As Arilan pulled the door wide and stood aside, Morgan nodded sheepishly and got to his feet, Duncan and Cardiel falling in quietly behind him.

“And you might tell us, as we walk, of what you learned in the cathedral tonight,” Arilan added, spreading his arms to include them all in his comradely embrace. “After that, I think we all had best retire to rest. We march at first light, and we wouldn’t want to keep Kelson waiting.”

TWO days later, Kelson received the homage of the rebel bishops at Dol Shaia, and himself knelt to the formal absolution they pronounced to free him of the taint of consorting with former excommunicants and heretics. Two days after that, they were at the gates of Coroth.

Strangely enough, Kelson had not seemed terribly surprised to learn that Arilan was Deryni. He had been aware, from the minute that Morgan and Duncan and the rebel bishops joined him, that something vital had changed. Other than Cardiel, none of the other bishops knew of Arilan’s newly revealed status; but even so, there was a subtle difference in the way they deferred to him as opposed to Cardiel, almost as though they felt his power without actually being aware.

Kelson, long a student of the subtle nuance in speech and movement, had even noticed a difference in Morgan and Duncan’s attitude toward Arilan; something that even he, after long association with both men, could not fully explain.

Once Arilan was revealed to him, however, it was a simple matter merely to take the information in stride, accepting Arilan’s Deryniness as an old and established fact. This ready acceptance worked much to his favor, for by the time the royal army came within sight of Coroth late the next afternoon, the four Deryni were a team. Kelson felt relaxed and confident as they drew rein at the top of a rise and watched the army deploying around Morgan’s occupied city.

They had flushed out several bands of gray-clad rebel horsemen as they advanced toward Coroth, so any element of surprise they might have had was long gone by the time the first royal advance scouts sighted the city.

Now the plain outside Coroth lay empty, deserted, the late-afternoon breeze rippling the sea grass to a gently undulating ocean of pale green. To the southeast, down a wide stretch of ocean strand, they could see the flat crinkle of the sea, green and silver in the mist-shrouded afternoon sun. The tang of salt was in the air, along with the slightly sharp scent of decaying seaweed, a whiff of the castle middens with their ripe decay.

Kelson surveyed the scene for several minutes, eyeing the blank castle walls, the empty expanse of plain and sand dunes, bare except for the rapidly advancing royal army. Far to the northwest, he could see the violet banners of Cardiel’s Joshuic Foot, war standards slowly giving way to spears and then to armed foot soldiers with tall, kite-shaped shields as they came over the rise.