Still, he could not abandon his brother and liege lord to the mercies of these unknown folk, simply because they claimed to reverence the same saint—and a Deryni one, at that—that Dhugal and Kelson had come seeking. Kelson might be in mortal danger even now, depending upon Dhugal to make the difference in whether or not he survived—as he had depended upon Dhugal for his physical survival earlier, when he lay so badly injured.
Huddled cross-legged and miserable on his straw mat, the hood of his grey cloak pulled far over his brow to block outside distractions, Dhugal clung to the two Camber medals like talismans against evil, one cupped in each hand, trying to use their proximity to amplify his now almost nonexistent contact beyond the closed door. Concentrating on the face on one of the medals, he tried to shape a form of the same vision that Kelson sought, drawing on everything that his father, Kelson, and even Morgan had ever shared with him about Saint Camber. And he, too, raised his heart in prayerful entreaty to the lost Deryni saint.
For Kelson, time slipped, disjointed, until eventually he had no idea how long he had been sitting at Saint Camber’s feet—though he sensed a mild stiffness in his knees and back, a desire to move and stretch, after sitting cross-legged for so long. The vapor in the chamber was like thick fog now, making it far easier to envision features on the statue’s face. He tried to imagine what it would be like if the statue came to life and spoke to him, visualizing the robed arms lowering—for surely they were tired after supporting the crown for all these years—picturing the head lifting just enough that Kelson could see features within the shadow of the hood.
And suddenly it was so! In Kelson’s dreamlike state, now fully submerged in his own trancing as well as the effects of the narcotic mist still rising from the pool, he stared aghast as a ghost of the statute seemed to step outside itself, the stone figure still standing with arms eternally holding up the crown, but a more vital and powerful entity, spectrally transparent, freeing itself from its stone prison to float slowly toward him.
Kelson’s heart was pounding as he watched the thing approach. He longed to back away from it, but he could not seem to force his limbs to move. He gasped as the apparition came up short against the barrier of his wards and spread its hands in a silent entreaty, its hood slipping back from its head to reveal a serene, beautiful face, clean-shaven and roundish in shape, crowned by a cap of silver-gilt hair. The firm, sensitive lips parted as if to speak, but Kelson could hear nothing.
The entity’s desire was clear enough, however; it wanted in. And though Kelson found himself released from his immobility at last, it was only to raise his hand and open a gate in the wards—for he knew his spectral visitor could not pass without his invitation, nor did he desire any longer to withhold it.
His pulse was pounding as he traced the outline of the opening, using the edge of his hand like the blade of a sacred sword to cut the energies and seal them at the edges. And as the outline was complete, and Kelson’s hand moved again to dissipate the energy bound within the outline and open the gate—an inadvertant beckoning gesture—the waiting figure crossed graceful, translucent hands briefly upon its breast in gratitude. Then suddenly it was inside the circle, the open gate clearly visible through its insubstantial body, seeming almost to swell in size rather than approach in any usual manner—though approach, it did, to Kelson’s transfixed dread. The closer it came, the more Kelson had to tip his head backward to keep watching it, until it stood directly before him and he found himself falling backward, sinking into the softness of the sleeping furs on which he lay.
And even then, the dread did not cease, for the figure looming over him, terrifyingly insubstantial, leaned closer, toward his head, right hand outstretched to reach transparent fingertips toward Kelson’s forehead.
He had no place to go, no way to escape it. And he fainted away as what should have been illusion proved to be a cool, solid physical touch, with a command whispered in his mind to sleep.
Dhugal, meanwhile, had no notion that the being associated with the medals in his hands had made so impressive an appearance. He had lost any thread of contact with the king some time ago. His further efforts to revive that contact seemed worse than useless, for nearly half an hour had passed since Dhugal had last been sure he was in contact.
