Deryni Chronology 14 – The King’s Justice – Kurtz, Katherine

And the king shall do according to his will.

—Daniel 11:30

“I tell you, he isn’t going to change his mind,” the Deryni Bishop Arilan said, slapping the ivory table with both palms for emphasis as his gaze swept the three men and three women seated with him in the vaulted chamber. “Not only will he not change—he refuses to even discuss it.”

“But, he must discuss it!” Laran ap Pardyce, wizened and frail-looking in his black scholar’s robes, was clearly appalled. “No Haldane king has ever done this before. Surely you’ve warned him what might happen.”

In the wan, purpled light filtering through the room’s great octagonal dome, Arilan leaned his head against the high back of his chair and breathed a forbearing sigh, praying for patience.

“I have—repeatedly.”

“And?” the woman to his left asked.

“And if I continue to press the point, he may cease to confide in me at all.” He turned his head to look at her wearily. “You may not think that likely, Kyri, but it could yet come to that. God knows, he certainly doesn’t trust us as a group.”

The group was the Camberian Council, of course; and the subject of their discussion was the seventeen-year-old King of Gwynedd: Kelson Cinhil Rhys Anthony Haldane, now more than three years on his murdered father’s throne.

Nor had the last three years been easy, for Council, king, or kingdom. Any boy-king might have fostered uneasiness among those designated to advise him—and despite the fact that few outside the room even knew of its existence, the Camberian Council considered itself so designated for the House of Haldane. But Kelson, unlike most sovereigns come prematurely to their thrones, had fallen heir to magic: the puissant and forbidden Deryni bloodline of his mother, Queen Jehana, her heritage unknown even to herself before she was forced to use it at his coronation, and the equally powerful Haldane potential for the assumption of magical abilities from King Brion, his father.

In anyone but Kelson, the combination might have been deadly, for Deryni were almost universally feared throughout Gwynedd, and hated by many. Before the Haldane Restoration two centuries before, Gwynedd had lain under Deryni domination for generations, Deryni sorcery enforcing the will of a despotic line that had not hesitated to advance Deryni fortunes over human in whatever way was most expedient. So had Deryni magic come to be despised as well as feared; and few knew or remembered any longer that Deryni as well as humans had fought to overthrow the Deryni tyrants, or that a discredited Deryni saint, besides giving his name to the Council that met in this secret chamber, had first triggered the magic of the Haldane kings.

Kelson knew, of course. And like generations of Haldanes before him, he had managed to represent that magic as an aspect of his divine right as king, walking a narrow balance between impotence, if he did not use his powers, and heresy, if he did—for much might be overlooked in the protection of people and Crown. Such a ploy was vital camouflage in a land where many humans still sought retribution for the years of Deryni persecution, and where any extraordinary power not demonstrably come of divine favor was regarded with fearful, often deadly, interest by a hostile and jealous Church.

Nor had the Church’s suspicion of magic arisen only with the coming of the Deryni. Extraordinary or seemingly miraculous occurrences outside the limits defined by Scripture had always fallen under the wary scrutiny of those whose function it was to guard the purity of the faith; and irresponsible use of magic, either by or in the service of the new overlords, only tended to reinforce the belief that magic was very likely evil. As reaction set in after their overthrow, ecclesiastical restrictions followed close on civil reprisals, and the Deryni themselves came to be regarded as evil, even though there had been Healers and holy men among them. The Church’s hostility toward the Deryni as a race continued to the present, even though civil restrictions had begun to abate in the last two decades. Outside the Council, not a dozen persons knew Bishop Denis Arilan’s true identity as Deryni—and he was one of only two Deryni priests he knew.

Nor was that other Deryni priest free of controversy, though his Deryni blood was almost as well kept a secret outside the Council as Arilan’s. Father Duncan McLain, recently become Duke of Cassan, Earl of Kierney, and also a bishop, was Deryni only on his mother’s side — a half-breed, in the eyes of the Council — but they held him at least partially responsible for the king’s continued reluctance to accept Council guidance.

For Kelson had been assisted to power, both civil and magical, not by the Council, with its emphasis on “proper” training and formal recognitions, but by Duncan and his equally half-breed cousin Alaric Morgan, the powerful but grudgingly respected Deryni Duke of Corwyn, both of whose mastery of their powers had come largely from chance and their own hard work.

So might Kelson also have been counted—half-breed and, therefore, outside the pale of Council protection—were it not for his father’s Haldane blood, and the addition that made to his already powerful Deryni heritage. It was the former that concerned the Council today, as rebellion grew in one of Gwynedd’s western provinces and her king prepared to designate his uncle as his heir before going on campaign to quell it, having yet no heir of his own body.

“Well, he does no service to Prince Nigel if he does succeed in what he plans,” old Vivienne said, shaking her grey head in disapproval. “Once Nigel has tasted even a part of the Haldane potential, he may not be eager to give it up.”

“He will have to give it up, once Kelson has a son,” Arilan said.

“And if he refuses, or he cannot?” asked Barren de Laney, from Arilan’s right, senior member of the Council and Coadjutor with the older woman seated across from him. “I know you believe Nigel’s scruples to be as pure as your own, Denis—and indeed, they may be. But suppose Kelson can’t reverse the process. Will you be able to reverse it, if he cannot?”

“I, personally? Of course not. But Nigel—”

Across the table. Tiercel de Claron yawned indolently and slouched a little deeper in his chair.

“Oh, we needn’t worry on that account,” he said, his voice edged with sarcasm. “If Denis can’t undo it, and Kelson can’t, I’m sure someone will find a way simply to eliminate our good Prince Nigel. That’s what will have to happen, you know,” he added, looking up, at several mutters of indignation. “After all, we can’t have more than one Haldane holding the power at once, now, can we?”

“Tiercel, you’re not going to start that old argument again, are you?” Barrett asked.

“Why not? Tell me what earthly harm it would do if more than one Haldane could hold the Haldane power at a time. We don’t know that it can be done, but what if it could?”

As Tiercel leaned his head heavily on one hand and began tracing a slow, spiraling pattern on the inlaid table, Vivienne, the second Coadjutor, turned her grey head majestically toward their youngest member.

“I’m sorry if we bore you, Tiercel,” she said sharply. “Tell me, is it your deliberate iatention to stir up dissent, or have you simply forgotten to think? You know that the very notion is forbidden, even if it were possible.”

Tiercel stiffened, and his hand ceased its idle movement, but he did not look up as Vivienne continued.

“And as for Nigel, if circumstances demand it, Nigel will be eliminated. The terms and conditions of the Haldane inheritance were set down two centuries ago by our blessed patron. In all that time, they have not been broken. There were reasons for that, which I cannot expect you to understand.”

Tiercel finally looked up at her last comment, his expression eliciting more than one raised eyebrow and indrawn breath. For though it was not unusual for the pair to spar at one another, older generation against new, Vivienne’s caustic retort struck perilously close to Tiercel’s chiefest insecurity: that, having less than half the years of nearly every other member of the Council, his experience, of necessity, must be somewhat less extensive—for he was only a few years older than the king himself. In fact, his theoretical knowledge was matched by few of them; but that reality did not always enable him to ignore what he perceived as attacks on his personal worth. As genuine anger glinted in Tiercel’s almond-colored eyes, cold and dangerous, the physician Laran laid a warning hand on Vivienne’s arm.

“Enough, Vivienne. Tiercel, both of you, stop it!” he murmured, automatically glancing across at Barrett, even though the man had been blind for half a century.

Barrett, do something, he sent mentally.

Barrett was already raising the ivory wand of his office in a ritual gesture of warning, his emerald gaze locked sight-lessly on Tiercel’s face.

“Tiercel, let it be,” he commanded. “If we quarrel, we accomplish nothing. Every effort will be made to spare Nigel.”

Tiercel snorted and crossed his arms across his chest, though he did not speak.

“We must not forget Kelson’s part in this, either,” Barrett continued. “In sharing his authority with his uncle, he but answers his duty as he sees it—which is to leave his present heir with the ability to carry on, should he fall in battle. Surely you would not have Kelson abrogate his responsibility by failing to make the proper provisions?”

Only barely subdued, Tiercel shook his head, apparently still not trusting himself to speak.

“And you, Vivienne.” Barrett turned his attention to the other. “You need not be so deliberately cold about Nigel’s fate. It is a solemn duty he accepts when he submits to the power that will be laid upon him. Our duty is no less solemn, should we be called upon to exercise it.”

“He does not bear the blood,” Vivienne murmured, low and petulant.

“Oh, Vivienne…”

From across the table, between Barrett and Tiercel, faintly mocking laughter floated like the chime of precious crystal: Sofiana, the one among their number who had not yet spoken, the most recent but by no means the youngest or even the most junior member of the Camberian Council.

More than twenty years before, when even younger than Tiercel, Sofiana of Andelon had served the Council brilliantly, resigning only on the death of her father without male heir. Now Sovereign Princess of Andelon for more than a decade, her children grown or nearly so, she had returned at the Council’s behest the previous summer to fill the seat of Thome Hagen—threatened with suspension if he did not resign, for his connivance with Wencit of Torenth and Rhydon of Eastmarch in the Gwynedd-Torenth War. A second vacancy, more directly caused by the war, remained unfilled: the seat of Stefan Coram, Vivienne’s predecessor as Coadjutor, who, unknown even to the Council at the time, had chosen to play a doubly dangerous game of deception that eventually cost him his life—though it spared Kelson his crown.

Sofiana’s record, and her lack of involvement with the intrigue and internal bickering that had marred the Council’s deliberations increasingly since Kelson’s accession, made her uniquely qualified for the position she now filled. She had also brought a breath of fresh insight and rare humor into the formerly stodgy assembly.

“What does that mean anymore, to be ‘of the blood?’“ she asked quietly, leaning her pointed chin on the back of one slender hand, lively black eyes turned on Vivienne in droll curiosity. “After two centuries of persecution, perhaps there are very few among our race who can truthfully attest to pure Deryni lineage, even to the time of Camber.”

Flame-haired Kyri, the youngest of the three women, raised her chin toward Sofiana in exception, her resentment at the newcomer’s more exotic beauty only thinly veiled.

“I can so attest,” she said haughtily. “And for two centuries before that. Nonetheless, have we not always held that the proof of the blood is in the doing?”

“I will grant you that,” Sofiana conceded. “However, by that definition, Brion himself was Deryni.”

“That’s preposterous—”

“And Nigel, like Brion, carries the Haldane blood—which may be just as powerful, in its way, as the purest Deryni— whatever that is. So perhaps Nigel is Deryni. And Warin de Grey. He can heal, after all,” she added.

The ripple of their objection began to appear in outraged eyes, on parted lips, but she stayed them with a gesture of her free hand without even lifting her head from its resting place, coolly regal and assured in her desert robes of silver-shot purple.

“Be at ease, my friends. I am the first to concede that we are not talking about healing at this juncture, though I know that is of abiding interest to our esteemed senior Coadjutor and the faithful Laran.” She smiled indulgently at both Barrett and Laran.

“We are concerned here with the Haldane potential. What is it that makes this particular family susceptible to having Deryni-like powers placed upon them? For that matter, Wencit of Torenth, for all his villainy, apparently discovered a way to place similar powers upon supposed humans—witness Bran Coris. The late Duke Lionel and his brother Ma-hael also seem to have received this benison. Perhaps what is called the Haldane potential in Gwynedd, then, occurs elsewhere as well, and is actually a lesser degree of Deryniness—or a greater one.”

“A greater one?” asked a surprised Tiercel.

“It is possible. I say ‘greater’ because the Haldane power comes upon the recipient full-blown, fully accessible, even if not fully understood. In some respects, at least, that is surely superior to having to learn how to use one’s powers— which is what most ‘pure’ Deryni have had to do, from time immemorial.”

Arilan, though more inclined to Sofiana’s reasoning than to anyone else’s, stopped his impatient turning of his bishop’s ring and furrowed his brow.

“Take care, Sofiana, or soon you will be asking us to believe that everyone is Deryni.”

Sofiana smiled and leaned back in her chair, silvery ear-rings chiming melodically as she shook her head.

“Never that, my friend, though it would certainly solve many problems—and doubtless create other worse ones,” she added, at Vivienne’s look of horror. “Consider, too, that the Haldane potential could be just such an obscure facet of our Deryniness as Morgan and McLain’s ‘rogue’ healing talent, both gifts requiring special training and handling, and both sometimes arising spontaneously.”

Arilan whistled low under his breath, and Laran glanced at Barrett in astonishment as the others buzzed among themselves. Privately, Arilan himself had examined that very possibility more than once, and felt certain he was not alone in that, but no one had ever dared to voice it in full Council. Laran, as a physician, and Barrett, whose sight might conceivably be restored if the healing gifts could be re-leashed, also would have given the subject ample consideration, Arilan felt sure.

“But, that, too, is a topic for another day,” Sofiana went on. “Our immediate concern, if I understand correctly, is that Kelson is about to act against our better judgment. Short of our physical intervention, however, I fear there is little we can do to prevent it, in this particular instance.”

“I believe you’ll receive no argument on that point,” Barrett said. “But your choice of words suggests some future remedy.”

“If we are bold enough to take it—yes. If, as we seem to agree, there is no question that Kelson is to be regarded as ‘of the blood,’ as Vivienne so quaintly put it, then I suggest that we have the means totally within our power to control him—and have had it for several years, in fact. Bring him into the Council.”

She ignored their gasps as she raised a hand toward the high-backed chair standing empty between Tiercel and Vivienne.

“Bring him into the Council and bind him by the same oaths that bind the rest of us. Or are you afraid of him?”

“Of course not!” Vivienne said indignantly.

“He is strong enough,” Sofiana countered. “He is mature far beyond his years.”

“He is untrained.”

“Then, let us take his training upon ourselves, and make sure he receives proper supervision.”

“He lacks other qualities.”

“Such as?”

“Do not push me, Sofiana, I warn you!”

“What qualities does he lack?” Sofiana persisted. “I am willing to be persuaded that he is not, indeed, ready, but you must give me a specific reason.”

“Very well.” Vivienne lifted her head in defiance. “He is not yet sufficiently ruthless.”

“He is not yet sufficiently ruthless,” Sofiana repeated. “I see. Then, would you rather have Morgan or McLain?”

“Are you mad?” Laran gasped, the first one bold enough to intervene in the exchange.

“It’s absolutely out of the question!” Kyri said, with an emphatic shake of her fiery mane.

“Then, elect some other Deryni willing to accept the responsibility,” Sofiana replied. “We operate at less than our full potential, with our number incomplete. How long must Stefan Coram’s seat sit vacant?”

“Better vacant than filled by one unready to wield its power,” Vivienne snapped.

Arilan watched and listened in some amusement as reaction continued to run its course around the table: Vivienne and Kyri continuing to challenge Sofiana over the very notion; Laran deeply disturbed; Tiercel excited but thoughtful, not saying anything for once; only Barrett unreadable, sitting still and solitary in his own mind between Arilan and Sofiana.

Nor was bringing Kelson into the Council a bad idea— someday. In the beginning, though the Council quickly agreed to acknowledge the king as full Deryni, no one even tried to argue that he was skilled or experienced enough. But in the three years since truly securing his throne. Kelson had learned many a hard lesson of kingship and of manhood. Arilan was in a unique position to report to them on that. In fact, it was Arilan who had first broached the subject of Kelson’s candidacy; Arilan who had continued to pursue the notion, albeit far more gently than Sofiana’s efforts of late; Arilan who, alone of all the seven of them, had ongoing contact with the king and knew, better than any, just how hard and disciplined—and powerful—the king was becoming. No Haldane king had ever sat on the Council before; but no Haldane had ever displayed Kelson’s abilities, either.

“I think we’ve talked around this subject long enough,” Arilan finally said, when most of the outrage had died down. “Even if we were disposed to admit the king today—and you all know my feeling on that matter—that is not the time, with war imminent and a disputed ritual of magic in the offing for tonight. Nor do I think anyone is seriously arguing that Morgan or Duncan are viable candidates at this time.”

“Well, thank heaven for that,” Vivienne muttered.

“Don’t worry, Vivienne,” Arilan replied. “I am the first to agree that both of them are still very much unknown quantities. Besides—” he allowed himself a bitter grimace, “— they still haven’t forgiven me for our apparent abandonment of them, once Kelson’s throne was secure.”

“Are you saying they mistrust you, then?” Tiercel asked.

Arilan waggled one hand in a yes-and-no gesture.

“‘Mistrust’ is perhaps too strong a term,” he allowed. “Let us simply say they’re cautious where I’m concerned— and who can blame them? They resent the fact that I won’t talk about the Council—and of course, I can’t tell them why I won’t.”

“Three years ago, you brought them here without permission,” Barren said stiffly. “They already know too much about us.”

Arilan inclined his head. “I accept responsibility for that—though I still maintain I did the right thing, under the circumstances. I’ve observed the Council’s restrictions scrupulously since then, however.”

“And see that you continue to do so,” Vivienne muttered.

“Let us not stray from the subject again,” Barrett said quietly. “This is an old, old argument. Let us return to tonight. Denis, if you cannot prevent it, can you at least control it?”

Arilan allowed himself a curt nod. “To the point that any trained practitioner can control the course of the outward ritual—certainly. I can make sure that we’re properly warded, that the forms proper to any serious working of high magic are observed. But what happens on the inner levels is and remains in Kelson’s control.”

“What of Richenda?” Laran asked. “Will she be able to assist you? Kelson trusts her, I believe.”

“He does.” Arilan shifted his attention to Sofiana. “And we now know that Richenda is possessed of both power and training we had not guessed before, don’t we, Sofiana?”

Sofiana gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Do not blame me for that, Denis. Had anyone asked at the time, I could have told you.”

“But she’s your niece,” Kyri said. “You knew she was formally trained, yet you let her marry a half-breed.”

“Oh, Kyri, I did not let her do anything! Richenda is a grown woman, and Deryni, fully capable of making her own decisions. And as for being my niece—” she shrugged again, shifting to a more whimsical mood, “—I’m afraid I hardly know her. My sister and her husband decided that Richenda should marry outside our traditions and faith, when they chose her first husband. I did not agree, but I respected their decision. I saw little of the girl after she became Countess of Marley.”

“But, to marry Morgan—”

Sofiana’s dark eyes flashed ebon fire. “Are you trying to make me condemn him?” she retorted. “I will not. Because he has made Richenda happy and has taken my sister’s grandson as his own child, and has given her a daughter as well, I cannot be but kindly disposed toward him—and curious, make no mistake. And though I have heard that his powers are formidable, if largely untrained, I have met him only once. Needless to say, he was both on his guard and on his best behavior.”

“Ah, then, you do not trust Morgan either,” Vivienne said.

“How does one define trust?” Sofiana countered. “I trust him to be a proper husband and father to my kin; I trust my niece’s sincerity when she tells me of his honor in all that he has done since she has known him. Beyond that, all else is hearsay. How could I trust him in the way that I trust all of you? We of the Council may often disagree, but we all have bared our souls to one another in our oath-takings. That is trust.”

Laran raised a silvered eyebrow. “Do you trust Kelson, then?” he asked. “Or you, Denis? Has the king bared his soul to you?”

