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Other Era Deryni FanFic - Coins of Memory - Chapter 1

Started by Laurna, March 05, 2013, 05:14:21 AM

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Laurna


There are a few special worlds that remain eternal for the men and women who read them.  The set of Deryni series, written by the talented Katherine Kurtz are a group of tales that can be read over and over, and thoroughly enjoyed with each repeated reading.  For thirty years, I have been a fan of the exploits of Alaric Morgan, Richenda Morgan, Rhys Thuryn, and Camber of Culdi, among numerous others.  The words I offer here are a culmination of my ideas for honoring these beloved characters of the Deryni world.

I want to give a thank you to my sister for keeping my story inline.  I also want to give a special thank you to Evie for editing all of those grammatical embarrassments that I have trouble seeing.


Chapter 1 - JK 973  1st Coin 


Smoke-filled lungs woke the small child from her suffocating nightmare.  A startled scream of panic came to an abrupt end as the little girl gasped for air.  She gagged on the smoke, awakening to the realization that it was no longer just a part of her dreams; it was real.  The acrid air filled her eyes with water and blurred her sight.  She blinked the tears away, and still the heavy darkness prevailed.  There was a disturbing scent of campfire in the air, while a deep rumbling vibration echoed through the floors.  A sharp crack of wood shifted over stone, causing the child to sit up in her bed, fully alert. 

A flash of light penetrated the dark.  The brilliant radiance filled the child's bedroom and then retreated.  The darkness returned and the little girl quested for answers.  That could not have been her mama's hand-fire.  That had a soft green glow with a caring aura.  This light had been a brilliance of yellow/red, awash with heat.  It burned the air as it passed.  It left an ember high up, near the ceiling.  The child's eyes opened wide, as the ember flickered and glowed with an orange iridescence through the haze overhead.

Confused, she watched the spark of light as it grew in size.  It sizzled on the upper corner of the tapestry hung at the head of her bed.  It was her favorite weaving, the one she had requested her mother place there on her last birthday, that happy day she had turned a full six years old.  The image was of a pair of unicorns on a pastoral grassy node, grazing beside a peaceful lake.  The spark ignited the full upper edge of the wool with a fiery glow.  The flames grew quickly.  They burst from the images of leaves on the once summer time trees.  They crawled down the trunks, and threatened the white innocent unicorns.  All in a terrifying flash, the unicorns turned into fiery black nightmares.

The child threw herself back from her bed and cowered on the floor.  She looked up again to see the whole wool tapestry alive, dancing with wild flame.  The six year old stared at it transfixed.  This should not be.  Before her eyes, her beloved unicorns were devoured forever by fire.  The flames grew, danced, and kicked their heels out from the wall.  They whirled in colors of gold, red, and blue, reaching down to her sleeping covers.

Disbelief turned to fear, and the girl called out for her mother.  She held her breath for a long moment, waiting for the pair of secure arms that always soothed her fears away.  The arms of her mother did not appear.  The heat pushed her back far from the bed, as far back as the wall would allow.  Now the fire danced across her bed covers, the flames leaping upward with delight. 

At last, she heard a distant voice calling out her name.  "Jessa!"

"Here!  I'm here!" she screamed out, holding back the panic.  Through the smoke filled room, she crawled to her closed bedroom door.  The handle was high above her in the midst of the thick air.  Standing up to reach it, Jessa caught the smoke in her throat, and she retched from lack of breathable air.  She desperately grabbed for the metal door latch, but her hands flinched back as the metal burned her fingers.  It came to Jessa in a horrid feeling of dismay that the thick oaken door had become hot, and smoke climbed upward from the slit opening at the bottom.

Fear turned to terror.  She was trapped.  Fire was close at hand on the door's other side, while before her, flames consumed the far wall of her room.  The heat of it baked the tears off her cheeks.  Crouching down, she could not think of any escape.  A desperate scream escaped her lips and the stream of tears finally wet her face.

In her mind, a voice called out once more, searching for her.  "Jessa!  Where are you?"

