot iron.

“Not our kind! Those were none of ours!” he said, with an emphatic shake of his head. “Deryni, yes, but—Jebediah told me some of what happened. They sound like the same breed of misfits that stopped you and Joram on the road last winter.”

“No!” said Camber. “Those were bored, mischievous children, by comparison. These were assassins, set on killing the princes—vicious cutthroats, of the same ilk as those who maimed Tavis O’Neill!”

“And I say you’re both wrong!” Evaine interjected angrily. “Those were sadistic children, and since no one was able to stop them, they have become assassins, murdering in their frustration, trying to destroy what they think keeps them from the lives they used to lead. What they fail to realize is that the House of Haldane and those who serve them are not the enemy.”

Joram snorted and pulled his ankles in closer. “As I recall, the esteemed regents supposedly serve the Haldanes. If our bored young compatriots are so eager to seek redress, why don’t they go to the source of their grievances?”

“Joram, Joram, there’s nothing to be gained by bitterness,” Camber sighed, extending his hand again for Gregory. “Go ahead and read it, Gregory. Then see if you are still inclined toward charity for the men who caused Davin’s death.”

With an indulgent sigh, Gregory made the contact and closed his eyes, slipping into rapport with the Alister portion of Camber and reading all that Davin had sent save his shriving and the final exchange. When Gregory emerged from trance, his narrow face was drawn. The reality of what he had witnessed through Alister’s experience pulled stark and poignantly at all the father instincts of Ebor’s earl.

For a moment, Gregory bowed his head, high forehead cradled in the long fingers. He was saved from the need to speak by the arrival of Rhys and Ansel, the latter stumbling a little as he and the Healer mounted the dais steps. As all of them rose to meet him, Camber saw the dead Davin’s echo in his younger brother, stripling-man almost still boy. The two stopped on the top level at Camber’s left.

“This is—not the Michaelmas I would have wished,” Ansel said haltingly. “I—” He had to stop and swallow hard to keep from crying again, finally regaining enough semblance of control to lift his eyes to Camber with some degree of steadiness.

“Bishop Alister—” His eyes wavered for just an instant before he went on. “I—Uncle Rhys tells me that you were—that you—”

“Read my memory, son,” Camber murmured, holding out both his hands and moving within reach of his grandson. “Go ahead,” he urged, when Ansel glanced uncertainly at the others. “The others know, and so should you. He was your brother.”

As Ansel made the contact, Camber gently let slip his Alister shields, at the same time drawing in Ansel’s tentative probe and solidifying the necessary rapport. He did not spare the boy the full feeling of the memory, for he knew that neither Ansel nor Davin would have wanted that. Instead, he spread the entire encounter there for the other to read, saving only the confession and the Camber interaction.

Tears were rolling down Ansel’s beardless cheeks when he came up from his trance. Camber gently gathered him in the circle of his arms as Rhys had done, seeing this time that all the grief came out, so that when Ansel finally drew away, there were no tears left—only the rich memory of the man who had been his brother and who had given his life for a cause in which they all believed.

They settled down around the marble slab to wait for Jaffray then, and shortly he joined them, disbelieving anger and despair laced through every step as he sank to his knees among them. He placed a black leather case on the slab beside Camber’s handfire. The top of the case was stamped with tiny gold crosses.

“I came as soon as I could,” he said, in a voice edged with bleak fatigue and grief. “When they got him back to Rhemuth, they—weren’t finished with him.” He sighed heavily. “Alister, I have to talk this out, or I’m going to lose whatever hold I’ve managed to keep on my anger and fear. Would you please take care of this while I talk? We’ll need a place to work.”

As he pushed the black case closer, Camber shook himself free of the immobility which had held them all, then reached a blind hand for the Ward Cubes he carried in his cincture. He drew out the familiar black velvet bag and untied the scarlet cords, upending it in his other hand as he had done at least a hundred times before.

