Wencit was responsible for all of this. A horrible cusp had been reached, and now Wencit controlled Derry’s body just as certainly as he controlled his lowest underlings. He had said that he would make Derry betray his master, and Derry had no doubt that Wencit could do it, if he said he would. He had also forbidden Derry’s escape through death—though that, perhaps, could be circumvented. Derry would not, could not, permit himself to be used as the instrument of Morgan’s betrayal.

Digging down through the straw, Derry used the blade to clear away to the bare clay, hollowing out a narrow hole that was deep enough to hold the hilt. He glanced at the door, hoping that there was no one watching what he was about to do, then lay down on his stomach beside the hole he had prepared, propped on his elbows, and held the dagger in his two hands.

Suicide. It was an act forbidden even in thought for a man who believed, as Derry did, in the God of the Church Militant. For the believer, the taking of one’s own life was a grave offense, damning one to an eternal torment in Hell.

But there were things worse than Hell, Derry argued with himself. The betrayal of self, the betrayal of friends…Himself he could not help. He had been tested against the master of Torenth and had been found wanting. There was no one to blame for that. But, Morgan—the powerful Deryni lord had saved Derry’s life more than once, had more than once snatched him from the jaws of death against unthinkable odds. Could Derry, in conscience, now refuse to do the same for him?

Grasping the dagger by its blade, Derry gazed at the cross-hilt for a long moment, rehearsing half a dozen childhood prayers and discarding them. Then he touched the cross-hilt fervently to his lips before placing it pommel-first into the hole in the floor. A compassionate God would surely understand—and Derry’s faith in that compassion would have to sustain him through that which he must now do…and whatever came after.

With the blade pointing upward like a silver flame, Derry raised himself from his elbows and shifted sideways, positioning himself with the blade angled up beneath his ribcage.

It should not take long in his depleted condition. His arms would give out in a few seconds, and he would no longer be able to hold his body off the shining steel. Even Wencit could not prevent the fall of an exhausted body.

He closed his eyes as his arms started to tremble with fatigue, thinking of a day long ago when he and Morgan had ridden laughing through the fields of Candor Rhea. He remembered the battles and the good horses, the girls he had tumbled in the hay of his father’s stables, his first stag hunt…

And then he started to fall….

CHAPTER TWENTY

“The Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.”