"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'm afraid I pushed too hard. Is everyone else all right? Do you realize what happened?"

"You linked in with something bigger than you could handle," Cullen said gruffly. "What was it? Do you know?"

"You mean you didn't see?"

"See what?" Rhys asked. "I knew you were experiencing something-but until you started shaking, all I saw was candlelight reflected on that black water."

"I couldn't see anything either, Father," Evaine agreed.

"Oh."

Camber swallowed down a surge of nausea and let that sink in, finding it increasingly difficult to think coherently in his exhaustion. He tried to straighten up more, but his fatigued body refused to obey. Partially abandoning that fight, he let himself slump back against Joram again and closed his eyes, making a conscious effort to organize his thoughts.

Rhys's hand touched his forehead, and he felt the cool touch of the Healer's mind against his, but he shook his head and opened his eyes again.

"I'll rest in a moment, Rhys-I promise. I got what I went for, though, and you'll need the information before I let myself collapse. Joram, if you'll release the wards, Evaine can get a map and pen. I have Ariella's troop strengths and deployment, and I think I'll have just about enough strength to make those notations before I have to sleep."

He gestured weakly with a hand which seemed almost not to belong to him, so heavy was his fatigue. Rhys took Joram's place, supporting him against the table, while Joram raised his arms to release the wards. As the silvery hemisphere dissolved away, the chill of the room a.s.saulted them. Instantly, Evaine was unlocking the door to the steeping chamber and rushing through.

Rhys and Cullen slowly walked Camber to his chair beside the fire, where Joram wrapped another robe around him. Cullen, when he had seen Camber safely ensconced, went to the earl's desk and brought back a map board. Evaine stood holding pen and ink beside a seemingly unconscious Camber. Cullen glanced at them all in concern.

"Is he all right?"

Rhys moved his fingers from his patient's pulse point to the temples and closed his eyes briefly, then nodded and motioned for Cullen to lay the map board across Camber's lap. As Evaine put the pen in her father's hand, Joram brought a lighted candle from the mantel and held it close.

Camber opened his eyes and took a deep breath.

"All right. Her main strength is here, and here, and here." The pen glided across the parchment, marking encampments and troop deployments.

"I'd say that close to a thousand men, most of them mounted, have already come through the Arra.n.a.l Canyon approach and are now camped here, at Coldoire. Another eight hundred are here, at the foot of the Cardosa Defile, where she herself plans to join them tomorrow. They plan to rendezvous near Iomaire two days from now. Be sure that Jebediah studies this aspect in particular."

As Cullen and Joram nodded agreement, Camber closed his eyes and took another deep breath. His hand shook a little as he again dipped the pen in the ink which Evaine held.

"Now, this is also important. She has eighty extra knights here." He indicated a location.

"And here. She's also considering a new foot route through this pa.s.s, which can accommodate several hundred men. If she uses it, we're vulnerable here and here, even if Sighere a.s.sists us. She has reports of his troop movements about a day's ride west of Iomaire, by the way.

"One last thing-she has a small body of men, perhaps as many as thirty of them, who seem to be some kind of elite bodyguard, or special shock troops, or something on that order. But they're more than that; there's something special about them that I wasn't quite able to read-only that Ariella seemed very pleased with herself about them. It may simply be that they're Deryni. I'll try to go back over that part in the morning, after I've slept, and see if I can remember anything else. They're quartered with her in Cardosa, for now, along with another five hundred of mountain cavalry."

His pen moved to the mountain city and drew a circle, with the figure 550? in it. Then his hand relaxed and he almost dropped the pen. Evaine rescued it as he leaned back in the chair and let out a deep sigh.

"Is that all of it?" Joram asked.

Camber nodded and closed his eyes. "All that's important. More details later. Sleep now..."

As his voice trailed off, his entire body relaxed and he was asleep in a single breath.

When Cullen removed the support of the map board from his lap, Camber slumped even deeper into the chair, his light, even breathing the only sound in the stilled room.

