The Bishop’s Heir (59 page)

But the sight and the stench of burning flesh stirred emotional responses not necessarily governed by reason or intellect, especially in the young. Nor could reason postpone more physical reactions indefinitely. Denis was not the first or the last to crouch with his head between his knees to keep from fainting, or to stagger retching from the square when they were finally allowed to leave, the pyre at last but a mound of smoldering ashes.

And the reek hung about
Arx Fidei
for day, even after Jorian's ashes were cast unceremoniously into the river nearby. When, a week later, in response to the expected news of his brother's ill health, Denis drew rein in the courtyard of his family's manor house of Tre-Arilan, outside Rhemuth, he imagined he could still smell the smoke clinging to his riding cassock.

“Well, I don't suppose there's anything I can say,” Jamyl said quietly, when brief greetings had been exchanged with family and retainers and the two were alone at last in Jamyl's private study. “I won't ask you for an account of what happened, because you'd only have to tell it again in a little while. I'm taking you to meet some very important men tonight, Den. I hope you realize what a risk we'll all be taking—and what we've already risked for you.”

Denis lowered his eyes, blinking back the tears he had fought to suppress all the way from
Arx Fidei
.

“How much did
he
risk, Jamyl?” he managed to whisper huskily. “It seems to me that he paid the ultimate price. I
won't
let it be for nothing, even if I have to die trying to handle things alone!”

“I'd hoped you'd say that,” Jamyl said, rising to come lay a comforting hand on Denis's shoulder. “And hopefully, there's been enough of dying. Come with me. The others will be waiting.”

Denis knew about the secret passageway Jamyl opened beside the fireplace and followed his brother without question as the elder Arilan led boldly into the darkness, each of them conjuring silvery handfire to light their way. He had not known about the Transfer Portal in the little ritual chamber at the other end, however; and he was not expecting Jamyl's next request.

“I've been instructed to bring you through blind,” his brother said. “I really have no business whatever taking you where we're going, but it's too difficult to transport one of the items we'll need. You must give me your solemn oath never to speak of what you see and hear. Nor will I be able to answer any of your inevitable questions, once we've come back—not about the place and not about the people. Is that understood?”

Denis swallowed uneasily, wondering what he was getting into.

“I understand,” he said.

“I need your formal oath, then,” Jamyl insisted, his deep blue-violet eyes never leaving Denis's as he held out his hands, palm up. “I need it very specific, fully open to my Reading, and I need it sworn by whatever you hold most sacred.”

Awe sent a shiver down Denis's spine as the seriousness of Jamyl's demand hit home. He could feel the tingle of the Portal under his feet, the magic of his race all around him, and he opened wide his shields as he laid his hands on his brother's, inviting Jamyl's witness through the powers they both held.

“I swear by my vocation as a priest,” Denis said softly, “and by the memory of Jorian de Courcy, whose priesthood I also vow to uphold, that I will never reveal any detail of what I shall witness tonight. This knowledge shall be as inviolate as that of the confessional. And if I break this oath, may I fail in all I endeavor and perish in the gaining of the priesthood that I seek. All this I swear, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Only when the oath was completed did he lift his hands from Jamyl's to cross himself in blessing and kiss his thumbnail to seal it. He did not think he had ever sworn a more important or more solemn oath.

“Thank you,” Jamyl whispered, lifting his hands to rest on Denis's shoulders. “I had no doubts, but there are others who must be absolutely sure. I'll take you to them now. You'll need to give me complete control for a few minutes.”

With a blink, a slowly drawn breath, and a nod of agreement, Denis let familiar rapport form with his brother, relaxing all his shields as he exhaled. As his vision tunneled down to only Jamyl's eyes, nearly all pupil in the dim light of waning handfire, he could feel Jamyl's controls slipping into place, almost welcome after having to keep himself in tight check for so many months. His eyes fluttered closed even before Jamyl's right hand lifted to brush his brow; and the next thing he knew, he was aware that they had gone through the Portal, he had no idea where.

