The actions had been clear enough, however—clear enough for Conall to decide that he would not have drawn back when Kelson had, sparing Rothana her virtue. Were it he instead of Kelson in the garden darkness with Rothana, he would even now be enjoying her lithe, sweet body, making it tremble beneath his, taking her as his own in a way that even her vows could not set aside, if he then demanded that she accept his suit of marriage or else face having her dishonor made public.
For it was Rothana on whom Conall had set his sights, since escorting her and her sister nuns back from Cùilteine the previous summer; and it was Rothana whom he meant to wed, however he could, regardless of what dear Cousin Kelson might desire.
As he tossed off the rest of his wine and prepared to go to his own assignation, he wondered whether Tiercel had some means of encouraging a lady’s affections—though Conall knew that influencing a Deryni woman would involve far more risk than bending any mere human quarry to his will. He had done that before, starting with Vanissa and not ending with several serving maids and ladies of the court.
But Rothana—here was a bride fit for a prince, and especially for a prince now nearly Deryni. And if Conall could, he meant to win her openly, perhaps right from under the nose of Kelson. Neither he nor the king would be able to pursue the matter for the next few months, but when they returned …
He heard the bells in the basilica ringing Compline and he pulled a dark cloak over his indoor attire. It was time to meet his mentor. Tiercel had promised an extraordinary lesson for tonight, surpassing anything Conall had experienced before.
And after that, Conall would see about Tiercel procuring him a bride.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Teach me, and I will hold my tongue.
—Job 6:24
Conall tried to put out of mind what he had seen as he made his way toward the library, where he was to meet Tiercel. Fantasies of bedding the fair Rothana were not conducive to the kind of concentration his mentor usually demanded of him, and he had no idea what to expect from tonight’s session. Tiercel’s message had said only to be in the library an hour after Compline. It was not one of their usual meeting places, but Conall had come to expect the unusual when dealing with Deryni.
The library was still and quiet as Conall entered—but he knew he was a little early. Shielding his rushlight with a cupped hand, he paused a moment with his back to the closed door to look around. He did not come here often. Reading held little interest for Conall unless it concerned military strategy and tactics. His Uncle Brion had amassed a fair collection of scrolls and bound books on such subjects, several of which Conall had nearly memorized by now, but Kelson’s tastes ran more to histories and, increasingly, to obscure esoteric subjects—though, in light of what Conall had been learning recently, perhaps some of them were not as obscure as Conall first had thought.
Kelson had even expanded the library since Brion’s time, cutting a connecting doorway through to an adjacent room to house his growing collection. Conall remembered the uproar, two winters ago, when Kelson had had the work done, breaking through the thick interior wall and then sealing off the new room’s former door from the outside corridor, so that access could only be had through the library. It seemed a great deal of trouble, when the library simply could have been moved to larger quarters, but perhaps Kelson wanted to retain the link with his father. Conall could understand that.
What he did not understand was why Tiercel had instructed him to come here rather than one of their usual rendezvous points. So far as he knew, Tiercel had never ventured into the keep before; it was far too risky, even for a skilled Deryni who could make guards forget he had passed.
Still puzzled, but impatient now, Conall moved on between the rows of shelves, heading for the second chamber. That was probably a better place to wait, just in case anyone came looking for some late-night reading. The temperature seemed to drop as he drew aside the heavy curtain across the connecting doorway and ducked to go through, but the feeling passed as he straightened on the other side. Shelves had been added across the opposite wall since he last had been here, but the room was still barer than he had expected. He also thought he was alone until a silvery glow suddenly flared in the deep window embrasure and Tiercel stepped out, only his face visible against the dark stuff of his hooded cloak, lit by the sphere of handfire in his gloved left hand.
“Oh, so you are here,” Conall murmured, turning to face him squarely.
“Yes, but not for long—either of us. Someone might come. Besides, I have important things to show you tonight.”
“All right. Where do you want to go? Dhugal’s room has that secret passage that can let you out in the castle yard or even outside the keep, if it comes to that. He’ll never know. He and Duncan are dining with Morgan in Kelson’s apartments. When I get back from the progress, I mean to speak to Kelson about that room. I should have had it, not Dhugal.”
Tiercel’s grin flashed in the shadow of his hood.
“Ah, Duncan’s dining with the king, is he? Good. That eliminates one potential problem. Blow out your rushlight and put it over in that niche. You won’t need it where we’re going.”
The instruction gave Conall a twinge of apprehension, but he did as Tiercel ordered. When he turned back, the Deryni lord had pulled off one glove with his teeth and was hunkered down in the middle of the floor, brushing his bare hand over one of the stone flags. His handfire still hovered at head level above him.
“What are you doing?” Conall murmured, coming closer to crouch beside Tiercel.
“Do you see the edges of this flagstone?” Tiercel said, with an amused glance up at Conall. “Notice that it’s the only completely square one here in the center of the room.”
“Yes. Why?”
“Lay your hands flat inside the square and tell me what you feel.”
Without answering, Conall obeyed.
“It tingles,” he murmured, quickly shifting one hand outside the square to compare the difference, then putting it back beside the other. “There’s magic here, isn’t there? What does it do?”