She focused her world into that mental link, grasping tightly to the strength of her father's mind beyond the door.  "Papa, here!  In my room.  Papa!  Help me!"

"I am coming," he replied.  "Stay back from the door." In moments, the door swung wide, with flames leaping through the opening.  The green glow of her father's magical ward swept the flames aside and engulfed his daughter within its shimmering protection.  A pair of swift strong arms surrounded her waist and lifted her high to the man's chest.  His arms held her tight and his mind soothed her fears as he ran back out of her room.  Over his shoulder, Jessa could see all the things within her room ignite in devouring flame.

"Jessamyn, love of mine, look at me!  No, don't look anywhere but at me."  Jessa's gaze turned from the inferno all around, and looked deeply into her father's gray eyes.  Her trust in him was complete.  "Good!  We are getting out of here!  I have you tight."  He ran to the middle of the playroom, past large dancing flames, and then dashed into the main family areas where the fire was less intense.  Even here, growing flames carried the searing heat high into the ceiling, threatening her favorite tapestries of majestic castles with knights on their horses in full splendor.  The house moaned from the torment and seemed to cry in its own pain.  Jessamyn buried her face in her father's shoulder to shut the horror out.

Lord Jacuth Kyriell caressed Jessamyn's mind.  He was Deryni and master of magic.  In the little girl's worshiping eyes, there was nothing her father could not do.  Her mother told stories of how she had first meet Jacuth at his knighting in the extravagant court of the Hort de Orsal.  How the tall Tralian Knight instantly won her heart.  With patience and devotion, he spent the two following years winning both the permission and the trust of her parents to gain her hand in marriage.  Elzia and Jacuth wed on the cliffs of the Isle of Orsal, in full pageantry of the Horthy tradition.  Over the next eleven years, within the walls of the summer Tralian Castle, the couple happily raised their five children.  Jessamyn could remember the time when their home looked over the sea, and gulls played in the air near her window.  That was three years ago, before her father was summoned to return to the land of his birth, back to this Kingdom of Gwynedd.  That was when Jessa first heard her father called 'Healer to the King'.  This king she had met, with his graying black hair and shining silver eyes.  He had told her how proud he was of her father, and how her father had saved him from horrible pains. 

The grateful king had given her father this large estate on the edge of the wide Molling River overlooking farmlands and soft sloping hills.  The manor house was stone on the ground floor, with the two next floors above painted white with brown exposed cross beams under sharp slanted roof lines of blue slate.  Her mother called it her country cottage, referring to the privacy the manor afforded for Lord Kyriell's family.  Very different from the castle by the sea, where the gulls used to fly.

"Papa, where's mama?  Please, can you get her too?" the girl asked, trying to be brave; her mother would not want to see her cry.

"Dear love, your mother is safe; she and your brothers and sisters are waiting for us outside."

"Then we must go there too," Jessa said, wanting to get away from the burning flames and be with her whole family once more.

Jacuth smiled at that and patted her long braided blond hair.  "We're going there now, my love."

The Deryni lord arched his arcane walking ward of glowing emerald further out away from their bodies.  The deep green sphere pushed the roaring flames aside.  The powerful spell of the walking ward required a skilled tactician to maintain the necessary degree of focus.  The ward moved as the maker moved, forward or back.  The fire curved around the arcing edge, the flames shifted aside and cleared her father's path.  He smiled at his daughter when she purposefully linked her mind to his and copied his focus to amplify the effects of defense from the searing heat.

She was always doing that, following his mind and copying what he did.  If she only knew how few practitioners of the magical arts could master this intensity!  Yet here at six years old, if he did it, she would follow.  The things he could teach her were boundless.  They had discovered she was a healer in the first days after her birth when even as a newborn her energies had responded to her father's healing of her mother after childbirth.

Jessa smiled, reading her father's mind through their link.  It was hard for him to hide his thoughts and feelings from her.

