The King's Deryni

by Katherine Kurtz

  The pony came to an abrupt and stiff-legged halt, wild-eyed and snorting, and Bronwyn continued over its head in a tumble of flying golden hair and tumbled skirts, to land with a thump before the pile of rags. The pony wheeled and took off in a fit of affronted bucking and squealing as a gnarled hand reached down to grab Bronwyn by the upper arm and haul her to her feet.

  “Got you now, missy!” the heap of rags crowed, giving the girl a none-too-gentle shake as the other three riders whirled to ride to her defense. “What’s the matter with you, galloping through here like you owned the free air and frightening an honest woman’s sheep? Well, speak up, girl. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “You leave my sister alone!” Alaric ordered as he yanked his pony to a halt and glared at the old woman.

  “You’d better not hurt her!” Duncan chimed in, also drawing rein. “She didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Tell that to my poor sheep!” the old woman retorted. “Better yet, tell it to the duke, or whoever is in charge of you ruffians!”

  Kevin, suddenly realizing that he was in charge of what the woman quite rightly regarded as ruffians at that moment, felt himself going red in the face, and ducked his head in shame as he dismounted and presented himself before the woman.

  “I’m very sorry, Mother,” he murmured, gentling his pony as he made himself meet her eyes. “We only meant to practice battle tactics—but we shouldn’t have chased your sheep. I don’t think any harm was done. Please allow us to make amends.”

  “Well, you can start by rounding up my sheep,” she replied with a snort, grudgingly releasing Bronwyn. “They weren’t bothering anyone, and they didn’t deserve to be chased.”

  “We are sorry,” Alaric chimed in.

  “That’s as may be,” came the sour reply. “It still was wrong. Get down off that pony—you, too,” she added to Duncan. “You’ll be less frightening on foot. And catch that loose pony before you do anything else. Girl, you take charge of the beasts while the boys do the herding. I expect it was their idea anyway. Go on now, all of you!”

  It took the better part of an hour to reassemble the old woman’s scattered flock. While the boys doggedly began collecting sheep that wanted nothing to do with them, Bronwyn secured the ponies in the shade of a sprawling oak tree across the pasture. After a while, she began laying out an afternoon repast of bread and cheese and apples packed for them by Cook before they rode out. By the time the boys returned, sweaty and dirt-stained from their exertions, the sheep were once again grazing placidly across the pasture, nearer to where the old woman had resumed her vigil.

  “Maybe we should just go,” Duncan said under his breath as Kevin and Alaric flopped down on the grass and tucked into the food. “She was really angry, and rightly so.”

  “Aye, and we’ve made amends,” Kevin replied. “She doesn’t own the field—and I’m hungry.”

  As he tore off a chunk of bread and stuffed it into his mouth, Alaric leaned across to snag a bit of cheese.

  “It was a bit funny,” he allowed, as he applied the cheese to a portion of bread. “And we were wrong to chase the sheep.”

  Kevin snorted. “Aye, we were—but it was fun. . . .”

  All three boys snickered at that, and Bronwyn rolled her eyes, but she set aside some cheese and a generous chunk of the fine manchet bread in a napkin while the others ate, and scampered off to deliver it to the old woman when everyone had mostly finished.

  Kevin sprawled for a nap after that, and Duncan settled with his back against the tree to whittle at a bit of wood. Bronwyn, when she returned, began weaving a daisy crown for Kevin, whom she adored. Alaric, ever the most adventurous of their band, shinnied up the tree with an apple and perched in a fork where he could oversee the entire area. He had nearly finished the apple when he noticed the squirrel eyeing him from a nearby branch.

  Slowly Alaric took the last bite of the apple, then extended the apple core on his outstretched fingers, suppressing any flicker of further movement that might alarm the squirrel.

  He had been watching the creature since even before he climbed the tree, while he and his sister and cousins sprawled in the shade below and ate. Bronwyn was tidying the remnants even now, and Kevin and Duncan had gone to resaddle the ponies grazing a little farther away. In the meadow beyond, the miscreant sheep also grazed, keeping wary watch on ponies and children.

