The pony finally lifted its foot, and the priest braced the hoof against his lap, using the cross-piece of his dagger as a hoof-pick to scrape away the last of the mud. Thunder rumbled low on the horizon, portending another storm, and Duncan glanced impatiently toward the shrine as he continued his work.

What was Alaric doing in there anyway? He should have been out long ago. Could something have gone wrong?

He eased the pony’s hoof to the ground and stepped back, replacing his dagger in its boot sheath.

It wasn’t like Alaric to be so long. His cousin was not irreligious, by any means; but neither would he spend an inordinate amount of time in an obscure highland shrine when the entire Gwynedd Curia was preparing to convene against them.

Duncan frowned and leaned against the pony’s pack, gazing across the animal’s hindquarters to the chapel beyond. He removed his leather cap and toyed with the Saint Torin badge pinned there, twirled the cap on his fingers. Maybe something was wrong. Maybe he should check.

Resolutely, Duncan jammed the cap back on his head and buckled on his sword, then started to leave the enclosure. On second thought, he turned back to untie the horses—they might have to make a rapid departure—then headed across the yard toward the shrine. He heard an astonished scurrying behind the right-hand grille as he entered the antechamber, and the creaky voice of the guardian monk addressed him immediately.

“Thou mayst bring no weapons into this place. Thou knowest that. This is consecrated ground.”

Duncan frowned. He had no desire to confound local custom, but neither did he intend to disarm under the circumstances. If Alaric was in trouble in there, Duncan might have to fight a way out for both of them. His left hand moved almost unconsciously to rest on the hilt of his sword.

“I’m looking for the man who followed me when I came here a little while ago. Is he still inside?”

Haughtily: “No one has entered the shrine since thou madest thy vigil. Now, willst thou leave with thine offensive steel, or shall I be forced to summon aid?”

Duncan peered keenly at the grille, sudden suspicion of the monk flaring. Then, carefully: “Are you trying to tell me that you did not see a man in hunting leathers and a brown cap come in here?”

“I have told thee, there is no one here. Now, go.”

Duncan’s lips compressed into a thin, hard line.

“Then you won’t mind if I take a look for myself,” he said coldly, crossing to the double doors and yanking them apart.

He heard an indignant yelp from behind as he stepped through and pulled the doors shut, but he ignored the monk’s muffled protests. Bringing his Deryni sensitivity into play and casting about for danger as fully as he dared, Duncan ran quickly down the center aisle. As the monk had said, there was no one in the tiny chapel—at least not now. But with only one entrance and exit, where could Alaric have gone?

Approaching the altar rail, Duncan surveyed the area suspiciously, taking in every detail with his precise Deryni memory. No candles had been added to the rack by the altar, though there was a cracked and snuffed-out one lying close by the steps that he did not remember seeing before. But the gate—had that been closed when he came through?

Absolutely not.

Now, why would Alaric have closed that gate?

Correction: Would Alaric have closed that gate? If so, why?

He glanced back at the doors and saw them closing softly, caught a glimpse of a thin, tonsured figure in a brown monk’s habit slipping back from sight.

So: the little monk was spying on him! And he would probably return very shortly with the reinforcements he had theatened.

Duncan turned back toward the altar and leaned over the rail to release the catch on the gate. As he did so, his gaze fastened on something that definitely had not been there before, and he froze.

It was a worn brown leather hunter’s cap with a chin strap, lying crumpled and abandoned against the bottom of the railing at the other side.

Alaric’s?

Chill suspicion nagging at a corner of his mind, Duncan started to reach for the cap, but froze as his sleeve brushed the gate latch and snagged on something. Bending down carefully to inspect the latch, he spied the tiny, needlelike protuberance that had caught him. He eased the sleeve free and moved his hand away, then bent to look more closely. Tentatively, he let his mind reach out to touch the latch.

His mind recoiled violently from the contact, and he broke out in a cold sweat. Only with difficulty did he manage to control his shaking and avoid retreating as fast as he could go. He dropped to one knee and steadied himself against the railing, forcing himself to take deep, sobering breaths.

Merasha. Now he understood it all: the closed gate, the cap, the latch.

In his mind’s eye he saw how it must have been: Alaric approaching the altar rail as Duncan had done, lighted candle in hand . . . reaching behind the gate for the latch, alert to the greater dangers the place might hold, yet never dreaming that the simple latch held the greatest treachery of all . . . The barbed latch snagging bare flesh instead of sleeve, sending the mind-muddling drug coursing through the unsuspecting body.

And then, someone waiting in the stillness of ambush—waiting to attack the merasha-weakened defenses of the half-Deryni lord and spirit him away, to what fate he knew not.

Duncan swallowed hard and glanced behind him, suddenly aware how close he had come to sharing his kinsman’s fate. He would have to hurry. The angry little monk would be back with reinforcements in no time. But he had to attempt contact with Alaric before he left this place. Because unless he could find some clue as to where his cousin had gone or been taken, he would not have the slightest idea where to look for him. How could he have gotten out of here?

