Cathan obeyed without hesitation.
“Now. We haven’t the time to go into great detail, but believe me when I tell you that both you and your sister used to have some Deryni powers, or at least the potential to be developed. To protect you both, when you were still very young, it became necessary to block those powers and to bury the memory that you ever had them. I apologize for that, because it cut you off from your heritage, but it also made you immune to the Deryni-specific effects of merasha, which probably saved your lives. We would have restored you sooner, but not just anyone can do it. Tavis had the ability, and another man you never knew, but they’re both dead. Tieg is the only one left that we know of.
“He’s going to unblock those powers now. You needn’t be anxious. I think you’ll have shields and a bit more, but Tieg is going to turn control over to me after he’s put things back. Then I’ll come in with a deep briefing to catch you up on what you need to know now, as an adult.”
As he glanced at Tieg and gave a slight nod, the young Healer moved into place behind Cathan’s chair, big Healer’s hands cupping gently atop Cathan’s sandy head. Cathan’s eyes closed of their own weight, and Tieg’s went dreamy and unfocused.
“Good natural shields,” Tieg said softly, after a moment, “a bit more that can be developed, though not instantly. No training at all, though. Over to you, Uncle Joram.”
As he lifted his hands, flexing his fingers several times, Joram bestirred himself from his perch on the table edge and moved in. Cathan had not moved under Tieg’s touch, but the closed eyelids flickered as Joram set his hands to the younger man’s head. After a moment, as Joram drew back, Cathan gave a long sigh and opened his eyes.
“C-Cathan?” Michaela asked, flinching as he raised his eyes to hers.
“I’m all right,” he said softly, searching first her face and then Rhys Michael’s with his blue gaze. “It’s as if—as if someone has lit a lamp inside my mind.”
He got to his feet as, with a sob, she came to him, burying her face against his chest while he made awkward little stroking motions on her hair, dislodging several of the roses. Apart, Rhys Michael watched helplessly, not daring to move closer or to say a word as Joram came to take her from her brother. She looked up at the Deryni as he put his hands on her shoulders to draw her away, not taking her eyes from his as he urged her to sit where Cathan had sat.
“I promise, there’s nothing to fear,” he whispered. “Your husband will need your help. Just close your eyes now, and relax.”
Her eyes seemed to close of their own accord. She felt Joram’s hands fall away, and then the hands she knew must be the boy’s were resting gently on her head, the fingertips pressing lightly against her temples. She could feel all resistance draining out of her, and then a deep, throbbing silence punctuated by a single, crystalline resonance and the flare of warmth and light behind her eyelids.
“Good shields here, too,” she heard the boy’s voice say, as if through layers of cotton wool, as his hands lifted and others took their place. “See what you can do.”
The next thing she knew, she simply knew a great deal about them and what they planned. As she opened her eyes, she found herself already considering how best to help Rhysem. Her first thought was to reach out her hand to him, smiling as she bade him come to her. There were tears in the grey Haldane eyes as he knelt at her side, taking her hand to cradle it to his lips.
“Mika?” he managed to murmur.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, fighting back her own tears. “Rhysem, what do you see, when you look at me now?”
“I see—a sort of brightness. It’s shields, isn’t it?” His face fell. “But, if I can see them, what about other Deryni? What if Dimitri sees them?”
Smiling, she damped the shields, watching the look of awe come over his face.
“I know how to do that much, at least,” she said. “I’m not sure what else, but—I’ll figure that out some other time. Maybe while you’re gone. As for Dimitri, I suspect he’ll be going along with you, so we’d better see about getting you some protection. Father Joram?”
Joram had drawn Cathan with him to the door to confer with Rhysel as the royal couple spoke, and now he motioned them toward the royal bedchamber.
“We’ll move in there now, where there’s a better chance of privacy,” he said. “I’ve pared the formalities to the bone, but the rest of our work will require a bit more intensity. An interruption could be literally fatal. Cathan will keep Fulk occupied and make certain no one else gets past them.”
