The Bastard Prince (58 page)

And after that—after that, if the Kheldour lords were not successful, it really hardly mattered …

When supper time had come and gone and Cathan still had not appeared or sent word, Michaela's anxiety began to mount. Increasingly worried inquiries to the guards outside her door revealed nothing until a sympathetic captain finally informed her that Sir Cathan was indisposed and would not be able to join her that evening. Her tearful persistence eventually elicited the opinion that the queen's brother was exhausted from his journey and was expected to catch up on his sleep in the next day or two.

Rhysel fared little better in her efforts to gain information. She found excuse to go abroad several times during the early evening hours, first to fetch her belongings from her former room and then making foray to the kitchen for a cup of warm milk for Owain, the while trying to pick up some hint of what had happened behind the Council's closed doors. She learned only that the Council was still in session, supper having been sent in. No one seemed to know if Cathan was still among them.

She returned to the royal apartments with Owain's milk to find the queen just finishing his bath, pulling a clean white nightshirt over the tousled raven head. Later, when they had tucked the boy into the big state bed, his Papa and Uncle Cathan knights propped against the lion headboard to guard him while he slept, she and the queen withdrew to sit in the window embrasure. With Rhysel's promotion to the queen's household, she now slept on a pallet at the foot of her mistress' bed, but with both women in their night shifts, and fair hair caught in fat braids down their backs, they looked like sisters or two errant schoolgirls rather than queen and maid.

“What did you find out?” Michaela asked, huddling over the rushlight set between them. “Is he all right?”

Rhysel shrugged and shook her head. “I don't know. The Council was still in session. That first story we got, of him being ‘indisposed,' suggests that he isn't going to be able to see you for a while.”

“Maybe he
is
catching up on his sleep,” Michaela said hopefully. “He did look awfully tired.”

“He also said he'd try to come back for supper—if they'd let him,” Rhysel replied. “But I don't think they'll dare to do anything to him at least until after the funeral,” she added at the queen's look of panic. “By then, the Kheldour lords should be here, and I hope everything will be all right.”

“What if it isn't?” Michaela whispered.

“We aren't going to think about that right now,” Rhysel said sternly. “In the meanwhile, the great lords think you're in far more precarious health than you are, and they're terrified you'll lose the child. You don't want to push that fear to the point that Master James comes poking around wanting to keep you in bed or sedated, but it wouldn't hurt to keep asking about Cathan and demand to be allowed to see him and make it clear that you're pining for your brother, especially now that—the king is gone.”

Michaela bowed her head, fighting back her grief—for both men—then remembered the brooch Cathan had been at such pains to get to her. Returning to her dressing table, as Rhysel leaned out to watch in some curiosity, Michaela picked up the Eye of Rom and the Haldane brooch and brought them back to the window embrasure.

“I wonder why he made such a point of giving this back to me,” she said, laying the great ruby aside and taking the brooch between the fingers of both hands. “I can understand about the Eye of Rom; it's part of the Haldane regalia. And certainly, the brooch was important to the two of us, as a symbol of—”

She broke off as Rhysel laid a hand on hers.

“May I see that?”

Wordlessly Michaela gave it to her, watching as the Deryni woman closed her hands around it briefly, then laid the enameled side of it against her forehead, eyes closed. After a moment she took the brooch away and looked up, grinning a little as she fingered the red-enameled gold.

“You have a very brave man for a brother, and your Rhysem was far wiser than I ever gave him credit for. I can't Read it, because it isn't meant for me, but there's something locked into this brooch, Mika—something your Rhysem set there, just beginning to learn to use the powers we loosed in him, here in this very room. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he's left you the key to setting the Haldane potential in his son.”

“In Owain?” Michaela breathed. “Rhysel, he's too young!”

“Too young to wield the power, but not too young to have it set upon him, so he can grow into it, guided by wise men who'll gladly come to teach him, if we can ever get him truly crowned. That's why Cathan brought you the Eye of Rom as well. You know it's always been more than just a physical part of the Haldane legacy. What did Cathan say When he gave it to you?”