Rhys reached across and felt for a pulse, then glanced at his brother-in-law.

"He's exhausted, but he's only asleep-not in a coma. He'll be all right when he's rested."

Joram gave a relieved sigh. "Good. In the meantime, we ought to get this map to Jebediah and the others. Can you and Evaine stay with him? He probably ought to sleep under wards, too."

"We'll do what's necessary," Rhys replied, slipping his arms under Camber's. "Just help me get him to the bed before you go, will you?"

As Evaine ran to turn back the bedclothes, Joram picked up his father's knees and helped Rhys carry him to the curtained bed. There they laid him down gently, Evaine unfastening his belt and starting to remove his shoes and stockings as Rhys escorted Joram and Cullen to the door. When the two priests had gone, and Rhys had bolted the door behind them, Evaine glanced up at her husband, looking tired but content as she tucked the last of the blankets around her sleeping father's form.

"I've seen him this way before, Rhys. I'm sure he'll be fine in the morning."

"Don't tell me you've worked with him on these kinds of things before," Rhys said, checking his patient's pulse again while he peered briefly beneath a slack eyelid.

"On occasion," Evaine admitted. "Don't you approve?"

"You know I wouldn't dream of interfering, even if I didn't approve," Rhys replied with a grin, sitting back wearily on the edge of the bed as he watched his wife rummage in the purse at her waist. "I know how important your work with your father is to you- as important, perhaps, as my healing call is to me. Besides, I know that you take reasonable precautions."

"We try," she said with a droll smile.

Pulling out a small black suede leather pouch, she dropped to her knees beside the bed and began undoing the thongs which bound the end closed. When she dumped the contents on the bed, eight polished cubes came tumbling out, four white and four black.

She glanced up at him as she began sorting them.

"Will you work the wards with me?"

"Of course."

Slipping to his knees beside her, he watched as she arranged the cubes in the necessary pattern: the four white ones in a square, all of them touching; the black ones at the four corners of the square so formed, each near but not in contact with its closest white neighbor.

"Go ahead and start," Evaine said in a low voice. "These are mine. You shouldn't have any trouble centering in."

With a nod, Rhys drew a deep breath and laid the fingertips of his right hand lightly on all four white cubes, closing his eyes briefly while he found the balance point with these particular cubes. Then he withdrew all but his index finger, to touch the cube in the upper left-hand corner of the white square.

"Prime," he said softly.

The touched cube began to glow with a ghostly, opalescent light.

"Seconde." He touched the cube to the right of the first one, and it, too, began to glow.

"Tierce." The cube below the first cube came to life.

"Quarte." As the last white cube lit, the four seemed to form a single square of milky light.

Rhys sighed and sat back on his haunches, watching serenely as Evaine drew a deep breath and brought her finger down on the first black cube. The glowing white square reflected off her hand and cast a mellow, moonlike glow on her calm face.

"Quinte."

Her low voice seemed to chime deep in the cube, which shone now with the iridescence of an ebon b.u.t.terfly wing.

"Sixte."

The second cube, at the upper right, lit with the same quiet fire.

"Septime. Octave."

As the last two black cubes were activated in rapid succession, Rhys came up on his knees again and picked up Prime, extending his empty left hand under his right arm to lie easily on the blanket. Evaine laid her left hand in Rhys's, then picked up Quinte and brought it toward his Prime. So joined, hand to hand, they also joined the two cubes, pouring in defensive energy as together they spoke the union nomen: "Primus!"

A minute click vibrated through both their fingers as the two cubes touched and fused; and then they were holding a single, oblong rectoid which gleamed with a metallic brightness. Evaine laid it on the blanket and picked up Sixte as Rhys took Seconde. She closed her eyes as they brought Sixte and Seconde together: "Secundus!"

Camber stirred a little in his sleep, perhaps unconsciously sensing the power being raised at his side, but he quickly settled down again as his daughter and son-in-law brought Septime and Tierce to: "Tertius!"

