The Bastard Prince (23 page)

“Dear,
dear
Dimitri,” Lior said softly. Flanked by the younger priest and Gallant de Breffni, he shook his head and made a soft
tsk
ing sound with his tongue as he folded his arms across his chest. “I had so hoped never to meet you this way.”

Just visible in one of his hands was the cap end of a Deryni pricker—an unusual one, cased in ebony and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His knuckles showed white upon it as he gazed down at his captive, betraying his tension. Though sick anticipation churned in Rhys Michael's gut, he could not but watch. Every muscle taut, he made himself ease down on the edge of his chair as Fulk came to stand beside him.

“You have broken faith, Dimitri,” Lior said more coldly. “In times past, you have
seemed
to serve, but now I worry that deception drove you from the start. In asking myself what seeds of treachery you might have sown in
my
mind, I have asked Father Magan to assist me tonight.” He fingered the Deryni pricker as he glanced at the younger priest beside him. “You have never met him, so you cannot have tainted him with your foul magic. But rest assured that he knows how to deal with your kind.”

Dimitri flicked a glance of utter disdain at both men, then turned his face away, his wrists testing at his bonds.

“No good, Deryni,” Lior said sharply. “You have killed one of your masters and probably a second. Before you are paid in kind, as you surely knew must be your fate, we require information regarding your
other
masters.” He smiled without a trace of mirth. “Naturally, you will not wish to give us this information. Just as naturally, we must insist.”

Dimitri closed his eyes briefly, a faint grimace twitching at the sensuous mouth as he swallowed with difficulty. Though he still seemed determined to put up a defiant front, Rhys Michael guessed that it was becoming more and more difficult, with the
merasha
in his blood. Sweat sheened on the lean torso, and muscles corded in his outstretched arms and legs flexed as he continued to test at his bonds.

“A ridiculous game, isn't it?” Lior said. “You are required by your masters to resist unto death, and I am required by mine to press you as hard as I can, your mind addled by my drugs and your body pushed by most exquisite pain to the very brink of death, but not beyond—until you have told me what I want to know.”

His expression hardened as his words seemed to have no effect on his prisoner.

“Very well. I know that we are not nearly to that point just yet. While Master Stevanus' sting denied you access to your powers, you still have most of your faculties of reason and the will to resist. Regrettably, Lord Rhun's method of rendering you senseless spared you from what I understand is a unique sensation, as the drug disrupted your control and stripped away access to your powers. Rest assured that such respite will not be granted again. I intend that you should experience the further erosion of your senses to the fullest.”

So saying, Lior handed the Deryni pricker to Father Magan, who unscrewed the cap and carefully withdrew the twin needles embedded in its underside. A tawny drop of liquid quivered in the torchlight, suspended between the needles, as Magan raised an eyebrow and calmly bent closer to their captive's lean torso.

Expecting the usual quick jab of the needles, Rhys Michael stifled a gasp and nearly came to his feet as Magan instead touched the needles lightly to the shadowed hollow of Dimitri's navel. In the same instant, as the act registered, Dimitri groaned and threw himself against his bonds in a frenzy, trying to roll away, rocking the wooden bedsteads to which he was bound and nearly breaking free.

“Hold him!” Lior ordered, even as Manfred and Gallard were throwing their weight across the ends to keep him fast, and Rhun was pinning his shoulders back against the wooden slats.

Rhys Michael forced himself to sink back into his chair, though his own heart must be pounding nearly as wildly as Dimitri's was. He could see the hard muscles of the Deryni's belly rippling in spasm as he made another halfhearted attempt to twist free, but clearly the drug so oddly administered was having its effect. He was panting as he ceased struggling, his body now running with sweat, and his eyes were glazing, the pupils wide and dilated as Rhun roughly turned the face toward the rushlights.

“Is that a new way of administering
merasha
, Lior?” he asked, as he released the captive's head and stepped back, looking at the inquisitor-general.

