The Bastard Prince (9 page)

His attire likewise proclaimed his emerging adult standing. Though Healers usually did not qualify until about the age of eighteen, Tieg had already earned the right to wear full Healer's green—at least here in sanctuary. Recently, in imitation of Dom Queron and Dom Rickart, he had also begun pulling back his wavy reddish hair in a four-stranded Gabrilite braid—a capital offense outside these walls, if the wearer was Deryni, and even humans sporting such a braid risked having their heads shaved. The law also allowed for human transgressors to be flogged to unconsciousness, if circumstances suggested that the offense had been meant to show support for Deryni. Fortunately Tieg rarely ventured outside the sanctuary, and never in green or wearing a braid.

“Well, you're looking very official today,” Camlin said, restraining a grin. “Did Joram really send you, or did you just get bored?”

Tieg chuckled and shook his head, looking down sheepishly. “He didn't exactly
send
me—but I guess I did get bored. They're busy talking about levies and supply lines and the strategic weaknesses of Rhemuth Castle. I don't mind relieving you, though.”

“Well, it's very kind of you to offer, but I think I'd just as soon stay a while longer and finish what I'm doing. I'm not that tired.”

“No, but your hands are,” Tieg replied. Looking faintly smug, he came over to catch up Camlin's two wrists in his big Healer's hands. “When are you going to stop trying to mask your pain, when you know I can do something about it?”

Camlin caught his breath as Tieg probed gently at the scarring on one of his wrists, then exhaled softly and closed his eyes, almost going boneless as blessed healing poured into swollen tissues and dissolved away his discomfort. He had never felt a Healer's touch like Tieg's, and he wondered whether it had anything to do with his blocking talent.

“I don't think so,” Tieg said aloud, answering the unasked question. “Dom Rickart told me one time that, back when he first started his training, one of the oldest brothers at Saint Neot's had something of the same feel, but Dom Queron says he detects a little of my father's flavor.”

He shrugged as he shifted his attention to the other wrist. “I haven't had contact with that many other Healers, so I really couldn't say. And unfortunately, I'm afraid I don't remember very much about my father.”

Only half listening, Camlin let the bliss of Tieg's healing wash all around him as the second wrist was eased. He wondered how Tieg did it. He could only compare it to the feeling he sometimes got when meditating, when he thought he had made a better than usual connection with the rhythm of the Spheres. Bishop Niallan had suggested that perhaps Camlin was tapping into the energies that sometimes called one to a life of contemplation and prayer. Camlin was not certain he had such a calling, but many aspects of such a life were definitely appealing—and suited to his physical limitations.

“I remember your father fairly well,” he said, reluctantly dragging his focus back to the here and now. “Of course, I was only eleven when he died.” He sat back in his chair and let his healed hands rest easily in his lap. “I really liked Lord Rhys; everyone did. I wish I'd had the chance to know him as a man.”

“So do I,” Tieg said softly.

The very tone of his words conveyed several shades of meaning, but before their conversation could digress into useless conjecture on what might have been, a faintly discordant surge in the local energies rippled at the edges of consciousness.

“Rhysel's coming,” Tieg said, instantly refocused as he turned away to move closer to the Portal.

Catching a little of Tieg's sudden tension, Camlin also got to his feet. The permanent Wards built into the sanctuary Portal were supposed to prevent unauthorized access, but solo Portal duty always put him a little on edge, on the chance that magical protections must be augmented with physical force. It was not likely—the Portal's defenses probably would hold against any psychic trickery most intruders might try, at least until help could be summoned—but Camlin's Deryni abilities were not particularly strong, never mind that his hands would be all but useless in any physical altercation. Still, that first instant of temporary disorientation upon arrival would render any newcomer vulnerable as well.

