The King’s Justice (10 page)

He draped the cloak over a chair that already held several others as Nigel began obediently unbuckling his swordbelt, and caught the weight of the weapon as the belt came free. He coiled the white leather around the scabbard and laid it on the table with the others as Nigel produced a sheathed dagger from the small of his back and a stiletto from a narrow sheath in the side of his boot.

“Any more?” Duncan asked, with a faint grin. “You and Alaric are two of a kind when it comes to sharp, pointed things. Incidentally, I suggest you take off any outer layers you think you can spare; the rest of us have already done so. It's going to be a little close in there, with so many people.”

Managing a snort of appreciation at the attempt to lighten the mood, Nigel removed a belt of metal placques set low on his hips, ducked out of the heavy, linked collar of his princely rank, then began unbuttoning a long, wine-colored overtunic with running lions intertwined around hem and cuffs. Now he noticed that Dhugal had already stripped to shirt and trews and boots, though Duncan's concession to undress appeared to be an open collar and the omission of his cincture.

“Why do I get the distinct impression that it's going to be more than ‘close' in there?” he said. “I thought you Deryni could do something about such things.”

“We can,” Duncan returned. “But it would take energy we'll need for other things tonight. Besides,
you're
not Deryni.”

“I take your point. I don't suppose you considered a different chapel?”

“Not for tonight's work,” came the reply. “We'll be working under the protection of Saint Camber. I trust that doesn't surprise you?”

“Surprise me? Hardly. I can't say it reassures me, but it doesn't surprise me.”

He knew he was talking to cover his persistent nervousness—and that Duncan knew it. Impatient with himself, he tugged loose three more buttons—enough to let the tunic fall around his feet—and stepped out of the pool of wine-dark wool. He would be well rid of it if it was going to be as warm as Duncan hinted. Beneath it he wore close-fitting britches of burgundy wool, midcalf boots dyed to match, and a full-sleeved shirt of fine linen. He untied the laces at the throat as he bent to pick up his discarded tunic, making a calming little ritual of folding the garment and laying it neatly atop his cloak before looking back at Duncan again, aware that he could delay no longer.

“I suppose I'm ready, then,” he said.

Duncan lowered his eyes, obviously aware of what Nigel was feeling.

“You can have a few more minutes, if you'd like.” He glanced to his right, where Dhugal had taken up a guard post beside the chapel door. “There's a prie-dieu there in the corner. You're welcome to use it.”

Deep in the shadows, Nigel could see two red votive lights burning before a small ivory crucifix, the vague outline of a kneeler before them, but he shook his head.

“I'm as ready as I'll ever be, Duncan,” he murmured. “You know I've never been much on ceremony.”

“Come, then,” Duncan said with a smile, taking him by the elbow and leading him toward the door Dhugal guarded. “As you know, you're going to have to bear with
some
ceremony tonight, but we've tried to keep things reasonably informal. It could be worse.”

“It could?”

“Of course.” Duncan gave him a reassuring smile. “You're an adult, coming into this of your own free will, able to give us your conscious cooperation. If you were a child, things would be totally out of your hands.”

Nigel snorted at that, wondering whether it had
ever
really been in his hands—then flashed for an instant on the sudden realization that one day it might be Conall or Rory or Payne approaching the ordeal he himself now must face. The thought chilled him—it should be
Kelson's
son walking toward the door he now approached with Duncan; not himself or his own sons—but all of that was academic in the immediate reckoning. For now, there was no turning back.

Nigel had to duck a little as he followed Duncan past the curtain Dhugal held aside. The chamber beyond was dim and close—half the size of the room they had just left, and almost crowded even before they entered. Arilan and Morgan stood against the walls to left and right, Richenda, all in white, immediately to his right against the back wall, but it was Kelson who caught and arrested his attention immediately.

His nephew—no,
the king
—the king stood with his back to them in the precise center of the room, raven head flung back and hands hanging easily at his sides. He was more than human or Deryni in that moment of Nigel's first beholding, sacred kingship lying upon his shoulders as puissant and apparent as any physical mantle he had worn since his coronation day—though he, like Morgan and Nigel himself, had stripped to the basics of shirt and britches and boots, putting aside all weapons or other tangible insignia of his rank.