“Absorption of the drug through the skin is slower but steady,” Lior said, drawing a deep breath and exhaling. “The umbilicus provides a handy receptacle, and the skin lining it is very thin. A somewhat limited method of delivery, but it has its uses. Father Magan discovered it. Obviously, it had not occurred to Dimitri.” He glanced at the faintly twitching captive, whose eyes had closed.

“I know you're still conscious, Deryni,” Lior said, in a slightly louder voice. “Nor need you bother to hope that your ordeal will be cut short by a miscalculation of the drug's dose. We know precisely how much
merasha
a Deryni can tolerate before the dose becomes lethal, or even before sleep gives temporary respite.

“But before that comes the pain. Just as Father Magan is conversant with the drugs we can use to help break you, so Sir Gallard is well versed in the various methods of causing pain. Do not look for your other masters to save you from either.”

Dimitri's other masters even then were debating the numerous possible reasons why their agent had not yet made contact. In the tower chamber at Culliecairn, Prince Miklos of Torenth was sitting on the edge of a narrow camp bed with his head in his hands. In a chair opposite sat Marek of Festil, wide-eyed and impatient-looking.

“But we know they're close,” Marek said. “We've had conventional dispatches since they left Rhemuth. Besides the death of Udaut, there's been no hint that anything odd has happened—certainly nothing to indicate that Dimitri's been found out. Believe me, if a Deryni spy had been discovered in the bosom of the
Custodes Fidei
, we would have heard.”

“We
should
have heard from
him
,” Miklos said, raising his head. “I like it not. In more than six years of service, he has never been more than a few hours off, if a contact was prearranged. Given the uncertainties attendant upon forced march, I could understand a delay of a day or two. Privacy could be hard to come by. But the scouts predict arrival at Lochalyn tomorrow. That means they shall be
here
the day after. And we have not the foggiest notion where we stand, what other key men he has been able to eliminate or subvert, what he has found out about the Haldane—”

“Then, let's go ahead and force the contact,” Marek said. “If he's that close, it won't take that much more energy to initiate the contact, instead of just standing by to receive. It's late enough now that he's probably asleep. We'll go in tandem, with a human backup. If everything's all right, we can find out what we need to know. If he's captured, or he's turned, we can kill him. And of course, if he's dead, we'll know that, too.”

Miklos, Prince of Torenth, rubbed his hands over his face, then nodded with a heavy sigh.

“Very well.” He stood. “I shall go and fetch someone for backup. I don't wish to use one of my regular sources; this may kill whomever we use, if the power drain is too heavy.”

With that he went out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. Marek rose and paced the length of the room a few times, then went to the window and looked out over the valley below the castle.

Beyond the valley lay the Coldoire Pass; and between the pass and the castle, the watchfires of Miklos' Torenthi levies sparkled in the cool night air like jewels flung across a bolt of velvet. It was the gateway to Marek's kingdom, stolen from his parents by the father of the king riding to meet him out there in two days' time. It was close enough that he could almost smell it.

He turned as the door opened behind him and Miklos returned, now accompanied by a short, stocky guard wearing Miklos' livery.

“Sit there,” Miklos said, pointing to the floor beside the narrow camp bed. “Lean your back against the bed.”

The man obeyed the odd command without hesitation, obviously already controlled. Wearily Miklos went around to the other side of the bed and sat down, drawing a deep breath, then totally emptying his lungs before reclining and swinging his booted legs up onto the thin mattress.

As he briefly laid an arm over his eyes, Marek came to join him, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the bed from the guard and performing the same deep-breathing exercise that Miklos had done. After a moment Miklos raised his arm to tip the guard's curly head back against the bed, his hand briefly cupping over the eyes. Then he shifted it down to let his wrist lie against the man's shoulder, the V of his thumb and fingers lightly clasped around the man's throat.

“All right, he's ready,” Miklos murmured, upturning his other arm along his side. “Whenever you are.”

