“We shall be ready for him,” Arilan said. “And as for surprises, I fear that Wencit is the one who will be getting that, once the sun rises.”

He paused as a movement outside the ring of torchlight caught his eye, then nudged Kelson as Morgan and Duncan strode past the guards to make short bows.

“Is anything wrong?” Morgan asked the king.

Kelson shook his head. “No, I’m just restless, I suppose. I wanted to go up to the hilltop and look at Wencit’s layout again. I don’t trust him.”

“And well you do not,” Duncan murmured under his breath, as Morgan raised an eyebrow and glanced past Kelson into the tent.

“How is Derry?” Morgan asked, ignoring Duncan’s comment.

Kelson followed Morgan’s glance and moved out of the doorway. “He was sleeping peacefully, the last time I looked. Let him be. I want to go up to the hilltop.”

“I’ll join you in a moment. I want to check on him myself.”

As the others moved into the darkness, Morgan turned away from them and entered the tent. One shielded candle burned in a wrought-iron holder near the great state bed, and by its light and the light of the brazier farther back in the pavilion, Morgan made his way to the form lying beneath sleeping-furs on the other side of the chamber. As he knelt down beside Derry, the sleeping-furs moved and Derry rolled face-up. His eyes were closed, but it was evident that he was either beginning or ending a nightmare.

He moaned softly and flung an arm across his eyes momentarily, then relaxed and passed into deeper sleep once again. Once Morgan thought he heard Derry murmur, “Bran,” but he could not be sure.

Morgan frowned as he reached out to touch Derry’s forehead lightly, but no impressions came through with his cursory scan of the troubled mind beneath his touch. Whatever the nightmare, it had passed. Perhaps now Derry would sleep peacefully.

Well it might have been, if Morgan had been able to dismiss what he had seen and continue about his business—but he could not. The fact that Derry still rested uneasily, when he should have been healed; that he had called out Bran Coris’s name—that boded ill, no matter how one looked at it. Certainly, Derry had been through much—just how much, no one would know until Derry came out of his deep sleep and chose to share it with them.

But why was he not now recovered? Could his rantings when he was first brought back to the camp have held some darker meaning? Suppose the bonds imposed by Wencit on that tortured mind had not been entirely broken?

Morgan posted an extra guard just outside the doorway, then made his way into the night. He was not conscious of any particular destination—he was merely walking to burn off nervous energy, to calm his uneasiness. He never knew how he found himself beside Bishop Cardiel’s compound—or what had made him seek out Richenda.