  Those sheep had been trouble enough earlier, Alaric reflected sourly. Actually, the trouble had been Kevin’s sudden assertion that the sheep were Torenthi spies. Though all of the children in the ducal household knew full well that chasing sheep was forbidden, that had not stopped Kevin from seizing the inspiration to practice some of the battlefield tactics he was learning as a newly fledged squire. And when Duncan joined right in, Alaric and his sister naturally had been obliged to follow suit.

  Which might have gone unnoticed by everyone saving the sheep, except that their keeper suddenly had risen up like a heap of animated rags and startled Bronywn’s pony, which had dumped her without ceremony—right at the old woman’s feet! It would have been almost funny, if the old woman hadn’t grabbed Bronwyn by the arm and hauled her upright—and then began taking them all to task for their transgression.

  Grimacing at the memory, Alaric shifted minutely on his perch, startling the squirrel, and glanced down at his sister, considering whether he ought to try bouncing the apple core off her head. The old woman had been very cross, and had made them round up the scattered sheep—though Bronwyn’s peace offering of their leftover bread and cheese seemed to have mollified her.

  On the other hand, the squirrel now frozen with tail a-tremble had been exceedingly patient, and surely did not deserve to go hungry because of a flock of silly sheep.

  In a burst of eight-year-old contrition, Alaric returned his attention to the squirrel and extended the barest tendril of thought as he had earlier, brushing the animal’s mind with a feather touch of enticement and reassurance. At the same time, he stretched his hand a trifle closer, waggling the apple core on his fingers—and abruptly lost his balance!

  Time seemed suddenly encased in thick treacle as he tried simultaneously to push the apple core within the squirrel’s reach and also to catch his balance and grab for a handhold. The squirrel seized his victory, along with the apple core, scampering up into higher, safer branches; but Alaric’s hands were slick with apple juice. His mad scramble for a better handhold—any handhold!—yielded only a double handful of leaves and twigs and a cracking sound as the branch gave way beneath him.

  Bronwyn looked up and shrieked as he fell, scrambling to get out of the way, and Alaric uttered an inarticulate cry of dismay, caroming against several other branches and grabbing ineffectually for new handholds en route. But none of it was enough to break his fall—only his arm, as he hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him and leave him dazed and gasping at the base of the tree.

  His sister scrambled immediately to his side, pulling at his shoulders and calling his name over and over, but he could only roll onto one side and gasp for breath, eyes screwed shut and both arms clasped tightly to his chest, head ringing from the force of his fall. Only gradually did he become aware that his right arm felt odd, and was vaguely starting to ache. He opened his eyes as Kevin and then Duncan thumped to their knees to either side of him, and Bronwyn was pushed out of the way as Kevin tried to help him to sit up.

  “Sweet Jesu, Alaric! Are you all right?” the older boy demanded, as Alaric dazedly shook his head and concentrated on trying to breathe. Duncan, meanwhile, was gently urging his cousin to roll onto his back, running his hands over arms and legs to check for injuries. He stopped as Alaric’s sharp intake of breath signaled serious damage to his right forearm.

  “I think it’s broken,” Duncan whispered, turning wide, frightened eyes on his older brother. “Kevin, what’re we going to do? We weren’t even supposed to be out he
re.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Kevin muttered, drawing his silver-mounted squire’s dagger. “Help me open up his sleeve so we can see. Bronwyn—”

  But the youngest member of their party had taken to her heels as soon as her brother’s plight became clear, and was pelting across the meadow toward the cave haven of the guardian of the sheep, skirts hiked up and golden hair flying.

  “Now we’re in for it,” Kevin said under his breath, as he cut the cuff tie of their patient’s sleeve, then cast the dagger aside and started ripping with both hands.

  “Ow, take it easy!” Alaric managed to gasp out, instinctively shrinking back from the hands that would have helped him.

  “I’ve got to see how bad it is,” Kevin replied. “Duncan, give me a hand!”

  “I dunno,” Duncan said doubtfully. “Shouldn’t one of us go back and bring an adult? He certainly shouldn’t try to ride like this.”