Deliberately distracted from what Jaffray was saying, he recalled another time and place, before the keeill’s finding—indeed, before they knew for certain that any of the more complex cube possibilities were safe to work. Now there were several such which he counted as most routine, though they still had never worked the cube configuration which mimicked the altar at Grecotha.

He tucked the empty pouch into his cincture for safekeeping, then began methodically picking the four white cubes from the pile in his left hand and setting them into position on the slab, their sleek chill against his fingers somehow soothing in the tangle of emotions eddying around Jaffray and the others as he slowly drew himself apart.

“What happened, Jaffray?” Jebediah was saying.

Jaffray breathed in deeply, as if trying to pull in strength and resolution from the very air. “There were four prisoners taken alive initially, all of them Deryni. You would recognize most of the names, if I told you. One of them died in the hall, when Lord Oriel set off a death-response which he knew was there.”

“Oriel?” Rhys gasped. “He’s helping the regents?”

Jaffray nodded. “Joram, you and Alister and Jebediah have been warning us for years that Deryni would turn against Deryni, and now it’s happening. I didn’t want to believe the rumors I’d been hearing, the little hints around Court, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The regents have been soliciting collaborators. In Oriel’s case, they have his wife and infant daughter to hostage. I have no reason to hope that this is an isolated case.”

“Sweet Jesu,” Joram whispered under his breath. “And Oriel just set it off, knowing it was there? He deliberately killed the man?”

“Not exactly. Tavis had found it initially and warned the regents what would happen. He did a superficial reading and gave the regents the names of those involved—they were all dead or captured anyway, except for one who got away—and then they brought in Oriel to check on Tavis. In all fairness to Oriel, he did it reluctantly.”

As Jaffray continued recounting the incident in detail, Camber took a deep breath and made his conscious mind block out what the archbishop was saying, laying a finger on the white cube in the upper left of the square before him and projecting its nomen.

Prime!

He had not spoken the word aloud, but immediately the cube lit from within, glowing with a cool white light.

Seconde!

The upper right cube gleamed like its companion.

Tierce!

So followed the cube below the first.

Quarte!

The last cube’s activation made of the four of them a single, softly glowing square of cool white light, whiter than the slab on which they lay. A moment Camber paused to shift his perspective to the other side of Balance, from white to black, then touched the black cube next to Prime. Jaffray’s voice was a meaningless buzz as Camber formed the first black’s name:

Quinte!

The touched cube sparkled to life, a dark, blue-black glitter of darkest opal fire, as he moved on to the next.

Sixte!

The fire seemed to leap instantaneously from the first black cube to Camber’s finger to the one so-named, and to follow as he touched the remaining black cubes in rapid succession.

Septime! Octave!

As the fires stabilized in the heart of the last cube, Camber drew a deep breath and let his conscious resume its attention to Jaffray’s words, wincing a little as what he had blocked now came through in full force, filling in the gap of his brief psychic absence.

“When Oriel first found the death-trigger, he withdrew a little,” Jaffray was saying. “He told them what would probably happen if he pushed too hard, but they made him go on by threatening the safety of his family. Perhaps he thought he could get past it—I don’t know. He couldn’t, though. The man’s name was Denzil Carmichael. I think I may have known his grandfather. At least his death was easy, compared to the others.”

“What happened to the others?” Evaine asked, horrified yet fascinated.

“The three remaining prisoners were executed in the castleyard, as befits traitors and assassins.”

“Drawn and quartered?” Gregory murmured, with a great lord’s knowledgeable raise of an eyebrow.

“Aye, and hanged first, though not to death,” Jaffray whispered. “The regents wouldn’t even let them see a priest before it started. Poor Alroy and Javan.…”

With a shake of his head, Camber flung up his shields again and blocked out Jaffray, taking but an instant to balance between black and white as he placed his first two fingers on Prime and Quinte and shaped the phrasa.

Prime et Quinte inversus! He switched the two cubes’ positions and felt the energies warp slightly.

