“Oh, Stefan, Stefan…” Arilan could only shake his head disbelievingly.

Coram smiled faintly, catching himself from swaying once again. “Yes. And I have appeared in another guise more familiar to your friends.” His shape rippled again, and they could see a silver-haired man cowled in gray superimposed over the handsome features of Coram for just an instant.

“You were Saint Camber?” Morgan breathed.

“No, I told you I was not.” Coram shook his head emphatically, going back to his Coram-shape. “I have only appeared to you a few times: at the king’s coronation as a representative of the Council; to you, Duncan, on the Coroth road; at Saint Neot’s—” He grimaced again and closed his eyes momentarily, and Arilan rushed to support him.

“Stefan?”

Coram shook his head in dismissal. “You cannot help me to live, my friend—only to die.” He swallowed with difficulty and leaned even more heavily on Arilan’s arm, dread shadowing his face. “Dear God…’Tis coming sooner than I thought.”

As he sagged against Arilan’s arm, the bishop eased him to the ground, Morgan and Duncan crowding to his other side. Kelson stood behind Arilan, watching them in dismay, but he did not join them. Now was a moment he could not really share with them. He hardly knew Stefan Coram, but the three now kneeling around the stricken man had been intimately involved with him in several ways, Morgan and Duncan in a way that Kelson could not begin to understand. He watched as Morgan pulled off his cloak and made a pillow of it under Coram’s head. The man’s eyes were closed, but he opened them at Morgan’s touch and turned his attention to Arilan once more.

“I suppose that, in a way, I’ve taken my own life,” he murmured, gazing up at Arilan. “But I—had no other choice. Do you—do you think He will understand?”

His eyes flicked to the pectoral cross on Arilan’s chest, and the bishop bowed his head and nodded slowly. “I think He must, my friend. What you have done…” His voice caught, and he had to swallow before he could continue. “Is—is the pain bad?”

Coram shook his head. “Not really. Only once in a while. It will be over soon. Can—can the others see?—the members of the Council, I mean?”

Arilan glanced at the four standing at the circle’s boundaries and nodded. “Yes, but the circle distorts their vision. Did you want to tell them something?”

“No.” Coram shook his head. “But I do want you to have a say in choosing my successor on the Council. Despite the opposition I have seemed to show you in the past, I have valued your friendship and your courage in the Inner Circle. Promise that you will relay my wishes to them—when you tell them how I died.”

His eyes closed, and he seemed to be fighting for breath. Morgan looked across at Arilan in concern.

“Isn’t there anything we can do? Couldn’t Duncan and I try to heal him?”