“In the sense that Sofiana has just reminded us?” Arilan smiled. “Hardly that. He has come to me for confession on occasion, when Duncan McLain was not available, but that is another matter entirely. I believe, however, that his ultimate goals are the same as our own.”

“And what of Nigel?” Tiercel asked impatiently. “In case anyone has forgotten, Kelson is going to attempt to pass on a part of his power tonight.”

“Aye, we’ve not forgotten,” Arilan agreed. “And I know where your argument is headed, Tiercel. Fortunately, the notion that more than one Haldane might hold that full power at a time has not occurred to our headstrong young renegades. But if all of you would like something else to worry about, consider this: Kelson has decided to have young Dhugal MacArdry present tonight. Now, there’s a one for you. I don’t know where he got it, but he’s at least part Deryni as well; and just because he didn’t know that until a few months ago doesn’t mean he hasn’t been learning since then from Kelson, Morgan, and Duncan.”

Kyri made an expression of distaste, and Vivienne muttered something about “another half-breed.”

“And then there’s Jehana,” Arilan went on, ignoring both women. “When she returns to court. …”

All of them grew apprehensive at that, for the queen mother was of the same bloodline that had produced one Lewys ap Norfal — a Deryni of enormous ability and training who had defied the authority of the Council nearly a century before. Though Jehana knew nothing of that, and had spent a lifetime denying her Deryni blood, yet she had been able to flex long-unused potentials at Kelson’s coronation with sufficient strength to give serious pause to a highly trained sorceress who sought her son’s life.

Nor had she yet reconciled that act with her conscience, even after nearly three years in the seclusion of a cloister. Her imminent return to court presented but another unknown factor, for Jehana was still quite hostile to Deryni.

“She will have to be watched closely,” Barrett said.

Arilan nodded and sat back wearily in his chair, covering his eyes with his hand.

“I know that,” he whispered.

“And the king,” Vivienne joined in. “He must not be allowed to get the notion in his head that Nigel might keep his powers, once Kelson begets an heir of his own.”

“I know all of that,” Arilan replied.

But as the Council shifted its deliberations to other matters, Bishop Denis Arilan remained very much aware of the task laid upon him. He alone, of all the seven, must move regularly among the chaotic blending of uncertainties and try to maintain some sort of equilibrium.

With arrows and with bow shall one come thither.

—Isaiah 7:24

“Kelson,” Alaric Morgan said, as he and his king looked down on the bustling yard at Rhemuth Castle, “you’re becoming a hard, cruel man.” He ignored Kelson’s startled stare and continued blithely. “Half the ladies of this kingdom and several other realms are pining for you, yet you hardly give them a second glance.”

Across the sunlit courtyard, bright as finches in their spring silks and satins and sarcenets, nearly a score of young females ranging in age from twelve to thirty chattered and postured among themselves along an overlooking balcony— ostensibly come to observe and applaud the men honing martial skills in the yard below, but equally to see and be seen by Gwynedd’s handsome and eligible young king. Admiring glances aplenty there were for others of the keen young men drilling with sword and lance and bow, for practicality recognized that the chance of any single one of them winning the king’s favor was slim, but their wishful glances always darted back to him, nonetheless.

Self-consciously, Kelson spared them not only the glance Morgan had accused him of begrudging, but a strained smile and a nod of acknowledgment, eliciting excited twitterings and preening among his admirers. He gave Morgan a sour grimace as he turned back to his own survey of the yard, raising one leather-clad knee so that he could half sit on the wide stone balustrade of the landing.

“They’re not pining; they’re after a crown,” he said in a low voice.

“Aye, most certainly,” Morgan agreed. “And eventually you’re going to have to give it to one of them. Or if not one of these, then someone else like them. Kelson, I know you’re tired of hearing this, but you are going to have to marry.”

“I did marry,” Kelson muttered, pretending avid interest in a quarterstaff bout between two of Duke Ewan’s squires. “My bride didn’t live long enough to have the crown placed on her head.” He folded his arms over the somber black he wore. “I’m not ready to marry again, Alaric. Not until I’ve brought her murderers to justice.”

Morgan compressed his lips in a thin, hard line and recalled one such bringing to justice: the defiant Llewell of Meara standing with his back to the executioner on a bleak morning in February, wrists bound behind him, chin lifted proudly heavenward in stubborn assertion that his act had been justified. The Mearan prince had declined to make any statement after his sentence was pronounced, disdaining either assistance or the solace of a blindfold as he knelt on the snow-scoured scaffold. Only in that timeless instant before the headsman’s sword rendered final justice did his eyes dart to Kelson’s—accusing and defiant to the last.

“Why did he look at me that way?” the shaken king had whispered plaintively to Morgan, as soon as they were out of public view. “I didn’t kill her. He committed sacrilegious murder in front of several hundred witnesses—his own sister, for God’s sake! There was no question of his guilt. No other verdict was possible.”

Nor did ultimate guilt rest on Llewell alone. Equal responsibility must be shared by his parents, the pretender Caitrin and her traitor husband Sicard, now leading Meara in open rebellion against their lawful sovereign. Where Kelson’s great-grandfather had sought to unite the two lands peacefully by marriage with the eldest daughter of the last Mearan prince—a settlement never recognized by a large portion of the Mearan nobility, who held another daughter to be the rightful heiress—Kelson had attempted to reassert that union through marriage with a captive daughter of the current rival line: the fifteen-year-old princess Sidana.

Granted, Sidana had two brothers who might have disputed that succession. But Llewell, the younger, was already in custody by then, and the eventual neutralization of Caitrin, Sicard, and the remaining brother would have left Sidana sole heiress of the cadet house. Her and Kelson’s children could have claimed unquestionable right to both crowns, finally resolving the century-long dispute over the legitimate succession.

But Kelson had not reckoned on the vehemence of Llewell’s hatred for anything Haldane—or dreamed that the Mearan prince would slay his own sister on her wedding day rather than see her married to Meara’s mortal enemy.

Thus, of necessity, had Kelson’s marital solution to the Mearan question become a martial one—the campaign for which all Gwynedd now prepared. Llewell’s father and his remaining brother, Prince Ithel, were said to be raising an army in the Mearan heartland west of Gwynedd even now— and deriving dangerous support from Edmund Loris, former Archbishop of Valoret and Kelson’s bitter enemy, who lent religious zeal and anti-Deryni fanaticism to the already explosive Mearan situation. And Loris, as once before, had lured a number of other bishops to his side, making of the coming conflict a religious as well as a civil question.

Sighing, Morgan hooked his thumbs in his swordbelt and let his gaze wander back to the yard below, idly fixing on an archery match in progress between Prince Nigel’s three sons and young Dhugal MacArdry, the new Earl of Transha, since that seemed to have captured Kelson’s attention in preference to the watching ladies. Both Dhugal and Conall, the eldest of Nigel’s brood, were giving an impressive exhibition of marksmanship this morning, Dhugal’s the more remarkable, in Morgan’s eyes, because he shot left-handed—”corrie-fisted,” as they called it in the borders.

That Dhugal had managed to retain this idiosyncrasy was a source of recurrent amazement to Morgan—not because Dhugal was skilled, for Morgan had met skilled left-handers before, but because the young Earl of Transha had received a major part of his early schooling here in Rhemuth, some of it under Brion himself. And Brion, despite Morgan’s repeated objections to the contrary, had held that left-handed swordsmen and lancers wreaked havoc with conventional drills and training formations—which was true, as far as it went, but neglected to acknowledge that warriors in an actual combat situation, if accustomed to fighting only other nght-handed opponents, often found themselves at a distinct disadvantage when faced with a left-handed enemy, whose moves were all backward from what was familiar and, therefore, predictable to some degree.

Brion had finally agreed that training should extend to both hands, in case injury forced shifting weapons in midbattle, but maintained until his death that left-handedness was to be strongly discouraged in his future knights. The trend persisted, even more than three years after Brion’s death. Far across the yard, Morgan could see Baron Jodrell putting some of the current crop of squires through a drill with sword and shield—none of the lads unfashionably corrie-fisted.

Not so Dhugal, of course. Though fostered to court as a page when only seven, even younger than most boys of his rank and station, he had been recalled to the borders before he was twelve, serving out his apprenticeship in an environment where survival, not style, was important. And survival demanded a far different fighting style than what Dhugal had learned at court. Border conditions dictated fast, highly mobile strike forces, lightly mounted and armored— not the more ponderous greathorses and armor of the lowland knight. Nor did anyone care which hand the future Chief of Clan MacArdry favored, as long as the job got done, whether meting out the justice of the sword with the patrols that policed the borders against reivers and cattle thieves, or practicing the skills of a battle surgeon afterward.

None of that made shooting a bow left-handed look anything less than awkward to Morgan, however, accustomed to more conventional shooting stance. And as he shook his head and glanced again at Kelson, who was still gazing raptly at the archers, he knew it was not Dhugal’s unorthodox shooting that was troubling the king, either. Nor was it their earlier discussion of the necessity for remarriage, though that was sure to bring a rise, even under the best of conditions, whenever the subject was broached.

No, today’s preoccupation had to do with what Kelson was — Deryni as well as king — and the necessity, this very night, to make Deryni confirmation of the man who would succeed him on the throne of Gwynedd, should Kelson not return from the Mearan campaign. For failing an heir of Kelson’s body, which he did not yet have, the crown and the Haldane legacy of magic would pass to Prince Nigel, Kelson’s uncle and brother of the dead King Brion.

Brion. After more than three years, the emptiness of the former king’s loss no longer ached in Morgan’s chest in quite the way it once had, but the uncompromising loyalty once visited on the father now lay upon the royal son—this slender, grey-eyed youth, only now verging on true manhood, who prepared to face yet another test that should have been reserved for one of greater years and experience.

At least the physical shell better matched the test. The boy-king who had been was gone forever. Intensive weapons training for the coming campaign had stretched and hardened boyish muscles to more manly proportions, and a winter’s growth spurt had given him another handspan of height, in addition to chiseling the rounded facial planes of youth to sharper angles. He now stood nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with Morgan, and had recently been obliged to employ a razor several times a week to maintain the clean-shaven appearance that he, like Morgan, preferred.

But where Morgan still wore his fair hair cropped short for ease of care in the field, as most fighting men chose to do. Kelson had allowed his to grow during the past two years of relative peace — “like any common borderer,” as Dhugal had laughingly noted, when first reunited with the king the previous fall. For bordermen traditionally wore their hair pulled back in a braid at the nape of the neck and tied with the colors of their clan; no one remembered why.

Unexpectedly, however, the whim of a few seasons of peace soon became a political asset, for it had enabled Kelson to sleek his black hair into a neat border braid like those sported by Dhugal and his kinsmen, underlining his own border connections with Dhugal as well as the clan and thereby binding his border allies more firmly to his support. Only after it had served its political purpose did Kelson discover that the affectation was also both comfortable and practical, working as well under a helm or mail as the bowl-shaped cut or the Roman style that most seasoned warriors favored.

Since then, many of the younger men and boys had begun to adopt the king’s border braid as their hair grew long enough, though lowland purists and those of a more conservative persuasion still considered short locks to be the mark of genteel civilization. Conall was one such purist, and wore his hair accordingly, though both his younger brothers boasted stubby border braids tied with ribbons of Haldane scarlet—somewhat less consequential than Dhugal’s coppery braid, to be sure, but meant as fervent compliment, both to their royal cousin the king and to his dashing foster brother, who took the time to coach them at archery, and did not laugh when their arrows went wide of the mark.

A patter of applause and girlish laughter from across the yard shifted Morgan’s focus back to Dhugal himself, who had just placed an arrow very near the center of the target. The young border lord lowered his bow and leaned on it like a staff as he glanced at Conall, watching in silence as his royal opponent carefully drew and let fly, placing his shot directly beside Dhugal’s—though no nearer the center.

“He’s quite good, isn’t he?” Kelson breathed, gesturing with his chin toward his eldest cousin.

As Conall’s brothers, thirteen and eight, moved forward to take their turns, Dhugal giving the younger boys helpful pointers, Conall stepped back from the line and glared sourly at his chief rival.

“Aye, he’s skilled enough,” Morgan agreed. “Perhaps one day he’ll learn to compete gracefully as well. I wonder where he gets his temper. Certainly not from Nigel.”

Kelson smiled and shook his head, glancing instinctively across the yard where his uncle, Conall’s father, was working with a pair of pages under his tutelage—lads too young to go along on the coming campaign. While an old, retired battle stallion plodded a patient circle in the mud, one youngster straddling its broad back behind the massive war saddle while a second attempted to stand and balance on the moving animal’s back, Nigel walked alongside and barked instructions. Jatham, Kelson’s own squire, led the horse.

“Watch it …” Kelson murmured to himself, as Nigel’s pupil teetered and started to tumble headfirst into the hoof-chumed mud—only to have Nigel snatch him in midair by his belt and a handful of tunic and boost him back into position.

They could not hear what Nigel said to the lad, though his words brought an immediate flush of scarlet to the downy cheeks. Almost at once, the boy found his balance and was standing up, erect if shaky, but moving more and more confidently with the gait of the horse. Lent new bravery by his companion calling encouragement from behind him, he even began to grin as Nigel nodded approval and started slowly backing toward the center of the circle the old stallion trod.

“God, I’m glad I’ve got Nigel,” Kelson whispered, echoing Morgan’s own appreciation of Gwynedd’s Iron Duke. “I suppose kings have always had to ride off to battle not knowing how their heirs will handle things if they don’t return, but at least with Nigel after me, Gwynedd will be in good hands.”

Morgan glanced at him sharply. “No prescience of impending doom, I hope?”

“No, it isn’t that.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow at the note of distraction in the royal answer, but he said nothing, only noting how the king had begun twisting at a gold ring on the little finger of his left hand. Briefly it had been Kelson’s bridal token to the Mearan princess who now slept eternally in the vaults below Rhemuth Cathedral; the ring had a tiny Haldane lion etched on a facet pared from along the top of the band, the eyes set with miniscule rubies. He had worn the ring constantly since the day of her burial. Likewise, when court protocol did not dictate otherwise, he had taken to wearing black. He was so attired today, not even a circlet adorning his royal head.

Nor did Morgan know how much the outward symbols of mourning reflected the true extent of the king’s grief. Kelson said that both gestures were but visible reminders of the vow he had made to bring the Mearan rebels to justice, but Morgan wondered whether the significance might run deeper— though he would not have dreamed of prying. Faced with a marriage of state to a girl who had been bred to hate his very name, Kelson had let himself retreat to the more comforting fantasy that he was falling in love with Sidana, and she with him. By the time they recited their vows before the high altar, he had nearly convinced himself that it was true—or at least that he eventually could have caused it to be true.

Her violent death, then, before the fantasy could be tested in the reality of a consummated marriage, had left the young king foundering in a sea of unresolved adolescent passions and shattered ideals. Playing the grieving and aggrieved widower gave him time to sort things out before circumstances forced him once more into the matrimonial sea. Both he and Morgan knew that he would have to marry again, however, and fairly soon. And as before, he would always have to place dynastic considerations firmly before considerations of the heart.

“Well, it’s natural to be a little nervous about tonight,” Morgan said, guessing apprehension rather than grief to be behind today’s mood. “Don’t worry. Nigel will do fine. You’ve been preparing him all winter for this.”

“I know.”

“And you’ll do fine,” Morgan continued, covering that aspect as well. “Why, I’ll wager that no Haldane king since Cinhil himself has had so many Deryni to help him designate his magical heir. Your father certainly didn’t. All he had was me.”

“What do you mean, all?” Kelson snorted, though the protest was a little too quick to be quite as casual as he tried to pretend. “Why, I’d rather have you standing at my back than any other man I can think of — no matter what I was about to do. And as far as magic is concerned—”

Morgan quirked him a quick, lopsided smile and chuckled aloud, knowing he had guessed correctly.

“As far as magic is concerned, you might do better with just about any trained Deryni at your back,” he said lightly. “Even Duncan and I don’t have a full set of training between us.”

“Maybe not, but maybe formal training isn’t that important. Besides, Richenda’s trained. And Arilan.”

“Arilan.” Morgan sighed and managed not to look as uneasy as he felt. “You’re aware that he’ll tell the Council every detail, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“Kelson, you know he will. Despite his apparent loyalty to you, he has oaths of far longer standing with the Council— and far more binding. Even I know that.”

“Well, they’ll have to find out sometime, I suppose,” Kelson murmured. “Besides, they’ve got access to records we’ll need if we’re ever to restore Saint Camber to his place of honor.”

“So you’ll compromise our security.”

“No, I’ll encourage further dialogue among fellow Deryni.” Kelson smiled. “Did you know that old Laran ap Pardyce has begun to use our library, for example? His scholar’s mind couldn’t stand not knowing what we had. And as a physician, he’s fascinated that you and Duncan can heal—though he won’t admit that to very many people.”

“And just how do you know that?”

“Oh, I’ve met him there, once or twice.”

Before Morgan could respond to that new piece of information, a raucous whoop from Rory and Payne, Kelson’s younger Haldane cousins, drew their attention back to the archery match, where Dhugal had just put his last arrow squarely into the center of the target.

To a patter of appreciative applause from the watching ladies, Conall moved forward to take his last shot—though there was little chance he could even come close to Dhugal’s, much less beat it. Nor did he.

“Well, that’s that,” Kelson said, as Conall’s arrow thumped home a full handspan from Dhugal’s—respectable enough shooting, but clearly not in Dhugal’s class.

The ladies again applauded—for a prince was nearly as good a catch as a king—but Conall all but slammed down his bow, though he did manage a stiff little bow of acknowledgment before stalking off sullenly toward the stables. Kelson glanced wistfully at Morgan as a subdued Rory and Payne trailed along with Dhugal to retrieve the arrows from the target.

“Well, well, well,” he said, sliding to his feet off the stone balustrade, “that was nearly far more exciting than anyone would have wished. Let’s go congratulate the winner, shall we? I don’t know how, but he even managed to keep Conall from losing his temper.”

“Which is an achievement in itself, aside from the brilliant shooting,” Morgan replied, as they headed down the stair and into the yard. “Perhaps one may venture to hope that Conall is learning.”

“Aye. Perhaps the presence of the ladies helped a little.”

They were waiting at the firing line when Dhugal returned, Rory and Payne carrying the arrows in adoring attendance. After the boys had made their duty to Kelson, Payne chattering excitedly about Dhugal’s victory, the young border lord sent them on their way and gave his foster brother his own casual yet respectful salute. In public, at least, he was always careful to give Kelson the deference their ranks required.

“Well shot, Dhugal,” Kelson said, smiling. “And a well-managed victory.”

Dhugal inclined his head and returned the smile, golden-amber eyes meeting Haldane grey, exactly aware what Kelson meant.

“Thank you. Sire.”

Though still not as tall as Kelson, he, too, had shot up over the winter—to the dismay of the castle armorers, who must even now rush to complete the season’s second alteration of his steel and leather brigandine, before he left on campaign on the morrow. He wore new boots and supple new leather britches of the same russet hue as his border braid, but the linen tunic was old, and pulled across the chest, the sleeve not bound with an armguard for archery hitting well above the wristbone. He had laid aside his plaid in the noonday sun, but no one would have mistaken his rank.

