A small cavalcade of riders in the somber black of deep mourning passed beneath the King's Gate hoofs clacking on the cobbles of the upper ward's forecourt. Prince Conall Haldane, watching the grooms exercise the royal horses with a dozen or so other squires and pages, took one look at the banner waving above the newcomers: party per pale Gules and Azure a Lion rampant guardant Or within a Bordure Ermine and ran for the great hall, leaping up the steps two at a time to vanish within the open doors.
Seffira MacAthan, Duchess of Travlum, dismounted without assistance, having ridden astride as she usually did, and looked around the peaceful forecourt, a slight frown knitting feathery brows. The pale oval of her face, framed by silken wimple and sable lined hood, had a childlike beauty with its small, delicate features, great eyes and round dimpled chin but the firm set of those rose petal lips and level, steely gaze of the violet eyes gave lie to the first impression of frail softness. Tendrils of curling red hair escaped from beneath the wimple. Her husband came to her side, taking her arm, and she turned her frown up at him.
"Where is everybody? Surely his lords and the citizens of Rhemuth should be here to do Brion honor?"
Duke Cathan could only shake his head and turn her towards the hall stair. They mounted the steps trailed by their small retinue of squires and women and a pair of chamber grooms in the scarlet and blue MacAthan plaid, then passed into a hall as empty and peaceful as the courtyard outside.
Prince Nigel entered by a door behind the dais and hurried towards them attended by his eldest son. Seffira swept to meet him, black skirts and heavy riding cloak swirling with her rapid steps. "Nigel! Where is Brion? Have they laid him in the basilica?"
The Prince delayed his answer a moment to embrace his foster sister then pulled back, swallowed and admitted. "He's buried, Seffira, three days ago. It was the Queen's wish."
Nigel was braced for an explosion but his sister surprised him; she frowned a moment in thought, black gloved hands resting quiet on his shoulders, then nodded. "Getting it over and done with. I can understand that. I might well feel the same in her place." she felt the Prince relax and smiled wryly up at him. "Don't worry, Nigel. I'm not going to quarrel with Jehana over anything - not now. Whatever her faults and fancies she loved Brion dearly and she must be suffering."
"We all are." the Prince answered, forcing back too ready tears.
"It was murder of course." Duke Cathan said quietly.
Nigel looked over Seffira's shoulder into eyes as Haldane gray as his own and nodded unhappy agreement. "So Kelson and I believe. It was too sudden, and too convenient to be anything else."
Duke Cathan's glance flashed to Prince Conall, all ears and eyes. "Perhaps we should continue this conversation in private."
"You suspect the Shadowed One of course." Cathan resumed. He and his duchess were now seated in the privacy of Duchess Meraude's solar, with wine cups in hand and no youthful ears by to listen.
"Yes. But as for how..." Nigel let his voice trail away as he studied his distant kinsman. Duke Cathan was a tall man, leanly made but broad in the shoulders, with a roundish face and boldly modeled features crowned by golden hair barely touched with silver gathered into a braid that hung almost to his waist. A short, silver gilt beard framed a faintly ironic mouth. His banner neatly encapsulated his lineage - and explained why his was so infrequent a presence at court despite rank and kinship.
Cathan Haldane-MacAthan bore the Lion of Gwynedd as the great grandson of Prince Jaron, son of King Cluim and brother to Nigel's own grandfather. But the Ermine bordure alluded to Cathan's great grandmother, the Princess Salentina, sole surviving child and heiress of the Festilic pretender slain at Killingford almost a hundred years ago. Jaron's heir had also been a daughter, the Princess Tamarine, and the field party per pale Gules and Azure aluded to the arms of her husband, Elathan MacAthan, a border noble of unblemished loyalty. But his blood, and royal Haldane wasn't quite enough to erase the taint of Cathan's Deryni ancestry.
Nigel found himself wondering, as he often had before, just how Deryni Duke Cathan was. He'd never made any public use of magic - assuming he could - and yet he had a presence that hinted at great power tightly leashed. A presence that reminded Nigel irresistibly of his brother Brion - or the Deryni Alaric Morgan.