Jacuth carried Jessa across the family room.  He descended the flight of stone stairs that opened onto the first floor's main hall.  The huge room below was in turmoil.  The oak tables were flipped over onto their sides; chairs and benches were smashed and piled high.  The tapestries had been torn from the walls, tossed onto the wreckage, and then set aflame.  This massive bonfire scorched the center of the great hall, igniting the ceiling woods, and sending the leaping flames upward into the guest rooms above.  Even in Jacuth's moment of hesitation, the flames grew and swirled in a firestorm of energy careening around the room, seeking anything new to set ablaze.  Their escape, the great entrance far across the room, tantalized the pair, while the firestorm threatened to consume them if they dared to pass.  Jacuth strengthened his warding and stepped into the burning hell.

Protected from the killing heat by the glinting energy shield, the Deryni wielder of magic made it a third of the way across the great room when the cracks and groaning began in the ceiling above.  The center ceiling beams collapsed.  The terrifying rip of timber and stone splintered and crashed section by section, like children's building blocks being toppled by an angry sibling.  Fire, smoke, and debris blew outward across the stone floor.  The lord of the manor raced away from the fiery explosion.  The shielding had been cast for protection from the elements of heat and flame; it had not the makeup or power to stop the physical forces of his home coming down upon their heads.  Chunks of ash and wood penetrated the green shield knocking Jacuth to his knees.  His focus crumbled, and the arcane sphere dissipated.  The full strength of the heat and smoke filled both their lungs. 

Together, father and daughter choked and coughed as they crawled to the north wall where the only other exit lay.  These doors led into the single story stone kitchen and the servants' quarters at the back of the manor.  Jessa's father pulled himself up to the door; he placed Jessa between himself and the wall, protecting her from the heat of the room.  He jerked the handle on the door, but unbelievably it was barred shut.  Holding her shift over her mouth to breathe, Jessa followed her father's focus as he desperately scanned the wooden frame, searching for the latch spring that was holding the door against their passing. 

Who locked this?  her father asked in urgency.  A mental lift of a bar and a twist of the latch, and the door came free from the lock.  Jacuth kicked the thick oak door wide with his booted foot.  He picked up his daughter and raced through the exit.  With his free hand, Jacuth slammed the door closed behind them.  Father and daughter retched for air after escaping the inferno of the main house.  Their burning eyes watered to clear the smoke away.  Still half-blind, Jacuth stepped forward, and then he stopped, transfixed by who stood in the kitchen before him.


                                                                       *******


Richenda Morgan opened her clasped hands and stopped the images displayed within the memory coin.  She took in a deep clear breath knowing the smoke was in the memory, and not in the air that she breathed.  Even so, a moment passed before her uneasy tension relaxed.  The visions embedded in the coin gave a clear accounting of another's memories, the memories of a child in the distant past. 

Richenda took the coin between thumb and fingers and looked at it closer.  It was a silver mark of the house of Cynfyn.  The coin was not a form of money, but rather a token of the noble house, often given as a medal of honor or as a reward for deeds done.  As often as not, unknown to the humans that carried them, these coins held magical messages sent from one Deryni to another.

The Cynfyn coin was a tad larger than the largest coin of real monetary value.  The coin in her hand was embossed with the Stag of Cynfyn on one side, and engraved on the opposite side with a pair of initials and a number: JK 973 1st .  Richenda determined that the initials must be for whom the memory was imprinted.  A child named Jessamyn Kyriell.  The number had to be a date stamp of 973.  That made the memory on the coin a hundred and fifty-two years old.  Many generations had passed since the coin had been enchanted.  There were four coins in all, with varying dates and a different set of initials.  The four coins were also marked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, delineating them as a set and the order in which they should be viewed.

Richenda fingered a loose strand of her red-gold hair back from her eyes, and pushed the unruly lock under the gold circlet holding her silk veil in place.  She had discarded the pretense of her position as mistress of the house by dressing without embellishment in a deep green plush surcote with an ash grey under gown of the softest wool.  The color of the dress contrasted with her blue eyes but it warmed the blush on her soft round cheeks. 