No sword hung from the gilded earl’s belt circling his narrow waist, but he wore a border dirk at his left hip, with a water-pale amethyst set in the hilt. The three eagle feathers of a border chief bristled from behind a MacArdry badge on his leather border bonnet.

Dhugal grinned as he dropped his arrows into a standing quiver, large, square front teeth flashing bright-white beneath the sparse, silky smudge of mustache that, at sixteen, was all the facial hair he could yet produce.

“Care to shoot a round, Sire?” he asked impishly. “We missed you just now.”

Smiling benignly. Kelson picked up Conall’s discarded bow and tested its pull, then nocked an arrow to string and casually drew.

“Conall didn’t miss me,” he said, letting fly and holding as he watched the arrow thump precisely into the center of the target. “And Conall hasn’t yet learned the graceful art of losing.”

He ignored the flurry of applause and the sighs of appreciation from the watching ladies as he lowered the bow and took another arrow from the wistful Dhugal, laying the shaft across bow and string and carefully fitting nock to string again.

“I see,” Dhugal said, not resentful, but curious. “So I get the job of humbling Conall.”

Almost lethargically, Kelson raised the bow and began to draw again, closing his eyes and turning his face slightly away from the target as he locked into full-draw.

“At least it was an honest competition,” he said softly, releasing his second arrow after the final word.

Eyes still closed, he held the position as the arrow made its flight, lowering the bow to look at Dhugal only when the arrow had thumped home precisely beside the first, the two shafts touching all along their length, the fletching on the two arrows indistinguishable from one another. The ladies applauded even more enthusiastically, and Kelson half-turned briefly to glance up at them and incline his head slightly in graceful acknowledgment as Dhugal gaped.

“I’m afraid I must confess to taking what Conall could consider an unfair advantage on that one,” the king admitted with a droll smile and a wink in Dhugal’s direction. “Being Deryni does have its more mundane advantages.”

He shifted his attention to Morgan. “And you will note, Alaric, that I am not totally insensitive to the interest of the ladies at my court,” he went on. “I am simply cultivating an aloofness in keeping with my eligible status—though I must confess that it seems somehow to have taken on some of the mystery that you yourself used to generate when you were in your darkling phase—and still do, I suspect, known Deryni sorcerer that you are. Perhaps it comes from wearing black.”

Any determination on Morgan’s part to maintain decorum disintegrated into delighted laughter at that, for Morgan’s own former penchant for black attire was well known and of only recent abandonment—and affected, in the past, for reasons very similar to those Kelson had just cited. Nowadays, he wore black for practicality, or because nothing else was handy—which was precisely why he had donned it this morning: serviceable black leathers over mail, for a predawn ride. The coincidence made Kelson’s comment a singularly suitable retribution for Morgan’s earlier jesting.

“Perhaps you ought to go ahead and try a shot,” Kelson suggested, suddenly aware that the bewildered Dhugal was still puzzling over the implications of Deryni advantages. “Show Dhugal how we Deryni do it.”

“You mean—”

Dhugal broke off in astonishment as Morgan merely raised an eyebrow and took up a bow, casually fitting an arrow to the string. He could not come to full draw with the shorter shaft the younger men used, but nonetheless his shot slammed squarely into the angle formed by Kelson’s first two, even though he deliberately averted his eyes before locking on the target. Nor did he look up as he nocked and drew again, his second shot completing the square formed by the four shafts.

“Bloody hell!” Dhugal whispered, as sighs of awe and more timid applause issued from the ladies’ gallery.

Morgan laid down his bow and favored his admiring audience with a courtly acknowledgment of his own before herding the two younger men along with him toward the target with vague shooing motions. Dhugal tried hard not to goggle.

“How did you do that?” he breathed. “No one can shoot like that! You really did use magic, didn’t you?”

Morgan shrugged noncommittally.

“Simple enough, when one knows how,” he said, keeping his outward demeanor casual and offhand. “Fortunately, our feminine admirers aren’t aware how unusual that kind of shooting is. Nor, I suspect, should we titillate them very often with performances like this. Right now, they are probably only reflecting that Conall and his brothers are rather poor shots by comparison with the three of us. Conall, on the other hand, might have guessed the truth—and been furious.”

“I’ll say,” Dhugal murmured. “He’s insufferable enough when he doesn’t win.”

Kelson reached the target first, and began carefully pulling the telltale arrows and handing them to Morgan.

“And now you know another reason I declined to compete,” he said. “It would have taken unfair advantage. When you’ve learned how to enhance a skill as Alaric and I have done, it’s a great temptation to use what you’ve learned. Your skill, on the other hand, comes from genuine talent with the bow—and can become better yet, once you learn how to use your powers more broadly.”

“You mean, I could do that?”

“Certainly. With practice, of course.”

As they started back toward the line, Conall and a squire burst from the distant stableyard on fractious bay coursers and clattered across the cobblestones toward them, the squire, at least, giving flying salute to the king as they shot past. Conall pretended not to have noticed any of them. The two had to draw aside at the great portcullis gate to let a returning patrol enter the yard, but they were gone as soon as they could squeeze their mounts past the last tartan-clad riders.

“Ah, look who’s back,” Morgan said, spotting his cousin Duncan among the men bringing up the rear.

Bishop Duncan McLain, Duke of Cassan and Earl of Kierney, looked hardly even ducal, much less episcopal, as he urged his grey forward alongside the ordered ranks of men. Besides a mist-pale plume in his cap, only a shoulder plaid of green, black, and white set off his drab brown riding leathers. He grinned and raised a gloved hand in greeting as he spotted king and company by the archery butts; however, he jogged his mount smartly in their direction instead of continuing on toward the stables with his men. A smiling Dhugal caught the horse’s bridle as Duncan reined in, gentling the animal with a word and a deft touch of hands to velvety nose.

“Good morning. Sire,” Duncan said to Kelson with a nod, swinging a leg and his sword casually over the high pommel of his saddle and springing lightly to the ground on the off side. “Dhugal. Alaric. What’s got into young Conall? One would have thought he was pursued by demons.”

“Only the demons of jealousy.” Kelson snorted, resting both balled fists on his narrow hips. “Dhugal outshot him, fair and square.”

“Did you, then? Well done, son!”

All three of them echoed his grin at that, for calling Dhugal “son” in that context was one of the few ways that Bishop Duncan McLain could publicly acknowledge that Dhugal MacArdry really was his son—for Duncan’s heartbreakingly brief marriage to Dhugal’s mother, though consummated long before Duncan entered holy orders, had been irregular in the extreme, so irregular that its existence could no longer be proven except by magic, so irregular that neither father nor son had learned of their relationship until a few short months before, though they had known one another as priest and royal page for many years. The secret was still shared only by the four of them and Morgan’s wife, Richenda, though Duncan was quite willing to acknowledge his son if Dhugal wanted it.

But both had agreed that the timing was not yet right for that. Public disclosure just now would only brand Dhugal a bastard, undermining his right to the leadership of Clan MacArdry and his rank as earl, as well as weakening Duncan’s credibility as a Prince of the Church. It would also cloud the succession to Duncan’s Cassan and Kierney lands—a factor in the coming Mearan conflict, since Prince Ithel held some claim to the titles if Duncan eventually died without issue, as bishops normally were expected to do.

A less immediate but far more dangerous result, in the final reckoning, was the possibility that Dhugal would eventually be branded a Deryni, once Duncan’s Deryni status became a confirmed fact rather than the present whispered rumor. And of the several Deryni at court, Dhugal was the least well-equipped to deal with that accusation.

Never having suspected this aspect of his heritage any more than he had his true paternity, Dhugal had never learned to use his magical birthright while he was growing up; indeed, had been hampered at first by rigid shields that were only finally breached by Duncan himself, and still remained resistant to all but the most cautious and delicate probes of any other Deryni. Even Arilan had tried—though before Dhugal’s kinship with Duncan was discovered.

“It was a good contest,” Morgan said, enjoying the interplay between father and son. “Dhugal, however, was not aware that one might improve one’s performance with the application of certain—ah—‘alternate’ skills, was he. Kelson?”

“We wouldn’t dare use them with Conall,” Kelson agreed. “He already rides off in a snit when he loses.”

Duncan laughed and pulled off his leather riding cap, ruffling a gloved hand through short brown hair. In preparation for the coming campaign, with its need for long hours spent under arming cap, mail, and helm, he had grown out his clerical tonsure save for a small, token circle right at the crown, no larger than a silver penny. The rest of his hair was barbered in the same martial-style that Morgan favored, in marked contrast to Dhugal and Kelson’s border braids.

“Oh, I think Conall has a paramour somewhere in the city,” he said with a droll smile quite out of keeping with his clerical rank. “Perhaps that’s where he was in such a hurry to go, when he nearly rode me down just now. I’ve noticed that he isn’t too attentive to most of the ladies at court—and he nearly always comes back with a silly smile on his face. Perhaps our king should take his example?”

Kelson knew Duncan was only jesting, but he still was faintly annoyed as Dhugal elbowed him in the ribs, flashing his bright-white grin, and Morgan raised an eyebrow in an amused expression of silent approbation.

“Must we keep harping on that same tired theme?” he said a little sharply, taking an arrow from Morgan and pretending to sight along it critically. “How was your patrol, Duncan? Are your men fit?”

Duncan’s smile vanished immediately, his blue eyes gone coolly serious as he put on his cap again, once more the restrained and efficient soldier-priest.

“Aye, fit enough, my prince. However, I fear we did come upon something I think will not please you overmuch. The queen’s party is less than an hour from the city gates.”

“Oh, no!”

“They must have made better time from Saint Giles’ than we expected. I left eight of my men for escort.”

“Damn!“

The expletive was barely whispered, but suddenly Kelson snapped his arrow across one knee and dashed the broken halves to the ground in a brief fit of temper.

“But, you knew she was coming,” Dhugal ventured, clearly taken aback.

“Aye. But not today. She could have waited another day or two—at least until after tonight.”

Morgan found himself wondering whether Jehana could possibly know what they planned, and said as much to the king, but Kelson only shook his head and sighed heavily, once more in control.

“No, I’m sure it’s just poor timing.” He sighed again. “I suppose there’s nothing to do but greet her and hope she’s changed—though I doubt that. Alaric, you’d better make yourself scarce until I find out whether she still wants your blood. She wouldn’t dare do anything, but there’s no sense asking for trouble.”

“I shall become invisible, my prince,” Morgan said quietly. “Also, we may need to start later tonight than we’d planned,” Kelson went on, gaining confidence as he took charge again. “Duncan, could you please inform Bishop Arilan?”

“Of course. Sire.”

Kelson sighed yet again.

“Very well, then. I suppose I’d better go and tell Uncle Nigel she’s on her way. I am not looking forward to this.”

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

—Micah 6:7

The enclosed horse-chair carrying the mother of the King of Gwynedd swayed and lurched as the lead horse minced around a muddy pothole. Inside, behind thick woolen curtains that filtered the spring sunshine to a safe, anonymous twilight, Jehana of Gwynedd clung to the wooden frame on either side and prayed for a better road.

She loathed travelling by horse-chair; it made her stomach queasy. But three years without so much as setting toe to stirrup, combined with the austerities she had practiced as a part of her religious discipline, had left her quite unfit to make the journey from Saint Giles’ to Rhemuth in any other way. The pale, well-kept hands clinging to the chair’s polished wood were painfully thin; the golden marriage ring given her by her dead husband would have slid from her finger with the slightest movement, were it not for the white silk cord securing it to her fragile wrist.

Her high-necked gown was also white, like the cord: the color of a postulant’s habit, though the fabric was nubby silk rather than the simple homespun wool the sisters wore, and her mantle was lined with miniver. The rich auburn hair that had been her pride and Brion’s joy was concealed beneath a wimple of white silk that also hid the grey beginning to thread the auburn at temples and crown. Her face thus kindly framed, the hollows of cheeks and brow gave an impression of ascetic beauty rather than gauntness, though a pinched look about the eyes betrayed the beauty’s source as internal torment, not contentment.

Only the color of her eyes remained as it had been: the smoky green of shaded summer forests, rich as the darkling emeralds Brion had loved to see her wear. She was just thirty-six.

Hard male voices jarred Jehana abruptly from contemplation, and then the sound of many riders approaching. As her horse-chair lurched to a halt, she drew in breath sharply and prayed that Kelson was not among them, cautiously parting the curtains on her left until she could peer apprehensively ahead. All she could see at first was the hind end of Sir Delrae’s brawny bay, its thick tail twisted up in a neat mud-knot, and a similar view of Father Ambros’ white mule.

Then, as Delrae urged his mount forward to challenge the newcomers, Jehana caught a glimpse of leather and tartan-clad riders beyond him, in green and black and white, too many to count. She remembered seeing the pattern before, but she could not recall the particular clan.

She watched Delrae confer with one of the officers of the troop for several minutes—he was senior of the four Bremagni knights her brother had sent to serve as her escort. Then Delrae gave way and allowed several of the men to fall in with his own command. As the rest of the troop rode off, and Jehana started to let the curtain fall back into place, Father Ambros kneed his mule between her and the view ahead and leaned down to reassure her.

“We’ve been given a guard of honor, my lady,” he said softly, with the smile that would melt the heart of an angel. “That was the Duke of Cassan’s patrol. He’s left men to see us safely to Rhemuth.”

The Duke of Cassan. With both Jared and Kevin McLain dead, that would be Duncan McLain — Father McLain, Kelson’s confessor of many years—and distant cousin to the Deryni Alaric Morgan. That Duncan was also Deryni had come as a complete shock to Jehana—though she never would have dreamed of betraying that knowledge to anyone not already aware of the fact. God would exact His vengeance upon Duncan McLain for daring to accept priestly ordination in defiance of the Church’s prohibition against Deryni entering priestly Orders—though how He had countenanced Duncan’s elevation to the episcopate was beyond her understanding.

“Yes, of course. Thank you. Father,” she murmured.

She was not certain, as she hastily let the curtain fall, whether she had succeeded in keeping the panic out of her eyes or not, though she thought her voice had not betrayed her. Still, Ambros was a canny judge of character, for all that he was nearly young enough to be her son.

But thought of her son was not to be countenanced any more than that of McLain—and Morgan. Time enough, later on, to worry about them. Clasping folded hands fervently to her lips, she closed her eyes briefly and breathed yet another prayer for courage—then grabbed at the sides of the chair for balance as her procession lurched into motion again.

Reunion with her Deryni son was not the only reason Je-hana was dreading the return to Rhemuth. Resumption of the very public life expected of a queen at court would not be easy, if only because she had grown unaccustomed to seeing anyone other than the sisters of Saint Giles’. Though she had taken no formal religious vows during the three years of her seclusion, she had lived and moved with the heartbeat of the community, performing all the offices and praying for expiation of the terrible taint of Deryni evil she knew she carried in her soul, seeking release from the torment that her self-knowledge carried. Taught from childhood by family and Church that Deryni were evil, she had not yet reconciled the religious and moral dilemmas raised by the discovery that she, too, was of the race she had long believed accursed. Her spiritual mentors at Saint Giles’ had assured her repeatedly that her sin was forgivable—if sin it was to use one’s every resource to protect one’s child from certain death at the hands of an evil adversary—but early indoctrination continued to warn a still-childlike Jehana that she had sinned.

The outward vehemence of her denial had lessened a little during her sojourn at Saint Giles’—for so long as she kept her seclusion, she had been able to insulate herself almost totally from contact with or even mention of other Deryni— but the dread rekindled and burned ever brighter as she drew closer and closer to Rhemuth and her Deryni son. Only for Kelson’s sake had she left the abbey even now, anguished by the continuing toll his Deryniness seemed to take in human lives. Not even his young bride had been safe.

And that was why, ultimately, Jehana had finally chosen to leave the cloistered sanctuary of Saint Giles’; for Kelson, now nearly six months a widower, would need to take another wife soon to secure the succession. Jehana had no idea what the field of likely candidates might be like—only a notion that the right royal bride, chosen according to the standards Jehana espoused, might mitigate the negative aspects of Kelson’s Deryni blood. Only thus might there be a chance to turn Kelson aside from the path he seemed to have chosen, to lure him away from the evil influences of the other Deryni at court and bring him back to salvation.

The horses’ shod hooves began to strike more solid footing, picking up the pace as the way became smoother, and Jehana parted the curtains just far enough to glance outside again. Ahead, between the straight figures of Sir Delrae and i tartan-wrapped Cassani officer, she could just see the familiar walls of Rhemuth Castle shimmering silvery and pristine in the spring sunshine, bold against a sky pebbled with tiny white clouds.

White sheep, she thought fiercely to herself, fighting down a lump threatening to rise in her throat. White sheep on a blue hill…

But the childhood image, intended to divert the double pangs of fear and joy at homecoming, did not have the hoped for effect. Far from the meager comfort she had found at Saint Giles’, she could feel the old emotions welling up— the terror for her soul, for Kelson’s soul, threatening the composure she knew she must regain before she dared face those who would be waiting.

And in the yard at Rhemuth Castle, on the landing of the stair that led to the great hall, Kelson, too, was experiencing no small amount of trepidation at what the coming reunion would bring. Only his Uncle Nigel, Archbishop Cardiel, and Nigel’s two younger sons waited with him for the queen’s arrival. He had thought not to overwhelm her with too many people at first.

“It’s been so long,” Kelson whispered to his uncle, standing at his left elbow. “What do you think she’ll be like?’

Nigel’s smile conveyed a reasonable composure as he glanced aside at his royal nephew, but Kelson knew that he, too, had misgivings about his sister-in-law’s return.

“She’ll be somewhat changed,” the royal duke allowed softly. “Hopefully, the changes will be for the better. God knows, she’ll see you’ve changed.”

“Not all that much, have I?” Kelson asked, surprised.

Nigel shrugged. “What do you think. Kelson? You’ve become a man in her absence—the magic all aside. You’ve fought a war, you’ve killed—you’ve had to make some very difficult decisions that I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to make.”

“I’m told it comes with the job,” Kelson murmured, managing a brief, wry grin.

“Aye, but some men do a better job than others,” Nigel returned. “You’re one of them. Even now, on the eve of another war, you’ve kept your personal anger in check when most men of far more experience and years would have let vengeance run wild. I don’t know that I could have kept from killing Llewell right there in the cathedral, if I’d just had my bride butchered before my eyes.”

Kelson half-turned away and began furiously twisting the ring on his little finger.

“If I’d really been in control, she wouldn’t have been killed in the first place.”

“Are we going to have to go over that again?” Nigel replied. “That’s past. It’s regrettable—but continuing to reproach yourself won’t change things. You can’t do everything exactly right. You can make a difference for the future, however.”

“Yes, and my dear, superstition-blinded mother will help things enormously!”

“She’s only your mother, for God’s sake. Kelson. You haven’t done anything you need to be ashamed of. If she wants to keep flagellating herself with guilt, that’s between her and her God. Don’t ask me to hand you a whip to do the same thing.”

