“One of the little beggars bit me!” he murmured, as Morgan put his child across the saddle beside the first and glanced anxiously across at the other two children.

“Just stay where you are and you won’t be harmed,” Morgan called, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the falls, and brandishing a finger at the two. “I’m not going to hurt you, but you can’t leave yet. Just stay where you are.”

As the children watched, wide-eyed and terrified despite Morgan’s reassurances, Duncan took the reins of the remaining horse and led it toward the falls, hooding it with the tunic he had pulled from the fleeing boy. Morgan walked beside the animal, steadying the two sleeping children in the saddle and watching the other two warily. He gasped involuntarily as he entered the icy water, nearly losing control of the restraining light-ring for an instant, then inched along beside the animal and into the falls. There was a narrow ledge behind the roaring wall of water, waist-deep and covered with green slime and treacherous, stream-polished pebbles that slid under a man’s boot or a horse’s hoof. But they were able to pick their way across without serious incident.

As the nervous horse lurched up the bank, Duncan caught the two children as they slid from the saddle and laid them gently on a patch of grass in the sunshine. Morgan calmed the horse, then raised one eyebrow and strode toward the two children on the other horse. The pair sat stiff in the saddle, petrified but defiant, as Morgan walked through the wall of light and reached a wet hand to the bridle. As he looked up at them, the light behind him died.

“Now, do you want to tell me what you intended to do with my horse?” he asked calmly.

The front child, the girl, glanced behind at her partner and whimpered, then looked wildly back. The older one’s arms tightened around the girl’s waist reassuringly as he returned Morgan’s gaze, a hard gleam flashing through the fear.

“You’re Deryni, aren’t you? You’re spying on my lord bishops.”

Morgan suppressed a smile and pulled the first child from the saddle, without resistance from the boy. The girl went limp as Morgan touched her, from fear rather than any manifestation of Deryni power, and the boy sat a little straighter in the saddle, indigo eyes going cold in the tanned young face. Morgan handed the little girl over to Duncan, exchanging his human armload for a handful of wet tunic, which he tossed to the boy. His gray eyes were slightly amused as the boy took the tunic without a word and slipped it over his head.

“Well?” the boy demanded, tugging his tunic into place with a defiant gesture. “Aren’t you Deryni? Aren’t you spying?”

“I asked you first. What were you going to do with my horse? Sell it?”

“Of course not. My brothers and I were going to take it to our father, so that he could ride with the bishops’ army. The captains told him that our cart horse was too old, and couldn’t keep up on a long march.”