  Alaric groaned and went white as Kevin’s fumbling ministrations jarred his injury. He was starting to catch his breath, but he had to concentrate hard to bite back tears. With a great act of will, he summoned enough focus to reach across with his good hand to touch his injury, but he winced at the new pain it caused.

  “I’ve gone and done it this time, haven’t I?” he whispered. “We’re really in trouble now.”

  “I’d better ride for help,” Kevin said uncertainly. “It’s your sword arm, after all. If it’s badly set, you could end up a cripple.”

  Alaric screwed his eyes shut and drew in a long, steadying breath, choking back a faint whimper. He knew the older boy was right, though he hadn’t had to say it. But he opened his eyes again as he sensed Duncan scrambling to his feet beside him, and Kevin drawing back a little, on guard, fumbling for his discarded squire’s dagger. Beyond them, Bronwyn had the hand of the old shepherd woman whose sheep they had chased earlier, and was leading her urgently toward them.

  That the old woman was coming, in answer to Bronwyn’s urgent pleas, underlined Alaric’s impression that their earlier contrition, demonstrated by rounding up the scattered sheep, had been accepted, if somewhat grudgingly. And no doubt, Bronwyn’s subsequent peace offering of bread and cheese had further sweetened the woman’s disposition. In fact, now that no cloud of affront lay between her and her unwitting interlopers, he supposed that the woman probably was not as ancient as he had first accounted her—though it was difficult to be certain. However many years she owned, those years had not been kind to her. Still, he sensed a basic decency beneath her rags and matted hair, a trace of gentleness behind the gap-toothed grimace she offered as Bronwyn drew her nearer.

  “Oh, please hurry, grand dame!” Bronwyn repeated, tugging still. “You must help him! He’s my brother.”

  “Is he, indeed?” the old woman muttered, dropping a satchel at Alaric’s right side and then easing to her knees beside it. “Well, let’s have a look.”

  She ignored Kevin’s watchfulness, and the dagger now in his hand but held close along his thigh, and began a brisk examination of Alaric’s injury, probing above and below the angle of the break.

  “Can you feel this?” she asked.

  Alaric winced and nodded, but he did not cry out, though he did go dead white several times in the course of the examination.

  “It seems to be a clean break,” she confirmed, as she looked up at him, “but both bones are snapped clean through. It won’t be easy to set, or pleasant.” She turned her gimlet gaze on Kevin. “I can tend it, but you’d best get back to your father’s and bring men with a litter. Once it’s set, it mustn’t be jostled before it’s had time to knit a little.”

  Kevin’s blue eyes flashed in slight rebellion. “It’s his sword arm, grand dame,” he said pointedly. “Are you sure you can set it properly? Shouldn’t I fetch one of my father’s battle-surgeons?”

  She gave him a contemptuous toss of her matted head. “Not if you want it to heal straight. Most battle-surgeons would just as soon cut it off. It’s a bad break. A careless manipulation, and bone could pierce the skin—and then he would have to lose the arm. I know what I’m doing. Now, go!”

  With a somewhat cowed nod, Kevin touched Alaric’s shoulder in reassurance, then sheathed his dagger and got to his feet.

  “I’ll be back as quickly as I can,” he murmured—and headed off briskly to where the ponies were waiting, Bronwyn staring after him. As he mounted up and kicked the pony into a gallop toward home, the old woman turned her attention to Bronwyn and Duncan.

  “I shall need some wood for splints,” she informed them. “See what you can find—the straighter and flatter, the better, but we’ll make do with what’s available. Go. I’ll stay with him.”

  They scrambled off to do her bidding, and the woman settled cross-legged beside her patient and continued to poke and prod at the arm for a few seconds, eliciting several just-contained hisses from her patient. She then turned her attention to the satchel beside her, muttering under her breath as she rummaged into its contents. Glad for the relative respite, and well aware of the pain that was to come, Alaric kept his good hand lightly clasped to the injury and closed his eyes, concentrating on trying to put the pain from his mind.

  He wasn’t very good at it yet. It was something that trained Deryni could do, for themselves and for others—and he had managed to block Llion’s pain. But the pain of a horse bite and that of a broken arm were of two entirely different magnitudes. And it was also entirely different when the pain to be blocked was one’s own.