“Keep your eyes closed until I tell you it's all right to open them,” Jamyl murmured, taking his right elbow and guiding him forward.

The psychic controls kept him from sensing anything about the space they crossed with their few dozen steps, and a part of him knew that even if he had been physically able to disobey and open his eyes, he would see nothing. He was blind and helpless until Jamyl should choose to release him—though that awareness caused him no concern in his deeply centered state. When, after what seemed like a very long time, Jamyl silently guided him to sit in a high-backed chair, a heavy table surface close in front of it, he had no idea what to expect. Thus he was not surprised when Jamyl had him place both his hands on what felt like a head-sized chunk of polished rock in front of him, and shifted one of his own hands to lightly clasp the back of Denis's neck.

“I'm going to bring two more minds into our link, Den. As soon as we're stable, I want you to let your memory of Jorian's ordination run—everything you yourself witnessed, and everything you learned or heard about afterward. We'll do it now.”

Denis's assent had not been asked for and was superfluous in any case, given the depth of Jamyl's controls; but he gave it anyway, trying to actively bridge as the new contacts eased deftly into place, sensing the raw strength of the newcomers beyond even his brother's, though Jamyl was a powerful and highly trained Deryni. The surge of memories began almost at once, shaking him nearly as much as the actual events had done, bittersweet even in the recollection of the earlier parts, before disaster struck—but he would not have blunted them even if that had been within his control, which it was not.

He thought he had weathered it well when the run ebbed to a close, his controllers also having demanded his recall of Jorian's execution; but then they took him deeper still, until he lost all consciousness of any function whatsoever. When he came to his senses again, it was no gradual easing back to awareness; he simply was there, sitting in a chair opposite two men he had never seen before. The table he had sensed before was at his right now, ancient ivory banded with gold, and Jamyl sat perched on the chair arm at his left, gently kneading the tight muscles across the back of his neck, smiling.

Any discomfort besides the one I'm working on?
his brother whispered in his mind.

Intrigued by the two strangers and what they had done to him—far beyond Jamyl's ability, he knew—Denis only answered,
No.
The younger of the other two men looked hardly older than Jamyl; he, too, was smiling, pale eyes lit with wry amusement, absently raking the fingers of one hand through a forelock of shortish, white-blond hair that kept slipping over one eye. His tunic was the same vibrant blue as the background of the shield above his head on the back of his chair—something with chevrons and arrowheads, vaguely familiar, though Denis could not quite place it.

The other man appeared to be in his forties, reddish-brown hair winged with grey at the temples, dark eyes very serious in his lean, angular face. He wore scholar's robes over an expensive-looking undertunic and had ink smudges on the first and second fingers of his right hand. He was leaning close to the table to drape a veil of purple silk over the biggest
shiral
crystal Denis had ever seen.

“It's a lovely one, isn't it?” the younger man said, his pleasant baritone catching Denis's attention instantly. “
Shiral
, of course. Don't even think about what it cost. Incidentally, I'm Stefan.” He grinned at Denis's blink of confusion. “That's Laran, our physician; and the fellow sitting beside you is Jamyl. I think you know him already. And there's certainly no doubt that you're an Arilan, is there?” He shifted his gaze to Jamyl with a roguish chuckle. “Jamyl, your brother may go even farther than you, someday—if we can get him through his ordination, that is.”

Denis swallowed a little uneasily at the light banter. He was not accustomed to hearing anyone besides family address his brother in quite so casual a tone. These men must be close, indeed. As he glanced at Jamyl for reassurance, the man identified as Laran sat in the empty chair beside Stefan's and pulled a stoppered flask from inside his robes, reaching across to set it in Denis' hand.

“That's all that's stopping you right now, young Denis Arilan,” Laran said. “Incidentally, you were absolutely right about
merasha
in the wine.”

Denis nearly dropped the flask as he realized he must be actually holding some of the
merasha
-laced wine.

