Uncurling his fingers from their deathgrip on his chair arms, Sicard took his wife's near hand blindly in his while he lifted his cup and drained it with a single-minded deliberation. Caitrin winced at the pressure of his hand, but she kept stony silence. When Sicard had done, he set the cup aside and drew deep breath before looking back at Loris accusingly.

"That last was a low blow. Archbishop."

Loris shrugged. "Then I apologize for it. The danger to Sidana, however - "

"I am her father. Archbishop!" Sicard snapped. "Can you imagine that particular fear has been far from my thoughts these many hours? When I saw the cursed Haldane sitting his great white horse, young and hot-blooded and proud, and his Deryni henchman with his arms around - "

"Sicard - no!" Caitrin said. "Don't do this to yourself. Sidana will be safe, you'll see. We'll find a way."

"Then, we must show the Haldane whelp that we mean business. Highness - and that we do not intend to be intimidated," Loris purred.

Jerkily Sicard took up his cup again and held it out for Ithel to pour him more wine, letting Caitrin soothe him with little caresses stroked along his shoulder. She was looking at Istelyn rather then her husband, however. The bishop had done his best to be invisible while his captors argued, but now he could not escape her scrutiny. Dark circles smudged the fine-drawn skin beneath his eyes, but he appeared to have recovered from the drug given him earlier in the day. As Sicard tossed off half his new cup of wine, Caitrin returned her attention to Loris. A new determination appeared to have stamped itself on her plain features.

"Indeed, we are not intimidated. Archbishop," she said quietly. "My love for my children is no less than my husband's, but the brutal fact of the matter is that they are of age and were fully aware of the possible consequences of supporting our claim to the throne. If G.o.d wills that they should die at a tyrant's hands, then I must pray that they be granted the grace to endure it with all the dignity of their royal blood. It is as a queen as well as a mother that I speak these harsh words. With G.o.d's help, none of us shall have to make the sacrifice."

She rose to begin slowly pacing the s.p.a.ce between her chair and the room's fireplace, playing with the rings on her slender hands.

"As a queen, however, it occurs to me that our young Deryni king may have made a great tactical error when he let us know he wants Bishop Istelyn back. He threatens reprisals if we do not submit by Christmas, but so long as he thinks we are considering his terms, I doubt he will actually do the children harm. For all that he is Deryni, he seems to prefer not to shed blood if there is another way. Negotiations could take a long time - all winter, as I said before.

Long enough to ensure that we have all the support we need to meet and defeat him in the spring."

"Winter itself will give us the time we need to build our strength for the spring campaign," Loris said stubbornly. "We do not need to bargain with Deryni, Madame."

"Mother, may I speak?" Ithel interjected.

Regally Caitrin inclined her head.

"Thank you."

Ithel came to stand beside his mother's empty chair, one hand on its back as he gazed at Loris.

"Archbishop, as my mother's heir, I stand to gain a great deal if we are successful against the Haldane, but I hope you will understand that I would prefer that my brother and sister were still alive to share our victory when it eventually comes. To that end, I should like to point out a few practical considerations of tactics and politics which may have escaped your notice."

"Don't lecture me, boy!"

"I'm not a boy. Archbishop - any more than Kelson is a boy," Ithel retorted, but coolly, and without raising his voice. "I'm a prince and I'll thank you to address me as such. Hasn't it occurred to you that even if it isn't possible for Kelson to mount an actual campaign during the winter, he could still hara.s.s the lowland regions enough to interfere with the raising of our levies? But he'll not take drastic action so long as we're negotiating."

"You have a lot to learn about politics, boy," Loris replied coldly. "And about Deryni. How can you even contemplate giving him the satisfaction - "

Sicard cleared his throat dangerously. "My son is a realist. Archbishop. His mother and I have brought him up that way. And speaking as a realist, I know that there is nothing we can do to protect Sidana and Llewell if the Haldane decides not to keep his word. But by the first of the year, only a short time past the Haldane's Christmas deadline, even the lowlands will be all but inaccessible to large bodies of troops from outside Meara. As long as we pretend to be considering his terms, they will be safe - and so will our borderlands."

"Neither the children nor the land will ever be safe while Kelson lives,"

Loris said stubbornly. "He regards the land as his - and he must eventually kill you and your heirs or else keep you in perpetual imprisonment, as he tried to do to me. He would be a fool to let you live, lest potential rebellion always hang above his head. He will use the children as bait to lure you to your destruction."

"Then let him think he will succeed," Caitrin retorted. "Talk is cheap.