In her mid-twenties, Richenda Morgan was a loving wife and mother.  She was the wife of Alaric Morgan, Duke of Corwyn.  She could not have asked for a more devoted husband or a man more highly respected within the Kingdom of Gwynedd.  Alaric had proven to her that true love really did exist.  Her first arranged marriage had left her widowed from a man who had abandoned both his wife and his king.  When Richenda was devastated and alone, Alaric had taken her into his protection and care, not just herself, but her first young son as well.  Her second marriage was one of love.  A daughter was born in the first year and then a son just beyond their third anniversary.  Alaric was a wonderful papa to her three children and a loving man to her.

At the birth of Alaric's first son, the duke abdicated the honorable title of Earl of Lendour to Kelric Morgan, thus making Kelric the 16th Earl of Lendour.  At five months of age, the earl slept peacefully in the crib next to Richenda's chair.  With the resurrection of the Lendour title separated from the Corwyn title, it had come to mind that Alaric should reopen the mountain estates for courtly retreats away from the Crown City of Rhemuth. 

In traveling from their home in Coroth to Rhemuth for King Kelson's nineteenth birthday, the duke and duchess stopped at Castle Cynfyn in the west Lendour Mountains to see the condition of the Lendour estate.  It had been many years since a titled earl had used this magnificent old castle as a seat of the earldom.  Alaric's grandfather had closed the earl's private rooms when he joined his house with the Duchy of Corwyn and had moved his governing seat to the palace at Coroth in the south of Corwyn.  For a short time in Alaric's younger years, his father and mother had moved back into this hall.  However, with the tragedy of his mother's death, followed too few years later by the passing of his father, Alaric had seldom returned to the castle's opulent old rooms.  Surprisingly, the proud residence of Cynfyn had kept the castle proper, with its gardens and surrounding curtain walls, in good repair.  After the initial formal gatherings, the duke and duchess found time to explore the private rooms and the sealed vaults of the old structure.  So here they were, portraying archivists, playing in historical records, and rediscovering family heirlooms.

Currently, Alaric was down in the armory, acting like a boy who had opened up a treasure box.  Every now and again, his mind would echo to his wife, telling of the wondrous craftsmanship of armor, swords, and grand tools of war to be found.  It appeared that the house of Cynfyn prized quality in all material things.

There is a trait that has not changed in two hundred years, Richenda thought.

Richenda knew some of Lendour's tumultuous history.  The castle was original built by the conquering King Festil I from the stolen wealth of the murdered Haldane Kings of Gwynedd.  Festil was the second son of the King of Torenth from the hostile kingdom on Gwynedd's eastern border.  The castle was built as a playground for the sons and grandsons of Festil before they each became kings in turn.  Decades later, the titled seat of Lendour was granted to a Deryni nobleman, Lord Cynfyn.  Under the House of Cynfyn, the small earldom redefined its purpose to producing high quality goods and chivalrous men.  The best artisans of leather tooling and armor smithing moved within the castle walls.  The kingly stables continued to breed the highest quality imported R'Kassi stallions and mares from the far east.  The mountain warriors gathered for training in the skills of knighthood.  They were tall, robust, and loyal to the chivalrous Lords of Cynfyn.

In time, the Festil Kings grew too abusive and greedy for the Earl of Lendour to support.  When rumors came of a surviving Haldane of the old kings' line, the house of Cynfyn quietly joined with the charismatic Deryni practitioner, Camber MacRorie, the Earl of Culdi.  Lendour lent its arms to the restoration of the Haldane to the throne.  From that time forward, the heavy cavalry of Lendour maintained its loyalty to the restored line of Haldane Kings, and they continued to be there whenever the peace of Gwynedd was threatened.  This bond was unbreakable, even through to Duke Alaric Morgan who was named Kings Champion and closest friend to the current Haldane King.

For the last two days, while Alaric played in the stables and the armory, the duchess had found herself within the private offices of the old earl's, sifting through the Cynfyn family archives, questing for personal family history, and seeking out stories and artifacts lost in the passage of time.  Little was remembered of the Cynfyn legacy after Alaric's uncle had died without a male heir.  Alaric's mother, heiress to a duchy and an earldom, too had died at a far too young an age, to be able to pass the family stories down.  Richenda did not know if the coins before her held any answers, but she sensed they were important in telling of a time lost in the records.