“We've been wondering for nearly two hundred years how the bishops kept blocking us from getting some priests ordained,” Laran went on. “We don't have to wonder anymore. Unfortunately,
merasha
is the almost ideal substance for screening out Deryni. There's no known antidote, before or after the fact—though we
can
minimize some of the nastier physical effects. In humans, right up to fatal dosages, it only acts as a sedative, the depth varying with the dose and the individual—in that sample, a little drowsiness, perhaps.” He waved a hand toward the flask Denis held. “Nothing that can't be explained by simple reaction to strong wine on an empty stomach, in a system already keyed up by the emotional tension of the priestly initiation—and nothing to attract attention to a one-time use of a bishop's private stock of wine for a priest's first communion.

“For Deryni, however—and unfortunately for your young friend Jorian …” He sighed. “But I don't have to tell
you
what happened to him.”

Shaking his head, Denis set the flask carefully on the table, then wiped his palms against his thighs distastefully.

“Is that from de Nore's private stock?” he asked.

“No, it isn't,” Stefan said. “We haven't even tried to penetrate his staff yet. It will be risky enough when we
do
have to infiltrate, to do whatever we decide to do to help you. That's from another bishop's sacristy, though. And we've spot-checked two others.” He grimaced. “They all have a special supply of wine that comes from the archbishop-primate's office on a regular basis and that's used only for ordinations. Needless to say, they're all adulterated with
merasha
. So we can't even consider trying to get you ordained in another diocese.”

“I couldn't anyway, having trained at
Arx Fidei
,” Denis murmured. “Not without having to answer a lot of very dangerous questions, especially after Jorian. What about switching the wine?”

Laran nodded. “We're working on that. We've even located some untainted wine of the proper vintage. Unfortunately, that isn't the entire solution.”

“Why not?”

Laran shrugged. “Well, aside from the obvious logistical problem of actually making the switch without getting caught, there's the question of whether anyone who shouldn't will be able to notice a difference in taste.
Merasha
doesn't have any taste
per se
, but it does have a distinctive aftertaste, as we all know—not as noticeable to humans, I'm told, but nonetheless it's there.”

“And you're afraid de Nore will notice, if it
isn't
there,” Jamyl guessed.

“Well, he
is
known for his discriminating palate,” Laran pointed out. “Not only is that a convenient excuse for bringing along his own wine when he travels and for sending special shipments to the other bishops as a sign of episcopal favor, but he celebrates enough Masses at enough ordinations to know quite precisely what his private stock should taste like. To keep a switch from being detected, I must find something that will give an aftertaste similar to
merasha
, that acts like a light sedative, but that also has no other side effects, for humans or Deryni—probably some combination of substances.”

He sighed heavily, then went on. “Or maybe we'll have to go with pure wine and take our chances that de Nore won't notice something's missing. It's better than the alternative. We
know
what
merasha
will do.”

“Maybe the pure wine isn't as risky as you think,” Denis ventured. “I'll bet that's what he uses for daily Masses. He wouldn't dare use the special vintage every day, if only because of the sedative effect.”

“Hmmm, he might have built up a tolerance to that,” Laran argued, “but your point is well taken. Knowing how de Nore feels about Deryni, and assuming that even
he
knows just
what
makes the ordination wine different—”

Startled, Stefan turned to look at Laran, his intensity cutting off the physician's speculation in mid-phrase.

“Are you implying that he doesn't
know
there's
merasha
in the wine, or that someone else may be responsible for adding it?” he asked softly.

Laran fluttered ink-stained fingers in a gesture of impatience.

“Either could be true, Stefan, or neither. That doesn't really matter. It's been going on for many years after all, and individual archbishops come and go. Think back to how it must have started, though!”

In the blink of an eye, Laran the physician gave way to Laran the professor, academic intensity displacing medical dispassion, his sharp features lighting with zeal as he slipped into the role of lecturer.