Marek had been disciplining his own trance already and linked in easily with the Torenthi prince, as he clasped his hand around the other's wrist. Marek was powerful and very well trained, perhaps the match of his older cousin, but this was Miklos' working, so he let himself take a subordinate role as Miklos wove the spell. In the background, he could feel the vibrant life-force of the guard pulsing in synch with the power Miklos was coiling to unleash, not even accessible to its owner but now set in potential and ready to be drawn upon.

Powerful and focused, their call went forth, fine-focused only to the mind of the agent they sought, sweeping a far smaller area and lesser distance than Dimitri had spanned, a week before, when last he communicated. It took some time to locate him, because his trace, when they finally picked it up, was odd.

Merasha!
came Miklos' stark pronouncement.
Someone has found him out!

Bracing himself for even the secondhand taste of
merasha
disruption, Miklos thrust the contact home, seeking no permission and needing none, for Dimitri's shields were in tatters, no impediment at all. Stark on the very surface of his mind lay drug-addled snatches of the event that had precipitated his undoing: Lord Albertus killed, as ordered, but under circumstances that inadvertently had betrayed Dimitri as well … and the despicable Paulin mind-ripped even as Dimitri succumbed to his captors' power.

Dimitri was not unconscious; indeed, he was in a great deal of pain. But not yet near the breaking point; not yet near the trigger Miklos had set against just such a contingency.

Yet something was wrong here—something about the trigger. To Miklos' consternation, other minds had been deep in Dimitri's. Alien traces showed like faintly wrong-colored threads against the subtle, complex pattern Miklos had laid down. He could not quite make out their source, but he could see glimpses of the work—and where at least a few of the threads seemed to lead.

Trigger alterations
, Miklos noted.
Let us see if we can discover who has done this. Could it possibly have been the Haldane …?

He drove his probe closer toward the source of the alteration, himself causing pain; drawing heavily on his backup now, ignoring
his
pain, starting to catch a glimpse, a glimmering—

In that instant, more powerful and more recent compulsions slammed into force, tripping the death-trigger that Miklos himself had set. Though aware what it would cost to delay the effect, Miklos locked Marek into the link and drove all their considerable power and all the last reserves of their backup into one final, desperate attempt to force the trigger back and keep the channel open just a little longer, relentlessly seeking explanation,
willing
the linked mind to yield its information.

Who? Tell me who!

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Rejoice not over thy greatest enemy being dead, but remember that we die all.

—Ecclesiasticus 8:7

Dimitri had yielded nothing to his interrogators, despite a diverse range of tortures applied to shrinking flesh over the space of several hours. Efficient and apparently unaffected by the pain he caused, the inventive Gallard de Breffni had presented nun with varied inducements calculated to push him to the very brink of what he thought he could bear and then beyond—though never to the point that he might escape into unconsciousness. Diverse stimulants kept him alert, periodically reviving sensations pushed to overload and countering the sedative effect of the
merasha
, but these did nothing to ease the disruption of his mind and powers.

Nor could Dimitri choose either to surrender the information they demanded or to end his agony, for he had given that choice into another's hands when first he offered himself as Miklos' agent. Though the decision of when to activate a death-trigger usually was reserved to the subject, the protection of extremely sensitive information sometimes required that absolute levels be set, over which the subject no longer retained control. With Dimitri's own concurrence, Miklos had set the triggerpoint against an almost unimaginably high pain threshold; for the longer Dimitri could keep from breaking, against the worse coercion, the greater the chance his interrogators would doubt their findings, even if bits of the truth should manage to slip through.

But now new pain probed into the very depths of Dimitri's awareness, totally apart from what Gallard de Breffni was doing to his body. Vaguely he recognized the touch; weakly he strained to reach toward it—or at least toward the triggerpoint, to give him blessed release. As the probe drove ever deeper, either the pain or his yearning finally tripped the long-sought trigger. An instant of relief immediately gave way to a rainbow brightness erupting in his mind, obliterating all else, hurtling him toward oblivion at last.