Perhaps we can tantalize him with the hope of Istelyn's return, since he seems to care for the man's safety. Now that Judhael has been consecrated, Istelyn is of little use to us here."

Loris raised an eyebrow disdainfully in Istelyn's direction. "Aye. Any worthy priest would have informed his superiors that one under his charge intended to break a sacred oath. Istelyn, I hold you personally responsible for young Dhugal's escape."

Istelyn, notably grim and silent until then, shook his head.

"I honestly regret that I cannot take credit for that," he said softly. "As for his oath-breaking, I suspect there are far worse offenses before G.o.d than the breaking of an oath taken under duress. Perhaps you have knowledge of a few of them."

Loris' eyes lit dangerously.

"As for my worthiness as a priest," Istelyn went on, "you have no authority to judge that - and have had none since the bishops removed you from office and sent you into confinement."

As much from reflex as volition, Loris was on his feet and raising his hand to strike the defiant Istelyn, a wordless growl rumbling in his throat, careless of the goblet which toppled from his chair arm to smash on the stone flags.

"Don't!" Caitrin gasped, as Sicard simultaneously launched himself between the two to block the intended blow.

The word and the sound of shattering pottery served to deflate Loris' blind fury, and he drew himself up indignantly before Sicard could touch him, pointedly dropping his hands to his sides and inclining his head in a grudging bow to Caitrin as he seated himself once more. Sicard, with an explosive sigh, tugged his tunic into place and also sat. Ithel, who had moved to his father's defense, warily resumed his place behind his mother's chair. Judhael clasped his hands tightly before him and tried not to look torn between loyalty to his aunt and obedience to the man who had made him a bishop. Istelyn had never moved from his stool or flinched throughout the interchange.

"Please accept my apologies. Your Highness," Loris murmured contritely.

"I don't know what came over me. His insolence is - unbecoming in a priest."

"Indeed, it is," Caitrin replied coldly. "However, I doubt he sees his behavior in quite that light. Be that as it may, the Haldane will need some rea.s.surance of Istelyn's well-being. His ring, I think - and perhaps a letter from his hand, which you shall dictate. Archbishop."

"I will not write it," Istelyn said quietly.

"And if he will not cooperate," Caitrin continued, her face hardening, "I shall leave it to you. Archbishop, to decide what measures should be taken to a.s.sure the king that we have his bishop and will deal with him as he intends to deal with my children, if agreement cannot be reached." She smiled grimly at Loris. "I shall ask my nephew to a.s.sist you, and rely on your joint good offices to see that our intention is carried out."

Loris nodded slowly, a grim smile coming across his face.

"Very well, Madame. I will be quite pleased to carry out your wishes. I think you will not be disappointed."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity.

- Nahum3:10 A weary but satisfied Kelson led his warband back through the gates of Rhemuth less than a week after his departure, none of his men with so much as a scratch, Dhugal's presence at his side proclaiming at least the partial success of his mission. As the column clattered across the bridge and into the castle yard, several elated Transha bordermen darted out to greet their new young chief with raucous highland yells. Dhugal's previous injuries had been aggravated by his escape and the enforced march of the past three days, but he managed a grin and a few words for each man before sliding painfully from his horse.

Nor was Dhugal the only addition to Kelson's company. Six glum prisoners rode with the warband; the youngest, a dark-haired, aristocratic-looking boy, was doing his best to put up a brave front, his wrists bound before him and his horse's lead secured to Conall's saddle. His cheeks flamed with embarra.s.sment under the stares of the curious, but he kept his eyes pointedly ahead, disdaining a.s.sistance as he climbed down from his horse. The most intriguing addition of all sat limply in the circle of Morgan's arms, apparently asleep - a heavily cloaked female form with tangled chestnut hair escaping from beneath her hood.

"They're the pretender's younger children," Kelson told Nigel, as he dismounted in the snowy courtyard and helped Morgan hand the sleeping girl into Duncan's arms. "Now all we need are Caitrin, Sicard, and the remaining son.

And Loris, of course. The girl's name is Sidana. Dhugal stole her out from under their noses."

"She isn't hurt, is she?" Nigel asked.

Morgan, relieved of his burden, swung one leg over his horse's neck and vaulted to the ground, shaking his head.

"She'll be fine by morning. I - ah - had to put her to sleep. She started to get hysterical when she realized she wasn't going to be rescued. I doubt she'll even remember most of the trip."

Nigel nodded slowly, accepting Morgan's use of his powers without batting an eye.