Quarte et Octave inversus! Again, the change of place, an intensification of the weaving, the stranding, of the power being harnessed. He laid his fingertips on Septime and the transposed Prime.

Prime et Septime inversus!

And Sixe et Quarte inversus! The final phrasa, suiting action to words.

The cubes lay in a saltire configuration now, one diagonal glowing a deep blue-black and the other gleaming white on white against the marble slab, their arrangement and the working he had done steadily drawing in more energy and laying in new strands to be commanded. He came back to the others, their words of the past few seconds flooding into his consciousness and making him wince with the intensity of accompanying emotion.

“… terrible thing for children to have to witness,” Evaine was saying, one protective hand cradling her own swelling abdomen. “Sweet Mary and Joseph, is it to be this kind of bloody reign forever?”

“So long as the regents hold sway, I fear it will get worse before it gets better,” Jaffray replied. “Their vengeance reaches far. Already, they have issued writs of attainder and outlawry against all males of the families of the assassins. And Ansel, I saw your death warrant signed myself.”

“Then, they counted my brother as one of the assassins!” Ansel said bitterly.

“They did—though both Tavis and Oriel insisted there was no evidence. Of course, they are both Deryni, and therefore suspect.”

“What—what about Davin’s body?” Ansel asked, almost dragging the words from his lips.

Jaffray bowed his head. “The regents determined to make an example of the assassins. Parts of—parts of their bodies were ordered sent to all the major towns of Gwynedd. The heads hang even now at the gates of Rhemuth as warning. They—did the same to the bodies of those already dead,” he finished lamely.

“To Davin?” Ansel gasped.

Jaffray could only nod.

A groan escaped Evaine’s lips, and several of the others shook their heads, Jesse blinking back tears. Rhys embraced his wife and would not meet anyone’s gaze. Joram’s jaw tightened even more than it had been throughout, the grey eyes hard and cold.

Camber tried to resist the raw emotion, for reason told him that it made no difference what happened to Davin’s body. Blinking back tears which nonetheless threatened, he tilted back his head and made himself focus on the vaulting high above their heads. He could only let the horror run its course and be thankful that at least Davin had not suffered the torture that the others had—and pray for the repose of all Deryni dead.

At last, under control once more, he glanced at the waiting cube configuration, then at Jaffray, sending a silent query. Jaffray made no response, caught up in his own working out of the day’s tragedy, so Camber resignedly took charge, drawing a deliberately audible breath as he extended his right hand over the cubes. Gradually he gained everyone’s dazed attention.

“This will be a new working for some of you,” he said, voice steadying as discipline displaced the flux of mere emotion. “Ansel, Jesse, you’re about to see one of the few second level configurations we’ve had the nerve to try—and one of even fewer that we’ve gotten to work. It seems to have limited application, so far, but we’re still learning. We have Evaine’s research to thank for it.”

As Evaine smiled weakly, Camber carefully picked up the cube named Septime and placed it on Quinte, black on black.

Quintus! he spoke in his mind, feeling the energy lick up around his fingers for just an instant before he moved on to Quarte, stacking it on Seconde, white on white.

Sixtus!

“More energy, twining with the first,” he murmured, gesturing for them to sense it for themselves.

He felt their support and Ansel’s and Jesse’s increasing curiosity as he set Prime atop Tierce, Sexte on Octave.

Septimus!

Octavius!

He did not know whether the words themselves were important—he suspected not—but the mental energies behind them were, and he could feel them woven among his fingers as he held his hand above the cube he had formed. The pillars of the temple, Joram had called the configuration, the first time he saw it. It reminded them all of the shattered altar beneath Grecotha.

Carefully, Camber got his feet under him, ready to stand, then let his right hand rest squarely on top of the cube. With his left he motioned the others to move back slightly. Then he actively engaged the energies.

He could feel them tingling in his hand and all up his arm, even tickling at the edges of his mind, as if hand and cubes had fused in one vibrant unit. As he wrapped his mind around the strands of energy and wove the grid, he could feel the potential building, so that by the time he began slowly to lift his hand, the cube rose, too—and also the marble slab, soundless save for the faint whisper of polished stone in passing.