As Cathan passed on into the anteroom, Tieg was already moving into the bedchamber, taking something out of the small pouch at his belt. Rhysel fetched a ball of white wool from one of the sewing baskets in the solar window and followed as Rhys Michael got up from his knees and helped his wife to her feet. Joram briefly withdrew to confirm that Cathan knew his part. When he shortly joined the four of them, Rhysel was unwinding the ball of white wool, laying it down to mark out the circumference of a large circle centered on the Kheldish carpet at the foot of the royal bed.
“Sire, could you come over here, please?” Tieg called softly, from where he was pouring water into a cup on the little table beside the bed.
Though the king complied, he cast a wary glance at the small blue glass vial in one of Tieg’s hands. It seemed almost to glow in the light of the single candle lit there.
“What’s that?”
“Just something to relax you a little, to take the edge off your nervousness. It’s perfectly harmless. You aren’t going to lose consciousness or anything like that.”
Rhys Michael swallowed with an audible gulp, looking at Joram in appeal as the older man came to join them.
“Joram, I don’t think I can do this,” he whispered, watching as Tieg unstoppered the little blue vial and began counting drops into the cup.
“I don’t think you can not do it,” Joram said quietly. “You’ve got very rigid shields and very little control, and we haven’t a great deal of time to take things gently. This should make our work a lot easier—and yours.”
Rhys Michael had gone a little pale as Joram spoke, and he glanced with growing horror at the cup Tieg now extended.
“Joram, I can’t,” he whispered. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s been like. They kept me drugged for months after Javan was killed.”
“This won’t be like that,” Joram replied, taking the cup from Tieg and holding it out to the king. “We want to enhance your perceptions, not dull them. This is similar to what was given to you and your brothers the night your father died. I assure you, there’s nothing to fear.”
As the king turned away, trembling, Michaela came to him, gently laying a hand on one taut shoulder.
“Rhysem, you must trust them,” she said softly. “Joram is right; we haven’t a great deal of time. If he says this will help, we have to believe him. Drink it, my love. Do it for me, for Owain—”
He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Please, don’t ask this of me. I can do it without.”
“I am asking, Rhysem,” she went on. “I’m asking the same way you asked, many years ago, when Cathan and I had to do something similar. Do you remember?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her in question.
“I know I’d forgotten, until Joram gave me back my memories,” she went on. “I was ten. It was the morning after Cousin Giesele died in her sleep, and the regents wanted to find out if Cathan and I knew anything. We didn’t, of course. But then Archbishop Hubert said we couldn’t see our parents until after we’d drunk a sleeping potion. We didn’t want to; we were afraid. But then you came over and took the cups from Hubert, and you said, ‘Mika, don’t be silly. It’s for your own good. It will only make you sleep for a while.’”
She could see by his expression that he remembered, and she quietly took the cup from Joram, to hold near her husband’s hand.
“I have to say the same sort of thing to you now, Rhysem,” she whispere
d. “Don’t be silly. It’s for your own good. And it won’t even make you sleep; it will only help you relax a little. Isn’t that right, Tieg?”
As the young Healer nodded, Rhys Michael glanced at him, at the cup, then back at Michaela. He said nothing as he took the cup from her, and his hand was trembling, but he drained it in one long draught, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand before setting the cup back on the little table.
“Good man,” Joram murmured, as Tieg grinned and touched the king’s hand in thanks and reassurance, then moved past him to join Rhysel in the circle. “Now, try to relax for a few minutes, until we’re ready for you. Try gazing into the candle flame—or lie down, if you wish.”
As Joram likewise led Michaela to join Tieg and Rhysel in the circle, Rhys Michael drew a deep, shuddering breath and did his best to follow Joram’s instructions. He knew he had made a fuss over something that should have been very minor, but he could not summon up any guilt about it. Even though he believed he trusted these Deryni who had risked so much to come to him, the incident had smacked far too much of the sort of treatment he had had at the hands of the great lords in those early days, and the threat of more such treatment if he ever crossed them.