Kelson snorted and started to cross his arms skeptically across his chest, then glanced at the gatehouse, his eyes caught by movement in the shadowed passageway. As the first of the Cassani escort trotted through the opening, he stood a little straighter and tugged nervously at the bottom of his tunic.

“Sweet Jesu, here she comes,” he whispered.

Two pairs of Duncan’s elite lancers rode at the head of the modest procession following, blue and silver silk pennons fluttering gaily from the tips of gleaming metal lances, McLain tartan bright on shoulders and saddles, horses jigging and prancing as they sighted the gate to the stableyard. Behind rode Sir Alan Sommerfield, the seasoned McLain captain, beside a stylish-looking younger knight bearing the black ship and crimson crescent of the Bremagni kings on his white surcoat. Two horse-chairs followed close behind, the first carried by a pair of pale matched greys and escorted by a young cleric on a white mule. Behind the second horse-chair followed three more Bremagni knights and another four Cassani lancers.

“Come, Sire,” murmured Archbishop Cardiel, touching the king’s elbow to lead him down the steps. “She’ll be in the first chair. We should be there when she alights.”

“Why isn’t she riding?” Kelson whispered to Nigel, as they followed Cardiel and the cousins down. “You don’t think she’s ill, do you?”

“It’s a long journey,” Nigel returned. “Perhaps this was easier for her.”

The queen’s horse-chair reached the bottom of the steps at about the same time the king and his party did, the priest and the two captains dismounting immediately to attend the chair’s occupant as the other knights lined up to either side in salute. As the Bremagni captain drew back the heavy curtains and opened the tiny half-door, the priest offered his hand inside with a bow. Then Jehana was emerging, all white and in white and looking even paler for the blaze of her eyes in her pinched, wan face.

“Mother,” Kelson breathed, reaching out to her and seizing her in a fierce embrace when she would have knelt to him on the dusty ground beside her chair. As he held her to his chest, a hand taller than last time they had met, he could feel her heart pounding beneath her silken robes—and was shocked to realize how little there was of her to embrace.

She must have sensed his surprise, for it was she who broke the embrace first, to back off a step and bob in formal curtsey, subject to king. Then she was moving on to Cardiel, bending to kiss his ring in homage, bringing forward the priest and a youngish-looking nun who had emerged from the second horse-chair.

“I beg leave to present my chaplain, Father Ambros,” she said softly, not meeting Kelson’s eyes, “and Sister Cecile, my companion. Sir Delrae commands my guard. I have no other household anymore,” she finished lamely. “I did not wish to presume upon the King’s Grace.”

“’Tis no presumption. Mother,” Kelson said softly. “Until I take another bride, you are still queen and mistress of this castle. And you must have a household befitting your rank. Aunt Meraude will assist you to choose new ladies-in-waiting. I pray you to take as many as you need.”

“Your offer is most generous. Sire, but I have found my needs to be far less in these past three years than one might believe. Sister Cecile shall continue to attend me—and if a place might be made at court for my chaplain, my Lord Archbishop?”

Cardiel bowed. “I shall see that Father Ambros is housed in my own palace, my lady,” he murmured. “In fact, if you have no further need of him for the rest of the afternoon, I shall take him now to begin meeting some of our brethren.”

“Thank you. Excellency,” she breathed. “Father Ambros, I shall not require your services until morning Mass.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

“And now. Sire,” Jehana went on, “if we may be shown to our quarters? Sister and I are very weary from our journey.”

“Certainly, Mother.” He cocked his head hopefully. “May I tell the court that you will join us at table tonight?”

“Thank you, no. Sire. I fear I am not yet ready for so public an appearance. I would be grateful if my knights could be afforded that courtesy, however. They have served me most loyally.”

Kelson inclined his head coolly, not surprised that she had declined his invitation. “Sir Delrae and his fellows are most welcome at our table. Mother. Gentlemen, our royal cousin, Prince Rory, will conduct you to lodgings befitting your rank. And now, if I may,” he went on, returning his attention to Jehana, “I’ll take you to your rooms.”

“Thank you. Sire, but I prefer that Nigel escort me, if you do not mind.”

Kelson minded, but he was not about to make a further fool of himself in front of so many witnesses, albeit that almost all of them knew what had raised the frosty barrier between Jehana and himself. As an apologetic Nigel set his hand under the queen’s elbow and led her up the stairs. Sister Cecile following meekly behind. Kelson watched them go. Young Payne stood by him, even after Rory had taken away the knights and Cardiel had drawn the young priest Ambros in the direction of the episcopal palace.

“She must be really mad at you, Kelson,” Payne whispered after a moment, glancing shyly at his silent cousin as his father and aunt disappeared through the great hall door.

Snorting, Kelson laid an arm around Payne’s shoulder and shook his head sadly.

“I’m afraid she is, Payne. I’m afraid she is.”

“He seems so grown,” Jehana murmured, as soon as she and Nigel were out of Kelson’s earshot. “I had no idea he would be so tall.”

Nigel glanced at her in surprise, but waited until they had passed a bowing knot of courtiers before answering.

“You’ve been away for three years, Jehana,” he said softly. “Children do grow, whether their parents are there to see it or not. Wait until you see Conall—and I wonder that you even recognized Rory and Payne.”

“I would have known them,” Jehana replied, as they passed out of the great hall and headed down a long corridor leading to the residence wing. “They bear the Haldane stamp. No one could ever mistake a child of yours or Brion’s.”

“Perhaps not. But I might never have recognized you in a crowd. Jehana, what have you done to yourself?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmured, averting her eyes and thrusting thin hands briskly into her sleeve openings as she walked a little faster.

“Oh, yes, you do. You look like you’ve been in a dungeon rather than a cloister. How much weight have you lost?”

“Fasting is good for the soul,” she replied, lifting her chin defiantly. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that, knowing the company you keep.”

Seizing her elbow, Nigel stopped in the middle of the corridor and spun her to face him.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, aren’t they still at court?”

“Aren’t who still at court?”

“You know: Morgan and McLain, and God knows what others.”

His expression was so shocked that she could almost believe the thought had not occurred to him before that very moment. Coolly Jehana drew her arm out of his grasp and moved a few steps in the direction they had been headed, gesturing for the silent Cecile to draw nearer.

“If you’ll show us where we’re to go, we should like to rest now,” she said quietly.

To her surprise and relief, Nigel did not pursue their discussion. Instead he led her to her old apartments close by the walled garden. She had been expecting lesser accommodations. At Nigel’s knock, a serving girl opened the door and stood aside with a shy, deferential curtsey, but Nigel did not come in. As the door closed behind Jehana and her silent companion, the queen had just a glimpse of the solar beyond the little reception room, and a dozen or so strange pairs of eyes lifted curiously from various stitchery projects. Then Meraude, Nigel’s wife, was darting toward her with outstretched arms, tears of joy streaming down her rosy cheeks.

“Jehana! Praise God, you’re back at last! Poor thing, you must be exhausted!”

Jehana could feel the taut swell of Meraude’s belly against her as they embraced—with child again, after so long!—and she pushed down a brief pang of envy that she herself had been able to bear no more children after Kelson. But on second thought, perhaps that was for the best, lest the taint of her blood be passed on to even further generations.

In fact, she was not sure she even approved of Meraude having another child—though the chance of it eventually assuming Kelson’s dread heritage was so remote as to be almost nonexistent. If, for some reason. Kelson should not produce an heir of his own, the line would pass through Nigel and Conall—or possibly through young Rory or Payne, if Conall’s line should fail. The baby Meraude now carried beneath her heart would never wear the Haldane crown, or know the curse of the Haldane taint.

“Meraude, Meraude, I have missed you, .she said softly, searching the other woman’s brown eyes as they drew apart to look at one another. “And you’re with child again, at last. You and Nigel must be so pleased.”

“How could we not be?” Meraude countered, grinning merrily. “Nigel hopes for a little girl this time, and I confess the thought pleases me as well, after three boys. We’ll know in another month or so. But you, Jehana—how thin you’ve become! Are you well?”

“As well as I may be,” she answered, turning slightly to motion her companion forward. “This is Sister Cecile. She came with me from Saint Giles’. Sister, this is the Duchess Meraude, Prince Nigel’s wife. May she wait in the solar with the other ladies while we speak for a moment?”

“Of course. Sister, you are most welcome to Rhemuth,” Meraude said, inclining her head to acknowledge the nun’s bow. “Please be at ease with my ladies. We shall join you in a few moments.”

As Cecile passed on into the solar, Meraude glanced back at Jehana and drew her into the sunshine of a nearby windowseat.

“So. What is it that cannot wait until you’ve rested?” she asked, easing her back with one hand as she sank down on a tapestry cushion.

Jehana did not sit; only stood in a pool of sunlight and clasped her thin hands nervously, her eyes searching Meraude’s for some sign of sympathy.

“Are you safe, Meraude?” she whispered.

“Safe?”

“Have Morgan and McLain corrupted your husband as they did mine?”

“Jehana—”

“It’s important to his very soul, Meraude!” Jehana went on, sinking down urgently beside her sister-in-law, eyes never leaving Meraude’s face. “You must keep him from the Deryni taint. Kelson is already in grave danger, but it isn’t too late for Nigel—and maybe not for Kelson, either. That’s why I’ve come back.”

“To—save Kelson?” Meraude said cautiously.

But Jehana went right on, taking Meraude’s response for an invitation to say more.

“He must marry again, Meraude—and soon. He needs an heir of his own. And I feel certain that the right bride could overcome the evil in him. Just as you keep Nigel safe from harm, so Kelson’s queen must bring him back to a life of righteousness. It’s his only hope, Meraude. Say you’ll help me.”

Wistfully Meraude returned Jehana’s eager smile, letting the queen take her hand.

“Well, there are certainly potential royal brides aplenty,” she said noncommittally, “though I suspect Kelson himself will have something to say about a choice. In any case, I doubt he means to make a commitment until after the campaign.” Her smile brightened hopefully. “But would you like to meet a few of them? Several of my ladies are quite eligible. In any case, you’ll probably want to appoint a few ladies-in-waiting of your own. Come and I’ll introduce them.”

Jehana lost track of the names after the first few presentations, but the prospect of involving herself actively in her son’s choice of a new wife even brought a little color to her cheeks. Many of the ladies were quite young, and eminently suitable.

She was in growing good spirit until Meraude brought her to a beautiful young woman stitching at a tapestry frame near one of the windows. The woman’s gown was the deep blue of mountain lakes, her heavy, flame-gold hair caught in a net of gold and pearls at the back of her head and circled across the forehead by a narrow golden fillet.

“This is the Duchess Richenda,” Meraude said, as the woman rose to dip in a respectful curtsey.

Jehana’s heart leaped into her throat, her entire body stiffening in shock.

“Duchess—Richenda?” she managed to whisper. “Have I not heard your name before?”

The woman straightened to meet Jehana’s eyes with the bluest gaze she had ever seen, deferential but direct, even sympathetic.

“It may well be that you have, Majesty,” she said in a low voice. “My late husband sat on King Brion’s council. He was the Earl of Marley.”

“The Earl of Marley,” Jehana repeated tonelessly. “But Meraude said—”

“My young son Brendan is Earl of Marley now. Majesty,” Richenda said. “My present husband is the Duke of Corwyn.”

Corwyn! Jehana let the name register on a mind suddenly gone numb with dread. Sweet Jesu, she is Morgan’s wife! She married a Deryni!

“I—see,” she managed to whisper aloud.

But she could hardly see as she turned to move on with Meraude, stumbling stiff and half-blind through the rest of the introductions until she could call Sister Cecile to her side and seek the refuge of the little oratory adjoining her sleeping chamber. Prayer brought her some semblance of serenity, but she could not banish the feeling of dull despair that the wife of a Deryni should be so firmly entrenched in the royal household.

For they have begotten strange children.

—Hosea 5:7

The strain generated by Jehana’s arrival set the tone for the rest of Kelson’s afternoon. Nor was his mood improved by the circumstances dictated for that evening. Already tense about the ritual set for later that night, he could not even escape for a few hours of much needed solitude and relaxation over supper, for even though Jehana had declined his invitation to dine with the court, he felt obligated to sup with her in private. To help keep the affair on more neutral ground, however, he asked Nigel and Meraude to host it, and had the meal sent to their quarters. That arrangement would also prevent Nigel from dwelling overmuch on what was to come. Half spitefully, he deputized Morgan and Richenda to preside at table in the great hall in his absence, since Morgan himself was at least partially responsible for Jehana’s attitude. Duncan and Dhugal could more than handle what few arrangements had to be made.

And so, he sat that evening with his mother, Nigel, and Meraude in his uncle’s supper chamber and tried to make pleasant small talk while he longed to be almost anywhere else. The chamber was stuffy—or perhaps it was only him— and he toyed distractedly with Sidana’s ring while his mother’s conversation meandered over half a dozen old themes. Almost all of them returned ultimately to her hatred and fear of Deryni.

“So when the news reached me at Saint Giles’,” Jehana went on, “I could hardly believe my ears. Continuing to keep Alaric Morgan around you is perilous enough; but to receive his wife, whose first husband was a traitor and apparently Deryni as well—”

“Bran Coris wasn’t Deryni, Mother,” Kelson said peevishly, suddenly concerned for the direction this conversation could take if he were not careful.

“But they say he stood by Wencit of Torenth in a magical circle—”

“And Bishop Arilan stood by me. Does that make him Deryni?” Kelson countered boldly.

“Bishop Arilan? Certainly not! But—”

“Of course it doesn’t.” Which was not precisely a lie, but it was sufficiently misleading to redirect any suspicions Jehana might have had about Arilan. “I asked his and Father Duncan’s presence—and Morgan’s—because the trial permitted four persons on either side. It was Wencit and I who were contending. We chose whom we willed to give us company and courage, but the power, if it had come to the Duel Arcane, would have come from Wencit and myself.”

“According to whose authority?” Jehana challenged. “Those strangers who came on white horses? I heard about them. Kelson. Who were they? They were Deryni, weren’t they?”

Kelson lowered his eyes. “I may not speak of them.”

“Then, they were Deryni,” she whispered. She turned a pinched, desperate face toward her dead husband’s brother. “Nigel, you were there. What saw you? Who were they? Are there so many of them that they may walk unrecognized among us with impunity?”

Nigel, of course, knew little more than Jehana in that regard, for he had not been privy to the intentions of the Cam-berian Council—only their actual intervention. But his uneasy dissembling was sufficient to lead Jehana back to the old, relatively safe topic of Morgan, whose Deryni proclivities were a secret to no one. As Jehana launched into yet another variation on the old fears, Kelson let his thoughts turn to a delicious contemplation of the Deryni at court that Jehana did not know about.

She had not yet made the connection about Richenda, of course—though she had skirted uncomfortably close. And it obviously had not occurred to her to question Arilan. The knowledge that a Deryni had risen through the ecclesiastical ranks unbeknownst and attained the rank of bishop would shake her faith to the core; surely such a deception could only be the work of the Devil, an attempt to destroy the Faith from within. Of course, Duncan had managed a similar rise— but few outside episcopal ranks were certain that he was Deryni, and much could be blamed on his Deryni cousin Morgan.

Dhugal, of course, was an entirely different matter. Outside Kelson’s immediate circle of close confidants—Morgan, Richenda, Duncan, and Dhugal himself—only Nigel and Arilan even knew that Dhugal was Deryni, much less that he was Duncan’s son; and even Nigel and Arilan did not know the latter. One must assume that the Camberian Council also knew at least what Arilan knew—and that they fretted over Dhugal and the mystery of his powers the same way they fretted over Morgan and Duncan—but other than those few. Kelson doubted anyone even suspected.

He took a deep draught of the light, nutty ale Nigel had provided with supper—wine might have blunted their senses for the ritual still to come—and hid a smile behind his cup as he nodded and made noncommittal grunts in response to his mother’s continuing monologue.

That Dhugal was Deryni, and Duncan’s son, still amazed and delighted him. The revelation had even eased some of the awful, heart-numbing shock of Sidana’s murder, that terrible Twelfth Night but a few months past. Letting the dull buzz of his mother’s voice carry him back, he set himself to savor the memory—able, from this distance, to let even the echo of his grief lap at his emotions as he anticipated the joy to follow.

He had been sitting hunched in a bath before the fireplace in his bedchamber, trying to let the warm water ease the chill that seemed to penetrate to his very soul. He had long since washed Sidana’s blood from his hands, but a part of him still kept going numbly through the motions, as if further ablution could somehow wash her blood from his soul as well.

He was vaguely aware of others moving about quietly in the room—Morgan, Duncan, Dhugal—and felt their compassion as a warm, comforting presence intended to ease his pain; but he was too tight-coiled in his own hurt and guilt and outrage to let their caring penetrate very deeply. He still did not know whether he had truly loved Sidana, but ultimate responsibility for her death remained squarely upon him in any case, even though another hand had wielded the dagger.

She had been under his protection, and he had failed her. Her marriage ring glinted bright and accusing as his hands continued their vague movement underneath the water. He had slipped it on his little finger as he held her lifeless body in his arms, crouched there in the blood-spattered sanctuary that so short a time before had been witness to their marriage.

“I think you’ve been in there long enough, my prince,” Morgan said quietly, suddenly appearing out of the shadows from behind him with a thick, thirsty towel. “Come dry yourself. Duncan’s making you a warm posset to help you sleep.”

As he obeyed, dully standing to let Morgan wrap him in the towel, he became aware of small sounds in the room: the crackle of the fire, metal clinking against pottery at the small table where Duncan worked by candlelight, his own shallow breathing. Stepping damply onto thick Kheldish carpet, he allowed himself to be guided to a deep, engulfing chair nearer the hearth. When he had settled, Duncan put a warm cup in his hand and sat down on a stool; Dhugal had already taken a similar seat within reach of Kelson’s knee. Morgan remained standing, his back to the fire, one arm resting along the carved stone of the mantel, the firelight limning his golden hair from behind so that he seemed to be haloed.

“Drink what Duncan’s given you,” his mentor said softly, jutting his chin toward the cup. “It will help to blunt some of the pain.”

He was aware, as he drained the cup obediently, that the three of them were exchanging a curious set of glances, but he sensed nothing but concern for him in their manner— certainly no reason for alarm. The posset was laced with strong wine, and almost too hot. It was not until Kelson handed the cup back empty that he could detect the faintly tangy aftertaste of something Duncan had given him before—the expected sedative. Dhugal coughed, looking almost nervous as Duncan set the cup aside, and Morgan laced his fingers together, one elbow still resting casually on the mantel.

“Dhugal and Duncan have something to tell you,” Morgan said softly, the grey eyes dark with compassion. “I wish you could have learned it under happier circumstances, but perhaps it will help to ease your sorrow now. I think you will not be displeased.”

Curious despite his grief. Kelson turned his gaze on Duncan, who had laid his hand on Dhugal’s shoulder. The sedative was already blurring his ability to make his eyes focus, but his thinking was still reasonably clear and would remain so for several minutes, he knew.

“Dhugal and I made a marvelous discovery before we left for the cathedral this morning,” Duncan said, smiling as Dhugal glanced at him and grinned. “It has to do with the cloak clasp he’s wearing. I believe you’ve admired it at various times?”