Nigel's gaze moved to Seffira. There was no question about her, her mother had been a known Deryni. The Lady Jessamy had never made any apparent use of her powers but her brother Morian ap Lewys most certainly had - in King Donal's service. Jessamy's husband, Sir Sief MacAthan was of the same family as Cathan's grandfather Elathan but court gossip had insisted for years that Seffira and her younger brother Krispin were in fact the children of King Donal.
Nigel had never been able to make up his mind about that. Seffira's looks favored her mother but those thick red curls must have come from Sief Macathan - or just possibly from the auburn haired Princess Jaroni, Queen to Cluim Haldane. Foster sister or half sister she was still Deryni and might have some knowledge of matters arcane.
If she did she had no intention of sharing it. "No doubt there are ways." was all she said.
Duchess Meraude blinked back tears, her eyes reddened from frequent weeping over these past trying days. "I hate to think about it. Poor Brion! and poor Kelson!"
"Poor Kelson indeed." Cathan agreed gravely. "Even if she wasn't responsible for Brion's sudden death the Pretender is unlikely to let him be crowned without challenge." his gaze moved to Nigel. "Where is Alaric Morgan?"
"Cardosa. He's been sent for - he should be here well before the coronation thank God." Nigel said feelingly.
Cathan nodded satisfied. All in the room knew that Morgan had handled King Brion's assumption of the Haldane power. No doubt he was prepared to do the same for Brion's son.
The Travlum party had been given the old royal apartments on second floor of the octagonal keep. These consisted of a large solar overlooking the forecourt, three bedchambers, several small mural chambers and a short gallery giving a view of the city beyond the castle walls. The rooms were well appointed, wainscoted in oak and hung with ancient tapestries - some dating back before the Interregnum - and luxuriously furnished but they were also well apart from the great wing containing the royal apartments and chief guest chambers, the isolation reflecting the wariness with which the ducal House of Travlum had always been treated.
The Duke and Duchess found their attendants busy unpacking. Cathan drew his two squires, young Perrin de Piran and his own son Crispin Earl of Cashien, both but fourteen years old into the sunny gallery. "Duke Alaric is unfortunately away," he told them, "which means the prince is unguarded against arcane threats."
Crispin's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "We're not like to be let near him. Not if the Queen has anything to say about it!"
His father smiled back, the familiar enigmatic smile that made both boys tense with eager excitement. "All too true. I must be seen but nobody will notice if you two are suddenly invisible."
Crispin and Perrin were grinning broadly, having successfully followed Cathan's line of thought. "And if we don't look like ourselves we can get close to Prince Kelson!" said Perrin.
"Exactly." Cathan raised a brow. "Nobody I think will notice two extra royal guards standing watch."
Crispin's grin broadened. "We'll see to it they don't, won't we Perry?"
Perrin nodded eager agreement.
There was nothing enigmatic about Cathan's smile now, it was pure sunshine. "I thought you'd feel that way." he reached out to draw Perrin, the nearer of the two, farther from the windows and lay his two hands upon his shoulders.
The young squire, gangly tall and not yet filled out, looked at his master with perfect confidence letting himself sink, unresisting, into the frost-fire depths of those smoky silver eyes, mind stilling to crystaline clarity and silence with the smoothness of long practice.
Duke Cathan murmured words igniting the pale ward fire around the three of them. His family had a number of stock figures used for shape-changings when not impersonating actual people; faces and forms of men and women long dead or completely imaginary. He allowed one such image - a thin, sandy haired young man with hazel eyes - to form in his mind then flow through his fingers to reshape the boy under his hands. He opened his eyes and Crinan, once squire to Cathan's ancestor and namesake, smiled back at him.
He lifted his hands. "Now Crispin." Another stock figure, slender and fair colored, one Eidiard of Clure whose form had disguised Davin MacRorie two hundred years before was invoked to hide the identity of Davin's many times great nephew.
Cathan looked at his work and found it good. "Now all we need are a couple of uniforms." he said.
Meanwhile Duchess Seffira changed her dress, assisted by her maid and her longtime companion Mariah Lady de Longeville, preparing herself to call upon Queen Jehana, a convention equally unwelcome to both ladies but required by court etiquette. The unruly, curling hair that was the bane of her life was pulled tightly back, pinned up in braids and covered entirely by a black velvet hood. The high necked gown was also of black velvet its long, close sleeves adorned with trailing 'weeper' cuffs that swept the floor when her hands hung at her sides. Her only jewel was a collar of massy gold with a pendant cross.