"Aye, that was probably kindest. Duncan, why don't you take her to my wife? Unless you wish otherwise, of course. Kelson. She'll want the comfort of another woman's company when she wakes - and a lady's bower seems a more fitting setting for this Mearan rose than a cell."

"A briar rose, I think," Kelson said, smiling, "with proper thorns, I'll warrant. But no matter. Aunt Meraude will be a suitable companion, I'm sure.

Father Duncan, would you take her, please?"

"Of course."

"And as for our other unexpected guest," Kelson went on, with a glance back at the sullen Llewell as Duncan withdrew, "you'll be proud to learn that it was your son Conall, who captured him. Uncle. His name is Llewell. He's been a little belligerent from the start, so I think he'll want closer guard. No cell, though.

He's a n.o.ble hostage, not a criminal."

Kelson took a few more minutes seeing to the disposition of his other prisoners and to the provisioning of his men and horses, then went with Dhugal and Morgan into the hall. While all three of them washed down mouthfuls of venison pasties with mulled ale, he gave a hastily gathered privy council his impromptu account of the venture. Dhugal was beginning to nod over his food by the time they finished, and even Morgan was beginning to slow down as food filled empty stomachs and ale lulled aching muscles. Within the hour, after scheduling a formal meeting of the full council for the following afternoon.

Kelson dismissed the court and retired for the night. The torches in Rhemuth hall burned late that night as Nigel and the others tried to digest what the king had told them.

Kelson woke with the dawn, however - not yet fully refreshed, but unable to sleep longer. He felt the need to do something, but there was nothing he could do until Caitrin replied to his demands. He sat in a window and watched the snow fall for a while, hoping he might ease himself back into drowsiness, but he only grew more restless. After a while he gave up the notion of sleep and got dressed, pulling on plain grey breeches, boots, tunic, and fur-lined overrobe.

Like a silent ghost he prowled the precincts of his castle, inquiring after the men and horses that had returned with him from Ratharkin, checking on his prisoners and hostages, and breaking his fast with Morgan, who was also unable to sleep into the day. When he returned to his own apartments a few hours later, still on edge, he found Dhugal also awake and dressed, wondering where he had gone.

"I couldn't sleep," Kelson told him. "I talked to Morgan, but that didn't seem to help much. I thought I might pay a visit to my father's tomb before the council meeting. Sometimes doing so helps me clear my head - almost as if I could still ask him for advice. Would you come with me?"

They chose the most common-looking horses they could find in the royal stables, for Kelson did not want his going to be noticed. Cloaked and closely capped, as much for anonymity as for warmth, they rode the half mile to the cathedral along silent, nearly deserted streets and alleys. The weather held cold and clear; the snow was still mostly white from the previous night when they dismounted in the cathedral yard. Their breath fogged on the air before them as they made their way through a slype to skirt the northern side of the cloister garth. Kelson bounding up steps to a side door, Dhugal hobbling a little stiffly from the still-painful bruise on his thigh.

"I used to hate this place," Kelson said as he led the way down the south aisle. "The royal crypt, I mean. Archbishop Cardiel has done a lot to make it more bearable in the two years he's had the cathedral, but it's still a little creepy. Did I ever bring you here before?"

"If you did, I don't remember."

"You'd remember." Kelson paused to open a high, gilded bra.s.s gate far enough for himself and Dhugal to slip through, then pulled it to behind them. "I suppose the best part about it is that it's one place where I can almost always be sure I'll not be disturbed," he continued. "Such places are rare when one is king."

Dhugal allowed himself a noncommittal grunt as they followed the corridor around a left-hand turn and started down a flight of marble steps, hanging back to ease his aching leg. By the time he reached the bottom, he found Kelson already kneeling beside an ornately carved sepulcher, head bowed in prayer; so he eased himself to a sitting position on the lowest step and breathed a prayer for his own father's soul. When he finished, he glanced around the dimly lit chamber, noting the rows of stone sarcophagi and the smooth marble of the walls. The stylized stone effigy atop the tomb where Kelson knelt was snowy-new and stiff, very little like the King Brion whom Dhugal remembered.

"I suppose this is the way most people will remember him," Kelson remarked, when he had crossed himself and stood to glance back at Dhugal, one hand lingering on the stone king's hand. "The stem Lord of Justice, who kept the peace for nearly fifteen years." He sighed and glanced at his feet. "It isn't the way I like to think of him, though. My father laughed a lot, but King Brion - well, he did what he had to do, as king. Kings don't get to laugh as much as ordinary folk.