For the first time Kelson noticed that although Dhugal had changed from border tartans to funereal black, he still wore the fist-sized lion-headed brooch that he said had been his mother’s.

“What about it?” he asked, glancing back at Duncan.

Duncan’s grin abruptly matched Dhugal’s. “Well, it’s a McLain badge—see the closed eyes?—the McLain sleeping lion. My father had it made for me. I gave it to my wife on our wedding night.”

“Your wife..?” Kelson murmured, stunned.

“To Dhugal’s mother, as it turned out,” Duncan went on happily. “You see, Dhugal is my son.”

Even now, Kelson remembered few further details of that evening, though later explorations of the happy news brought him a joy that did, indeed, ease a little of the shock of Sidana’s death. But as he flashed on the somber days of her lying-in-state and funeral, and his visits since then to the simple tomb in the crypt where she slept with other of Gwynedd’s former kings and queens, he was jarred back to the present by her name on his mother’s lips.

“…cannot grieve forever over this Sidana,” she was saying. “You hardly knew the girl. You have a duty to take another bride. That’s why I’ve come back from the convent: to help you find one. A suitable wife can help to expiate the curse I’ve placed upon you.”

“And what, pray tell, was not ‘suitable’ about the bride I chose?” Kelson said irritably, setting his cup aside with a hollow clunk. “Even by your standards. Mother, Sidana was ‘suitable’ in every respect: princess of a noble house whose union with our own might have forged a lasting peace; young and beautiful; almost certainly able to provide healthy heirs.

“Nor was she either Deryni or in sympathy with Deryni. And her own brother killed her, with a solid, reliable, un-Deryni knife!”

“You know that isn’t what I meant—” Jehana began.

“No, don’t lecture me about ‘suitable’ brides. Mother,” Kelson went on. “I was prepared to do my dynastic duty, and chose my bride for all the ‘right’ reasons. You must pardon me if I do not seem overeager to leap into the matrimonial sea again, quite so quickly!”

Jehana shook her head, lips compressed in a thin line. “Not now, of course. Kelson. But soon—”

“Not too soon. Mother. In case you’ve forgotten, I have a war to fight this summer—one of the little legacies of my brief foray into matrimony. And as if the Mearan rebellion were not already far enough advanced, her family now blame me for Sidana’s death as well as Llewell’s. The dispute over Mearan sovereignty has taken on the added dimension of a blood feud, despite the fact that it was Llewell who killed Sidana—not I—and that Llewell was executed for his crime of murder, not because I particularly wanted him dead.”

“You would have to have done away with him eventually, in any case,” Jehana said coldly. “So long as he lived, he would have remained a threat. Any issue of his body—”

“Mother …”

Pushing himself away from the table with an exasperated sigh and a scraping of heavy chair legs against stone, Kelson stood and glanced at Nigel and Meraude, who had remained notably silent throughout this last exchange.

“Fortunately, the subject of Llewell’s issue has been rendered academic,” Kelson said patiently, catching Nigel’s eye in signal that it was time to make their escape. “Nor have I any wish to discuss the matter further this evening. The commanders of my northern army leave for Cassan tomorrow morning, and there are matters Nigel and I must discuss before then. Uncle, would you please make your apologies to the ladies? We still have work ahead of us before we sleep.”

He could only admire Nigel’s coolness as the older man rose to take his leave. Though he knew Nigel trusted him and his Deryni colleagues implicitly, and they him, he must have harbored some apprehension about the “work” still ahead of them, if only for the fact that he was the object of that work and did not know what would be done to him. Still, he showed no glimmer of anything but relaxed duty as he pulled a cloak around his shoulders and advised Meraude not to wait up.

“You know how long Kelson’s staff meetings sometimes last, darling,” he told her. “We could be half the night. You and the little one need your rest.”

Meraude smiled and laid one hand on her swollen abdomen as her husband followed Kelson out, glancing aside at Jehana wistfully when the door had closed behind them. Jehana looked a bit taken aback, as if she could not quite believe how Kelson had managed his escape.

“He’s become quite the young man while you were away, hasn’t he?” Meraude said.

Jehana lowered her gaze. “I hardly recognize him,” she whispered. “He’s so stern and warlike—and grown-up.”

“Children do that,” Meraude answered gently. “I’m having to face the same realization about Conall. And Rory comes of age in the fall as well—though fourteen-year-olds still have a little time for being boys yet.”

“Mine didn’t,” Jehana murmured.

“True. But Kelson was already a king by the time he turned fourteen. For Rory to face a similar circumstance would require tragedy indeed. No, Rory is my little boy for yet a while longer—and Payne, of course. And soon there’ll be the new baby for loving. But I do hope this one will be a girl.”

Jehana grimaced. “A girl, to become a pawn one day for a royal marriage?”

“A girl, to marry where her heart dictates, if God wills it,” Meraude replied. “With three older brothers to carry on the line, I see little reason to force her into any marriage she would not want. Or perhaps she will prefer marriage with the Church. I gather that would not displease you.”

Jehana smiled bitterly, tracing a fingertip through a small spill of ale on the table before her. “Would that my marriage had been with the Church, and saved the passing of the taint I carry within me,” she’ murmured.

“And what of Kelson, if you had?” Meraude countered. “Aside from the fact that Kelson would not have been Kelson, given another mother, where would he have been without your inheritance and protection when he had to face Charissa?”

“He might have died,” Jehana conceded. “But at least he would have been human, his soul unsullied by the Deryni curse I placed upon him by bearing him.”

Shaking her head, Meraude pushed herself heavily back from the table. “You won’t let go of it, will you? You’re Deryni, Jehana. Nothing you can do will change that. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be a curse. Surely it’s possible some good might come of it.”

“I fear you listen far too much to my son,” Jehana said sadly. “It is a curse, Meraude. It is a canker that festers within me—and here at my son’s court. Nor may I rest until I find a way to exorcise it.”

Exorcism of a far different sort than Jehana had in mind was underway in another part of the castle, performed by a man who bore the very taint Jehana feared. Murmuring ritual words of purification. Bishop Duncan McLain slowly paced the circumference of the tiny Saint Camber chapel adjoining his study, methodically sprinkling the chamber with water from a silver aspergillum. Incense already hung lightly on the air. From the doorway leading back into the study, Dhugal watched and made the responses, eyes following his father’s every move with reverence and respect. They had finished nearly all the other preparations necessary before the rest arrived. The censing and asperging of the chapel was the final touch, done as much to center and steady the two participants as to cleanse a room long sanctified by its sacred use.

“Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.”

“Amen.”

“Pax huic domui.”

“El omnibus habitantibus in ea.”

Peace be to this house…

And to all who dwell in it…

When they had done, and Duncan had put aside that paraphernalia of his office, father and son returned to the study, Duncan drawing into place the curtain that normally covered the door. Dhugal lingered a moment, eyeing the curtain with still-awed speculation as Duncan took a seat at the round table set before the room’s fireplace. One candle burned at the center of that table, giving the only illumination save for the firelight. After a moment, Dhugal came and joined his father, though he still continued to glance at the curtained doorway from time to time.

“The chapel retains quite an impression of power, doesn’t it?” Duncan said, smiling at Dhugal’s startled glance in his direction. “I’m not surprised you’d notice. Saint Camber does seem to make his influence felt. And if you’d had the experiences Alaric and I have had, the difference between this chapel and most others would be even more apparent. Our good Deryni saint can be a very powerful intercessor.”

Dhugal shifted a little uneasily. “Do you—really think he intervenes in earthly affairs? Does any saint?”

“Well, it’s difficult ever to be certain, of course,” Duncan replied. “Alaric and I know that a few of the things we’d ascribed to Saint Camber right after Kelson was crowned seem to have been done by—” He lowered his eyes. “By someone else,” he finished. “I’m sorry, but I’m not permitted to say whom, even to you. It was a former member of the Camberian Council, but they’ve asked that we never mention names.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” Dhugal protested.

Duncan smiled. “I know you don’t, son. In any case, some of the things we’d ascribed to Camber weren’t done by anyone we know of—so maybe he did intervene. Whenever I spend any time in that chapel, I begin to believe he did.”

Dhugal glanced at the curtain again, then back at Duncan. “Kelson told me that’s where you and Morgan did the ritual that invested him with power. Is that why we’re doing Nigel’s there?”

“In part,” Duncan admitted. “However, it’s also appropriate that we invoke Camber’s special patronage, since it’s said he was the first to give Deryni magic to any Haldane, more than two hundred years ago. And until his name is vindicated, as I’m certain it will be, one day, this may well be the only chapel in Gwynedd that’s consecrated to him.”

“Oh.” Dhugal thought about that for a moment. Then: “Did—Kelson’s father also receive his power in there?”

“I don’t think so. Alaric had to do with that one—not I— several years before Kelson was born. He was even younger than you. As I understand it—”

A knock at the door cut off further retelling of that story, and Duncan rose to admit Morgan and Richenda.

“If Kelson weren’t my king, I’d be tempted to box his royal ears for making me sit in for him at table tonight,” Morgan said, as he and Richenda shed their hooded cloaks in the warm room. “Do you have any idea how boring it was, having to play at being the gracious host while I knew you and Dhugal were already here, making preparations? And why is it so hot in here?”

“Because,” said Richenda, loosening the throat of his tunic, “the windows are closed and you’ve let yourself get in a dither.” She glanced at Duncan. “I suspect it will be warmer still in the chapel, with as many bodies as we’re going to have generating heat. Is there any ventilation in there?”

Duncan smiled and shook his head as he seated her at the table.

“Very little, I’m afraid. We’ll just have to cope as best we can.”

A second knock at the door heralded the arrival of Arilan, immediately bringing a greater degree of formality to the gathering. He glanced half disapprovingly at Dhugal as he swept past all of them to inspect the preparations in the chapel, calling Duncan to join him for several minutes.

When the two bishops rejoined the others now waiting expectantly around the table, Arilan automatically assumed the role of senior, gesturing briskly for them to be seated as he took his seat. He did not seem to notice that Morgan and Richenda had neatly interposed themselves to either side of him, thus shielding him from close proximity to either Duncan or Dhugal. Later on, Arilan would be too busy to notice any hint of the true relationship between father and son, but for now, it had been agreed that they would take no chances.

“Naturally, it will be Kelson’s part to direct matters when we actually begin,” Arilan said quietly. “However, until he and our—ah—subject actually arrive, I believe a period of meditation would not be amiss for any of us. A great deal of this will be new to young Dhugal, so I suggest we join hands around the table before we begin centering. The physical link will help to balance out the disparities in our levels of experience.”

An expected hint of condescension was in his tone, but even Dhugal sensed Arilan meant well. Without demur they joined hands and obeyed, gazing through the candleflame for focus at first, then gradually dropping, one by one, into deeper rapport; breathing more slowly, eyes closing, even Dhugal easing at last into calm, floating receptivity, passive yet alert, waiting for king and kin. …

And in the castle, the king led their intended subject into a darkened apartment that had been his own as prince. It was Dhugal’s now. The door was not locked, but even if it had been, that would not have stopped a Deryni of any training whatsoever.

Drawing Nigel into the gloom and closing the door behind him. Kelson paused just a moment to conjure handfire. The faintly crimson ball of light cupped in his left palm revealed a tight-jawed and apprehensive-looking Nigel, now that there was no need to maintain the facade of casual competence he had worn all through supper. Concerned, Kelson motioned Nigel farther into the room, away from the door, pausing before the darkened fireplace to turn and glance at his father’s brother with apparent casualness of his own, though his next words came of a far from casual concern for the response he would receive.

“You don’t want to back out, do you? Because even if you did, at this late date, I couldn’t let you.”

Nigel managed a shaky grin and a chuckle. “Kelson, I outweigh you by half. What would you do? Knock me out and carry me to—where is it that we’re going, by the way?”

“You’ll see,” Kelson replied. “And I’m sure you know that I hadn’t in mind to use any physical force.”

“I hadn’t thought you would.” Nigel took a deep breath. “I am nervous, though. You don’t begrudge me that, do you?”

Kelson moved a step closer, relieved, and shook his head. “Of course not. I can ease a little of that for the time being, though, if you’d like.”

“Do it, then,” Nigel whispered. “But I want to be back in complete control before it’s time for—the other.”

“You can depend on it,” Kelson said, raising his right hand to touch Nigel’s forehead as he locked the grey eyes with his own. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath….”

With a little shudder, Nigel obeyed.

“Now hold it for a count of five—and let it out. Feel the apprehension drain away as you empty your lungs, until you’ve reached a level of lower tension that you can handle. Have another breath if you need to.” He dropped his hand as Nigel breathed in deeply again. “Now let it out and look at me.”

As Nigel exhaled with a whoosh, his eyes fluttered open and he blinked.

“Better?” Kelson asked.

Nigel nodded bewilderedly. “A little dizzy—as if I’d had a glass of heavy wine on an empty stomach.”

“That will pass,” Kelson said, turning away and pacing off a few precise steps to the left of the fireplace. “Now I’m going to show you something I first learned from Morgan. After tonight, you’ll be able to do it, too. Are you watching?”

“Yes.”

He could feel Nigel standing at his right shoulder, far steadier than he had been, and sensed that at least a part of his uncle’s new calm had come as much from his own strength of character and trust as from anything Kelson had done. That was reassuring, for Kelson himself was not without his own apprehensions about the work ahead, though for different reasons than Nigel.

Lifting the handfire still cupped in his left hand, he raised his right hand as well to trace a smooth, intricate pattern in the air with his forefinger. A psychic triggering went along with the physical act, but Nigel would receive that along with the rest of the night’s accomplishments.

“I—don’t think I caught that,” Nigel whispered, gasping as a section of the wall swung back to reveal a dark stairwell.

Kelson smiled and stepped into the opening, turning to beckon Nigel to follow.

“Don’t worry. You’ll remember if there’s need. Many of the Haldane powers operate that way.” As he started down the shadowy stairs, Nigel had to scramble to keep up.

“In fact,” Kelson went on, “I’m going to try to give you a few limited abilities tonight, even though we’re primarily just setting your potential. Some of mine started coming through in Father’s lifetime, so I don’t see that there’s any conflict. We’d better be quiet now, though. We’ll be passing close to some occupied parts of the castle, and I shouldn’t want anyone to think they’re hearing ghosts in the walls.”

Nigel snorted at that, but they traversed the rest of the passage in red-lit silence, halting finally before an apparently blank wall. There Kelson quenched his handfire and peered for a long time through a peephole set at eye level. Then a narrow section of the wall was swinging back silently and a lighter patch of courtyard lay before them in the starlight.

The passage closed silently behind them as they emerged. Ahead, the silhouette of Saint Hilary‘s-Within-the-Walls loomed black against the dark night sky, the darkness broken by the occasional glint of starlight on shadowed glass. Kelson made no attempt to conceal their passage as he led Nigel briskly across the yard. Not until they had almost reached the top of the steps leading to a western door did Nigel see why.

“All’s well, Sire,” said Sean Lord Derry, stepping from the shadow of a column to give casual salute. “The others are already inside.”

Kelson nodded. “You’ve posted adequate guards around the yard?”

“Lord Dhugal’s own borderers, Sire.” Derry’s grin flashed in the darkness. “They have very precise orders.”

“Thank you. I’m certain they have.” Without further ado, he drew Nigel through the postern door and into the narthex.

The inside of Saint Hilary’s had changed little since Kelson had come here the night before his coronation, he the subject that night, and Morgan the escort. It seemed, perhaps, a little brighter. To either side of the high altar, in what would have been the transepts of a larger church, racks of votive candles glowed sapphire and crimson before secondary altars to the Blessed Virgin and the church’s patron. Saint Hilary. In the sanctuary itself, the expected Presence lamp burned above the tabernacle set behind the altar, where the Reserved Sacrament kept a place of honor. Nothing moved besides the captive flames dancing behind bright glass, but foreboding washed over Kelson like a wave—Nigel’s as much as his own, Kelson suddenly realized.

Time to set things into proper balance and get on with it. Further delay would only make it more difficult for both of them.

“We’ll pray for a moment before we join the others,” he said softly, leading Nigel resolutely down the side aisle to a pew near the front, where he and his uncle knelt side by side.

When Kelson had finished, and composed himself to face the others, he reached out with his mind and released the slight control he had been holding on Nigel. As he raised his head, Nigel looked up with a start.

“I’m going to leave you to meditate for a few more minutes on your own,” Kelson said. “When you’re ready, you can join us in Duncan’s study. We’ll know when you’ve come to the door.”

Nigel swallowed and managed a weak smile. “You’ve let me go, haven’t you?”

Kelson nodded.

“You’re sure I’ll come?”

“Quite sure.”

This is the faithful and prudent steward, whom the master will set over his household.

—Luke 12:42

As the door closed behind Kelson, Nigel let out a slow, apprehensive sigh and slumped back on his heels, letting his back take support from the edge of the seat behind him. In a few minutes, he must also walk through that door.

He had hoped never to have to face what would presently be required of him—not out of any fear for his own safety or comfort, but for what tonight’s work implied. To take upon himself the potential for the ancient Haldane power was to acknowledge, in a far more concrete way than hitherto, the possibility that he himself might one day be king. That was what frightened him.

For he had never sought or even idly wished for the crown. Until Brion’s death, he had lived his life in the pleasant limbo of a much-loved younger son—close to the crown, unshakably loyal to it, whether worn by father, elder brother, or brother’s son, but confident and relieved that he himself should never wear it. That was for his nephew’s heirs, in the fullness of time; and Nigel was content with that.

And yet, if Kelson should perish before an heir could be engendered, then the crown must pass to Nigel or his heirs. That was a grim possibility Nigel had known from the moment Brion died—and something he prayed fervently would never come to pass. But if it did, then Nigel must be prepared to take up the mantle of his royal duty; must stand ready to sacrifice his own wishes for the good of the land. He felt himself a far from worthy vessel, but he must be ready to meet the test, if it was demanded of him. Tonight was the first step toward that readiness.

Still reluctant, then, but resigned, and with a weight of far more than years resting on his shoulders, he rose and dared to approach the high altar, lifting his eyes to the Christus gazing down at him even as he sank to one knee at the foot of the altar steps. He did not often feel the need for a physical expression of his religious feeling. Like Brion, he preferred to witness for his faith through the example of an upright life, rather than spend overmuch time on his knees, in a building that took the place of belief for many folk. Tonight, however, had its special demands, and seemed to demand more formal observance.

A little awkwardly, then, he bowed his head and framed his thoughts in far more formal petition than was usually his wont, entreating the Anointed One for strength to endure, should he be called one day to his own anointing as Gwynedd’s king, but praying also that such fate should never come to him. He asked as well for courage to face the more immediate ordeal—but he would suffer that gladly if it might permit the greater cup of kingship to pass.

Whatever was given him, he knew that in the end he could only offer all he had, and pray that it would be enough. He would serve his king as he had always served, with faith, loyalty, and love, and he would either live or perish according to God’s will. When he rose to join those who awaited him, turning inward now to draw his strength, his steps were steady and his head was clear.

He heard no sound as he passed through the doorway where Kelson had gone. A short corridor lay beyond, and as he closed the door behind him, another door opened ahead and to the left. Duncan inclined his head in silent greeting and stood aside to let him pass, both reassuring and vaguely alien in his episcopal purple.

