“You!” Rogier murmured, his voice low and deadly in the chill silence. “What the Devil are you doing here?”

Morgan shrugged casually. “I couldn’t sleep; neither could Kelson. So we thought we’d come and visit Brion. You know, I haven’t seen him in over three months. I thought I might even say a prayer or two. Will you join us?”

Rogier’s eyes narrowed, his hand moving toward his sword. “How dare you!” he said, each word clipped between thin, tight lips. “How dare you! After the mockery of justice in Council today, after spreading your cursed Deryni lies over all the realm, you have the gall to bring His Highness here, of all places, for what purpose only the Devil knows—”

As Rogier began to unsheath his weapon, Morgan’s eyes flicked behind to where a flash of movement had caught his eye. He stepped back a pace to keep the timing right. And as Rogier’s sword cleared its scabbard, Duncan’s fingertips touched Rogier’s neck lightly on either side.

At that touch, Rogier stiffened for just an instant, then relaxed and started to slump to the floor. As he crumpled, Morgan reached out to catch the sword before it could clatter onto the flagstones, and Duncan eased the unconscious man to a half-sitting position against the wall.

Duncan dusted his hands together ceremoniously as he straightened.

“What was he doing here?” Kelson breathed, eyeing the unconscious Rogier with suspicion and growing distaste. “Do you think she sent him?”

Morgan stepped through the gate to the royal crypt and motioned the other two to follow him. “Do you mean Charissa or your mother?” he asked, pulling the gate closed behind them. “I would say that Rogier just happened to be in charge of the guard detail tonight. There won’t be any trouble. He won’t remember a thing, and neither will the guards. Come on.”

A few steps carried them down into the crypt, past the family altar. Then they were among the tombs of the Haldanes.

The vault was enormous, higher than the height of two men, its insides hewn from the solid rock of the cathedral’s foundations. All along the walls, carved out of the living rock, were coffin-sized niches, each holding the bones of one of Kelson’s distant ancestors, each bedecked in rotting garments of fine materials, the empty eye sockets staring unseeing at the rock above. In the rest of the chamber, the tombs of the kings and queens of Gwynedd for the last four hundred years were placed in ordered rows, each one more magnificently carved than the next, each inscribed with the name and reign of the royal son or daughter who lay within.