The King’s Justice (37 page)

Loris was reviewing the records of interrogation regarding both subjects now, scanning the account of Duncan's answers with the clark who had taken it all down. As he came to join Gorony and Sicard, an expression of long-suffering patience and solicitude on his narrow face, Duncan twitched feebly at his chains and longed for even one chance to blast all three men with a taste of the magic they so feared.

Not that he really could have done much to help himself, even released from his fetters of iron. The
merasha
locked away his powers far more inaccessibly than the chains locked away his physical freedom.

His captors knew how long
merasha
lasted, too. Just when the effects of the rather uncertain first dose had begun to wane to an almost tolerable level, Gorony had dosed him again—this time, without his being able to offer even token resistance.

It had only been a little, for apparently they knew that too much would either put him to sleep or kill him—out of reach of their pain in either case—but it was more than enough to keep him in thrall to the drug's disruptive effect. As his empty stomach rebelled at the new intrusion, and self-preservation made him fight to keep it down rather than choke on his own vomit, he found himself wondering where Gorony had gotten his obviously fine-tuned knowledge of
merasha
. But, then, torturers through the ages had always had their sources of information.…

His chief torturer was playing with one of his instruments of torture now, fiddling with the bloody pincers he had used on Duncan's feet, letting the meager torchlight in the tent catch and flash on the red-stained metal. Loris saw how Duncan was watching Gorony and his toy and crouched down beside the captive priest in a most comradely fashion.

“You're being very unreasonable, you know,” he purred, his halo of wiry grey hair making of him a grim, avenging angel as he gently moved a tendril of sweaty hair off Duncan's forehead. “You have only to confess your heresies, and I shall grant you the swift and painless death you desire.”

“I do not desire death,” Duncan whispered, turning his eyes away from Loris'. “That is not in my choosing, as you know well. I will not risk the damnation of my soul by seeking my own demise, however much suffering it may save my physical body.”

Loris nodded thoughtfully and turned one of the rings on his hand. It was Istelyn's ring, Duncan noted with a little start, and he found himself wishing that the power of Saint Camber might manifest through the ring as it had in the past and blast the obscenely confident Loris—not that Camber would sully his holiness on the likes of Loris!

“Aye, there is a certain, twisted logic in your reasoning,” Loris went on. “Why speed your entry into the eternal fires of Hell, to which you are already damned by your heresies? What Earthly pain can possibly match that endless torment to which God will surely condemn you?”

“I have loved my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my might,” Duncan whispered stubbornly, grasping for comfort in the familiar words as he closed his eyes against the sight of the mocking archbishop. “I have served Him as well as I could. If He demands my life, then I offer it freely unto Him, trusting in His infinite mercy.”

“There shall be no mercy for Deryni!” Loris retorted. “If you die unrepentant, you are surely damned. Only if you confess your heresies and seek absolution may you hold any hope of forgiveness.”

Duncan moved his head very slowly from side to side, letting the vertigo it produced help to block out Loris and the pain throbbing in his feet.

“God knows that I am repentant for any offenses I have committed against Him or any other. I admit me to His justice alone.”

“You blaspheme with your every word and breath, McLain!” Loris replied. “Confess your heresies!”

“No.”

“Admit how you have profaned your sacred office with every breath you drew—”

“No,” Duncan repeated.

“Do you deny that you have often celebrated the Black Mass, in service of the Lord of Darkness?”

“I deny it.”

“I shall burn you, McLain!” Loris shouted, little drops of spittle dotting Duncan's face. “I shall send you to the stake that you helped the heretic Morgan escape, and I shall scatter your ashes upon the dungheap! I shall give you such pain that you will weep for death, admit anything, deny all that you hold dear—just for an instant's respite from the wrath I shall bring to bear upon you!”