The room Nigel entered was strange to him as well, of fair size, but lit only dimly by the light of a low fire immediately to the right and a single candle on the table before it. Weapons lay on the table: several daggers, a narrow stiletto Nigel thought he remembered seeing in Morgan’s hand from time to time, and a sword in a scabbard set with cairngorms that was definitely Morgan’s. Dhugal stood behind the table, his own sheathed sword cradled in the crook of one arm, the baldric wound loosely around the scabbard. There was no sign of Kelson or any of the others he had been expecting to see.

“I’ll relieve you of your cloak first of all,” Duncan said, already reaching for the garment as Nigel unsnapped the clasp and let it fall away from his shoulders. “I’ll also ask you to leave your weapons here. The others are in a small chapel through that door,” the bishop went on, nodding past Dhugal with his chin, “but only Kelson’s sword is permitted inside.”

He draped the cloak over a chair that already held several others as Nigel began obediently unbuckling his swordbelt, and caught the weight of the weapon as the belt came free. He coiled the white leather around the scabbard and laid it on the table with the others as Nigel produced a sheathed dagger from the small of his back and a stiletto from a narrow sheath in the side of his boot.

“Any more?” Duncan asked, with a faint grin. “You and Alaric are two of a kind when it comes to sharp, pointed things. Incidentally, I suggest you take off any outer layers you think you can spare; the rest of us have already done so. It’s going to be a little close in there, with so many people.”

Managing a snort of appreciation at the attempt to lighten the mood, Nigel removed a belt of metal placques set low on his hips, ducked out of the heavy, linked collar of his princely rank, then began unbuttoning a long, wine-colored overtunic with running lions intertwined around hem and cuffs. Now he noticed that Dhugal had already stripped to shirt and trews and boots, though Duncan’s concession to undress appeared to be an open collar and the omission of his cincture.

“Why do I get the distinct impression that it’s going to be more than ‘close’ in there?” he said. “I thought you Deryni could do something about such things.”

“We can,” Duncan returned. “But it would take energy we’ll need for other things tonight. Besides, you’re not Deryni.”

“I take your point, t don’t suppose you considered a different chapel?”

“Not for tonight’s work,” came the reply. “We’ll be working under the protection of Saint Camber. I trust that doesn’t surprise you?”

“Surprise me? Hardly. I can’t say it reassures me, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

He knew he was talking to cover his persistent nervousness—and that Duncan knew it. Impatient with himself, he tugged loose three more buttons—enough to let the tunic fall around his feet—and stepped out of the pool of wine-dark wool. He would be well rid of it if it was going to be as warm as Duncan hinted. Beneath it he wore close-fitting britches of burgundy wool, midcalf boots dyed to match, and a full-sleeved shirt of fine linen. He untied the laces at the throat as he bent to pick up his discarded tunic, making a calming little ritual of folding the garment and laying it neatly atop his cloak before looking back at Duncan again, aware that he could delay no longer.

“I suppose I’m ready, then,” he said.

Duncan lowered his eyes, obviously aware of what Nigel was feeling.

“You can have a few more minutes, if you’d like.” He glanced to his right, where Dhugal had taken up a guard post beside the chapel door. “There’s a prie-dieu there in the corner. You’re welcome to use it.”

Deep in the shadows, Nigel could see two red votive lights burning before a small ivory crucifix, the vague outline of a kneeler before them, but he shook his head.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, Duncan,” he murmured. “You know I’ve never been much on ceremony.”

“Come, then,” Duncan said with a smile, taking him by the elbow and leading him toward the door Dhugal guarded. “As you know, you’re going to have to bear with some ceremony tonight, but we’ve tried to keep things reasonably informal. It could be worse.”

“It could?”

“Of course.” Duncan gave him a reassuring smile. “You’re an adult, coming into this of your own free will, able to give us your conscious cooperation. If you were a child, things would be totally out of your hands.”

Nigel snorted at that, wondering whether it had ever really been in his hands—then flashed for an instant on the sudden realization that one day it might be Conall or Rory or Payne approaching the ordeal he himself now must face. The thought chilled him—it should be Kelson’s son walking toward the door he now approached with Duncan; not himself or his own sons—but all of that was academic in the immediate reckoning. For now, there was no turning back.

Nigel had to duck a little as he followed Duncan past the curtain Dhugal held aside. The chamber beyond was dim and close—half the size of the room they had just left, and almost crowded even before they entered. Arilan and Morgan stood against the walls to left and right, Richenda, all in white, immediately to his right against the back wall, but it was Kelson who caught and arrested his attention immediately.

His nephew—no, the king—the king stood with his back to them in the precise center of the room, raven head flung back and hands hanging easily at his sides. He was more than human or Deryni in that moment of Nigel’s first beholding, sacred kingship lying upon his shoulders as puissant and apparent as any physical mantle he had worn since his coronation day—though he, like Morgan and Nigel himself, had stripped to the basics of shirt and britches and boots, putting aside all weapons or other tangible insigniae of his rank.

The object of his attention appeared to be a very ornate crucifix of ebony suspended above an altar set hard against the eastern wall—or perhaps it was the wall itself that held his gaze, painted all around the altar and above it like the midnight sky, spangled with bright-gilt stars that caught the light from six honey-colored tapers. The stars shimmered through the heat rising from the candles, and the air tickled at Nigel’s nostrils with the faint aroma of beeswax and incense.

“Come stand beside me. Uncle,” Kelson said softly, turning slightly to beckon with his right hand, quicksilver eyes drawing him even if the gesture had not.

Without hesitation Nigel obeyed, taking the proffered hand and bobbing briefly to one knee to press it to his forehead in homage before straightening at his sovereign’s side. Duncan passed to Kelson’s other side and approached the altar—but a few steps in the confines of this tiny chamber— and Nigel dared a glance at Morgan, back pressed against the southern wall and’ arms folded across his chest, almost close enough to touch. As their eyes met, Morgan inclined his head slightly in a nod meant to be reassuring, then turned his gaze deliberately toward the altar, where Arilan had joined Duncan in the preparation of a thurible. Dutifully Nigel turned his attention that way as well.

They would ward the chamber first; he knew that. He even knew a little about warding. He had seen Morgan ward a circle once, long ago, when Morgan helped Brion assume his full Haldane powers before the battle with the Marluk. Nigel had been nineteen, Brion twenty-five, Morgan not yet fourteen.

Many years later, there had been another warding as well: in a tent at Llyndruth Meadows, the night before the final confrontation between Kelson and Wencit of Torenth. He had seen only the beginnings of that warding; that was the night he had learned that Arilan was Deryni. He remembered little else besides black and white cubes and Arilan’s hand touching his forehead—and Kelson’s eyes boring into his until he thought his very soul must be sucked out of his body.

Since then, he had learned not to fight or fear that kind of mental touch. Something akin to that would happen again tonight, but he put that knowledge from his mind for the moment and set his attention on the two bishops. Arilan was beginning: censing the altar and the East and then moving to his right toward the space between Nigel and Morgan.

They would cast a triple circle first. As they trod the circle, they would invoke the protection of the four great Archangels who guarded the Quarters and ruled the elements. Duncan was already aspersing the East with holy water, preparing to follow Arilan in the second circle. Morgan would cast the third with a sword.

The South was Nigel’s especial favorite, however: first of the Quarters to be saluted after the East, where Morgan still stood and Arilan now paused to bow—for the South was the realm of Saint Michael, familiar to Nigel as the patron of warriors long before he learned the Prince of Heaven’s other, more esoteric attributes.

To Saint Michael had Nigel pledged a special devotion those many years before, as he kept his knight’s vigil before receiving the accolade from his brother. God willing, perhaps his son would conceive a like devotion. Before another year was out—if they all lived that long—Conall, Kelson, and Dhugal would keep their own knights’ vigil, and receive the knightly accolade from his hand. He suspected that Kelson and Dhugal would reserve their special devotion to Saint Camber—which was certainly fitting—but he knew they reverenced Michael as well. He was surprised to realize that he did not know his own sons’ feelings on the matter.

That realization so occupied him for the next few seconds that he was not aware when Morgan moved from South to altar—only that Morgan was suddenly there, drawing the fine-wrought scabbard from Kelson’s sword—Brion’s sword, his father’s sword! Spellbound, he watched Morgan raise the blade in reverent salute to the East, candlelight flashing down the polished steel and taking on a life of its own—remembering another Morgan, another Nigel, a Brion still alive, as Morgan leveled the blade at eye level and slowly began to retrace Arilan’s and Duncan’s paths.

Light streamed from the tip of the blade as Morgan walked, scribing a ribbon of blue-white brilliance a handspan wide along the wall behind the altar. It floated with substance of its own where the tip of the blade bridged the southeast comer of the room, curving in a blue-white streak to follow all across the South.

Nigel watched Morgan’s progress on toward the West until he could no longer follow without turning his body as well, catching just a glimpse of Richenda stepping closer to him, away from the West wall, so that Morgan could pass between it and her. The chamber was growing uncomfortably warm, as Duncan had warned, but he thought he could feel cold radiating from the ribbon of light. He shivered a little despite the sweat trickling between his shoulderblades and plastering his shirt to his back.

At the altar, their circuits completed, Arilan and Duncan replaced thurible and aspergillum on the altar, and backed off to stand directly in front of Kelson and Nigel as Morgan continued past the North and closed the ring of the circle in the East. The ribbon of light clung to the walls like a physical thing, pulsing slightly.

Saluting again, Morgan laid the sword back on the altar beside its sheath and came to stand behind Nigel, at Richenda’s right. Nigel suddenly wondered what the circle looked like to Dhugal, standing just outside, in the doorway to the chamber—whether it floated across the doorway the same way it arched in the comers.

“We stand outside time, in a place not of earth,” Arilan said quietly. “As our Ancestors before us bade, we join together and are One.”

“Amen,” the others responded.

Nigel could feel the faint breeze of a flowing sleeve brush his back, and sensed the shadow of Richenda’s hand raised between him and Kelson.

“Before us … Ra-fa-el…” Richenda intoned, chanting the syllables of the name with an odd inflection and holding the last note.

As the note died, he sensed her hand moving and saw a circle of black appear in the ribbon of light stretched above the altar. He stifled a little gasp, but the others seemed unperturbed.

“God has healed,” Richenda said in a normal tone.

“God has healed,” the others repeated.

Confused, he let himself be turned to face the south. Morgan was beside him now, Richenda behind Morgan. Again she stetched forth her hand.

“Before us … Mi-ka-il…”

Again, the prolonged note, the movement of her hand as the note died—only this time, a red glowing triangle pierced the ribbon of light, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Who is like God,” Richenda said this time.

“Who is like God,” the others repeated.

Again they all turned, now facing the west. Beyond the ribbon of light, which did hang in midair where it crossed the recess of the doorway, he could just see Dhugal, looking very solemn.

“Before us … Ji-bra-il…”

A crescent of white light for the West.

“God is my strength,” Richenda said.

“God is my strength,” Nigel repeated with the others. He had suddenly realized that the phrases were translations of the names of the Archangels being invoked, the symbolism doubtless drawn from Richenda’s eastern origins.

On to the North.

“Before us … Au-ri-el…”

A golden square here.

“Fire of God.”

“Fire of God,” came the response.

He started to turn again to the east, but Morgan pulled him back a step instead. Kelson also took a step away from him before turning, so that all at once everyone was facing toward the center. Richenda, her loose-fitting shift a luminous white by circle-light, spread both palms before her at waist level and closed her eyes.

“At our center and foundation is Spirit—that which endures.”

As she moved her hands slightly apart and tilted them toward one another, a five-pointed star appeared in the air between them, etched in violet light. It floated to the floor as she parted them still farther, pulsing against the stone as she threw back her head and stretched her palms heavenward this time.

“Above us, the circled cross: defining and containing, unity of all contained within One.”

As the symbol appeared, green fire hanging above their heads, she swept her arms to either side and held, eyes closing, but it was Arilan who spoke.

“Now we are met. Now we are One with the Light. Regard the ancient ways. We shall not walk this path again.

“Augeaturin nobis, quaesumus, Domine, tuae virtutis operatio…” May the working of Thy power, O Lord, be intensified within us. …

“So be it. Selah. Amen,” Richenda responded.

And as she lowered her arms, bowing her head over hands joined palm-to-palm in an attitude of prayer, the ribbon of light around the room quickly broadened and extended upward and downward until its edges met in the symbols above their heads and beneath their feet. Then all six symbols vanished. Glancing surreptitiously toward the doorway, Nigel could no longer see Dhugal except as a vague, shadowy form.

“Lumen Christi gloriose resurgentis sissipet tenebras cor-dis et mentis,” Kelson intoned steadily, signing himself in ritual gesture as the others did the same. May the light of Christ rising in glory scatter the darkness of our heart and mind….

The motion seemed to release them from a former immobility. Suddenly Kelson was smiling at him, Arilan and Richenda withdrawing slightly to stand against the northern and western walls. Morgan took his elbow.

“Well, that’s done,” Kelson said softly. “The warding was drawn partly from the tradition that Richenda grew up in. Other than the Moorish elements that have crept in over the years, it’s supposed to be fairly close to the form Camber might have used. Not that we’ll ever know for certain, I suppose.” He glanced at Morgan, at Duncan, who had moved to the altar, then back at Nigel.

“Are you ready?”

Nigel only inclined his head, afraid to speak.

“We’ll get on with it, then. Come with me, please.”

Three steps brought them to the altar. Duncan’s small surgical kit lay open there, Duncan doing something with a wad of cotton wool and a small flask. As Morgan assisted Nigel to kneel, Kelson reached to his right ear and removed the great ruby fastened there. For the first time, Nigel noticed that Kelson also wore the Ring of Fire, the gamet-studded seal of Brion’s power, great central cabochon surrounded by a dozen lesser, brilliant-cut stones that fractured the cold light of the circle like summer lightning. He did not think he had seen it since Kelson’s coronation.

“So far as we know, the Eye of Rom has always played a part in the setting of the Haldane potential in Haldane heirs,” Kelson said, handing the earring to Duncan for cleansing. “It and a ring seem to be important and constant elements in the power rituals of all Haldane kings. Because you aren’t my heir in the usual sense, we’ll only involve the ring marginally tonight, since it usually seals the ritual after the old king is dead, but I do want you to wear the Eye. I’ll leave both in a place of safety here at Rhemuth before I go to Meara—just in case you should need them.”

Nigel swallowed and managed a faint nod, eyeing the jewel as it was passed back to Kelson, and Duncan moved closer with the wad of cotton wool. As Morgan held his head steady from behind and Duncan swabbed his earlobe with something cool and pungent—welcome relief in the heat—Nigel braced himself for the bite of a needle, but it came as only a slight pressure and popping sound. He wondered whether Morgan had blunted that sensation for him. Intrigued now despite his apprehension, he watched Kelson remove the Ring of Fire and bring it close to his ear for a few brief seconds—marking it with his blood, he sensed—then lay it on the altar. Next, the Eye of Rom was brought close in a similar manner, though Kelson’s hand came away empty this time.

Nigel felt a brief sting as Duncan threaded the earring’s wire through his flesh, faint weight of the stone as adjustments were made to its fastening, but then Duncan did something else and the sting became a tingle and then nothing. As the bishop withdrew and Morgan released him, Nigel brushed the earring lightly with his fingertip. He was surprised to feel no discomfort.

“We’ve healed that for you,” Morgan murmured, helping him to stand.

Somehow that did not surprise him. Nor did the piece of parchment lying on the altar, inscribed with all his royal names.

“I am told that the Deryni have a tradition of Naming their children by means of a brief magical ritual,” Kelson said quietly, drawing the parchment nearer the edge and reaching for the tip of the sword with his right hand as Duncan steadied the hilt. “The child’s mother generally performs this ritual between the ages of four and eight, depending upon the maturity of the child. Besides confirming the child’s bloodline as Deryni, it is also the first formal ritual in which most Deryni children are involved.”

He met Nigel’s eyes briefly and managed a quick, nervous grin. “I daresay, I am hardly your mother, and you have a few more years than eight. Still, this will be your first true ritual experience. And it does provide a useful framework in which to shift the succession to your bloodline—if only for the present. As one might suppose, a shedding of blood is required.”

He ducked his head at that. Nigel suddenly realized that Kelson was as nervous about the whole affair as he was. Holding the end of the blade over the parchment, grasped firmly between the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, Kelson drew the tip of his left ring finger along the edge until blood welled from a fairly deep cut. His jaw tightened at the sight, whether from pain or some other emotion Nigel could not tell, but he made no sound, only touching the blood to the parchment beneath Nigel’s name with solemn deliberation. He held the wounded finger curled into the palm of his hand as he surrendered his place to Nigel.

“Now yours,” he said softly.

The blade itself held no terror for Nigel; as a soldier, he had sustained far greater wounds than was required now. Grasping the blade as Kelson had done, he drew his fingertip along the sharpened steel in a brisk stroke, letting the slight burning sensation of the cut help keep him from thinking about what might come next. When he had smudged his blood alongside Kelson’s on the parchment, the king pressed their wounds together briefly in further symbolism of the joining of the two bloodlines.

“By this mingling of blood do I acknowledge thee Haldane: Nigel Cluim Gwydion Rhys, son of King Donal Blaine Aidan Cinhil and only brother of King Brion Donal Cinhil Urien, who was my father and king before me.”

There was a bowl for rinsing off the blood after that, linen for drying, then Morgan’s hand enclosing Nigel’s wound briefly while Duncan ministered to Kelson. When Morgan released him, the wound was gone as if it had never been. As Nigel stared at his finger in the candlelight, Duncan wiped the sword clean with a linen cloth, then handed it off to Morgan, who reversed the blade and took up a guard position immediately behind Nigel, hands resting on the quillons. Nigel heard Kelson give a little sigh as Duncan pulled the thurible closer, still smoking slightly of incense, and opened it to the smoldering charcoal within.

“Be thou blessed by Him in Whose honor thou shalt be burnt,” Duncan murmured, tracing a cross in the air over the incense boat before offering it to Kelson.

Kelson bowed over the incense, hands joined before him in an attitude of prayer, then took the spoon and carefully sprinkled a few grains of incense onto the charcoal.

“Welcome as incense smoke let my prayer rise up before Thee, O Lord. When I lift my hands, may it be acceptable as the evening sacrifice.”

The chamber was so still and silent, Nigel could hear the faint hiss of the resin beginning to melt. As sweet smoke started spiraling upward. Kelson took the parchment and creased it loosely into quarters, then touched one corner to the glowing coal.

“May this offering blessed by Thee ascend to Thee, O Lord,” he said, laying the parchment full on the coal as it caught and began to burn. “And may Thy mercy descend upon Thy servants, both present and to come.”

When he was sure it was burning well, he turned once more to Nigel. Arilan had joined them at the conclusion of the prayer, and now took from the altar a thumb-sized brass container and a small ivory spatula.

“Bishop Arilan has offered to provide you with a little assistance for the last part of the ritual,” Kelson said, as Duncan pushed back Nigel’s right sleeve to expose the inner forearm and Arilan unscrewed the lid of the container. “The drug is sometimes used in the early phases of formal Deryni training to enhance psychic response. It also has a slight sedative effect.”

