“Morgan?” Kelson asked.

“Warin, you have an eye for intrigue—and I am glad that it now serves the king.” Morgan smiled. “Can your lieutenants see to it right away?”

The rebel leader nodded.

“Excellent. And when you have finished, I should like for all of you to meet us in the tower stairwell. In the meantime, there are several of my officers whose expertise I require. Are they in the dungeons?”

“Alas, I fear they are,” Warin admitted.

“No matter. I know of ways to get them out. Shall we meet, then, in two hours?”

“It will be light in three,” Paul de Gendas volunteered.

Morgan shrugged. “That cannot be helped. We must have time to make preparations. In two hours, in the tower stairwell, then. Agreed?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far…”

ISAIAH 5:26

BY dawn there were few in Castle Coroth who did not know at least something of the strange and wondrous vision dreamed by Lord Warin during the night. Warin’s troops, who composed the bulk of Coroth’s defenders, still stood in staunch support of their charismatic leader, though they did not pretend to understand this seeming reversal of his former policy regarding Deryni. The handful of ecclesiastical troops who had come with the archbishops to Coroth were wary of outright resistance to the change, in light of the rebels’ greater numbers. In the early hours of the morning, several of them had made the mistake of questioning the new orders being handed down. Many had found themselves promptly locked up in the castle dungeons by Warin’s loyal followers.

Accordingly, first light found Archbishops Loris and Corrigan and a half-dozen of their colleagues gathered fearfully in the ducal chapel, ostensibly to celebrate morning devotions but in fact to speculate among themselves as to what the night’s developments might mean. Most were dubious about the reports that Warin had had a vision; none had any inkling of what had actually occurred.

“The entire thing has gotten out of hand!” Loris was saying. “This Warin de Grey goes too far. The idea of visions, in these times! Why, it’s unheard of.”

His subordinates sat huddled at the far end of the chapel’s nave, close to the sanctuary, where Loris was pacing the carpeting in obvious spleen. Archbishop Corrigan, looking haggard and aged beyond his sixty years, occupied a stool a little apart from the others, as befitted his station as Loris’s second-in-command. The others—de Lacey, Creoda of Carbury, Carsten of Meara, Ifor, and two of the itinerant bishops, Morris and Conlan—sat facing them anxiously. There was no one else in the chapel, and it was barred from within. Conlan, one of the younger bishops present, cleared his throat in a growl.

“Well, you may say that it is unheard of, my lord, but frankly, it worries me. It appears that Warin is moving toward a more lenient policy toward the Deryni. And what will happen if he decides to support the king?”