PROLOGUE

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.

—I Peter 2:9

The document was written in the tight, crabbed court hand of one of the castle scribes, and covered an entire large sheet of creamy vellum. The man reading it had thought it innocent enough at first glance—dull, routine procedures for the running of yet another royal commission—but now, as he scanned it a second time and began to catch the more subtle nuances of phrase and intent, he looked up at his companions in amazement.

“Murdoch, I don’t know what to say. This is brilliant—everything we could have hoped for. He’ll never sign it, though.”

“He already has,” Murdoch said in his thin, nasal voice, taking the document and handing it to a third man. “I slipped it in among a stack of other routine documents yesterday. This is only a copy.”

The third man, who was also the youngest of them, glanced over the text with hungry eyes that did not miss a thing, an oddly academic quirk in a man so obviously a soldier in every other way. Big-boned, well-muscled, solid but not fat, Baron Rhun of Horthness was a rising star in the army of Gwynedd at only thirty-two. The sparse, wolfish grin now spreading slowly across his face was a feature which had made friends and enemies alike refer to him as Rhun the Ruthless.

“I assume that Cullen hasn’t seen this,” Rhun said, his tone clearly confirming a fact rather than asking a question.

Murdoch nodded, steepling spiderlike fingers in a gesture mixed of confidence and arrogance. “He hasn’t, and he won’t,” he said. “As far as our dear chancellor is concerned, the king’s will remains exactly as we all witnessed it last fall. And because this is not a change of the will, but only an alteration of the guidelines for a potential regency council, there is no reason that he should see it until after the king is dead and it cannot be changed. God grant that the king’s death may be painless, and soon,” he added piously.

Rhun chuckled at that, a low, dangerous rumble, but the first man did not even smile. As he glanced at Murdoch again, his expression was thoughtful.

“Tell me, does anyone know when Bishop Cullen will be returning?” he asked.

“Too soon to suit me,” Murdoch said. “The king sent Jebediah to fetch him yesterday. Knowing the way our illustrious earl marshal rides, he should reach Grecotha by tomorrow at the latest, even allowing for bad weather. That puts Cullen back in Valoret well before the first of February. I had hoped he would winter at Grecotha, but—” He shrugged, a surly twitch of the narrow shoulders. “At least this will probably be the last time. The king can’t last much longer.”

“He’s that ill, then?” asked the third man.

“I wasn’t certain he would survive past Twelfth Night,” Murdoch replied coolly, “though the Healer Rhys seems to have kept body and soul together rather better than I hoped. Curse the miserable Deryni, anyway!”

The exclamation elicited a short, taut silence, as each of the men considered what the king’s death might mean to him personally. Finally Murdoch rolled up the document and bound it with a length of vermillion cord. As he glanced at his companions again, he tapped it several times against the heel of his hand.

“Well, I’m off, then. I want to show this to Hubert before I put it away for safe-keeping. Either of you care to come along?”

“I will,” said Rhun.

After they had gone, Earl Tammaron Fitz-Arthur, Third Lord of the High Council of Gwynedd, sat quietly for several minutes, thinking. If things went according to plan, he could very shortly be the next Chancellor of Gwynedd.

A few days later, on a snow-clogged road leading south toward Valoret, the Deryni Camber MacRorie and his escort trotted at a steady pace, the sound of their passage muffled by the snow and carried away by the wind.

Camber, whom the world knew as Bishop Alister Cullen, onetime Vicar General of the powerful Order of Saint Michael and now Lord Chancellor of Gwynedd, had received the king’s message before dawn, grouchy at being rousted from his warm bed until he realized that the king’s messenger was his old friend Jebediah of Alcara, Grand Master of the Michaelines as well as Earl Marshal of Gwynedd. He and Jebediah read the words of the royal missive together in the bishop’s study—terse and typical of King Cinhil. Jebediah then gave Camber the true gist of the message.

Yes, the king was sick. Alister must come. Yes, his condition was serious; and yes, he had seen the royal Healer. No, he was not about to die until his good friend and chancellor, Alister, got back to the capital—and maybe not even then, if he could help it.

But Cinhil had also made it abundantly clear that he would brook no delay in Alister’s coming. And though he had not made it precisely clear, he had certainly implied that there were other reasons for calling the chancellor-bishop back from Grecotha so soon after Twelfth Night—reasons which might not be consigned to the written word, even in the hands of his earl marshal.

At that, Camber had begun to hope—both that the king’s condition was not so grave as he had first been led to expect, and that Cinhil might have reached the decision which Camber, as Alister, had been urging for more than a decade.

And so the Bishop of Grecotha had summoned his household guard and set out for the capital just after first light, riding hard through the snowdrifts of late January and pausing only to change horses and occasionally take a hot meal. At this pace, they would be in Valoret before nightfall. As they rode, Camber had time for reflection, for wondering, for playing the tempting game of if only.

If only Cinhil were not dying. If only his final illness might have been delayed, even for a few more years. For that matter, if only Cinhil had been younger when they put him on the throne. A man in his mid-forties was hardly of an age to be starting a royal family, especially if he hoped to see that family grow to maturity.

His eldest son had been poisoned as an infant, before Cinhil even came to the throne. The twins, next in age, were not quite twelve, a full two years and more from their legal majority. The youngest was just ten, and their mother dead these nine years of bearing a final son who outlived her by only a few months. Even when the twins came of age, it would be several years before the first of these, young Alroy, could be expected to rule competently on his own. Until that time, Gwynedd would continue to be effectively governed by a council of regents.

Camber had feared that this day would come; had known, when he and his children had placed the reluctant Cinhil on the throne, nearly thirteen years ago, that it would likely come far, far too soon—but he had never given up hope that the inevitable might be delayed for yet a little longer. Even now, a potential regency council not entirely of Camber’s liking had been named by Cinhil; and many of them watched and plotted and waited for Cinhil to die, solidifying their influence over the three young princes, prodding and undermining the spirit of human-Deryni coexistence which wise men of both races had tried for years to inculcate both in the future heirs and in the people of Gwynedd—and Cinhil would not see the danger.

Now the anti-Deryni factions were about to get their wish. Cinhil would die within the year, probably within the month, if Rhys’s estimates were correct, and young King Alroy would be ruled by his regents. The last of the Deryni loyal to the Crown would be ousted from their offices, their positions of influence, no matter that many of them had served Gwynedd and its present king well and with distinction. And then the ostracism would begin, and the persecutions, and finally the bloodshed. It had happened before, in other lands, in other times. Perhaps it was happening already.

And so Camber hurried along the Valoret road to the summons of his king, himself still young for his seventy years, in the guise of a man ten years younger still, and by appearance and action no more than fifty or so, to meet his children and his king and try to accomplish the goal they had set when they began this road, now fourteen years before. Then they had made a former priest a king and given him powers equal to any Deryni—though the king had always been reluctant to use those powers. Now that king must pass on his power, or at least its potential, to his young sons, in hopes that they would learn to use it more wisely and with less fear than he had shown.

Camber did not know whether or not they could succeed, for time was running out; but he knew they had to try.