The polished onyx box that held the four coins had first caught her attention due to the richness of the numerous rubies faceted along the black sides.  When the duchess lifted the box off the high shelf, she saw the shell inlay decorating the lid.  The name Washburn was written with mosaic pearlescence into the ebony finish.  She found this box among the belongings of Muir, the 8th Earl of Lendour.  It had no mechanical lock; instead, she discovered it was magically sealed.  This intrigued Richenda even more.  Her husband had shown her the family spell, one that had already opened several items in the archive.  She used the opening spell and the lock had released the lid, allowing it to open on its hinges. 

With the box opened, her eyes had searched inside, finding a white silk velvet pouch embroidered with the red rearing stag of the house of Cynfyn.  The fragile pouch was heavy, containing the four coins.  Beneath the pouch had lain a folded page of parchment.  Oddly, the page was empty, but for a wax seal at the bottom with an Earl of Lendour's signet embedded in the wax.  All of these items were now laid out on the table before the duchess.  Curiously, the beginnings of the first memory coin had nothing to do with the family name.  What would she find if she finished reviewing this coin and what of the other three coins placed with it?  Why did they seem to be so highly treasured?

It was the discovery of a healer that drove Richenda's curiosity.  Wasn't that why she was reviewing the archives in the first place?  To find some hidden answer to a long asked question.  Maybe here was the solution for which she searched.  She would see what had become of the father and the daughter in the home that surrounded them in flames.  She would see what had become of the two Deryni with the healing talent. 

The duchess focused her thoughts and cast the spell that would resume the telling of the memories placed there.


Next chapter: http://www.rhemuthcastle.com/index.php?topic=1046.0
May your horses have wings and fly!

Jerusha

What a fascinating beginning!  I can hardly wait for the next chapter!

Alaric Morgan "playing in the stables and armory" - tee hee! Nice touch!  :D
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night...good Lord deliver us!

 -- Old English Litany

Evie

Finally got up the courage to jump into the water, I see!   :)  Good to have another writer on the board. 
"In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas."

--WARNING!!!--
I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words, and I'm not afraid to use it!

Elkhound

This is an interesting story, and quite well written.  The only criticisms I have are too many 'infodumps.'  99% of the readers would already know who Alaric and Richenda are and the stories of their respective families, and the histories of the Festils and the Haldanes, etc.

derynifanatic64

Very well done!  I too have been a fan of Katherine Kurtz for over 30 years!
We will never forget the events of 9-11!!  USA!! USA!!

Laurna

I want to say Thank you to everyone who has taken time to read my first chapter. It means quite a lot to me that anyone has done that.

My new year resolution was to put this out there. Lack of courage and fear make it easy to find any excuse not to. With my finger shaking over the 'Post' button for an eternity, I finally just hit it. It took Evie's calm words the next morning to hold back the panic. At least the worst of the panic.

So thank you again, I will post chapter 2 on Tuesday. My hope is that someone will read that one too.

All my appreciation
Laurna
May your horses have wings and fly!

Elkhound


Jerusha

I will definitely be reading.  I want to know what happens to Jessa!
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night...good Lord deliver us!

 -- Old English Litany

revanne

I thought I'd re-read Jessa's earlier history and am so glad that I have. Knowing a little more of what is to come really helps her to come alive for me and as ever I find your rich writing style a delight.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
(Psalm 46 v1)

drakensis

Well this being reposted brought it to my attention and it's a very fine story.

Laurna

This is unexpected!
Thank you Revanne and Drakensis.
May your horses have wings and fly!

NavaWazr

Hey Laurna, just wanted to let you know that this is a wonderful story, and frankly, was what led me here to this site and the many more wonderful stories here. Thank you for writing the adventures of Jessa.

Laurna

I'm glad you found Rhemuth Castle site. This is a group of wonderful people. With lots and lots of good stories to read.  Thank you for reading this one. (Now, if I can just get the one I'm working on completed and posted; soon, I promise.)
May your horses have wings and fly!