“Guard?”

“Yes, my lord?”

The guard was attentive, eager to be of service, and saluted smartly as he entered the pavilion.

“Can you give me a hand here?” Derry found himself saying. “I seem to have lost the brooch from my cloak.” He gestured toward the pile of furs where he had been sleeping and made a deprecating little smile. “I’d look for it myself, but my head still throbs when I bend down.”

“No trouble, sir.” The guard grinned, laying down his spear to bend over the furs. “Glad to see that you’re up and feeling better. We were a bit anxious there for a while.”

As the man talked, Derry closed his hand around the sheathed blade of a heavy hunting dagger and moved to the man’s side. Without warning, he brought the weighted hilt down hard behind the guard’s right ear; the man crumpled without a sound.

Derry lost no time. After dragging the unconscious guard to the Transfer Portal, he moved to the tent entrance and dropped the flap. Then he was back at the guard’s side, kneeling with his hands on the man’s temples, as a strange lethargy came over him. The guard’s eyes fluttered and then opened, but the intelligence that gazed back at him was not that of the simple, honest guard. Derry’s own involuntary shudder was overcome by the new power forcing him to do this, and he could only abide helplessly as he felt his eyes boring into those of the enthralled guard and making contact with the new intelligence.

“Well done, Derry,” the guard murmured in a voice not precisely his own. “What have you learned? Where are the Deryni princeling and his friends?”

“Gone to the perimeter to observe your camp, Sire,” Derry felt himself answering. And there was nothing he could do about it.

The guard blinked and gave a slight nod. “It is well. You were not observed overpowering the guard?”

Derry shook his head. “I think not, Sire. What is it you wish of me now?”

After a slight pause the guard turned his eyes on Derry with a new intensity. “The Lord Bran wishes the return of his son and his lady. Do you know where they are kept?”

“I can find them,” Derry heard himself saying, though he despised himself for the words.

“Good. Then, find some ruse to bring them to the Portal here. Tell the Lady that—”

At the sound of voices outside the tent, Derry froze. He could not be certain, but it sounded like one of the guards was talking to—Warin?

Stealthily, he got to his feet and glided over to the doorway, staying to one side where he would be shielded by the flap as it opened. Footsteps approached on the other side of the canvas, and then a hand was pressing the flap aside. As the close-cropped head of Warin was thrust through the opening, he saw the guard lying in the center of the chamber. But before he could turn to give warning, Derry had tackled him and dragged him into the pavilion, stifling his attempted outcry with a savage hand across the mouth.