He sat himself down on the edge of the great bed and made himself draw another deep breath, gazing into the candle flame. He thought he could begin to feel Tieg’s drug working in him, but he wasn’t sure. He did seem to feel a bit less anxious now, and he found his heart rate had slowed when he pressed his fingers to the pulse in his neck.
He closed his eyes, letting the slow, steady pulse beat take him deeper, trying to put his fear aside, and gradually became aware that the edge of his hand was touching the Haldane brooch at his throat. Covering it with his hand, he bowed his head and dared to breathe a prayer that what they were planning would work.
After a while, the prayer drifted into stillness, and remaining upright seemed to require too much effort. It was pleasant and floaty behind his closed eyelids, so he drew another deep breath and let himself lie back on the bed, legs still dangling off the edge. As he outflung his arms to either side to stretch, a more fearful and cynical part of him marked the symbolism as acknowledgment that he, like his brothers, was very likely to become another sacrifice for the great lords’ ambitions, just as the Christ had stretched out His arms upon the Cross; but a sterner part of him rejected such defeatist notions and brought his hand back to the brooch, like a talisman against the great lords’ power over him—the Haldane lion, bold and fierce and proud. He could feel the cool of the metal and enamel under his hand as he made his resolve, and he hardly even flinched when someone lightly touched his other wrist.
“Sire, we’re ready for you,” Joram said quietly.
CHAPTER SIX
Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice.
—Job 4:15–16
Rhys Michael felt a momentary rush of light-headedness as he sat up a bit too quickly, and he gratefully accepted Joram’s steadying hand as he stood down beside the bed. It took a few seconds for his vision to settle. He was not exactly dizzy, but he surmised that Tieg’s drug probably was responsible for the faint distancing he seemed to be experiencing as he glanced around the room.
The very silence was imbued with a clarity, a sense of expectation, that he had never experienced before. Beyond the foot of the bed, he could just make out the others gathered in the circle marked out by Rhysel’s wool—Rhysel closest, Mika to her right, between him and the door, and Tieg opposite Rhysel, with his back to the curtained window bay. The arrangement seemed to strike a familiar chord in Rhys Michael’s memory, but he could not quite remember why. It occurred to him that the window faced east, and that this was significant.
The light seemed odd, too, not so much bright as—different. Only two other candles were burning in the room besides the one on the bedside table: one by the door and one on the floor in the center of the circle, next to what looked like a small glazed cup. The latter was hard to make out, as were the occupants, but if Rhys Michael squinted his eyes just so, he thought he seemed to detect a faint silvery sheen wrapping itself over and around the circle, like a huge, almost invisible bowl upturned over it. The hazy glow obscured his vision almost like looking through a fine veil, cobweb-fragile, and he shook his head slightly to try to clear it as Joram led him forward, heading them between the circle and the foot of the bed.
Instinct warned him not to try to touch it. Even passing close to it, he felt his skin seem to crawl. Just past the bed, he noted that the circle was incomplete. The two ends of white wool that should have closed it had been folded back to either side to leave a gap wide enough for a person to pass. The Haldane sword lay on the floor just outside, with its point just touching the more easterly side of the gap and angled to suggest an open door. Peering more closely at the opening, Rhys Michael thought the air seemed slightly clearer there, as if there really was a door through something just beyond his ability to see.
“Go into the circle and wait in the center, Sire,” Joram said quietly, as he indicated the opening. “I’ll join you when I’ve let Cathan know we’re starting.”