Still, he could not give up. Dhugal had no idea what kind of ordeal Kelson might be undergoing, but if there was any chance that the king might be able to tap into the energy Dhugal was determined to make available to him, then Dhugal would keep it available until he himself passed out from exhaustion. In fact, the choice was not so drastic as that, for if the power was never tapped, then there was little drain on Dhugal. What Dhugal did not realize was that the focus of his call was broadening, with no receiver to tap it and give direction to the energy flow. And that listeners far away were beginning to scan in his direction.
Duncan, with the head of the deeply entranced Morgan in his lap and Ciard and Jass lying close beside, stirred slightly as his mind brushed just a tendril of a familiar mental touch—the touch of none of those apparently asleep around the fire. Uncertain, the Deryni bishop cast more intently in the direction he thought the touch had come from, forcing himself to extend farther than he thought he could, in hope of picking it up again. Jass moaned softly as Duncan’s demand for energy became more intense, but he quieted at a touch, as Duncan shifted to a more evenly distributed draw.
For Duncan had touched something startling, unperceived even by Morgan—something he had feared never to find again. Only he was fully aware of what it had been—or what he thought it had been—and he was so surprised that he all but came out of rapport, dragging a groggy Morgan with him to half-consciousness.
Did you catch that? he asked in Morgan’s mind, laying a hand across the other’s eyes when Morgan would have stirred and sat up.
Still in Duncan’s partial control, Morgan subsided, only his silent query sounding in Duncan’s mind.
Show me what you saw, he asked.
Reverting to purely psychic activity, Duncan closed his eyes again and shared the image he had picked up—a silver medal of Saint Camber, blurred as if from double vision—or perhaps there were two medals. The design, however, was very familiar to both men.
Stirring lethargically, Morgan pulled one very like that of the shared image from inside his tunic. It had been his mother’s and was the master for the ones he had cast for Kelson, Dhugal, and Duncan.
There are only the three others, that I know of, Morgan observed, opening his hand so that Duncan could close it between their two palms. And you weren’t seeing yours or mine. We’ll use this as a link.
With that instruction, he edged into a dual and equal teaming with Duncan to take both of them much deeper, casting more powerfully now in the direction of the original contact. Both of them went dangerously deep, beginning to draw heavily on the energy resources of the humans linked with them; but just when they had about reached the end of their reserves and Ciard and Jass both began breathing unevenly, the contact came again. This time, Duncan was on it at once, dragging them all into the link and locking on it, Morgan retreating far enough to safeguard their backups while Duncan pushed the contact forward.
Dhugal! Praise God, son, is it really you?
The mixture of joy, fatigue, and fear that came through the link nearly shattered it, but it was, indeed, Dhugal.
Father!
Frantically—for the young border lord feared to lose the link at any instant, or to have his captors interfere—Dhugal sent a jumble of reassurance and basic information in telegraphic bursts of image rather than words: that both he and Kelson were alive; that the village where they lay was called Saint Kyriell’s, apparently a lost stronghold of people calling themselves the Servants of Saint Camber, some of whom were Deryni; that Kelson even now was undergoing some kind of ordeal having to do with a vision-quest for Saint Camber—for the two of them had inadvertently violated local holy places when they broke through a series of tomb chambers to es
cape their weeks of wandering underground; how they had been swept along an underground river and beached, more drowned than not, with Kelson badly injured; and that Dhugal had discovered how to Heal him! Almost as an afterthought, Dhugal added that there had been merasha in Dhugal’s flask.
The multiple information levels were staggering and bore far more investigation than was possible at this remove, but Duncan knew he dared not hold the link much longer. Morgan warned that their human energy sources were nearing the end of their endurance, and Dhugal himself was wavering, his concentration slipping.
But at least Duncan and Morgan now had a fix on the direction of the contact; and provided that nothing too untoward happened to Kelson in the next few hours, all should be well. If Duncan and Morgan had not made a physical rendezvous with the two by the following evening, they would attempt another contact then. Duncan was grinning broadly as he let the contact go and brought Morgan out of trance.
“God, do you believe it, they’re alive!” Morgan blurted, struggling to a sitting position with Duncan’s help. “We didn’t just imagine it, did we? Reassure me that you read the same things I did, Duncan.”