“That, my friend, is a Transfer Portal,” Tiercel said, standing and dusting his hand against his leather-clad thigh as Conall did the same. “It’s a Deryni way of getting somewhere in a hurry. More specifically, that’s the Transfer Portal that Charissa used to gain access to the library the night before your cousin Kelson’s coronation. Morgan and Duncan found it a couple of years ago. That’s why all this was done.” He gestured around him to indicate the room.
“In any case, I felt you ought to know about such things, so I’ve decided to give you your first taste of Portal travel tonight—and as sort of a reward for your hard work all winter. It isn’t something I ordinarily recommend just for recreational purposes, since it does use energy, especially if one has to go very far, but there are three I’d like to show you here in Rhemuth, all quite close. This is the first.”
Conall glanced at the innocuous-looking flagstone again. He had heard his father and Morgan speak of Portals before and had a vague notion what they did, but he had never seen one and certainly had never suspected there was one right here in the library.
“Whenever I’ve heard of Portals, I’ve always pictured a door,” he murmured. “There’s nothing here but a square on the floor.”
Tiercel smiled. “Oh, there’s far more than that, my practical young friend. Stand here in front of me, inside the boundary of the square, and close your eyes. There isn’t going to be anything to see, anyway.”
He quenched the handfire as he guided Conall into place and set his hands on the younger man’s shoulders from behind, standing close and shifting one hand farther around Conall’s neck to span lightly across the carotid pulse points with the vee of his thumb and first two fingers.
“Go ahead. Close your eyes. And let down your shields. This first time, all I want you to do is relax as much as you can and let your mind be as still as possible. I’ll do the rest. The first time, the sensation of the ac
tual jump is a little startling, but you mustn’t fight it or me. If you do, I’ll have to help you along. Relax now.”
Though Conall did as he was directed, stilling his mind easily under his mentor’s guidance, he still could feel his heartbeat pulsating under the increasing pressure of Tiercel’s fingers. But then, in a sudden, sickening swoop of vertigo that made him clutch instinctively at Tiercel’s arm to keep from falling, the pressure was released and he was staggering against Tiercel’s body, trying to catch his balance, and they were closely surrounded by walls, about where the outline of the Portal square would have been if they were still on it—but they were not.
“Easy,” Tiercel murmured, close beside his left ear. “You’re fine. We’re now in a Portal that opens into Father Duncan’s old study, adjoining the basilica.”
He conjured handfire practically in front of Conall’s nose, causing the startled prince to recoil harder against him for just a second, then reached out to finger a barely noticeable stud projecting from one of the corner stones lining the chamber. Instantly, the wall to their left withdrew with a soft sigh, revealing a heavy tapestry curtain which Tiercel pushed aside with his forearm as he stepped through and gestured for Conall to follow. The silvery glow of Tiercel’s handfire lit the room eerily, but Conall recognized it as soon as he had crossed the threshold.
“I know this room,” he murmured. “When Kelson and I were children, Father Duncan used to hear our confessions in here sometimes. I haven’t been here in years.”
“It’s a very old part of the basilica building,” Tiercel replied. “If you’ve ever wondered why Duncan never moved his study to some more convenient location, as he rose in rank, now you know. There’s something else you should see, since we’re here.”
Crossing softly to the prie-dieu set facing the corner to their right, Tiercel dropped to one knee and ran his hand tentatively under the arm rest. His touch caused something to move behind the tapestry covering the Portal entrance.
“Go ahead and have a look,” he said, at Conall’s questioning expression. “Other than ourselves and the Council, I doubt more than half a dozen people even know it’s there. This is where they brought your father to set his potential, and presumably where they’d bring you, if it ever came to that.”
It was a tiny, ancient chapel, only half the size of the study. The warm red gleam of a Presence lamp hanging to the left of a narrow altar gave only a vague suggestion of the dark crucifix suspended above, though it reflected more brightly from tiny giltwork stars studding the blue-painted wall behind the altar. And as Tiercel pressed past him and moved farther into the chapel with his handfire, to bend his knee briefly in prayer, Conall could see that the walls were decorated with frescoes depicting the lives of saints. Though Conall himself rarely felt the need for any outward religious observance, he, too, knelt and bowed his head, waiting until Tiercel had crossed himself and stood before doing the same.
“I hope you made a petition to Saint Camber,” Tiercel said, turning to face him, “because this chapel was once sacred to him.” He nudged the handfire higher and stood with his hands on his hips as he looked around again. “I suppose that’s why Duncan and his friends are so fond of it. I confess, I rather like it myself. I hope your quest is successful. I’d like to see the day when Camber can claim his proper veneration in the open again.”
“Why, because he was Deryni?” Conall asked, a little uneasy at this talk of saints.
“Partly that. I think he would have been a great man even if he hadn’t been Deryni, though. And maybe he’d have kept his sainthood longer, too.”
He grinned and called his handfire to hand with a snap of his fingers as he indicated it was time to leave.