The slab continued to rise, as effortlessly as if it were feather instead of marble, supported by four large cubes, black and white alternating. Camber stood as the rest of them rose, his upper body still bent over the smaller cube whose power he had harnessed. A second course of black and white cubes began to appear, these set in opposition to the first course, finally revealing a black base of the same size as the mensa on top. Pillars the size of a man’s arm stood at the four corners of the cube thus revealed, alternating black and white like the broken ones under Grecotha.

When the black slab had risen to the same thickness as the top one, the entire mass stopped. Camber, with a slight sigh, withdrew his hand out to the side of the small cube and flexed his fingers experimentally, then glanced at his intrigued audience as he scooped up the wards and returned them to their pouch.

“Its own weight will take it back into place when we’re done,” he said matter-of-factly. “One only needs the cubes to raise the thing.” He looked at the archbishop. “Jaffray?”

“Aye. Ansel, I wish I could have brought back your brother’s body, but since I could not, I thought to bring you our Lord’s. I thought the Blessed Sacrament might offer us all some measure of comfort.”

Ansel inclined his head, unable to reply with words, but then Jaffray’s hands began shaking so badly that he could not even unfasten the straps which closed the leather case. Camber stepped in at that, moving the box away from Jaffray and himself unbuckling the latches to raise the leather lid. Inside were all the accoutrements needed to celebrate Mass.

“It was a fine and thoughtful idea, Jaffray,” he murmured, touching the small gold chalice and paten reverently. “I should have thought of it myself. It will help all of us to center in and clear our heads so we can make cogent plans.”

Jaffray shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know now, Alister. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I didn’t even bring any proper vestments, I was so anxious to get away from the stench of blood. Do you think He will mind?”

“Surely not,” Camber said gently, as Joram roused himself from his stunned lethargy to shake out the linen cloth which his father handed him.

“But—we don’t really know what kind of altar this was before,” Jaffray continued. “We don’t even know whether the Airsid celebrated the Mass as we know it.”

At his distress, Evaine moved around and laid her hands on his shoulders, leaning her cheek against his back.

“Oh, Jaffray, I’m sure they must have,” she said, as Rhys picked up the box and nudged Camber’s handfire higher, so Joram could spread his linen. “And even if they didn’t, I think it’s high time a Mass was said within these walls. It would be a beautiful and fitting memorial for Davin.”

Even Jaffray, in his distraught state, had no quarrel with that, and watched numbly as Joram laid a small crucifix in place, set out the two half-burned candles in their simple wooden holders, passed his hands over them, and brought them to life, at the same time quenching the handfire.

Camber took out the chalice and paten and set them in place, then extracted four large unconsecrated Hosts from a flat metal box he found in the case and laid them carefully on the thin gold plate; Joram removed the water and wine, in their leather-covered glass flasks, and set them to one side. The narrow purple stole, much folded and creased, Camber shook out and laid across Jaffray’s trembling fingers with a slight bow. Jaffray stared at the stole for a moment, then shook his head.

“I can’t, Alister,” he whispered. “God help me, for the first time since I was ordained a priest, I can’t. I saw, Alister! I had to watch while they hacked his poor, murdered body to pieces! There’s no charity in my heart for what they did. God, I had come to love that boy like a son!”

“So had I,” Camber whispered under his breath.

But he took the stole from Jaffray’s stiff fingers and touched it to his own lips, put it on, moved to the west side of the altar as one walking in his sleep, and waited for the others to range themselves around him. Jaffray he motioned to his left, with Rhys between him and Ansel. On his right stood Joram and Evaine, ready to serve him. Jebediah, stoic and silent outwardly, but churning inside, stood opposite with the shaken Gregory and Jesse.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen,” he whispered, as his hand moved in the sign of their faith, the familiar words beginning to give him an anchor to sanity. “Introibo ad altare Dei.”

“Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,” the others responded, Joram leading them coolly in the response.

I will go up to the altar of God, to God Who gives joy to my youth.…

“Judica me, Deus …” Camber continued. Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.

“Quia tu es, Deus.…” For Thou, O God, art my strength; why hast Thou cast me off? the others replied. And why do I go sorrowing whilst the enemy afflicteth me?

They offered up the Mass for Davin and his memory. They willed the meaning of every word to penetrate beyond their grief, lifting them into a renewal of their purpose. They had no book of scripture for their use that night, so each of them contributed from memory a verse which meant something to him or her in this troubled time—something to give comfort, or hope, or courage to go on.

Camber celebrated the Mass in the Michaeline manner, giving both Host and Cup to all who shared the rite. Now he moved among these loved ones of his, laying a piece of consecrated Host in each reverently outstretched palm, while Joram followed with the Cup. When he had finished, he had gained a measure of peace which almost transcended the tragedy of Davin’s death. Somehow, he resolved, Davin’s death would not have been in vain.

Ansel returned to Grecotha with Camber and Joram that night, for there was virtually no place in Gwynedd where the last Earl of Culdi might show his face and live, once the regents’ writ was circulated. But another monk would not be noticed, especially in the household of a bishop; and so, with his bright locks shorn in a clerical tonsure and dyed a light brown, Ansel was introduced to the Grecotha community as Brother Lorcan, a Michaeline lay scribe sent to augment Bishop Alister’s clerical staff. The difference of garb and hair, surrounding a face which had not been that well known anyway, was sufficient to hide Ansel without benefit of magic.

Father Willowen and the rest of the Grecotha congregation welcomed the new brother warmly, and thought nothing amiss the next day when, after the commemorative Mass which the bishop celebrated for the chapter, the newcomer was invited to share the bishop’s private Michaelmas observances with his secretary. Everyone knew that Michaelines stayed together, especially for this important feast day. Camber and Joram used the time to good advantage to instruct Ansel further regarding ecclesiastical deportment and the Order to which he pretended. Within a few days, he was sufficiently informed to be able to move among the priests and monks of Grecotha without suspicion.

The others, too, returned to their various abodes, though all of them strove to keep as low a profile as possible in the days and weeks ahead. With no further need to monitor poor Davin, Gregory retired to Ebor and began making quiet arrangements for his family to leave Gwynedd, though he himself would return as often as the Council needed him. Jebediah went back to Argoed and bade farewell to his Michaeline brethren. Rhys and Evaine kept the feast of Michaelmas at Sheele with their children, but their celebration was much subdued by having to tell the children that their cousin Davin was dead. Little Tieg was too young to understand fully, but the eight-year-old Rhysel cried and cried.

Jaffray returned to Rhemuth to conduct the appropriate religious observances at Saint George Cathedral the next morning with Archbishop Oriss; but that night he slipped out of his apartments in Oriss’s episcopal residence and made his way to a little-known Portal in the cathedral’s sacristy, whence he whisked off to Saint Neot’s and his old Order.

He spent that night and most of the next day closeted with Dom Emrys and the Elders of the Order, telling them of all that had happened in King Alroy’s hall the day before and seeking counsel. His visit sparked a flurry of speculations and consultations among his brethren at Chapter; and when Jaffray met with the Camberian Council the following week, he told them of the Gabrilites’ growing concern. If the Michaelmas Plot, as it had come to be called, pushed human reaction to the breaking point, the Gabrilites felt that the Deryni religious houses would be among the first to feel the regents’ wrath. Nowhere else could one find so high a concentration of Deryni in close proximity. And the Gabrilites, as teachers of the most sophisticated Deryni practitioners in the known world, would be prime targets.

There were other Deryni establishments—the Varnarite School, and Llenteith, near the Connait, and the newly established schola near Nyford—which had already been burned out once and partially rebuilt—and the Council saw to it that all of these were warned, Camber and Jaffray making especial use of their episcopal rank to help the religious houses formulate escape plans. They could only hope that there would be time to use those plans, if the worst came to pass.