The object of his attention appeared to be a very ornate crucifix of ebony suspended above an altar set hard against the eastern wall—or perhaps it was the wall itself that held his gaze, painted all around the altar and above it like the midnight sky, spangled with bright-gilt stars that caught the light from six honey-colored tapers. The stars shimmered through the heat rising from the candles, and the air tickled at Nigel's nostrils with the faint aroma of beeswax and incense.

“Come stand beside me, Uncle,” Kelson said softly, turning slightly to beckon with his right hand, quicksilver eyes drawing him even if the gesture had not.

Without hesitation Nigel obeyed, taking the proffered hand and bobbing briefly to one knee to press it to his forehead in homage before straightening at his sovereign's side. Duncan passed to Kelson's other side and approached the altar—but a few steps in the confines of this tiny chamber—and Nigel dared a glance at Morgan, back pressed against the southern wall and arms folded across his chest, almost close enough to touch. As their eyes met, Morgan inclined his head slightly in a nod meant to be reassuring, then turned his gaze deliberately toward the altar, where Arilan had joined Duncan in the preparation of a thurible. Dutifully Nigel turned his attention that way as well.

They would ward the chamber first; he knew that. He even knew a little about warding. He had seen Morgan ward a circle once, long ago, when Morgan helped Brion assume his full Haldane powers before the battle with the Marluk. Nigel had been nineteen, Brion twenty-five, Morgan not yet fourteen.

Many years later, there had been another warding as well: in a tent at Llyndruth Meadows, the night before the final confrontation between Kelson and Wencit of Torenth. He had seen only the beginnings of that warding; that was the night he had learned that Arilan was Deryni. He remembered little else besides black and white cubes and Arilan's hand touching his forehead—and Kelson's eyes boring into his until he thought his very soul must be sucked out of his body.

Since then, he had learned not to fight or fear that kind of mental touch. Something akin to that would happen again tonight, but he put that knowledge from his mind for the moment and set his attention on the two bishops. Arilan was beginning: censing the altar and the East and then moving to his right toward the space between Nigel and Morgan.

They would cast a triple circle first. As they trod the circle, they would invoke the protection of the four great Archangels who guarded the Quarters and ruled the elements. Duncan was already aspersing the East with holy water, preparing to follow Arilan in the second circle. Morgan would cast the third with a sword.

The South was Nigel's especial favorite, however: first of the Quarters to be saluted after the East, where Morgan still stood and Arilan now paused to bow—for the South was the realm of Saint Michael, familiar to Nigel as the patron of warriors long before he learned the Prince of Heaven's other, more esoteric attributes.

To Saint Michael had Nigel pledged a special devotion those many years before, as he kept his knight's vigil before receiving the accolade from his brother. God willing, perhaps his son would conceive a like devotion. Before another year was out—if they all lived that long—Conall, Kelson, and Dhugal would keep their own knights' vigil, and receive the knightly accolade from
his
hand. He suspected that Kelson and Dhugal would reserve their special devotion to Saint Camber—which was certainly fitting—but he knew they reverenced Michael as well. He was surprised to realize that he did not know his own sons' feelings on the matter.

That realization so occupied him for the next few seconds that he was not aware when Morgan moved from South to altar—only that Morgan was suddenly there, drawing the fine-wrought scabbard from Kelson's sword—Brion's sword, his father's sword! Spellbound, he watched Morgan raise the blade in reverent salute to the East, candlelight flashing down the polished steel and taking on a life of its own—remembering another Morgan, another Nigel, a Brion still alive, as Morgan leveled the blade at eye level and slowly began to retrace Arilan's and Duncan's paths.

Light streamed from the tip of the blade as Morgan walked, scribing a ribbon of blue-white brilliance a handspan wide along the wall behind the altar. It floated with substance of its own where the tip of the blade bridged the southeast corner of the room, curving in a blue-white streak to follow all across the South.