  Furthermore, if he did succeed in blocking his own pain, would that reveal his true nature to his strange benefactor? He had intimated to the king that the hill folk of the borders were more accepting of fey powers such as the Deryni possessed, but was that really true? He had gained that impression over the years, but this old woman might be as bigoted as the Bishop of Nyford. It was one thing to make a sweeping statement affirming the benign nature of hypothetical strangers, and quite another to gamble one’s life on such a belief.

  And then there was the matter of a future reckoning, when he got back to Culdi. With his father and Duke Jared still away with the king in Meara, and even Llion temporarily at Morganhall, he would be obliged to confess to Lady Vera, how he had come to fall out of a tree in a field where he was not meant to be.

  He grimaced at that thought, for while his mother’s sister was a kind and gentle woman, who loved Alaric and his sister as she loved her own son and her stepson, she, too, had very strict rules about how young Deryni should comport themselves in a world that was hostile to their kind. The penalty for their disobedience was not likely to be physical, but her disappointment was apt to sting far worse than any birch switch or belt leather.

  Anticipation made Alaric grimace again, and he looked up to see the old woman stirring something with a twig in one of the cups the children had tossed aside after their noon repast.

  “What is that?” he asked, as she reached down with her free hand to raise his head from behind his neck.

  “Something for the pain,” she replied, though her gaze shifted from his as she said it. “Drink. You will feel nothing, after this.”

  Predisposed to accept the instructions of adults, the boy laid his good hand on hers, where it held the cup, and started to set his lips to the rim. But then some inkling of her true intent crossed the link of their physical contact and he froze, his eyes darting to hers in sudden, shocked comprehension.

  “It’s poison!” he gasped, pushing the cup aside. “You want to kill me!”

  As he drew back in alarm, his head slipping from her grasp to hit the grass with a thump, he sent out a tendril of thought as he had done for the squirrel, and felt her hostility. He tried to roll away from her, cradling his injured arm as he attempted to sit up, but her touch on his shoulder seemed to drain strength from him. As he subsided, helpless, he could feel her fingers twining in his hair, lifting his
head upturned, her other hand again bringing the cup toward him: the cup that he now knew held his death, if he drank it.

  “But, why?” he managed to whisper, tears runneling tracks down the dirt on his face. “I never harmed you. I never wished you ill. It can’t be for the sheep!”

  She only shook her head, tight-lipped, shifting her hand to pinch at the hinges of his jaw and force his mouth to open.

  “Please, no,” he whimpered, as the cup came nearer.

  But in that instant, reason or reality or divine providence suddenly prevailed. Sunlight filtering through the tree’s leafy canopy flashed bright gold on the plain band his assailant wore on her right hand, and the maniacal gleam in her rheumy eyes abruptly went out. With a muted little cry, she flung the cup aside and released him, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with sobs.

  “I’m sorry, Darrell,” she whispered, pressing the ring against her lips. “I am so sorry! Oh, forgive me, my love, my life. . . .”

  Astonished, Alaric shifted onto his back and watched her cry herself out, sensing that the moment of immediate danger had passed, grimacing against the pain as he tried to cushion his broken arm with his good hand. When she finally dried her eyes on an edge of her tattered skirt, he caught her gaze with his. Once upon a time, he realized, she had been a fine-looking woman.

  “You know what I am, don’t you?” he asked softly.

  She gave a curt nod, but shifted her gaze from his.

  “This . . . Darrell—was he killed by a Deryni?”

  She shook her head, stifling another sob. “No,” she whispered. “He was Deryni, and died to save another of his kind.”

  Alaric gave a wary nod. “I think I understand.” He drew a deep breath. “Listen, you don’t have to help me if you don’t want to. Kevin will bring the battle-surgeon, even though you said not to. I’ll be all right.”

  “Without a sword arm, young Deryni?” She drew herself up with returning dignity. “Nay, I cannot let you chance that. My Darrell would never approve. How can you carry on his work without a proper sword arm?”