“In any case, you have that adventure ahead of you, and we should be about showing you more of Portals. I’ll take you through under my control again,” he said, closing the chapel door behind them before guiding Conall back into the Portal chamber with one hand on his shoulder, “but I’ll let you experience the jump in its full glory this time, now that you know what to expect.
“Before we go, though, I want you to close your eyes and probe this Portal. Be aware of what it feels like. Every one of them is slightly different, or we wouldn’t know where we were going. And one almost has to have been to a particular Portal in order to go to it unassisted—either that, or else get a very specific image from someone else who’s been there. Notice everything you can about this one and commit it to memory. I’ll verify, when you’re done.”
Obediently, Conall closed his eyes and cast out with his mind to the Portal beneath his feet. Now that he knew what to look for, he could feel its tingle even through his boots, and it did feel different from the one in the library.
He let his heightened senses mull the feeling for several seconds, classifying everything he could about what made it feel different, then opened his eyes and glanced over his shoulder at Tiercel, still holding the images for his mentor’s inspection.
“Good,” Tiercel breathed. “You shouldn’t have any trouble getting back here if you needed to.” He quenched the handfire with a thought, but his mind was still wrapped around Conall’s.
“Now we’ll go to the next one. It’s in the sacristy at the cathedral—which we’ll hope is unoccupied at this hour; but if it isn’t, I’ll bounce us right back here before you or whoever’s there even realizes something’s happened. That’s another good reason for me to keep control, even if you knew where we were going.”
Tiercel’s control this time was more a melding of their perceptions than an actual taking over, so Conall was able to follow the process with far more understanding as Tiercel seized and balanced the energies, then bent them just—so. And apparently there was no one in the sacristy, for Tiercel conjured handfire again, as soon as he had assured himself of Conall’s well-being and released his mind.
“Have you been here before?” Tiercel whispered, glancing casually around the little room as Conall did the same.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Have a look at what you’re standing on. This one is marked out in the floor mosaic. Do you see the squared cross motif?”
As Tiercel backed off a few steps and nudged the handfire closer to the floor, Conall crouched to look. By appearance, the square was but one of many, all very similar, but his heightened senses told another story altogether as he ran his fingertips along the design’s perimeter.
“That’s right. You’ve found the physical marker for this one,” Tiercel murmured. “Now take a few minutes to file away this location, the way you did the other. You’re really taking to this far more easily than I had feared. I keep underestimating your talents.”
“I have a good teacher,” Conall said with a grin, in rare compliment.
“Hmmm, we’ll see how good he is when you try the jump yourself for the first time. Do you think you’ve got this one?”
Opening his shields to the other, Conall said, “See for yourself.”
“Very good. How about seeing if you can get back to the one in the study now. You haven’t quite got the library squared away, since you didn’t know what you were looking for when we started out, so there’s nowhere you can end up except here or in the study. Are you game to try it?”
“By myself?” Conall squeaked.
Tiercel grinned. “Well, it’s safer than having you try to take me through, too. Only one person can control the operation—and if it’s you, I’d only be a hindrance anyway. I’ll follow right behind, as soon as you’ve gone. Just don’t move physically at the other end, until I get there.”
Conall drew a deep breath. “You’re sure I’m ready?”
“Have I asked you yet to do something you weren’t ready to do?”
“No.”
“Then I suppose you must be ready.”
Conall exhaled slowly and stood, aware of Tiercel watching intently. He did not need to look down at his feet to know he was standing squarely on the Portal. He
could feel it tingling beneath his feet, vibrant and alive. He summoned up the memory of the other Portal’s location, brought it into balance with the one he was standing on, then glanced at Tiercel uncertainly. The Deryni did not appear to have done anything to prepare.
“Just—go?” Conall asked.
“Did you want a royal fanfare?” Tiercel countered, with a wry grin.
Conall did not answer that. Instead, he closed his eyes and drew another deep breath, linking in with the energies beneath his feet the way Tiercel had done and then bending them to where he wanted to go. And then he was staggering in darkness again, and a split second later, Tiercel’s arms were bracing him around his shoulders, the warmth of his congratulation wrapping him like a mantle as he realized they were back in the study Portal again.
“Well done!” Tiercel whispered in his ear. “Oh, well done! How do you feel?”
“A little—giddy,” Conall said. He could feel himself grinning ear to ear like an idiot. “I did do it, didn’t I?”
“Does this look like the cathedral sacristy?” Tiercel countered, making his handfire flare brightly around them to reveal familiar stone walls.
“Let’s do it again,” Conall said happily. “That was so quick, I hardly got to realize what had happened.”
“No, we’ll not risk going back to the sacristy,” Tiercel said. “Besides, I told you that this uses energy. We’ll go back to the library, so you can memorize that location, and then, maybe, I’ll let you bounce us both back here one more time. I’ll need to get home when we’re done, after all. And you’ll need a good night’s sleep to be able to ride out in the morning. I suppose you’ll have a lot to think about, at any rate.”
“That’s for certain,” Conall agreed.
He let Tiercel take control again for the jump back to the library Portal. He was less disoriented this time and was able to kneel immediately to finish assimilating the characteristics of this location. And when he had done it to Tiercel’s satisfaction, he asked whether he might control the return.
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