There was more, but Duncan only bit at his lip and deliberately curled his mangled toes against the earth, letting the sensory input of pain of his own choosing help blot out the sound of Loris' ravings. The threat of burning was the worst yet, but he had expected it would come eventually. If he was fortunate, perhaps Loris might become deranged enough to plunge a dagger into his heart and release him that way, before the stake could claim him. If he was to die, he did not think God would mind if he hoped for the quicker mercy of the blade. He knew, with unshakable faith, that Loris could not touch his soul.

“You shall writhe in the flames!” Loris ranted on. “But I shall be certain that the fire is slow, that your suffering may be prolonged. Shards of your roasted flesh will fall from your bones while you yet live! Your eyes will melt upon your cheeks!”

The horror Loris invoked cut through even the pain Duncan had managed to divert to himself, whirling and embellishing in his imagination, shaking his resolve, setting his body to quivering with a terror that would not be stilled.

He was actually glad for the sharp torment of Gorony's instruments, wrenching and twisting at his right hand. It seemed somehow fitting that the first of his fingers to suffer the torturer's ministrations was the one that, until lately, had worn the ring of a martyred bishop. He only hoped he could be as steadfast as Henry Istelyn.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors
.

—Psalms 7:13

“So, are you going to execute him or not?” Sicard of Meara asked, buckling a gorget at his throat as a squire adjusted steel greaves and tassets on his legs.

Loris, a white cope over his war harness, flicked the end of a riding crop against his armored thigh in annoyance and glanced down at the prisoner still spread-eagled on the floor. Duncan lay in a faint, his breathing labored and shallow, bloody hands and feet twitching occasionally in their shackles, his bare chest crisscrossed with welts from Loris' whip. Gorony sat on a low stool near the prisoner's head and watched for signs of returning consciousness. Neither blood nor sweat nor even smudge of dust from the night's work marred the snowy livery he wore over his armor.

“What's the matter, Sicard?” Loris said. “Have you no stomach for the Lord's work? The man is a heretic.”

“Well, burn him and be done with it, then.”

“I need his confession first.”

Snorting, Sicard took the sheathed sword his squire offered and thrust it into a hanger at his waist, dismissing the lad with a curt nod.

“Listen to me, Archbishop,” he said, when the boy had gone. “You may know about saving souls, but I know about saving lives.”

“I see only one life in the balance here,” Loris replied. “What does it matter to you whether he burns now or this evening?”

“It matters because I have the entire Mearan army camped outside this tent,” Sicard said. “My wife—my
queen
—entrusted them to me, to use in the cause of Mearan victory. McLain's men may be scattered and demoralized for the moment, but they are not stupid. They know where we are, and they know we have their duke. Give them time, and they'll attempt a rescue, even if they can't possibly hope to succeed.”

“If they can't possibly hope to succeed, then why do you fret?” Loris countered. “Have faith.”

“I'll have faith when I know where Kelson and his army are!”

“We'll find out.”

“Yes, but
when?”
Sicard slapped a mailed gauntlet against his thigh with a clash of metal links against plate as he glared down at the motionless Duncan. “Why hasn't he broken? That Deryni drug was supposed to make him talk.”

“His will is strong, my lord,” Gorony murmured. “Sometimes the drug alone is not sufficient. But he
will
tell us what we want to know.”

“Easy to say, Monsignor. But I need some answers
now.”

“There
are
more stringent measures I could take,” Gorony suggested.

“Aye, and with no more useful results.”

“Do you question my methods, my lord?”

Sicard set his fists on his hips in a gesture of distaste and turned slightly away.

“I don't like torturing priests,” he murmured.

“Ah, but executing them is quite another matter, isn't it?” Loris interjected smoothly. “Tell me, do you recall whether Henry Istelyn suffered any torture before his execution?”

Bristling, Sicard drew himself up self-righteously.

“Henry Istelyn was hanged, drawn, and quartered because, in his secular capacity, he was a traitor to Meara,” he replied. “His sentence did not reflect upon his sacred office as priest and bishop.”

Loris permitted himself a chill smile. “Then, think of McLain's secular office as Duke of Cassan and Earl of Kierney, a prisoner of war with valuable information needful of extraction,” he soothed. “So far as
I
am concerned, he is no longer even a priest, much less a bishop.”

