“For now, your primary concern is to meet the challenge of Miklos of Torenth and stay alive. Remember that you’re still mortal. Magic you may have, but swords and arrows, poison—they can all still kill you, if you aren’t careful.”
“I’ll remember,” Rhys Michael murmured, earnest resolution in his eyes. “Thank you, Father Joram—and Tieg. And please—thank that other man who was in the circle with us, there at the end. I’m not sure I could have done it, if it hadn’t been for him.”
Joram closed his eyes briefly, knowing he had not heard the last of this, then nodded. “We’d better go,” he murmured, glancing at Tieg. “We don’t want to press our luck—or yours. I wish there were time to establish a contact link for future communication, but you’re in no condition right now. Later, perhaps, after you’ve returned. Meanwhile, Rhysel will continue to be your go-between. God keep you, Sire—and your Highness. You’d both best sleep now.”
As he and Tieg slipped out of the room, Rhysel following, Michaela snuggled down to lay her head against her husband’s shoulder. He smiled as he let his arm encircle her, reaching out drowsily with a tendril of thought to gently brush her mind. To his pleased surprise, he felt the feather-brush of her response in kind, fragile but exquisite. It was thus that he allowed himself to drift into sleep, enwrapped in her love and secure in the expectation that, at last, he had a weapon to use against his enemies.
One of those enemies even then was prowling the darkness not far away, bound on an errand for other masters besides those to whom he answered in the castle. Unseen, the Deryni Dimitri made his way along a dim-lit range of vaulted cellars, silent as a wisp of fog. Torches burned here and there along the stone-flagged corridor, but the pools of light they cast were far apart, leaving wide areas of darkness between.
The alcove Dimitri sought was well screened by one of these patches of darkness, and here he hid himself to wait. Very shortly his intended victim came sauntering along the corridor as expected—a bored and gullible young guard named Iosif, who had served Dimitri’s purposes before.
He was bigger than Dimitri, and much younger, full-featured and powerfully built, with a mop of curly black hair above the scarlet surcoat that covered body armor of boiled leather. He was armed with short sword and dagger. One big hand bore a torch aloft, and the other swung a large ring of keys. Though his mere size would have made him a formidable opponent, Dimitri had no intention of ever letting their relationship become adversarial on any level.
Poised to make his move, he waited until the young man had come just abreast of the alcove, then reached out one hand to seize the man’s nearer wrist, at once securing control and drawing him into the alcove, his free hand catching up the ring of keys before they could fall. His victim’s eyes had closed at Dimitri’s touch, and he offered no resistance as his torch hand slowly sank.
“Good evening, Iosif,” Dimitri whispered, smiling slightly as he rescued the torch and snuffed it against the wall. “You do not remember me, but I promise you shall remember your reward, if you survive this night’s work. Sit and be at ease now. I must reach very far tonight.”
Oblivious to his mortal danger, the younger man sank at once to a sitting position against the wall, booted legs splayed wide to brace himself, head lolling against the rough stone at his back, big hands lying open and motionless beside his leather-clad thighs. His captor bent to set keys and torch within easy reach to either side, then folded to sit cross-legged between the younger man’s knees. Drawing a deep breath then, Dimitri leaned slightly forward and reached up to lay hands on either side of the curly head, fingers slipping through the thick hair and thumbs coming to rest on the temples.
“You cannot resist me,” he whispered, dark gaze fixing on the blur of his victim’s closed eyes. “I regret that it may be necessary to hurt you, but I shall try to be brief. Look at me, Iosif. Open your eyes … and now open your soul …”
The young man’s breath caught in a little gasp, but he obeyed. The Deryni’s thumbs tightened. Ignoring the brief flash of dread in his subject’s eyes, Dimitri at once breached the puny human defenses, quelling the stifled moan that passed the other’s lips as he forced the pathways open wide and pushed deep into the other’s mind, to the very core of life-force. He could taste the pain he caused as he began to pull the power to drive his intent, but he balanced his speed to a level that was safe enough, if less than comfortable. If he had to draw too deeply or for too long, true damage would be done, but that was a calculated part of the risk—Iosif’s risk.