Wiping his damp forehead against his shoulder, Duncan bent and pulled the leather cap through the spindles of the railing, cleared his mind, and let his senses range forth. He felt the aura of pain, confusion, growing blackness that surrounded and clung to the cap clenched against his chest; caught a hint of the anguish that had driven his kinsman to pull the cap from his tormented head.

Then he was outside, briefly touching the anonymous flickers of thought that were the myriad travelers on the road beyond. He sensed soldiers of some kind approaching with purpose in their thoughts, though he could not read that purpose at such range; caught the sinister shadow of presence that could only be the little monk, his mind filled with fury at the interloper in his precious shrine.

And something else. The monk had seen Alaric! And he had not seen—nor did he expect to see—him leave!

Duncan broke his trance with a shudder, slumped momentarily against the altar rail. He would have to get out of here. The monk, who was evidently a party to whatever had happened to Alaric, would be returning with the soldiers any minute. And if Duncan was to be any help to Alaric in the future, he dared not let himself be taken prisoner.

With a sigh, Duncan raised his head and scanned the chancel area a last time. He would have to leave, and now.

His eyes were closed, and he didn’t seem to have the strength to force them open yet, but awareness was returning. And fiery needles stabbed at his head again with every pulse beat, making it almost impossible to concentrate.

He closed his eyes more tightly and tried to shut out the pain, trying to focus all his attention on moving some small part of his aching body. Fingers moved—he thought they were on his left—and he felt dirt and straw beneath his fingertips.

Was he out of doors?

As he asked himself that question, he realized that the pain behind his eyeballs was somewhat abating, so he decided to hazard opening his eyes. Much to his surprise the eyes obeyed him—though for a minute he thought that he was blind.

Then he saw his own left hand, only inches from his nose, resting on the—floor? Covered with straw? And he realized that he was not blind but merely in a darkened room, that a fold of his cloak had somehow fallen partway across his face, obstructing his view.

Once his dulled senses adjusted to that fact, he was able to extend his gaze beyond the hand. He tried to focus, still without moving anything but his eyes—and found that he could now distinguish patterns of light and shadow, mostly the latter.

He was in what must have been an enormous chamber or hall, all of wood. His field of vision was very narrow without changing his position, but what he could see was a wall of high, deep arches, fitfully illuminated by the guttering light of torches set in black iron brackets. In each archway, far in the recesses, he could barely distinguish a tall, motionless figure looming vaguely menacing in the shadows, each armed with a spear and holding an oval shield of some dark heraldic design. He blinked his eyes and looked again, trying to read the devices—then realized that the figures were statues.

Where was he?

Rather too abruptly, as he immediately discovered, he tried to get up. He managed to get his elbows under him, and actually got his head a few inches off the floor. But then the waves of nausea returned, and his senses began spinning worse than before. He cradled his head in his hands, trying to will the whirling to subside. And finally, through the fog, he was able to recognize the symptom he was fighting—the dizzying disorientation of merasha.

Memory returned in a rush. Merasha. It had been on the latch of the gate in the shrine. He had stumbled into the trap like a bumbling squire. The flat aftertaste numbing his tongue told him he was still under the influence of the mind-dulling drug, that whatever his situation now, he would not be able to use his powers to extricate himself.

Knowing the source of his distress, he found that he could at least curb the physical symptoms to some degree, control the numbness, stop some of the spinning. He carefully raised his head a few more inches to see a sweep of black wool robe a few feet to his right, and then a motionless gray boot not six inches from where his head had lain. His eyes darted to either side—more boots, long cloaks trailing the straw-littered floor, the tips of drawn broadswords—and he knew that he was in mortal danger, that he must get to his feet.

Each move of a cramped limb was torture, but he forced his body to obey; slowly raised himself first to elbows, then to hands and knees. As he rose, concentrating on that boot before his face, he raised his eyes also, knowing as he did that it was too much to hope that the boot would be empty.

There was a leg protruding from the boot, and another leg and boot beyond it, and a gray-clad body attached to the legs. A falcon emblem on the chest swam in Morgan’s vision. And as he raised his gaze to the piercing black eyes that glared down at him, Morgan’s spirits sank. Now he was surely doomed.

For the man in the falcon tunic could only be Warin de Grey.

Something was still unanswered. Somewhere he had failed to notice some piece of evidence—information that might still save Alaric’s life. That fallen candle he had seen when he first returned to the shrine. Where was it?

Bending to peer behind the altar rail once more, Duncan spied the candle lying near the altar steps to the left of the central carpeting. He started to reach for the gate latch, froze in mid-motion as he remembered the danger there, then swung his leg over the rail and climbed in instead. Glancing nervously back at the double doors, he crouched down beside the candle and studied it in position, reached out to prod it with a cautious forefinger.

As he had suspected, the candle was still warm, the wax at the wick end still semisolid and malleable. He could feel just a whisper of Alaric’s ordeal clinging to it yet, catch the faintest hint of pain and terror just before it was dropped.

Damn! All this pointed to something he had missed—he knew it. Alaric had to have been within the railing. The gate had been opened, and the candle lay too near the altar to have simply rolled there. But where could Alaric have gone from here?