“You know I cannot argue the fine points of canon law with you,” Sicard muttered. “I do not know what makes a bishop in the sacred sense. But this I know: a priest is a priest forever! At his ordination, his hands are consecrated for the purpose of holding the Body of Our Lord. Look what you've done to his hands!”

“Deryni
hands!” Loris spat. “Hands that have profaned the blessed Sacraments every time he dared to offer Mass. Do not presume to lecture
me
regarding the proper treatment of Deryni, Sicard!”

Duncan, drifting feverishly at the brink of returning consciousness, moaned aloud as Loris punctuated his words with a cut of his whip across the already welted chest. The pain reverberated up and down his body in a wave of fire and chill dread.

He tried to push himself back down into the blessed blackness where he did not hurt, but full awareness welled and flooded back upon him in a rush of old pain, throbbing in his hands and feet. The hard edge of psychic distortion from the last dose of
merasha
had waned but little—certainly not enough to give him any real measure of control.

He did not open his eyes. But even as he sensed Loris bending closer to look at him, and someone else waiting near his head, any chance of maintaining the pretense of unconsciousness was obliterated by the sharp pressure of a boot compressing his wounded right hand against the dirt beneath it—not hard, but it did not need to be. His groan, as he curled to the limits of his bonds in an effort to evade the torment, was almost a sob.

“He's coming around, Excellency,” Gorony murmured, from close beside Duncan's left ear.

Loris snorted and moved back, and the pain in Duncan's hand receded almost immediately to a dull throb.

“Amazing how much pain can be bought from the tip of a finger—even in so willful and obdurate a priest as our Duncan. Pay attention, McLain.”

Loris underlined the order with another cut of his whip across Duncan's chest, and Duncan gasped and opened his eyes. He was burning with thirst, his throat so parched and swollen that he might almost have welcomed even another draught of
merasha
—for they had given him nothing else to drink since his capture.

“So, you
have
returned to us,” Loris said, smiling with satisfaction. “You really must try to be more attentive. Can it be that you do not appreciate Monsignor Gorony's ministrations?”

Duncan only dragged his swollen tongue across dry lips and turned his head aside, bracing for Loris' next blow.

“Why, Father,” Loris purred. “You clearly do not yet understand. What matters a man's body if his soul be damned?”

The end of the whip only tapped lightly against one raw fingertip, but the leather might as well have been red-hot steel, for the agony it produced. Duncan clenched his teeth against the pain, but he would not let himself cry out. Suddenly the lash flicked hard against his bare chest, raising yet another welt among the dozens already there, and he did let out a gasp at that.

“Answer me,” Loris said sharply. “I am doing this for the good of
your
soul, not my own.”

“A noble sentiment,” Duncan whispered, almost managing a wry smile. “From a most noble and godly man.”

The whip snapped across his face this time, laying open a bloody split in his lower lip, but Duncan was already braced, and only grunted at the blow.

“I believe I have just lost patience with you, Deryni!” Loris muttered through clenched teeth. “I wonder what kind of song you will sing when you taste a proper lash. Your tongue needs discipline as well. Gorony?”

Gorony rose immediately and disappeared to another part of the tent, where Duncan could not see, and for just an instant, he feared a literal fulfillment of the threat: that Loris meant to have his tongue cut out. Gorony would do it, too, if Loris ordered it.

But it was a cup, not a knife, that Gorony brought back with him: more
merasha
, then. God, how they must fear him, to risk another dose so soon.

He did not even try to resist as Gorony raised his head and put the cup to his lips. Whether he fought or not, they would get it down him eventually; struggling would only compound his discomfort. And perhaps they
would
miscalculate and overdose him. At worst, the drug's disruptive effect might help him blunt the other pain.

He swallowed thirstily, almost welcoming the nausea and vertigo the drug produced. Even this tortured near-oblivion of mind was preferable to what they were doing to the rest of his body. And if they burned him …