Duncan only sighed and nodded happily, distractedly scanning their human allies and then deepening their trances to let them recover in sleep for a little while before all must rouse themselves and ride.
“Aye, they’re alive, all right,” Duncan said. “For every question we’ve just had answered, though, several new ones arise.”
The first edge of Morgan’s exuberance blunted immediately, and he grimaced as he shifted to a more comfortable position.
“Aye, that’s for certain,” he said quietly. “And the most troubling one, beyond their immediate safety, has to do with the merasha in Dhugal’s flask. Who could have put it there, Duncan, and why? Dhugal has no enemies, does he?”
“None that I know of.”
“None that I know of, either, but—wait a minute. Try this one. Who is the single person whose fortunes took an upward turn when Kelson and Dhugal came up missing?”
Duncan drew in breath cautiously. “Conall?”
“Conall,” Morgan agreed, “who has become king now in all but name. He has the full range of Haldane powers, too, Duncan, and he isn’t going to want to give them up.”
Duncan whistled low under his breath. “And we gave them to him.”
“Did we?” Morgan replied. “I wonder.” He paused a moment to glance into the fire, then looked back at Duncan.
“What if we didn’t give them to him? What if he already had them? Suppose Tiercel was right—obviously he was right! More than one Haldane can hold the Haldane power at a time, since Kelson’s still alive. Good God, maybe Tiercel—”
“Maybe Tiercel brought Conall to power,” Duncan interjected grimly, “and then Conall killed him for his trouble. Tiercel would have had access to merasha, too. Or—good Lord, you don’t suppose the Council had something to do with this, do you?”
Morgan shook his head. “If they did, Arilan knew nothing of it. His grief was genuine when he thought Kelson was dead.”
Duncan snorted. “That mightn’t have kept him from countenancing Kelson’s death. He still could have been grieving, even while he accepted the necessity for it. If the Council put Tiercel up to working with Conall and found him a more biddable king candidate than Kelson—”
“More biddable.” The word triggered the ghost of an entirely different memory in Morgan, and he closed his eyes to try to capture it. The word had been Arilan’s, but in reference to—
“Rothana,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Sweet Jesu, by now he’s married her. And I’ll bet she did love Kelson! No wonder I was feeling uneasy when Arilan told us Conall was marrying her. Good Lord, could Conall somehow have done all this for jealousy, for love?”
“Jealousy of Kelson and Dhugal and love of Rothana,” Duncan repeated, horror in his tone. “And Nigel. Alaric, what about Nigel?”
“If Conall already had the Haldane power and Nigel found out—about that, about Tiercel, about the merasha, you name it—” Morgan said, “Conall very well could have turned on him.”
“On his own father?”
Morgan bowed his head, tight-lipped. “Knowing what you do of Conall’s character, do you really think that would have made much difference?” he asked quietly. “A crown was at stake, Duncan, and a queen.”
“Poor queen,” Duncan whispered.
“Aye, poor queen.”
In Rhemuth Castle, in the royal suite formerly belonging to Kelson, now Conall’s, the woman Conall had chosen as his future queen sat huddled at the edge of the hearth in a fur-lined robe, black hair tumbled loose on her shoulders and arms hugged around her knees. The cathedral bells had tolled the passing of midnight a short time ago, rousing Rothana from a fitful doze and after futile attempts to go back to sleep, she had fled her marriage bed to take counsel of the fire, leaving Conall snoring underneath the sleeping furs. More furs were mounded before the fireplace, and she snuggled her toes deep into them for warmth.
Ah, me, and I am well and truly Conall’s wife now, she thought, as she gazed resignedly into the flames. The taking of her maidenhead had not been as painful as she had feared it might be, but it was unpleasant enough for one until quite recently vowed to virginity. Conall had tried to be gentle and had told her repeatedly how much he loved her—an avowal honestly reflected in the brief, awkward rapport he allowed her when he first embraced her as husband rather than betrothed—but he was both insistent and impatient as a lover. He had apologized afterward, which was an unexpected kindness, and spent quite a while kissing away her unbidden tears, his hands caressing, until her slight discomfort was transmuted to a sharp, intense crescendo of pleasure that left her weak and trembling, long after he had drifted off to sleep.