Steely-willed, Dimitri drove his call outward then, tight-focused toward the mind that should be waiting for his contact. Finding the connection he sought took longer than he would have liked—Iosif was tiring quickly—but once the link was secured, the communication itself was quick and smooth, briefly giddying as the other probed deep and then withdrew enough to pass on further instructions before dismantling the contact.
In the space of a heartbeat, Dimitri was alone in his subject’s mind once again, blinking dazedly back to normal awareness. The pounding of his own heart indicated that the operation just completed had taken far more out of him than it usually did, so he drew a long, slow breath and pulled a bit more energy from Iosif to stabilize himself, breathing out men with a relieved sigh. The young guard looked pasty-faced and almost feverish as Dimitri assessed the cost, and the pulse in the side of Iosif’s neck fluttered weak and thready under his captor’s fingers.
“A near-run thing, eh, my hapless young friend?” Dimitri whispered, shifting a little energy back to better balance the younger man. “Now you shall have what you desire, but consider carefully what dream you shall wish for in the future. Succubi are passing fickle, and sometimes cruel. Pleasure they may give, but not always do they reckon well a mortal mount’s endurance.”
A sly smile curved at his lips as he set the old scenario in motion, for well he knew what men like Iosif desired, in the loneliness of the long night watch. The erotic fantasy starting to stir at the edges of the younger man’s awareness was tailored to fuel the most profound of carnal longings.
The dream would be brief but vivid, after which a shaken and exhausted Iosif would be off on his rounds again. If he did not actually ascribe his condition to a literal visitation by the delectable succubus of nocturnal memory, he certainly would be convinced that his exhaustion came of an exquisitely satisfying dream—clandestine bliss stolen while he sought a catnap in one of the several hiding places he had discovered were safe from his sergeant’s prying. And it was something he would never report to his superiors or even a confessor.
So Iosif would keep his secret—and Dimitri’s—and the odd partnership would continue as long as Dimitri had need of him—or until the night came, as it could at any time, when Dimitri must drain his subject past recovery. A less skilled mage might simply have killed his subjects after each night’s work—supplying such an illusion as Dimitri’s required extra effort and a bit of imagination—but Dimitri was savvy enough to realize that a series of mysterious deaths would have aroused suspicion.
No, far better to use the same subject again and again, and give the workman generous compensation for his labors. As Dimitri got to his feet, the younger man already was beginning to breathe more heavily, face flushing with anticipated ecstasy.
Smiling slightly as he shook his head, Dimitri put the man from his mind and glanced out into the main corridor, scanning left and right. He had his orders; time enough to begin implementing them tomorrow, as opportunities presented themselves. Several ideas had occurred to him already …
His master, meanwhile, had also paid a price for the night’s work. Far away, in the cool darkness of a sparsely furnished tower room of a castle called Culliecairn, Prince Miklos of Torenth lay still as death and set himself the welcome discipline of running slowly through a spell to banish fatigue. These far contacts necessary to maintain input from his agent in Rhemuth always left him drained, even when he augmented his energies, and it was hard
on the subjects from whom he borrowed those energies. The sturdy captain sprawled unconscious in the chair beside the camp bed was accustomed to serving his prince in this wise, but even with a Healer’s ministrations, he was apt to require a day abed to fully recover. But the extra power had to come from somewhere, and a subordinate could spare it far more easily than Miklos.
Stirring a little stiffly, the prince opened his eyes and carefully stretched each long limb before sitting up with a sigh. Long blond hair tumbled loose around his shoulders as he bent his head to press the heels of both hands hard against his forehead. At this sign of life, a shorter, darker young man of a similar age came over to pour wine into a pair of silver goblets, handing one to the man just awakened before flouncing down in another chair beside the narrow camp bed.
“Well?”
“It proceeds according to plan,” the fairer man replied, lifting his cup in salute and then drinking it down. “The Haldane has taken the bait and will be here within a fortnight.”