“Why, only that I'd have to pierce Owain's ear so he could wear it—
and that I should do it, as soon as possible
,” she added, suddenly remembering that silent exhortation he had sent her, temporarily forgotten in her concern for his safety.

She picked up the Eye of Rom and looked at it, the great cabochon ruby the size of a man's thumbnail, set in gold as an earring, with a golden wire to secure it.

“Rhysel, I don't know how to do this,” she whispered, her eyes going round. “Oh, not how to pierce his ear—I remember when my mother did mine. But the rest—the ritual. I can only vaguely remember what we did for Rhysem, and
I
didn't really do it; I only said and did as I was told.”

Smiling, Rhysel took away the Eye of Rom and replaced it with the brooch, closing the queen's fingers around it.

“See what he's left you, Mika,” she whispered. “Close your eyes and let yourself relax. Draw a deep breath and let it out … and now think of Rhysem, lying in some darkened room, not very long ago, with the brooch clasped in his hand, thinking of you and of Owain … And when you're ready, press the brooch to your forehead, the way you saw me do … and open to Rhysem's message … an ultimate message of love and strength that can sustain you and Owain and even the other son you carry, even beyond Rhysem's mortality … When you're ready …”

Michaela could feel the lethargy stealing over her, the power of Rhysel's magic taking her deep and centered, and gradually she came to know that she could do as Rhysel asked. She could feel all her concentration focusing on the brooch in her hand, the resolve that she and Rhysem together had forged in this symbol of Haldane freedom. And as the other woman's hand fell away from hers, she was aware of her own hand slowly lifting, seemingly of its own volition, the brooch cupped in its palm; and her head nodding lower and lower until it touched the cool enamel.

Knowledge came complete and crystal-clear, of how he had wanted it done. He had simplified and refined what had been done for him, both the night she had been witness and another night, when his own father had done secret things to his own three sons. It was the nature of the Haldane power that a father might not see his son fully empowered, but it was also its nature that each holder of the power sensed, by instinct, how its potential was to be transmitted. Owain
was
young for what was asked; but Rhysem had trusted in the wisdom of the new regency he had tried to create. And if Michaela trusted in
him
, subjecting their son to what was required, and Rhysem had, indeed, judged the Kheldour lords with wisdom, the Haldane crown might yet be free.

Tears were spilling from her lashes when she at last looked up, but she also was smiting. Still lightly in trance, she offered Rhysel her hand, to share what she had learned. Rhysel, too, was crying after she had Read it and moved closer to hug the queen in comfort until they both had spent their tears.

“Should we try to do it tonight,” Michaela whispered, drying her eyes on the sleeve of her shift, “or do you think we ought to wait until tomorrow night? Cathan might be able to help, if we wait.”

“We maybe ought to do it while we have the chance,” Rhysel replied. “The situation could get worse. For one thing, the new regents could decide that you need closer observation, what with fears about your pregnancy and the threat of the Kheldour lords coming to challenge them.” She raised an eyebrow in faint amusement. “This is going to be interesting: no medication, no Healer, no priest—”

“And nobody who really knows what she's doing,” Michaela said, returning a brave smile. “But Rhysem thought we could do it; he thought
I
could do it, just in case you weren't available to help me out. With both of us, how far wrong could we go?”

“Now
that
,” Rhysel said with a grin, “is a question you must never ask.”

It took them most of an hour to prepare, assembling and improvising materials and waiting for activity to settle down in the outer rooms of the apartments and in the corridors outside. After they heard the guards change, Rhysel slipped into the solar where Nieve and Lirin were sleeping on daybeds—the ladies on duty, should the queen need them during the night—and deepened their sleep so that only a commotion in the corridor outside would rouse them. She could do nothing about the guards, but intrusion was unlikely at this hour, given the queen's delicate condition.