Wordlessly Arilan set aside the lid and dipped out a miniscule amount of viscous, butter-colored unguent with the spatula. This he spread in a thin film over a thumb-sized area of Nigel’s inner arm, which Duncan then bound neatly with a strip of linen bandage.

“The drug is gradually absorbed through the skin,” Duncan explained. “When we’re done, we wash off the residue and the effect stops soon after. That makes it far easier to control than if you had taken a specific dose by mouth.”

Nigel cradled the bandaged forearm close to his chest and fingered the linen nervously. He was beginning to sweat profusely, whether from the drug or not, he had no idea.

“It tingles a little,” he said. “Sweet Jesu, it’ s hot in here!’’

“You’re feeling several effects already,” Arilan replied, handing him a towel and watching him closely. “How’s your vision?”

Nigel wiped his face on the towel and blinked several times, feeling slightly befuddled, then closed his eyes briefly and opened them again.

“I’m having trouble focusing,” he whispered. “I feel a little—dizzy, too.”

“Look at me for a moment,” Arilan commanded.

Swaying a little on his feet, so that Duncan and Morgan had to steady him on either side, Nigel obeyed.

“His eyes are dilated,” he heard Kelson murmur.

“Aye. Get him down before he falls down,” came Arilan’s low reply.

Nigel needed no encouragement to collapse to all fours. Light-headed and rapidly losing all sense of balance, he let them help him to a sitting position on the floor. His arms and legs seemed to have no bones in them. The stone floor was cool and soothing, and he wanted to lay his forehead against it, but Morgan knelt behind him and made him sit upright, providing a backrest for him to lean against.

He could not focus even as far as his toes. His hands lolled useless at his sides, but at least he could press the backs against the stone for relief from the heat now pulsing through his body with every heartbeat. The added warmth of Morgan’s body against his back was almost unbearable until he felt the sword slip between them, the blade chill as ice along his spine. As he turned his head blearily to see what Duncan was doing, he glimpsed one quillon above his head and to the side.

Duncan had the thurible as he knelt to Nigel’s right. Kelson was on his knees as well, but he loomed in Nigel’s vision like a darkling giant, forbidding and austere. Far more slowly than seemed right. Kelson’s reached into the thurible to crush a pinch of ash between thumb and forefinger, free hand burning Nigel’s shoulder where it touched to steady him.

“Nigel Cluim Gwydion Rhys,” Kelson breathed, touching Nigel between the eyes with a sooty forefinger and tracing a cross, “I seal thee Haldane and confirm thee as Heir until such time as I may produce an heir of my body.”

Nigel trembled beneath his touch, tears welling in his eyes as Kelson reached again to the thurible to take another meager pinch of ash. The left hand shifted to his jaw, pressing his cheeks to make his mouth open—and he could offer not a shred of resistance.

“Taste of the ashes of our mingled blood,” Kelson went on, sifting some of the ash onto Nigel’s tongue. “By blood art thou consecrated to the Haldane legacy. If it should come to thee, be The Haldane. Then shall the power come upon thee.”

The ash was bitter—bitter as the cup Nigel prayed he would never have to drink—and as the consecrated royal hands lifted slowly toward his head, Nigel felt a primal terror of the power latent there. In that interminable instant, the king seemed limned in fire—dread sovereign and master of all the power in the universe, not merely king and lord of the lands of their fathers—and Nigel feared that if Kelson touched him, he would die.

He had neither strength nor will to resist it, though; this cup, at least, must be drunk to its dregs—and the dregs were already bitter on his tongue. As the royal hands embraced his head, the thumbs pressing lightly on his temples, he closed his eyes with a shudder and surrendered any last resistance. The hands were hot, searing his flesh, making his fear boil up within him like molten lead, threatening to explode inside his brain.

But he did not explode. Not then, at least. The fire remained, but now another pressure began to build within him like a great wind, relentless and strong, scouring away the last vestiges of his will, pounding again and again in a rhythm a part of him only vaguely recognized as his own heartbeat.

The wind became a firestorm then, raging inside his mind and licking at his body, so terrifying that he was sure the very flesh must melt from his bones.

Water, then, quenching the fire but sweeping him away, out of his body, whirling and tumbling him in total disorientation, slamming him at last upon a stony beach where he seemed to lie and gaze numbly at a grey, fog-shrouded sky.

Until a face appeared against the fog: a kindly compassionate face framed by soft, silver-gilt hair; the eyes like windows to the fog beyond, calling him, drawing him, as a hand reached out to gently touch his forehead.

The touch sent him plummeting into nothingness.

He shall direct his counsel and knowledge, and in his secrets shall he meditate.

—Ecclesiasticus 39:7

Nigel’s vision stunned Kelson, but he kept both his reaction and the very fact that he had perceived the vision carefully shielded from the others for the balance of the ritual. He suspected that Morgan and Duncan might have glimpsed it as well, being part of the primary link, but if they had, they followed his lead and gave no indication of it. Some instinct warned that Arilan should not learn of it, so Kelson forced himself to shutter away the information while he completed what he had started. With the unconscious Nigel now open to his will, it was the work of only a few minutes to finish keying in Morgan and Duncan, then to add Arilan and Richenda to the chain that would enable them to trigger Nigel’s Haldane potential in the event of Kelson’s premature death.

The process took energy, and the heat and closeness of the room were taking their toll, but Kelson was not really tired by the time he was finished. Still, he set Morgan to take over monitoring Niger s vital signs, himself standing apart to watch in silence as Duncan and Arilan unbandaged Nigel’s arm and carefully washed off the residue of Arilan’s drug. He hoped that Arilan, at least, attributed his silence to fatigue and the need for introspection that often came after a powerful working, for neither the vision nor his reticence to tell Arilan of it had faded.

But Arilan seemed unaware. As soon as he and Duncan had finished. Kelson dropped heavily to his knees once more beside the still unconscious Nigel and bade the others close the circle. If Arilan read that as confirmation of fatigue, so much the better, for it might forestall further questioning later on; and in the meantime, the ritual kept Arilan too busy to pay close attention to him.

Kelson tried to keep his mind mirror-still as Arilan and the others wound the ritual to its proper conclusion, and he began shooing them out as soon as the last glimmer of the wards had died. He doubted anyone had much inclination to linger in the chapel overlong, for the hour’s working in so close a space had made the temperature most uncomfortable, but he especially did not want to be left alone with Arilan. A chapel sacred to Saint Camber was no place to try to hide a vision of that saint from a high adept like Arilan.

With that in mind, then, he signed for Arilan and Richenda to precede him out, himself lingering only long enough to help Morgan and Duncan get Nigel on his feet. He trailed behind them as they half walked and half carried Nigel back into the study, giving Dhugal a fleeting smile and a brush of hand on shoulder as he emerged from behind the curtain his foster brother held.

Arilan was waiting just beyond, Richenda moving with Morgan, Duncan, and Nigel toward the chairs by the fireplace. Fortunately for Kelson, passing into the relative chill of the study set him to sneezing before Arilan could do more than open his mouth. At once, Dhugal was laying a cloak around his shoulders and insisting that he join the others by the fire, solicitous and almost a little alarmed. The grateful Kelson played the scene for its full distraction value, making a show of bundling the cloak around his body and wiping his sweaty face on the sleeve of his shirt. By the time he had huddled down in the chair next to Nigel’s, he was not having to feign shivering.

“Are you all right?” Morgan asked, turning from Nigel long enough to lay the back of a hand against Kelson’s forehead.

Kelson nodded, gesturing back to Nigel with his chin.

“What about him?”

“He’ll be coming around in a few minutes,” Duncan said, gently peeling back one of Nigel’s eyelids. “The drug’s almost worn off. He’s going to want a lot of sleep, though.”

Arilan grimaced and pulled his cincture from one of the piles of clothing shed earlier. The grimace became a scowl as he began wrapping it around his waist.

“Does that surprise you?” he muttered. “Whatever he experienced, it hit him like a wall. I don’t suppose any of you can tell me what happened in there?”

Kelson shrugged noncomittally. “We did what we set out to do.” He glanced at his uncle again. “And frankly, I would have been surprised if it hadn’t hit him like a wall, as you so aptly put it. I suspect it’s distinctly Haldane. Having been through it myself, I doubt anyone can appreciate the full impact unless he’s also been through it. You can tell that to the Council if you like. That is where you’re going when you leave here, isn’t it?”

Arilan’s mouth twitched in annoyance, though he tried to make it look like a grimace of frustration as he did up the collar of his cassock.

“Don’t sound so accusatory, son. We may not have spoken of it directly, but surely you realized that I’d have to report on what you’ve done.”

“Forgive me if it seems a lot like spying,” Kelson countered. He nodded thanks as Richenda handed him a cup of pale wine. “They can’t have it both ways indefinitely, you know. They’ve been vacillating for more than two years now, trying to decide whether I’m fish or fowl—and if my status is still in question, then Alaric and Duncan must still be in the insect category. God knows what they think of Dhugal!”

As he gestured curtly with his cup toward his foster brother, who was trying to become invisible before this increasingly heated exchange between king and bishop, Arilan glanced in Dhugal’s direction, smiled wryly, and pulled his cloak from a chair.

“If we continue this discussion, we shall quarrel. And I’d have you at a distinct disadvantage, fatigued as you are.” He slung the cloak around his shoulders and glanced around the room speculatively as he tied the ribbons at his throat.

“Now, I seem to recall that you have a Portal here somewhere, Duncan. I should like to use it, if I may. I am going to the Council now, Sire, but I assure you that I shall be as objective as possible in my reporting.”

Kelson still had distinct misgivings, but there was no point belaboring the issue. Whether or not Kelson liked it, the Council was going to know about Nigel before the night was out. He had known that from the moment he even considered asking Arilan’s assistance. And at least if Arilan left now, Kelson would not have to risk him learning about the Camber vision.

“Show him the Portal,” he said to Dhugal.

He turned his head away at Arilan’s sardonic little bow of thanks, knowing it would irk Arilan just a little that even Dhugal knew of the Portal, where Arilan did not.

Arilan said nothing—merely acknowledged Dhugal with a curt nod and stepped onto the Portal when Dhugal had pulled aside the tapestry that covered the doorway; then he was gone.

Kelson sighed explosively and tossed off his cup of wine, stretching out his legs toward the fire to rest his boots on the raised hearth.

“Bloody Camberian Council!” he muttered.

Morgan raised an eyebrow, a little surprised at the king’s outburst—though he quite agreed with the assessment.

“Come, now. This is hardly the first time Arilan has gone running back to the Council to report what we’re doing.”

“No—though in all fairness to Arilan, he’s made no real secret of it, at least to me. In his way, I suppose he’s trying to be open-minded.”

“As an individual, that may well be,” Morgan said guardedly. “You’re certainly in a far better position to know about such things than I. From my own observation, however, I can’t say that the apparent attitude of the Council as a whole has been anything but disturbing.”

“I’d rather not talk about them,” Kelson said quietly.

Morgan and Duncan exchanged glances, and Richenda withdrew unobtrusively to perch on a low stool beyond them and Nigel. Dhugal, still a little rattled by Arilan’s comments and departure, took up a cautious post to Kelson’s right.

“Kelson, we know you’d rather not,” Morgan said quietly. “Unfortunately, your reticence to do so of late has hardly helped to reassure Duncan and myself. They may be courting you, but—”’

“I don’t know that I’d exactly call it courting,” Kelson countered. “I may have made some progress with a few as individuals, but as a body they’re still very, very conservative.”

“I fear narrow-minded is nearer the mark,” Duncan said. “I can only agree with Alaric. As far as we know, we’re still half-breeds and outcasts where the Council is concerned— and as you yourself have pointed out, God knows what they think of Dhugal.”

“Dhugal is a cypher,” Kelson said, almost shortly, “and I intend that he remain so.”

“And Nigel?” Richenda asked, speaking up for the first time.

Kelson set aside his cup, shaking his head. “Nigel himself can’t have been any surprise to the Council. After all, they or their predecessors have been coping with Haldane heirs for two hundred years. Thank God that Arilan wasn’t in the primary link, though.” He shivered and looked up at Morgan and Duncan. “You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

The glances the two exchanged told Kelson that they knew precisely what he was talking about. Clearly Richenda did not—which meant that Arilan probably had not caught any inkling of Nigel’s experience either. Dhugal, who would not have been expected to read much detail from outside the circle, even if trained—which he was not—looked predictably mystified.

Richenda’s expression of speculation turned to comprehension as she laid a hand on her husband’s forearm to share his memory of the experience.

“Ah, Saint Camber,” she breathed. “I should have known.”

Dhugal gulped and looked aghast at all of them.

“Saint Camber? What is she talking about?”

“Nigel had a—vision during the ritual,” Morgan said, dragging his eyes from Richenda’s to look at Dhugal. “Duncan and I caught a little of the spillover from Kelson.”

“A vision? Of Saint Camber?”

Duncan nodded. “We’ve—ah—come into contact with him before. I must say, I certainly wasn’t expecting him tonight.”

“A—saint?” Dhugal only just managed to swallow.

Kelson sighed and gestured wearily toward Duncan. “Do you want to show him, Duncan?”

“Why can’t you show me?” Dhugal asked plaintively, before Duncan could respond. “Unless you’re too tired, that is. But I’m never going to learn if I only work with my father.”

The request could not have been made a few months before, for it was only with the new year that Dhugal had learned to lower his shields even for Duncan. He had grown far more adept since then, working with Morgan, Kelson, and occasionally Richenda, but rapport with anyone besides Duncan still required far more effort on his part than he thought it should. Kelson knew that. So despite his fatigue, he smiled and held out his hand.

As soon as their fingers met, he could feel Dhugal’s shields collapse—saw the sun-amber eyes go a little glassy as Dhugal slipped firmly, if not easily, into rapport.

He did not spare him, though. Cementing the link, he bore deep into Dhugal’s mind and began to filter the memory through, beginning with Nigel’s sensations as the drug took effect and his eyes began to go out of focus, and not letting up as the pain began to build along with other sensations.

Dhugal gasped and closed his eyes as the feed became more intense, inadvertently drawing back just a little, but Kelson merely shifted his hand around to grasp Dhugal’s wrist and held the contact. As the link steadied, he fed the last set of images: the face against the fog, compassionate and kind; quicksilver eyes, silver-gilt hair; and the hand whose touch brought oblivion. With them he sent a montage of the other times he had seen that face, and the images of Morgan’s and Duncan’s sightings.

When he let the link dissolve, though not the physical one of hand to hand, Dhugal exhaled in a long, slow sigh and did not move or even open his eyes for several seconds. When he did raise his head to look at Kelson, his eyes were moist with tears.

“I—had no idea,” he murmured, after a few more seconds, finally raising both hands to wipe surreptitiously at his eyes. “Do you—really think it was Saint Camber?”

Duncan smiled sympathetically and exchanged a glance with Morgan.

“Well, at least we know it wasn’t Stefan Coram this time, don’t we?” he said. “And I don’t think it was Arilan, either.”

“God, no!” Kelson said, sitting back with an explosive sigh and crossing his arms on his chest. “I don’t think he caught any of it. Richenda didn’t, after all. And after it was over, I was terribly anxious that he not pick up something about it from me or the two of you, before I could get rid of him. Somehow, I didn’t want him to share that.”

“Perhaps because you knew he was going to the Council after he left,” Morgan ventured.

“Perhaps.” Kelson shook his head and sighed again. “What do you think, though? All of you. Was it Saint Camber?”

“Why not ask the man who saw it firsthand?” Duncan murmured, laying a hand on the forehead of the reviving Nigel. “Nigel, are you with us again? How do you feel?”

With a little moan, Nigel opened his eyes and turned his head toward Kelson, not fighting the light control Duncan extended to block any residual pain.

“Kelson,” he murmured. “God, what an incredible experience! I had no idea. …”

Kelson grinned and laid his hand on his uncle’s, glancing briefly at Duncan to shift control.

“I know. You weathered everything well, though. Do you remember any details?”

Nigel’s lips parted in a slow, lazy half-smile, the grey Haldane eyes dreamy and still a little focused in some other world.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said softly. “And then—you’re not going to believe this—I think Saint Camber saved my life. Or at least my sanity.” He turned his head to look at the rest of them searchingly, then back at Kelson. “He did. And I am not going mad now—am I?”

Slowly Kelson shook his head. “No, Uncle, you’re not going mad. I saw him too. Alaric and Duncan—have seen him before.”

“Somehow that ought to alarm me,” Nigel replied, “but it doesn’t. Your doing?”

“In part,” Kelson admitted. “But in part, I think it goes along with what else has happened to you. Camber seems to have an affinity for us Haldanes. Now, perhaps, you understand better why I want to know more about him—maybe even restore his cult here in Gwynedd.”

“I shan’t argue that,” Nigel answered, around a yawn. “‘M too sleepy.”

“The expected response,” Kelson replied, giving the hand a squeeze and getting to his feet. “Are you ready to go back to your quarters?”

Nigel rose without help, if a trifle unsteadily, and gave another enormous yawn. “I think I’ll sleep for a week.”

“No, only until morning,” Duncan said, grinning as he laid an arm around Dhugal’s shoulders. “Dhugal and I leave for Kierney tomorrow, and you must see us off.”

“Oh, aye,” Nigel mumbled.

“Meraude’s going to think he’s drunk,” Morgan muttered under his breath.

“Then, best she have reason to think he’s been drinking,” Richenda replied. Quickly she poured a cup of wine and put it in the swaying Nigel’s hand. “Drink it down, Nigel. You’ll sleep the better for it, too.”

Nigel obeyed without hesitation, setting the empty cup back in Richenda’s hand when he had finished. After he and Kelson had gone, Morgan sat down in the chair Kelson had vacated and pulled his wife down on his lap. She laughed lightly, and Duncan poured wine for all of them.

“Thank God that’s over,” Morgan said, lifting his cup in salute when everyone had wine. “Shall we drink to Saint Camber, King Kelson, and our fine Haldane heir?”

“To Camber, Kelson, and Nigel,” Duncan agreed, raising his own cup as Richenda and Dhugal did the same.

“But how much will he remember?” Dhugal wondered, when the toast had been drunk.

“It’s unclear just how much he’ll remember,” Arilan was saying at that very moment, addressing the other members of the Camberian Council. “He knows me as Deryni, of course, from the Portal construction at Llyndruth Meadows, but Kelson and I agreed at the time that a block should be placed to prevent him disclosing my identity to anyone else. That’s held, of course.”

Old Vivienne, even more irascible this evening than was usually her wont, allowed herself a sour smile. “Thank God you had the good sense to do that—and to erase that Warm person’s memory of the incident altogether. I could have told you he would bolt again, once the immediate crisis of the war with Wencit had passed.”

“It’s true we’ve not heard much of Warin in the past year,” Laran said, tapping his fingertips lightly together. “As a physician, I would like to have explored his healing gifts more thoroughly. Unfortunately, no one seems to know what’s become of him.”