She was there even as he thought it, not looking vulnerable at all, the sheer psychic impact of her sudden presence making Camlin recoil a step even as he drew a startled breath. For all that both he and Tieg towered over her, she was cool and self-possessed, golden eyes scanning and assessing over the book she clasped to her breast. Even in the drab, colorless gown worn by the queen's maids, with her spun-gold hair mostly covered by a white kerchief, Camlin thought her quite one of the loveliest creatures he had ever seen—though here, in the cloistered seclusion of the sanctuary, he had to admit that his experience was somewhat limited.

“What's happened?” Tieg demanded, as her look of concentration shifted to a worried smile. “You weren't expected for hours. Does this mean there's news?”

Sighing, she stepped from the Portal niche to deposit her book on the table where Camlin had been working.

“More like intimations of disaster, I'm afraid. Hello, Camlin. I don't know whether we can move fast enough or not Messengers from Eastmarch arrived at Court this morning with news that Torenthi forces have taken Culliecairn, up by the Eastmarch-Tolan border. Then a Torenthi herald arrived. It seems that Miklos of Torenth intends Culliecairn as a christening present for Marek of Festil's new son. The king leaves for Eastmarch in the morning. This could be Marek's bid for the throne.”

Camlin could only stare at her, openmouthed. Tieg had gone a little pale beneath his freckles, obviously fathoming far better than his elder cousin what the news meant in more immediate terms.

“It's too soon,” Tieg muttered. “Dear God, we'd better tell Uncle Joram. He's with Ansel and Jesse. They've only just begun compiling troop commitments for six months from now.”

“Well, I think it's going to take more than that and far sooner than six months from now,” Rhysel replied. “Are they in the staff room? I need to get back as soon as possible, but if we're to salvage anything from this, we'll need to move quickly.”

“I'll take you,” Tieg agreed. “Camlin, I'll have to back out on that offer to relieve you.”

Rhysel gave her brother the gist of her plan en route, in quick rapport that spared nothing of the dangers inherent in what she proposed. She and Tieg had always been close, and they had discussed a similar scenario before, unbeknownst to their elders.

A few minutes later, she had conveyed just her news to her uncle and the other four men gathered with him around a table strewn with maps and papers. She had not expected Niallan and Queron, but she knew them all very well, and the arguments they were likely to raise—and that any argument could come to only one conclusion, once she told them what she proposed. But she still had to convince them.

Her Uncle Joram would have the final say, of course, even though Bishop Niallan was his senior in years and ecclesiastical rank. Joram was the only one of them to have been there from the beginning, back when his father, the sainted Camber, had orchestrated the Haldane Restoration. Only Joram had firsthand knowledge of how it had been done, and only Joram could shoulder that ultimate responsibility for deciding what must follow.

He had paid a price for the weight of such authority. The silver-gilt hair grew a little more tarnished with each passing year, even receding a little at the temples of late, cool silver now against the plain black cassock that was his usual working attire instead of the Michaeline blue he once had worn. The planes of the handsome face, once merely lean, had been honed to something more akin to ascetic.

But the Michaeline knight remained. Though the distinctive blue cassock of his former order had been abandoned some years ago, save for ceremonial occasions, he had taken to wearing the white sash of his knighthood at all times, in unspoken declaration of his self-assumed role as inheritor of the trust his order had borne before their suppression. Had the Order still existed in Gwynedd, he might have been their vicar-general by now. At forty-three, though no longer battle-fit because of the forced exile of the last decade, he was only now approaching his intellectual prime.

Nor were his companions any less formidable. Close by Joram's right hand sat Niallan Trey, the exiled former Bishop of Dhassa. Before his elevation to the episcopate, Niallan had been a Michaeline like Joram. Even now, though in his early sixties, something of the former warrior remained in the way he carried himself, in the cant of the proud grey head, in the military precision of the close-clipped grey beard. He, too, wore the white sash of Michaeline knighthood.

Dom Queron was one of their two resident Healers besides Tieg, steel-slender and intense, his wiry hair gone nearly white and once again grown long enough to display the four-stranded braid of his original religious order, though he had been a Servant of Saint Camber and a disciple of the preacher Revan since. A priest and Healer he remained, and always at heart a Gabrilite, though he wore the grey robe of the Camberians under a green Healer's mantle rather than the white of the Gabrilites; either would have meant his death outside these walls.