The younger man laughed aloud and lifted his own cup in answer. “Well done, Dimitri! I really didn’t think they’d let him come out. I thought they’d simply send an army.”
“They are sending that, too,” Miklos said mildly. “And it remains to be seen whether he can be lured into a confrontation of the sort you seek, once he arrives.”
Marek of Festil snorted and set his cup beside his chair.
“I don’t see why not. If he thinks he can get Culliecairn back by negotiation, why should he wish to risk men’s lives in battle?”
“True enough. However, he seems rightly to have deduced that we have not my brother’s support in this venture, and that you are as yet in no position to make him a serious military challenge. These insights show a far keener understanding of political realities than we had been led to expect. We may have been mistaken in assuming that he is controlled by his great lords.”
“Dimitri swears that he is,” Marek said.
“I prefer to judge that for myself, I think. We can afford to go slowly.”
“Miklos, I’ve been going slowly for twenty-three years,” Marek said, exasperation in his voice. “I’m the same age my father was when the Haldane’s father killed him. It’s time I found out whether the Haldane magic that killed my father passed to his son. I don’t think it did, or he would have used it by now to free himself from his great lords.”
“I am inclined to agree; and if you are correct, I shall kill him for you.”
“I can kill him myself.”
“You probably could. However, if we both are wrong, and the Haldane magic is his, it is best that I be the one to find this out. The House of Festil can ill afford the loss of its head at this time. Your heir is less than a year old, Marek.”
“And you have no heir,” Marek pointed out.
Miklos shrugged and smiled. “The gamble of a younger son, cousin. I have yet to establish my dynasty, but if it’s to be done, better on the basis of lands won than lands merely given, however generous one’s benefactor.”
“When I am king,” Marek murmured, reaching across to clasp his cousin’s arm, “when we have won back my lands, I shall make you Duke of Mooryn, holding all of southern Gwynedd. And it will be because you have won it, not because anyone deigned to give it.”
“Which is precisely why I am willing to be a little reckless in your cause,” Miklos replied with a sly smile. “Now, here is what I have asked Dimitri to do.”
At that moment, what Dimitri had been asked to do was of far less concern to him than making his way back to the privacy of his own quarters for some much-needed sleep. Soul-weary from his work of the past hour, and grown at once arrogant and complacent through several years’ supposition that he was the only Deryni at large in Rhemuth Castle, he hardly noticed or cared that his shields were sloppy as he began to climb a turnpike stair leading upward. What mere human would notice his vulnerability, should he chance to meet anyone?
But others noticed. Nor were they merely human. En route back to the Portal room beside the library, just emerging from the turnpike stair that had led them down from the level of the royal apartments, Joram and Tieg paused to glance quickly along the corridor and then back down the stairwell as they sensed the flare of undisciplined shields somewhere nearby. Simultaneously came the faint, padding whisper of soft-shod footsteps ascending the turnpike stair from farther below, confirming the source of the flare. But there should be no other Deryni here!
Hardly breathing, Joram set a hand on Tieg’s forearm, tight-shuttered communication passing between them. By keeping their own shields locked down, they should be able to avoid betraying their identity as Deryni; but they stood little chance of going unnoticed, for Tieg carried a torch. Nor dared they risk being seen entering the little room beside the library.
But their mere appearance should arouse no suspicion, dressed as man-at-arms and squire. As such, they had every right to be about the castle at this hour. Could the intruder say as much? Who was he?
The only way to find out was to brazen it out. Shields pulled close, they turned back onto the landing to await whoever was coming, Tieg holding his torch aloft in simple courtesy. The footsteps continued up the stairwell, torchlight now breaking around the newel post, preceding the one who bore it.
Against the glare of the other man’s torch, Joram could make out but little of his features, but his raiment was black and monkish. Joram felt the other’s flare of interest as he became aware of them, but no suspicion. And before simple interest could shift to suspicion, Tieg boldly reached out to grasp the hand holding the torch, at the same time plunging deep for the triggerpoint, stripping the other’s powers bare and plummeting him into oblivion.