For nearly a month, their luck held. But then, in late October, during a last wave of near-summer weather, the balance swung once more against the Deryni and their cause.

The unseasonable heat, then in its second week, had brought a resurgence of the so-called Deryni plague which had swept through Gwynedd in high summer; in Valoret, a mob of irate townsfolk and farmers had whipped themselves up to stone a merchant family which had been spared the plague and was, therefore, suspected of being Deryni. A riot ensued when the town guards tried to rescue the intended victims, and they had been forced to summon a troop of the archbishop’s household guards to assist them.

The archbishop himself led the sortie, since he was then in Valoret on one of his now-rare pastoral visits, a snow-white surcoat over his hauberk and a closed-face helm covering his head. A burnished bronze crucifix laid along the nasal and overshadowing the eyes proclaimed his identity, but he carried no weapon himself, save his crozier of office, for his Gabrilite Order was sworn to nonviolence. Jebediah, visiting Jaffray on his way back to Grecotha from a trip to Argoed, rode at the archbishop’s side in full Michaeline array.

They had ridden out well-armed and twenty-strong in the noonday sun, alert, but not as vigilant as they might have been—for who would have thought that scarcely-armed townsmen and farmers could seriously threaten mounted knights on the city streets? The knights pressed their destriers into the fray, the weight of the great horses seemingly insurmountable by men on foot, laying about them with weighted riding crops and the flats of swords.

Only Jebediah at once recognized the danger from hoes, bills, and pitchforks, or the stones which whizzed past their ears and occasionally rang against steel helm or thudded hollowly against a shield. Too late he tried to call them in to regroup and guard one another more closely—too late, as one of Jaffray’s men was suddenly yanked from his horse and buried under shouting, poking, pounding men. All at once, the milling, muttering gathering of disgruntled but basically law-abiding subjects had become a ravening animal, intent on destroying any who stood in its way.

Even Jebediah’s swift blade was not fast enough to block the chance thrust of a bill-hook before it buried itself to the haft in the eye-slit of Jaffray’s helmet. The archbishop was dead before his body even hit the cobblestone pavement.

The act took an instant only to register. Stunned by the sacrilegious murder of their archbishop and primate, both sides shrank from the still, white-garbed form as if expecting lightning to arc down from the heavens and slay them all where they stood.

But lightning did not strike them; and when the immensity of what had happened reached other levels, it was Jaffray’s Deryniness which did strike them—and the fact that a Deryni had fallen at their hands—that so high a Deryni as the Primate of All Gwynedd could be killed like any other man!

Even the swords and horses of the soldiers could not stop them then! Not only did the original family of suspected Deryni perish in the violence which followed, but many townsfolk, as well, and fully a third of the archbishop’s household guard. Jebediah’s Michaeline garb made him a ready target—fortunately only rarely reached, and then by no blow which did him any real harm. It was sheerest luck which brought him through unscathed, for his Deryni faculties were so shocked by the proximity of Jaffray’s violent and unexpected death that he could not think for a time—could only let his soldier’s reflexes take over as he tried to stay alive. He was later to speculate that the only thing which saved him was his fortunate presence with the tiny group of knights who took Jaffray’s body to safety; even in their fury, the mob fell away from the white burden which one of the knights carried over his saddlebow, as if it were some awful apparition.

Jebediah saw them safely to the gates of the episcopal palace, his wits returning as they gradually won through to open streets, but there he took his leave of them and made his way out of the city, not wishing to endanger them any further by the presence of a Deryni among them. With Jaffray’s death, the last highly-placed Deryni was gone from Valoret. And the mob’s reaction to Jaffray’s murder and to Jebediah had proven that Valoret was no longer a safe place for a Deryni to be, even as Torcuill de la Marche had predicted a full nine months before. As he made his way past the troops coming in to aid the failing episcopal guards, Jebediah wondered how long any place would be safe.