Finally, "Quartus" was formed of Quarte and Octave. Of the four silvery oblongs now lying on the bed, Rhys took the last two and set them on the floor behind him, Tertius to his left, toward the head of the bed, and Quartus to the foot. Then, as Evaine moved around to the other side to place Primus and Secundus, Rhys sat down at the head of the bed beside his father-in-law, laying a sleep-deepening hand on Camber's forehead as Evaine paused at the foot of the bed to activate the wards.

Facing toward the first of them, she raised her arms heavenward and threw back her head for a moment, eyes closed, then opened them and pointed to each of the wards in succession as she spoke their names and the words of power: "Primus, Secundus, Tertius, et Quartus, fiat lux!"

A silvery canopy of light sprang up around them with her final words, its edges defined by the limits laid out by the ward components. Evaine smiled as she came to join her husband, taking the hand he held out to her and touching it tenderly to her lips. Rhys sighed contentedly and leaned back against the headboard, pulling her into his lap with an arm around her waist. They had just settled into a comfortable position, she with her head smuggled in the hollow of his shoulder, when suddenly she giggled.

"A giggle at a time like this?" he whispered.

She pulled away to peer at him mischievously. "My love, you're going to giggle, too, when I tell you."

He raised one eyebrow in question, the corners of his mouth curving up in antic.i.p.ation of her explanation, as she brushed his lips with hers and laughed again.

"I was just sitting here, thinking about cleaning up Father's dressing room in the morning, and I remembered that, in the excitement, I dumped everything down the garderobe-including the Haldana necklace!"

"Surely you're joking!"

Evaine giggled again and shook her head. "And that means, dearest husband, that someone is going to have to go wading in the middens tomorrow and find it."

Rhys shook his head incredulously and drew her closer in amused disbelief.

"I knew things had gone far too smoothly," he chuckled, nuzzling her ear. "Now all we have to decide is who's going to do it. Let's see-who do we know who needs a little humbling?"

chapter four.

For it is better, if the will of G.o.d be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.

-I Peter 3:17 In the end, it was not a humbled soul at all, but Camber himself, who went into the middens to retrieve the Haldana necklace. He would not have thought of relegating the task to any other man; besides, they dared not involve any outsider in what they had done.

When Camber awoke the next morning, to find Rhys and Evaine cuddled asleep in each other's arms beside him, his head was clear, his body rested, and his memory intact. He, too, recalled what had happened to the necklace. After rousting his daughter and son-in- law from bed, he dressed hastily and set Evaine to straightening his quarters. Rhys he took with him.

In fact, it was not as complicated or as odious a task as Rhys and Evaine had imagined it to be. On reaching the dungeon level, where all the garderobes of that range emptied out, Camber simply scanned the moat directly beneath the appropriate shaft with his mind, seeking lightly to reestablish the link he had forged with the necklace the night before.

The water was almost clear from the past week's rain, yet neither eyes nor mind could locate the necklace at first. But further investigation on Camber's part soon revealed the necklace still inside the garderobe shaft, caught just a yard or two inside its mouth.

Once Camber had reached up and disengaged the tangle-the jewels had fouled on weeds and other refuse-the necklace came away in his hand, intact and hardly the worse for wear. Camber flushed it with clean water from the well, when they came out into the courtyard again, then wrapped it carefully in a clean cloth he had brought for just that purpose.

He went back to his quarters to change then, giving the necklace to Rhys to return to Cullen, who would slip it back into the royal treasury later. Rhys remarked, just before they parted, that neither moth nor mite nor any other creeping thing would likely bother the robe which Camber had worn that morning; indeed, Camber would be fortunate if Evaine even readmitted him to his own chambers in such a condition.

Camber, with a delicate sniff at his sleeve, could only smile and allow that Rhys was indisputably correct.