That's but one of the things I've learned in these three years I've worn the crown."

Dhugal nodded and glanced around the subterranean chapel again with idle interest, remembering the old king's kindness to a confused young page of eight, still fresh from the less sophisticated ways of his father's highland hall. Like many eight year olds, Dhugal's command of his rapidly growing body had been intermittent, with disastrous results the first time he was required to serve the high table. Only the king had refrained from laughing when Dhugal tripped and sent a tray of steaming pheasants and gravy skittering and, sloshing down the steps of the royal dais.

The memory merged with recollections of old Caulay seated in the hall at Transha, training his own fosterlings with the same sort of firm but loving discipline that Dhugal had enjoyed at Brion's court, and Dhugal started to smile.

The smile faded as he glanced again at Brion's effigy, however; for the man at Transha was only newly dead, and the shock of his pa.s.sing was unnumbed by the pa.s.sage of years. Dhugal could feel the tears threatening to well up in his eyes, despite the fact that, in some ways, old Caulay's death still seemed quite unreal.

"It's all right to miss him, you know," Kelson said softly, reading his mood, if not his thought. "I still miss my father, after all this time. I cried when it happened, too. And sometimes late at night, when I'm feeling especially alone and burdened, I still cry."

Dhugal had all he could do to swallow, not daring to look at Kelson lest he loose a whole floodgate of ill-timed grief. He focused on one of the torches burning in a bra.s.s cresset instead, forcing himself to raise his eyes to the chapel's vaulting.

"This isn't such a creepy place," he managed to say, in an awkward attempt to change the subject. "It's rather nice, actually."

Kelson gave him a sympathetic smile, well aware what his foster brother was trying to do and hardly blaming him.

"It's only been this way the past year or so. All the stone facing on the walls is new." He gestured casually toward the nearest stretch of burnished marble as he moved toward it. The slap of his open palm against the stone made Dhugal start.

"There are tomb niches carved in the living rock behind here," he went on.

"It used to be that only kings and queens were buried in free-standing tombs like my father's. Other members of the royal family were simply wrapped in their shrouds and laid to rest on the shelves in these walls. They didn't rot for some reason; they just dried out and eventually crumbled away - something about the air, I'm told. I'd hold tight to my mother's hand and hide my eyes when my parents brought me here to pray on feast days. The fellow behind this wall, in particular, used to scare me half to death."

Ready to seize on any topic in preference to his own grief, Dhugal rose to approach the panel Kelson was touching.

"Dolonus Halda.n.u.s, Princeps Gwyneddis, 675-699," Dhugal read, stumbling a little over the fine, archaic script. "Filius Llarici, Rigonus Gwyneddis.

Requiem in pacem." He glanced at Kelson in question. "Prince Dolon - didn't his own father execute him?"

Kelson nodded. "And his younger brother as well. It was thought at the time that they were plotting treason."

"Were they?"

"Who knows?" Kelson glanced at the next row of wall inscriptions. "His brother is over there. I can remember being terrified of the two headless skeletons. My nurse told me that their father had cut off their heads because they displeased him."

"What a thing to tell a child!"

Kelson grinned. "I think I'd been especially trying that day. Still, it was years before I gained a more objective perspective." He glanced back at his father's tomb wistfully.

"That wasn't my most frightening experience down here, though," he went on softly, not sure whether he should risk frightening Dhugal as well by recounting the old nightmare. "It happened the night before my coronation."

"My father heard rumors...." Dhugal said cautiously.

Kelson smiled and moved back to Brion's sarcophagus, leaning both hands along the edge.

"I'll bet he did. Well, I shan't go into details that might alarm you overmuch, but as you may know, Morgan wasn't here when my father died. He was in Cardosa."

"And came back the day before the coronation," Dhugal supplied.

"That's right. My father had been buried for over a week by then: my mother's doing - she hates Morgan for being Deryni. Anyway, as I talked with him and Father Duncan that afternoon, it soon became apparent that - well, something we needed to make my kingship complete had been buried with my father."

"Then you did open the tomb!" Dhugal breathed, wide-eyed with horror.

"My father said there'd been rumors of vandals - "

"We weren't responsible for that part," Kelson countered. "We think it was Charissa or her agents, trying to discredit Morgan and Father Duncan. We were looking for the Eye of Rom."

As he brushed a strand of hair behind his right ear, exposing the crimson gemstone, Dhugal nodded.

"I remember him wearing that."