Nigel watched Morgan's progress on toward the West until he could no longer follow without turning his body as well, catching just a glimpse of Richenda stepping closer to him, away from the West wall, so that Morgan could pass between it and her. The chamber was growing uncomfortably warm, as Duncan had warned, but he thought he could feel cold radiating from the ribbon of light. He shivered a little despite the sweat trickling between his shoulderblades and plastering his shirt to his back.

At the altar, their circuits completed, Arilan and Duncan replaced thurible and aspergillum on the altar, and backed off to stand directly in front of Kelson and Nigel as Morgan continued past the North and closed the ring of the circle in the East. The ribbon of light clung to the walls like a physical thing, pulsing slightly.

Saluting again, Morgan laid the sword back on the altar beside its sheath and came to stand behind Nigel, at Richenda's right. Nigel suddenly wondered what the circle looked like to Dhugal, standing just outside, in the doorway to the chamber—whether it floated across the doorway the same way it arched in the corners.

“We stand outside time, in a place not of earth,” Arilan said quietly. “As our ancestors before us bade, we join together and are One.”

“Amen,” the others responded.

Nigel could feel the faint breeze of a flowing sleeve brush his back, and sensed the shadow of Richenda's hand raised between him and Kelson.

“Before us …
Ra-fa-el
…” Richenda intoned, chanting the syllables of the name with an odd inflection and holding the last note.

As the note died, he sensed her hand moving and saw a circle of black appear in the ribbon of light stretched above the altar. He stifled a little gasp, but the others seemed unperturbed.

“God has healed,” Richenda said in a normal tone.

“God has healed,” the others repeated.

Confused, he let himself be turned to face the south. Morgan was beside him now, Richenda behind Morgan. Again she stretched forth her hand.

“Before us …
Mi-ka-il
…”

Again, the prolonged note, the movement of her hand as the note died—only this time, a red glowing triangle pierced the ribbon of light, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Who is like God,” Richenda said this time.

“Who is like God,” the others repeated.

Again they all turned, now facing the west. Beyond the ribbon of light, which
did
hang in midair where it crossed the recess of the doorway, he could just see Dhugal, looking very solemn.

“Before us …
Ji-bra-il
…”

A crescent of white light for the West.

“God is my strength,” Richenda said.

“God is my strength,” Nigel repeated with the others. He had suddenly realized that the phrases were translations of the names of the Archangels being invoked, the symbolism doubtless drawn from Richenda's eastern origins.

On to the North.

“Before us …
Au-ri-el
…”

A golden square here.

“Fire of God.”

“Fire of God,” came the response.

He started to turn again to the east, but Morgan pulled him back a step instead. Kelson also took a step away from him before turning, so that all at once everyone was facing toward the center. Richenda, her loose-fitting shift a luminous white by circle-light, spread both palms before her at waist level and closed her eyes.

“At our center and foundation is Spirit—that which endures.”

As she moved her hands slightly apart and tilted them toward one another, a five-pointed star appeared in the air between them, etched in violet light. It floated to the floor as she parted them still farther, pulsing against the stone as she threw back her head and stretched her palms heavenward this time.

“Above us, the circled cross: defining and containing, unity of all contained within One.”

As the symbol appeared, green fire hanging above their heads, she swept her arms to either side and held, eyes closing, but it was Arilan who spoke.

“Now we are met. Now we are One with the Light. Regard the ancient ways. We shall not walk this path again.

“Augeatur in nobis, quaesumus, Domine, tuae virtutis operatio
.…” May the working of Thy power, O Lord, be intensified within us.…

“So be it. Selah. Amen,” Richenda responded.

And as she lowered her arms, bowing her head over hands joined palm-to-palm in an attitude of prayer, the ribbon of light around the room quickly broadened and extended upward and downward until its edges met in the symbols above their heads and beneath their feet. Then all six symbols vanished. Glancing surreptitiously toward the doorway, Nigel could no longer see Dhugal except as a vague, shadowy form.