Rothana suspected she knew why such ambivalence warred within her, as she prodded listlessly at the nearest log with an iron poker. If it were Kelson sleeping in the canopied bed behind her, she did not think she would feel this way. If it were Kelson in the bed, she would be there at his side even now, content merely to be close beside him. It was not that she disliked Conall or that he had treated her badly—for in faith, he had not—but he simply was the wrong Haldane.
Oh, she would still be Gwynedd’s queen when the time came and take up her royal and Deryni duties with willingness and competence, for she had been bred to that, and it had been Kelson’s wish; but how she wished that it would be at the side of a different Haldane. She was thinking about that other Haldane, dreaming of what might have been, when a hand on her shoulder brought her sharply out of her reverie.
“Why so startled, darling?” Conall whispered, bending down to do disturbing things to her ear with his tongue.
She shivered as she looked up at him, for he was naked in the firelight, his body smooth and kissed with the gold of the flames and more than ready to take his pleasure of her again.
“My lord, I though you were asleep,” she managed to reply, glancing back at the fire in an effort to still her trembling. “I did not wish to disturb you with my tossing and turning.”
With a low chuckle deep in his throat, Conall dropped to one knee beside her and slid his hand into her hair, tilting her head back so that he could kiss her passionately, his other hand slipping into the front of her robe.
“Then, let us toss and turn together, my love,” he murmured, as he drew back a little from the kiss and bore her to the furs before the fire. “This is our wedding night. The first time was for my pleasure. The second shall be for yours. Lie down with me, Rothana, and let me show you the ways of a king with his queen.”
Silhouetted against the firelight, with his black hair touseled around his face, she could almost believe he was that other king she mourned, and she let herself retreat into that fantasy as he took her again. Her body believed the lie, even if her heart did not, and took even greater pleasure in his ministrations this time, eventually lifting her to an
ecstasy that carried her into sated oblivion.
The sexual tension of that bedchamber at Rhemuth found its echo in an underground chamber far north and east of there, too, where Kelson dreamed restlessly in the delirium of long exposure to the vapors of the pool. In the hours just past, his mind and soul had been spent of his passion for the vision of Saint Camber, but now his body, restored to health after so many weeks, fell prey to more primal instincts.
He dreamed of Rothana, the way she had looked in the moonlight that night in the gardens at Rhemuth. In dream-bound memory, embellished by present desire, as some dark-robed cleric blessed their union and then withdrew, he drank her kisses again, once more feeling the stirring she roused in his blood. Only this time, he did not let her pull back from his embrace as he loosed the ties at the front of her gown and buried his face between her breasts. And this time, she did not try to stop him.
He could feel the delicious tightening in his groin as he lay back on a bed of fragrant grass, warm and enticing on a night changed in his dream from early spring to summer. Half in awe, he watched her standing above him, her hair unbound in the moonlight, slowly unlacing the rest of her bodice until her outer gown fell in a pale, silver-azure heap around her feet. A thin shift with moonlight behind silhouetted her body, slender but enticing, little pointed breasts emerging pert and firm above the edge of the garment as she loosed the drawstring at the neck and let it slip from her shoulders, to fall in a softer, lighter mound on the gown.
He sighed as she stepped free of the gowns, for her beauty made him ache with wanting her. Her long hair lifted on the breeze as she knelt astride him, strands of it shrouding his chest and stomach, dark veiling against pale skin, and he could not seem to see clearly as she guided him into warm ecstasy. His pleasure exploded at the top of his head in a cascade of fire and flame that did not subside but grew to ever more excruciating levels of delight as she moved with him, moved with him and carried him even higher. He groaned as she brought him to release, the intensity plummeting him near to fainting.