Then there were Ansel and Jesse, only in their mid-twenties, Ansel looking much as his famous uncle must have looked at that age, light-eyed like Joram, but fairer than Joram had ever been. He wore his hair close-cropped to make it less memorable, for the sun had bleached it almost to white. His riding leathers were well cut, but plain and patched in several places, molded to his lean frame by years of wear in all kinds of weather. His homespun shirt could have done with a wash.

Jesse, shorter and stockier than Ansel, was dressed much the same, with brassy highlights streaking the brown hair queued back with a rawhide thong. Both men had unbuckled their swords and laid them across one end of the trestle table—serviceable-enough weapons by mere appearance, unremarkable by their mountings and well-worn scabbards, but bladed with the finest R'Kassan steel. The pair had spent most of the last six years looking like what they were not, ferreting out the information and contacts that would eventually enable them to assist a Haldane coup in Rhemuth.

When Rhysel had finished her initial report, Ansel scowled and moved around to the far end of the table to consult one of the lists he had brought to Joram, glancing at his uncle in speculation. Jesse was silently turning a map marker in suntanned, callused fingers, emotion stirring golden flecks in the depths of his brown eyes.

“I wonder why they're letting the king go to Eastmarch,” Jesse said quietly. “They've never even let him go on a progress before, much less a military campaign. It's too dangerous—aside from the question of his physical safety. What if he tried to take the bit in his teeth and break free, in front of witnesses?”

“Maybe they don't mean for him to come back,” Ansel retorted. “With another heir in the offing, maybe they'd just as soon he died in glorious combat with the enemy, the way his brother did. They might even find a way to blame it on us again.”

“It doesn't matter
why
they're letting him go, don't you see?” Rhysel said, leaning both hands on the table in front of where she stood. “The point is, he's going—and he's going to be in grave danger. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

“A bit more warning would have been useful,” Niallan said quietly, bestirring himself to turn one of the maps for a better look at the area of Eastmarch. “But whatever the great lords' long-term plans may be, we'd better have a presence there secretly, at least. If we're lucky, maybe we can help counter dirty tricks, if Marek decides to try any arcane unpleasantness.”

Ansel swept aside a stack of papers and flounced into his chair. “A lot of good that's going to do,” he muttered. “Uncle Joram, are you going to say something?”

Sighing, Joram tossed aside the remains of the quill pen he had been shredding while the others argued, avoiding Queron's gaze.

“Our original scenario is impossible,” he said. “It would mean moving our timetable forward a full six months. It can't be done.”

“Not all of it—no,” Rhysel said.

To the man, other than Tieg, those present turned to stare at her aghast.

“I hope you aren't suggesting what I think you're suggesting,” Queron murmured.

Rhysel pursed her lips, bracing for their objections. “There's only one option open to us, if we hope to have a king six months from now,” she said quietly. “We must try to bring the king's powers through. Tonight.”

Joram closed his eyes, drawing a slow, deep breath. Queron was shaking his head. Ansel and Jesse glanced at one another uneasily. Tieg sat forward eagerly in his chair on Joram's other side. Niallan watched and said nothing, only his nervous turning of his bishop's ring betraying his tension.

“It's out of the question,” Joram finally said, not looking at her.

“No, that
is
the question. Hear me out. We know that he can Truth-Read; we also know he has shields. That's as much as Javan had, when you brought him to power. He's got to have access to his powers before he heads off for a war in which his enemy might use magic against him. Whether it's Marek himself or only Miklos he has to face, neither of them will stop at anything to kill him, if they get the chance. Aside from the fact that we don't want it known that he has Deryni backing, he may need more protection than Ansel and Jesse are able to provide.”

“The need is not at issue!” Joram replied. “The means is another matter entirely. Just whom did you have in mind to accomplish what you're asking?”

“You. Me. Tieg. Michaela.”

“
Michaela?
” Joram said.