She tiptoed back into the bedchamber to find Michaela sitting cross-legged in the middle of the great bed with a sewing basket on her lap, the sleeping Owain close beside her. In Rhysel's absence, she had unreeled a skein of silken thread to define a circle around the bed—Haldane crimson, almost invisible against the dark floorboards. Included in the circle was the small nightstand hard by the left-hand side of the bed, which held a towel and basin and a single rushlight. As instructed, she had left a gap in the northeast quadrant, as had been done in another circle in that room only a few weeks before.

“I'll confess before we start that this is as primitive as
I've
ever worked,” Rhysel whispered, as she came through the gap in the circle, closed and loosely tied the ends of silk behind her, and climbed up onto the bed beside the queen. “My mother would have loved it—experimental ritual. My father would have been appalled. But then, Healers are often quite conservative. Look at my brother: you'd think he was thirty, not thirteen.” She smiled and glanced down at the sleeping Owain.

“On the very positive side of things, if anyone walks in on us, unless they catch us at
exactly
the wrong moment, there isn't any physical evidence to get us into trouble. I'll try to keep the necessary formality to a minimum. Are you ready to begin?”

“I am.”

And she was. As Rhysel smiled and held out her hands, Michaela took them and bowed her head, closing her eyes as they lowered the circle of their arms around the sleeping Owain.

“Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, O Lord, and I shall be clean,” Rhysel murmured, taking this simple verse as symbol of the more formal purification they dared not enact, with incense and aspergillum. “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”

“He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul,” Michaela continued softly, whispering the words, with Rhysel until they had finished the Psalm. After repeating the Lord's Prayer, she crossed herself in the protection of the Holy Trinity, also signing Owain's forehead with the sacred symbol, then watched as Rhysel slowly stood in the center of the bed and faced the east.

Her head nearly touched the canopy above them, pale yellow Forcinn silk shot with gold, nearly the color of her hair. After clasping her hands before her for a moment, lips pressed against her fingertips, Rhysel lifted her arms in a silent gesture of orison, sweeping them up and wide to either side and back to cross on her breast, after which she bowed. Then, with left hand still pressed lightly to her breast, she pointed the first two fingers of her right hand at the floor in a gesture of command, just where the silk thread lay. Michaela could almost see the ghostly, steel-bright blade of her focused will shoot out to touch and ignite the silk with an unseen fire that did not burn.

Rhysel spoke no words aloud as she began turning slowly to her right, her two fingers following the line of the silken thread, but Michaela could feel the power pouring through the focus of that hand and sensed the invisible light that followed the hand like snagged silk caught and dragged behind it, a gossamer veil that billowed wider as she turned, rising up and over the canopy of the bed in a softly shimmering dome of not-light by the time Rhysel had come full-turn to her starting point.

She clasped her hands before her again at that, bowing slightly to the east, then cocked her head to listen to the outside sounds before turning her palms upward, just at her breast, and beginning a whispered invocation.

“O Lord, Thou art holy, indeed: the fountain of all holiness. In the name of Light arising do we summon Thy holy Raphael, Heavenly Physician, Guardian of Air, to witness this rite and bring healing of minds and souls and bodies.”

She brought her hands together and bowed, then turned a quarter circle to lift her palms southward.

“O Lord, Thou art holy, indeed: the fountain of all holiness. In the name of Light increasing do we summon Thy holy Michael, Protector, Wielder of the Fiery Sword, to witness this rite and protect us in our hour of need.”

Again the bow, the turning, the lifting up.

“O Lord, Thou art holy, indeed: the fountain of all holiness. In the name of Light descending do we summon Thy holy Gabriel, Thy Herald of the Heavens and Lord of Water, to witness this rite and carry our supplications to Our Merciful Lady.”

And finally to the north.

“O Lord, Thou art holy, indeed: the fountain of all holiness. In the name of Light returning do we summon Thy holy Uriel, Lord of the Earth and Conveyer of Souls, to witness this rite but to take only fear from this place. All this, if it be Thy will.”