“Good riddance, if you ask me,” Kyri said with a toss of her flame-colored hair. “Healing by the power of God, indeed! We don’t need that kind of superstitious nonsense!”

“However he does it, he does it,” Arilan said dryly. “In any case, I hardly think Warm de Grey is the issue here. We came to discuss Prince Nigel, as I recall. I suspect that our Tiercel, at least, is bursting to hear more of the new Haldane heir—though he will keep his peace until I have finished telling you of it, I feel certain,” he concluded emphatically, flashing a brief but adamant glance of warning across the table.

Tiercel, on the brink of an objection, thought better of it and subsided, to the obvious relief of more than one person seated at the table.

“So,” said blind Barrett, after a measured sigh at Arilan’s right, “what is your understanding of what was done to Nigel? We must surmise that the Haldane potential was set, but was the king able to make the patterning reversible?”

“Such was his intention. However, since only Morgan and Duncan were included in the primary link, I have only Kelson’s word on that.”

Sofiana cocked her head to one side and studied Arilan thoughtfully. “Do you have reason to doubt him, Denis?”

“Not—exactly.” He lowered his eyes, idly following the pattern he was tracing with a fingertip along the gold inlay of the table, his bishop’s ring glinting in the chamber’s dim illumination. “Oh, I don’t doubt that the pattern was set. And we expected a powerful working. The Haldane rituals almost always are.”

“Are you saying there might have been a transfer of power as well?” Tiercel asked, no longer able to contain his curiosity. “Some actual awakening of ability, I mean.”

Vivienne glanced at him sharply. “Why do you insist upon belaboring the issue? Only one Haldane may hold the power at a time. We have gone over this time and again.”

“And have never, ever truly answered the question!” Tiercel retorted.

“And shall not meddle in forbidden things!” Vivienne snapped, now openly glaring at the younger man. “Now, will you keep your peace, or must I invoke an official censure?”

Tiercel looked as if he might have been considering further defiance, but Sofiana, seated to his left, touched two fingers lightly to his lips in restraint.

“Enough, Tiercel,” she murmured. “Now is not the time.” She glanced back at Arilan, watching stoically a few places away. “What further can you tell us, Denis? By your expression, one might almost think Kelson did give his uncle at least a taste of power.”

Arilan folded his hands carefully before him and shook his head. “It would have nothing to do with being Haldane, of course—and there are definite limits to what could be bestowed upon a human. We know of several such cases in recent years.”

“Are you thinking of Bran Coris?” Laran asked.

“Aye—though one must almost wonder, in retrospect, whether he might not have been at least part Deryni himself. It hardly seems likely that Wencit would have bothered, unless there were something more to work with.” He cocked his head at Sofiana in sudden speculation. “Do you know? Was Bran Coris Deryni?”

Sofiana gave an odd little smile that might have betokened either disdain or secret knowledge.

“If he had been, what does it matter, now?”

“It matters,” Barrett murmured, “because he and Ri-chenda had a son, your sister’s grandson—a child who would be full Deryni, if Bran was. How old is Brendan now?”

“He will be seven in June,” she replied quietly. “Unfortunately, his father was not Deryni.”

Kyri sat back with a perplexed sigh. “You could have said as much. He’s another rogue, then: Brendan, little Briony— young Dhugal MacArdry, from an even less explainable bloodline. Incidentally, Denis, how did the MacArdry boy behave? Have you any further speculations on that account?”

“None. He was door warden for the actual working. He never entered the circle. He seemed to keep his composure, so far as I could tell, but I was rather preoccupied.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, he managed not to be next to me during our meditation time before things got started— whether by chance or design never occurred to me at the time. I had Morgan and Richenda to either side of me. He was between Richenda and Duncan.”

Tiercel shrugged and gave an impatient sigh. “I hardly think that matters, since we’re really supposed to be talking about Nigel,” he said. “Touchy as Dhugal’s shields are, I suspect he merely opted to minimize possible clashes. Kelson probably told him to. You certainly wouldn’t have wanted that kind of distraction during the ritual.”

“Thank you for bringing us back to the subject,” Barrett said.

“And for refraining from your usual line of discussion,” Vivienne added. “Denis, is there anything else that you can tell us about Nigel’s reaction?”

Arilan shook his head. “Very little, I fear. As planned, Richenda and I were keyed in as facilitators on the secondary level—and what we were permitted to See seemed quite in keeping with what I expected.” He raised an eyebrow wistfully. “Naturally, I can’t give you any details of the actual process.”

“Naturally,” Vivienne said cynically. “He bound you by oath.”

“I would think less of him if he had not,” Arilan replied.

“Pray to every god in heaven that you are never forced to choose among your oaths,” Kyri murmured. “We can accept your judgment that all was done properly for now, but if things should change, I do not think I should like to be in your place.”

“Fortunately for all of us,” Arilan said dryly, “none of you shall ever have to worry about that possibility.” He shifted position in his high-backed chair and sighed.

“Now, is there other business for tonight, or may I go home and get some sleep? I must confess that keeping up with a seventeen-year-old king becomes increasingly difficult, even if he were not Deryni.”

Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth.

—Psalms 60:4

Keeping up with a seventeen-year-old king was enough to tax far younger men than Arilan. Though Kelson could have gotten little more sleep than any of the rest of those involved in the previous night’s work, he was up at first light to see that Duncan’s escort had begun to assemble in the castle yard, and summoned his bleary-eyed chief advisors to join him at table before another hour had passed.

Granted, it was the table in the great hall rather than the council table, for the still growing Kelson rarely missed a meal of late, but he seemed to take perverse delight in the yawns and long-suffering expressions of his lords of state, many of whom made no attempt to disguise their irritation at the early morning summons.

Nigel alone seemed to match the king for mood and freshness—which surprised Morgan and Duncan, given the ordeal Nigel had undergone only a few hours before. Even Dhugal, nearly two years Kelson’s junior and by no means as involved as the others, propped his elbows on the table and occasionally leaned his chin on one hand while he ate and listened to the king’s briefing. And Dhugal was eager for the day, for he and a handful of his clansmen rode with Duncan at noon to join the other MacArdry levies and the army of Cassan in the north.

Morgan studied king and prince as he and Duncan paused at the edge of the yard where the ducal escort was mustering. Dhugal had gone ahead of them to be with his borderers, and the two Haldanes were inspecting the mounted men-at-arms, both resplendent this morning in Haldane crimson. The prince regent moved among the men with the same easy grace that had been his brother’s trademark and was now Kelson’s, even managing, with Kelson’s connivance, to bring an occasional smile to the lips of Dhugal’s dour border scouts.

“God, he’s good,” Morgan murmured. “Sometimes, watching him is like watching Brion at his very best. I think the men would ride to hell and back for him, if he asked.”

“Oh, they would—though God grant that they never have to,” Duncan agreed, tugging at the cuff of a gauntlet embroidered with the sleeping lion of Cassan. “He certainly seems to have weathered last night in good form, though. One would think he’d had a full night’s sleep—which is more than I can say for myself. Do you think Kelson helped him with a fatigue-banishing spell?”

Morgan shrugged and smiled as he returned his attention to Kelson again, now examining a new battle standard that Dhugal and Jodrell were unfurling.

“I don’t know. He may have done. It will be fascinating to see how much Nigel begins picking up on his own this summer, once you and Kelson and I are away.” He sighed. “It’s also going to be strange, having you and Dhugal off in the north.”

“Aye. God grant that the war will be quickly won, and all of us soon reunited.”

He did not reiterate—nor did Morgan—that grim possibility that every fighting man must eventually face, at least in some deeply buried, secret part of him: that for some of those who rode out on campaign, even on so glorious a spring day as this, there would be no reunion, at least in this life. That was an unspoken “given” that soldiers almost never voiced, lest the speaking invite the very thing they dreaded. As a bishop, Duncan might laugh off such a notion as superstition; but the soldier in him was more cautious. He was very much the soldier today, in appearance as well as demeanor.

No cassock or cope or other ecclesiastical accoutrement proclaimed his episcopal rank. The plain silver cross hanging from under his gorget might have belonged to any pious man, and his bishop’s ring was hidden under its embroidered gauntlet. Over close-fitting trews of deerskin and knee-high boots, Duncan had buckled a trim, buff-colored jazerant of quilted leather studded with steel, the edges bound in bright McLain tartan and the McLain device picked out in silken stitches on the left breast. A sword and crozier crossed in saltire behind the embroidered shield gave hint of his dual status, but only at close range.

There was a helm that denoted his double rank more obviously, circled by a ducal coronet, and with a steel cross splayed above the eyes and extending down the nasal, but that was still hanging on the saddle of his palfrey: a cloud-grey mare chosen for stamina and smoothness of gait. A squire held her, over near Dhugal and Jodrell. The big, battle-trained destriers were with the baggage train and sumpter animals, along with the heavier armor, none of which would be needed for the swift dash across the plains to the Mearan border.

“The summer will fly; you’ll see,” Morgan said quietly, after a beat. “Richenda has promised to continue working with Nigel, and to send us progress reports. And when we exchange dispatches, I shall send you more of that excellent wine we drank last night, and you shall drink to all our very good health!”

As he clasped Duncan by the shoulder, he forced a smile which Duncan returned dutifully, then glanced past him to the men mounting up in the yard.

“But, I see the archbishops coming out to bless the troops. I suppose we’d best rejoin our respective contingents.”

“Aye. You are still riding out with us (he first few miles, aren’t you?”

“Certainly. But this blessing is for your lot—unless you’d care to give me a blessing before you go….”

Duncan raised one eyebrow in surprise, then grinned unabashedly. “I’m flattered, Alaric. You’ve never asked before.”

“The last time we left on a major campaign, you weren’t a bishop.” Morgan flashed him a quick, self-conscious grin. “Nor were you even a priest in very good standing, as I recall—at least so far as the Church was concerned.”

“Mere technicalities,” Duncan muttered, quickly pulling off his right gauntlet and glancing around to see whether they were being observed. “I’m still flattered. I don’t suppose we should call undue attention to ourselves, so you needn’t kneel—but do bow your head.”

Kelson and Nigel were returning to the great hall steps beside the archbishops, so most attention was focused on the king—which was fortunate, because the flash of sun on Duncan’s episcopal ring triggered potent memories in both Deryni as he raised his hand slightly between them. Morgan caught his breath in an echo of the old awe, then as quickly dipped his head and averted his eyes. The memory was too intimate, too precious, to share with anyone but Duncan.

The ring had been Bishop Istelyn’s until six months before: hacked from his hand at the orders of Edmond Loris and sent, still circling Istelyn’s finger, as an earnest of Loris’ intention, with his Mearan allies, to wage total war against the Deryni Kelson. When Kelson did not capitulate, Istelyn’s head followed; and Duncan had declared he would be made a bishop with no other ring than the martyred Henry Istelyn’s.

But the ring held power beyond the mere symbolism of a bishop’s office; and as Duncan’s consecration approached, the presumption of wearing a martyr’s ring weighed increasingly on his conscience—until, on the morning of the ceremony, Morgan insisted he face his fear. Together they had used their Deryni abilities to read the psychic impressions the ring carried—and had experienced what they could only describe later on as a vision of Saint Camber, not the first nor the last of many.

Camber’s magic was in the gold itself—which had been a communion vessel of some kind, before it was Istelyn’s ring—and the metal seemed to have retained some whisper of its earlier sacramental nature, even through the fire of crucible and forge and the metamorphosis from holy cup to consecrated ring. A measure of that special magic surrounded both of them as Duncan lightly touched Morgan’s bright gold hair.

“May Almighty God bless and keep you safe, now and forever,” he murmured, tracing a cross on Morgan’s forehead with his thumb. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Then the moment was past, and they were moving on into the yard, Duncan striding toward his waiting men and Morgan bounding up the steps by twos to join Kelson, a bright splash of green riding leathers against grey stone. Archbishops Bradene and Cardiel, Bishop Arilan, Nigel, and a handful of courtiers also waited to witness the departure. Not surprisingly, Queen Jehana was not present.

As Duncan neared the center of the front line, one of Dhugal’s border drummers did a brisk drumroll. At that signal, Baron Jodrell brought forward the new battle standard, bright as a cardinal in his color-bearer’s surcoat over mail and leather, the silk of the standard spilling down the cross-tipped staff and billowing over his gloved hands. Duncan caught a handful of it as he and Jodrell continued to the foot of the stairs and knelt on the bottom-most step, holding the silk clear of the stone when Jodrell lowered the staff in salute to the two archbishops coming down to bless it.

“Omnipotens Deus, qui es cunctorum benedictio et trium-phantium fortitude…” Bradene prayed, he and Cardiel laying their hands on the standard as Duncan and Jodrell bowed their heads.

Almighty God, Thou Who dost bless all men, Who dost give strength to those who triumph in Thee: in Thine infinite kindness, hear our humble prayers and with Thy heavenly blessing deign to bless this standard, meant for use in battle, so that it may be a source of strength against aggressive and rebellious peoples. Armed with Thy protective power, may it strike terror in the enemies of Thine anointed. King Kelson…

As Bradene continued, Duncan fixed his gaze on one of the red roses scattered over the particolor of blue and white that formed the tails of the standard. The roses symbolized the McLain commitment to the coming venture, as the Hal-dane lion on its red field, next to the hoist, signified Kelson’s support as king and overlord.

Duncan touched the silk to his lips as Cardiel aspersed the standard with holy water, and remained kneeling as Kelson came down to join the archbishops. As the king laid his own consecrated hands briefly on the standard, half a hundred lances dipped in salute, swallow-tailed pennons of blue and white almost brushing the ground.

“Receive this standard, blessed with the blessing of heaven,” Kelson said, helping Jodrell raise the weight of the staff as the latter stood. “May its sight strike terror in all our enemies, and may the Lord grant all who follow it grace to break through the ranks of the enemy with it safely and without harm.”

“Amen,” Bradene and Cardiel respondeo.

The Haldane lion danced in the breeze as Duncan released his handfuls of silk, and the azure and white of the standard’s tails cloaked his shoulders in a mantle of McLain roses. Gravely he ducked his head to receive the flat-linked chain of gilt that Kelson laid around his neck, then offered the king his joined hands in token of his homage.

“Be our Captain-General in the North, Duke Duncan,” the king said, clasping the ducal hands between his own and thereby raising him up.

“I will, my Liege, and shall serve you faithfully, upon mine honor and my life.”

“Cassan!” shouted Duncan’s men, rattling lances against shields as the two exchanged a formal kiss of peace.

Then Duncan was escorting Jodrell back to their waiting line, bracing the standard against his hip while Jodrell swung up on a mean-tempered blood-bay that had to be sharply curbed before it would move close enough to take the banner back. Beyond, Dhugal waited on a rust-colored mare that matched his hair and brigandine, the reins of Duncan’s grey in his hands.

He grinned as Duncan mounted, raising a hand toward Kelson and Morgan, who were heading down the steps toward where their own horses and a small escort waited for them to accompany the troops for the first few miles. Behind them on the landing, Nigel had been joined by his three sons. They, the bishops, and a handful of lesser nobles watched attentively as king and champion fell in with Duncan and Dhugal, wheeling to follow the Cassani lancers already eddying out of the yard through the gatehouse passage.

“Well, then. They’re away,” Nigel said to Conall, who was looking very tight-jawed and upset. “Here—what’s this gloomy face? I thought you were going to ride out with Kelson and Alaric for a way.”

“He can’t,” said the thirteen-year-old Prince Rory, smiling primly. “Payne hid all his riding boots.”

“Rory! You said you wouldn’t tell!” Payne blurted, kicking his brother sharply in the ankle and then ducking hastily between him and his father as Conall whirled on him with fratricide in his eyes. “Papa, don’t let him hit me!”

“Conall!”

At Nigel’s warning, Conall reluctantly lowered his fist, but to be sabotaged by a nine-year-old was no mean affront to his adolescent pride. Several men who had overheard Rory’s announcement were fighting to control snickers, and one had already walked away to keep from laughing. Conall could scarcely contain his anger.

“You’d better thrash him. Father,” he said through clenched teeth, “because if you don’t, I will. I swear it.”

“You’ll thrash no one without my leave, sir!” Nigel retorted. “You’re a grown man, for God’s sake! You’re almost twice Payne’s age and size. I’m sure it was only a childish— Here now!” he barked, as Payne poked his head from between Rory and his father long enough to stick out his tongue at his eldest brother. “Stop that before I do thrash you! You’re not innocent in this matter, y’know.”

As Nigel grabbed him by the upper arm and gave him a shake, Payne paled visibly and deflated, all the defiance draining out of him as Nigel went on.

“I can’t say I blame Conall for being angry, if you’re going to act like a spoiled brat. Perhaps I should let him thrash you. Now, why did you hide all his boots?”

“It isn’t fair, Father,” he whispered. “Why does Conall get to go on the campaign with Kelson? Why can’t I go, too?”

Nigel sighed and released the boy’s arm, and even Conall looked a little less angry.

“We’ve been over all of this before, son. Conall needs the battle experience. He’s going to be knighted next spring. Your time will come.”

“But Duke Alaric is taking Brendan, and he’s not even seven!”

“Brendan will be serving his stepfather as a page,” Nigel said patiently. “I need you and Rory to be my page and squire. You know I’m to be regent while Kelson is away. Do you understand what that means?”

Payne fidgeted and studied the toes of his pointed court boots, trying to hide his sniffles behind a scowl.

“Lots of boring courts,” he muttered.

Nigel smiled. “I’m afraid that’s a major part of the life of a prince, son. And it’s a very necessary one. When a king has to go to war, it makes his job far easier if he knows that the ‘boring courts,’ as you put it, are being taken care of by someone he can trust. If you ask Kelson, I’m sure he’ll agree. Rory understands that, don’t you, Rory?”

Rory, the thirteen-year-old, managed a grimace of a smile. “Yes, sir. It isn’t going to be nearly as exciting as being with Kelson, though. I could go with him. I’m almost as old as he was when he became king. And it will be glorious, won’t it, Conall? You’re going to have all the fun!”

Conall, mellowing as he realized what had sparked this minor rebellion on the part of his younger brothers, decided he could afford to be gracious.

“Ah, so it’s glory you’re worried about, is it?” he said, feigning amazement as he planted both hands on his hips and looked down at the two boys. “Are you afraid you’re going to miss out?”

At their shy, grudging nods and murmurs of agreement, he glanced at their father and gave him a broad wink.

“Well, then, little brothers, if that’s all that’s bothering you, I promise to win enough glory for all three of us! Perhaps it isn’t quite as exciting as actually coming along on the campaign, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? And Father will need your help while I’m away.”

“They can help me right now, if they’re interested,” Nigel said, laying an arm around both boys’ shoulders and flashing Conall a look of gratitude as he tousled their hair. “Gentlemen, did you know we’re to receive a Torenthi embassy in the next few days?”

“So what?” Payne muttered under his breath, as Nigel began walking him and Rory back into the hall.

“Well, young King Liam of Torenth is coming to reaffirm his fealty to Kelson as overlord,” Nigel went on. “His brother is coming, too. Liam’s ten, as I recall, and Ronal’s six. They’ll probably be as bored as you are. Perhaps you can help me plan some interesting things for them to do while they’re here.”