Rhys Michael could feel the hackles rising at the back of his neck as he passed uneasily into the circle. Mika came to him as he entered, gathering him to the center in a silent embrace that needed no words. He kissed her gently, and as they drew apart, she kissed her fingertips and pressed them lightly to the Haldane brooch at his throat, tears in her eyes. Smiling, he did the same, the wonder of her loyalty and love lending him courage and determination as Joram returned, passing again between the circle and the foot of the bed. As Joram bent to pick up the Haldane sword, Rhys Michael noticed a small silver cross now hanging outside his crimson surcoat, a tangible reminder of the Deryni’s priestly calling.
Somehow reassured by that, the king let his wife withdraw to her former place and turned back to the opening. As soon as Joram had entered, Tieg crouched down briefly to bring the ends of white wool together and loosely knot them, symbolically completing the circle.
But it was Joram’s action that actually completed it, Rhys Michael knew. Setting the point of the sword to the floor at the left side of where the doorway had been, Joram drew the blade smartly across the former threshold three times. Each stroke seemed to make the fog intensify in the opening, so that when he finished, bending briefly to lay the sword just along that part of the circle’s arc, only the weapon’s position remained to indicate where the opening had been.
“You stand now in a warded circle, Sire,” Joram said softly, coming to turn him toward Tieg now, but well back from the candle. “I believe you sensed something of its power when you passed through its gate, which now is closed. The circle is guarded by the holy archangels, upon whom we shall call again shortly. A few small preparations are required first, however. Give me your right thumb, please.”
Heartbeat quickening despite his determination not to be afraid, Rhys Michael gave Joram his right hand. As he did so, young Tieg produced a small piece of parchment from his belt pouch and, surprisingly, the Haldane Ring of Fire. Joram, meanwhile, had drawn a small silver dagger from a sheath at his belt. Somehow, Rhys Michael had the feeling he had seen it before, but he could not quite remember where.
“You’ve gone through part of this before,” Joram said, compressing Rhys Michael’s thumb beside the dagger’s blade. “The sacrifice of blood and at least a token test of courage have been elements of all the empowering rituals in which I’ve assisted. The form we have used has differed, according to the circumstances, but the blood baptism of the Ring of Fire seems to be a constant, as is the formal naming of the king. The words you are about to hear were chosen by your father. Tieg?”
With a casual gesture of one Healer’s hand, Tieg conjured a fist-sized sphere of greenish handfire and set it hanging in the air slightly above their hea
ds. The suddenness of it startled Rhys Michael, especially so close, but he knew what it was; he had seen Javan conjure handfire once. But even had he wished it, he could not have pulled back, for Joram’s hand held him fast, his thumb imprisoned close by the shining blade. He forced himself to lower his eyes from the handfire as Tieg tilted the square of parchment toward its light and read.
“I will declare the decree. The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son: This day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
Rhys Michael blinked at the words. He had heard them before, he was sure, at a time just beyond the range of recall. He was still trying to remember where, when Joram drew his captive thumb sharply across the dagger’s razor edge, to the accompaniment of other words that struck a chord somewhere deep inside him.
“Rhys Michael Alister Haldane, King of Gwynedd, be thou consecrated to the service of thy people.”
He could not move. He seemed frozen in this instant of time: Into the thrumming silence that followed came the faintly rasping sound of Joram twice drawing the flat of the blade across the thigh of his breeches to clean it, then the cool, metallic snick of it being sheathed. The blade had been sharp enough to cause no immediate pain or much bleeding, but Rhys Michael’s jaws clenched as Joram compressed the cut from the ends and it gaped open, welling with blood in which Tieg carefully rolled the dark red stones of the Ring of Fire. The touch of the stones against raw flesh made the king bite back a gasp of real pain, all his body tensing, but then the wounded thumb was being pressed to the parchment Tieg handed to the elder Deryni, mere pressure that allowed the cut to close.
The action gave the young Healer brief respite to pull a bit of clean linen from his pouch and wipe the thumb clean, then clasp it in one hand for a few blurred seconds. The pain ceased; and when Tieg opened his hand a moment later, releasing the king’s thumb, the wound was completely healed.
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