Half an hour later, the Gwynedd war council convened in the great hall, this time with a surprisingly attentive King Cinhil present. All of the major battle leaders were there: Jebediah, sitting at the king's right hand as commander in chief; Cullen and Joram, for the Knights of Saint Michael and the other ecclesiastical knights; Camber, with young Guaire of Arliss, representing the Culdi levies; James Drummond, scion of a distaff branch of Camber's family, who brought the vast Drummond levies to Cinhil's aid; Bayvel Cameron, the queen's aging but brilliant uncle; Archbishop Anscom and four of his warrior bishops who also commanded lay forces; young Ewan of East-march, eldest son of Earl Sighere, who had arrived during the night to speak for his father's allying army; and a score of lesser n.o.bles whose varied levies had managed to reach the capital in time to give aid.

Their plans quickly solidified. Speaking with occasional prompting from Cullen, Jebediah outlined what had been learned of Ariella's strength and positioning, without divulging its source-if he even knew it-and the war leaders haggled out a workable battle plan. Map boards were brought out, markers adjusted; and soon the clarks were drawing up final battle orders for Cinhil's signature. By the time the sun reached its zenith, winking bravely in a watery sky, the decisions had been made and appropriate orders dispatched, all under a compliant Cinhil's seal. They would leave at dusk that same day. Some of the lords left even then, to ready their men for march. Cinhil found himself left somewhat breathless by it all.

He tried to make some sense out of things, as his commanders began drifting from the hall to see to their individual responsibilities. The tide of their movements swirled around him but did not really touch him, for they knew that his approval in these matters had been largely for show. He was not, nor did he claim to be, a military man.

But even to Cinhil's unpracticed eye, the probable deployment of Ariella's army had shifted drastically since the last time he had thought to look seriously at a map board. That positions should change was not surprising, of course. And it was certainly to be hoped that their information would become more reliable as battletime drew near.

But he was amazed at the new confidence in the voices he had heard this morning. They had spoken in far more definite terms than he had been led to expect, based on the uncertainty and anxiety they had displayed the last time he had paid attention to a military planning session.

Cinhil admitted himself mystified by it all, for he did not pretend to understand a great deal of what had been discussed. And there was too much certainty around him now to think of questioning, of asking what might happen if things did not go as they had planned. Still, he worried.

Ariella was devious-even he knew this. Even if their information were correct-which was by no means certain, so far as he could tell-suppose Ariella changed her mind?

Women did. Or, G.o.d forbid, suppose the information was incorrect to begin with-or, worse, deliberately false, set to mislead them? If either case were true, Jebediah and the other battle leaders were committing the royal Gwynedd levies to disastrous positions. He was surprised to find that he cared.

He asked Rhys about it later, when the last orders had been signed and sealed, and most of the others had hurried off to make final preparations for departure. He knew that, where military matters were concerned, Rhys probably knew little more than he did. Still, the young Healer had been silent but supportive all throughout the morning's long session.

Cinhil wondered where he got his self-confidence.

"A word with you, Rhys?" he murmured as Rhys started to pa.s.s the chair where they had left him.

Rhys returned an easy smile.

"How may I serve you, Sire?"

"You may answer a few questions," Cinhil said, waving his squire aside and motioning Rhys to sit down beside him. "Everyone seems so resolute this morning, so certain of what is happening. Is this usual?"

Rhys ran a hand through unruly red hair and c.o.c.ked his head at the king.

"Well, Sire, I really can't say, not being a warrior sort. One is supposed to appear optimistic, though. It gives the men courage."

Cinhil leaned back, unconvinced, studying the Healer through narrowed eyes.

"My studies indicate that realism is preferable, at least among the leaders. Father Cullen said something yesterday about new information which was expected. Could any new information be reliable enough to risk everything on it?"

"Those who understand these things seem to think so, Sire," Rhys said glibly. "Why, what did Father Cullen tell you?"

"That there was possibly to be some new information. Actually, he was rather evasive."

"I see."