Seffira regarded her reflection in the long mirror without favor. Unadorned black was not a good color for redheads like herself. It gave her delicate complexion a washed out, transparent appearance and made her small, even features seem more childish then usual. She looked like a stricken waif - she who was all of forty-two years old, a wife for fifteen of them and mother of seven children! She grimaced at the image in the mirror and turned away.
Jehana received her unwelcome guest formally, sitting on her chair of state and wearing her crown above a thin, dark veil that fell to her lap, hiding her face. Her ladies, similarly veiled, stood behind her.
Confronted with this woman who'd never been her friend and refused her even common courtesy after learning of her Deryni blood, Seffira found herself able to think of nothing but how much Brion had loved this difficult princess and how happy she'd made him. "Your Majesty," she heard herself say in a warmer voice than she'd ever used towards Jehana, "you were the light of my dear lord and brother's life and I thank you from my heart for the joy you gave him."
Jehana gave a little gasp, as if pierced by an unexpected wound. It took her some moments to recover herself enough to stammer. "Th - Thank you for that, my Lady." her voice broke. "I loved him very much."
"As did I, though in a different way." Seffira answered, still gently. "You have a brother dear to you, Madam, you can imagine my grief. I dare not say I can comprehend yours."
A hand rose under the veil to press tightly against the shrouded mouth. Crystal drops spangled the gauzy fabric. Seffira waited a long moment as stifled sobs shook the slender shoulders. Finally recognizing that Jehana was unlikely to recover herself - and that there really was no more to be said between them - she asked softly; "Shall I go, Madam?"
The Queen nodded convulsively. Seffira made her curtsey and withdrew. "Well," she said to Mariah de Longeville as the door closed behind them. "That's done." she took a deep breath. "Now I want to see Brion." her voice shook. "I need to say good-bye to my brother."
Denis Arilan, auxillary bishop of Rhemuth, stood in a window embrasure of the gallery connecting the keep to Old Hall, pretending to read his breviary. A pair of youthful royal guards passed and he answered their respectful salute with a distracted gesture of blessing. Finally the man he was waiting for appeared, black mourning garb setting off his golden fairness, his long stride slowing then stopping as he saw Arilan.
A faint, ironic smile crooked Duke Cathan's lips. "My Lord Bishop."
Arilan didn't bother with the courtesies. "What are you doing here?"
Cathan snorted. "Oh come now! Not even the great and glorious council could expect me to stayed holed up in Travlum when one Haldane king is dead and another in mortal peril!"
The bishop folded his lips tightly. "You are bound not to interfere -"
"Am I?" Cathan challenged. "That promise was made, under duress by my grandfather and great grandfather. Tamarine is dead and her son too. The council has no more leverage."
Arilan's hands clenched, white knuckled, around his breviary. "You mean to defy us?"
"Not yet." Cathan answered coolly. "But should it prove necessary..." he left it hanging, an implicit threat. "And what exactly does the noble council intend to do about Charissa?"
Bishop Arilan flushed. "She's been ordered to desist."
Cathan rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, that'll intimidate her!"
"We can't act openly -" Arilan began defensively.
"The council didn't have any trouble acting covertly against my family!" Cathan's eyes narrowed. "Could it be they favor a return to Deryni rule in Gwynedd?"
Arilan went white with anger. "How dare you!"
Cathan ignored the interruption. "Because if so I would remind you that Charissa is not the rightful Festilic heir I am, through Salentina daughter of Marek II." his eyes glittered coldly and his lowered voice was weighted with menace. "And I am the Haldane heir after Kelson, Nigel and his sons. Would the council like to see me on the throne of Gwynedd?"
Denis Arilan was speechless, the hands clutching the breviary trembling visibly.
Duke Cathan nodded slowly. "If not then they better pray Charissa fails in her bid - or better still act to stop her - for if Kelson falls I swear by God and Saint Camber my forefather I will challenge and destroy her!"