The man had no time to cry out, even in his mind. Consciousness simply ceased. He went rigid rather than buckling at the knees, for Tieg’s controls held him immobile. After a taut instant to confirm his work, the young Healer handed off first one torch and then the other to Joram, shifting his hands then to either side of the man’s head to Read him. Within seconds he glanced back at Joram in consternation.
“Good God, Joram, this is Dimitri!”
Joram moved in beside him immediately, glancing around surreptitiously as he stubbed out one torch against the wall and then conducted his own quick probe of their captive’s mind. The breadth and depth of Dimitri’s ongoing deception was so vast as to be almost unbelievable, except that Joram had seen the results all too clearly. That the Deryni double agent was no longer capable of any deception or subterfuge hardly mattered, for his work for the great lords had cost the lives of scores of innocent men and women, over the years. His work for Prince Miklos of Torenth and the Festillic Pretender, Prince Marek, bespoke even more convoluted plots and betrayals.
We’ll take him back to the haven, Joram said in Tieg’s mind. I plan to strip him dry before I kill him.
That’s risky, Tieg returned. If he just disappears, awkward questions are likely to be asked, maybe even of the king.
If no body is ever found, his disappearance will remain a mystery, Joram replied. They have no other Deryni to investigate it, and Fulk will verify that Dimitri never came near the royal apartments and the king never left them—which is all quite true. Help me get him up.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Who causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit.
—Proverbs 28:10
With but a few hours remaining before dawn, Joram finally decided not to kill Dimitri.
“The temptation is almost irresistible,” he said to his closest advisors. “God knows he deserves to die. But considering what we’ve learned, I think he can serve our purposes far better if we return him precisely where Paulin and Hubert think he ought to be—with his orders suitably redirected, of course.”
Bishop Niallan sat back wearily in his chair, absently rubbing one hand over his short-clipped grey beard.
“I just don’t know, Joram. Granted, he’d be in a position to
do us several very large favors, but this does complicate an already precarious situation.”
The subject of their discussion still lay where he had been deposited some hours before, oblivious even to their presence, stretched out motionless on the long table previously taken up by maps and strategy papers. Still stripped of his powers and, therefore, quite humanly vulnerable, Dimitri had been subjected to the most thorough and rigorous examination of which the very proficient Deryni ranged around this table were capable. The full extent of his service to the great lords now was known, as well as the superior allegiance he owed to Miklos of Torenth—and had owed, from long before he allowed himself to be recruited by Paulin of Ramos.
“Well, it was an incredible double deception,” Dom Rickart said, glancing toward the head of the table, where Jesse MacGregor was still immersed in trance, fine-tuning Dimitri’s new orders while Queron and Tieg observed. “And what incredible luck, that he should just walk into your hands like that.”
“What incredible luck, that one of our people hasn’t just walked into his hands, over the last few years,” Joram countered. “And if he’d ever gotten his hands on the king, it would have been the end of him. We’ve all seen what suspicions he already had.”
“Which is all the more reason to simply kill him and be done with it,” Ansel said. “The very thought of letting him go back alive, even controlled—”
“Ansel, the idea doesn’t exactly thrill me either,” Joram said sharply. He was still wearing his Haldane harness and looked taut and irritated. “I’m quite aware of the risks. But his disappearance just now, on the eve of departure for a major military expedition, would raise far too many questions—as would his death by ‘natural causes.’”
“Didn’t we eliminate some Custodes priest just before Javan’s coronation and make it look like natural causes?” Dom Rickart said thoughtfully.
“Yes, and Paulin was suspicious at the time, even though he was never able to put a finger on anything,” Joram replied. “I don’t think we dare use that ruse again, at least not in this instance. A convenient and fatal ‘accident’ would be useful, but that’s far more difficult to arrange so that it’s convincing, especially on short notice. And needless to say, we daren’t even consider any form of killing that would be recognizable as murder.”
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