Scrutinizing the floor around the candle, Duncan spied wax drippings on the bare wood, a fine trail of faintly yellow wax leading from the candle to a spot just left of the carpet approaching the altar. The wax was scarred and scuffed just beside the rug, as though someone had stepped on it before it had had time to congeal. One of the droplets, a large one very near the edge of the carpeting, had a faint vertical line through it, almost as though—

Duncan’s eyes widened with a sudden idea, and he bent to look more closely. Could it be that there was a crack in the wood floor there, a line not part of the floor’s intricate design, but running along the edge of the rug toward the altar?

He scrambled across to the other side of the carpet on hands and knees, sending an apologetic glance at the altar for his unseemly behavior, then squinted at the floor on that side.

Yes! There was definitely a faint line running the entire length of the carpet from the chancel gate to the bottom step of the altar, more pronounced than the other joinings in the patterned flooring. And there appeared to be a seam in the carpet where it joined that portion covering the steps themselves.

Crawling back to the left side, Duncan inspected the crack once again. Yes, the wax had been disturbed after it hardened, not before. It was lighter on one side of the line, as though one side of the crack had become lower, had dropped from under and then returned.

Hardly daring to believe it might be possible, Duncan closed his eyes and extended his senses along the carpet, trying to fathom what lay beneath. He had the impression of space below, of a convoluted maze of slides and low corridors lined in polished wood through which a man, even an unconscious man, might slip for God knew how far. And the mechanism that controlled the opening of that space—that was a scarcely visible square in the patterned floor directly to the left of the carpeting, though he sensed that this was not the only center of control.

Scrambling to his feet, Duncan stared down at the carpeting, at the square. He could trip the device very easily. A hard stamp on the square would do that.

But did the passage lead to Alaric? And if it did, was his cousin still alive? It was unrealistic to assume that the setters of the trap, whoever they might be, would not have been waiting for Alaric when he reached the bottom, wherever that was. And if Alaric had gotten a strong dose of the merasha—and again, there was no reason to suppose to the contrary—then he would not be able to function normally for hours.

On the other hand, if Duncan followed him down, armed and in full command of his faculties—which were not inconsiderable—Alaric might yet have a chance.

Duncan glanced once more around the chapel and made up his mind. He would have to be extremely careful. He really should drop into wherever he was going with drawn sword, ready to fight his way out. However, there was the question of the maze. He had no idea how far he would be going, how the maze would twist and turn before he got to the end. If he weren’t careful, he could impale himself on his own weapon.

He fingered the hilt of his blade thoughtfully, then tipped the scabbard up under his left arm, hilt down. That position, sheathed and with the blade held in place by his sword hand, should suffice until he reached wherever he was going. And then a quick draw—

He heard sounds in the antechamber, and knew he must act at once if he hoped to avoid a confrontation with the treacherous little monk and his reinforcements. Taking a tighter grip on his sword, he stamped on the square and crouched in the middle of the carpeting, felt the floor tipping out from under him. He caught a last glimpse of the heavy chapel doors crashing back on their hinges—of the little monk, who did not look nearly as little now, framed in the doorway with three mailed and armed foot soldiers.

Then he was sliding through the darkness, sword clutched to his side, faster and faster into what danger he knew not.

Stifling a moan, Morgan closed his eyes and forced himself to relax in his captors’ grip, willed the pain to recede as the men pulled him to his feet once more. It was clear he could not hope to win a physical contest against so many while in his present drugged condition. Nor, until the merasha wore off, could he call upon his powers. And as for normal thinking processes—ha! He couldn’t even think straight at this point. It would be interesting to see if he could, indeed, salvage anything out of this fiasco.

He opened his eyes and forced himself to remain calm, to assess the current crisis as well as his befuddled senses would allow.

There were about ten armed men in the chamber: four holding him prisoner and the rest grouped in a semi-circle in front of him, swords drawn and ready. From behind him came a strong light source—probably a doorway to the outside—and it glinted from the swords and helmets of the men before him. Two of the men also held torches aloft, the orange light spilling around them like fiery mantles. Between those two stood Warin and another man in clerical garb whom Morgan thought he recognized. Neither had spoken a word during the short scuffle, and Warin’s face was impassive as he gazed across at his prisoner.

“So this is Morgan,” he said evenly, with no emotion evident in voice or face. “The Deryni heretic brought to bay at last.”

Folding his arms across the falcon emblazoned on his chest, Warin walked slowly around his prisoner and studied him from head to toe, his boots rustling the loose straw as he passed. Morgan, because of the choking arm across his throat, could not observe Warin in turn; nor would he have given the rebel leader that satisfaction had he had the chance. Besides, his attention had shifted to the cleric ahead. Recognition of the man had brought with it a chilling suspicion.

The priest, if Morgan recalled correctly, was one Lawrence Gorony, a monsignor attached to Archbishop Loris’s staff. And if that were, indeed, the case, then Morgan was in worse trouble than he had thought. For it could only mean that the archbishops had recognized Warin in some capacity, that they stood ready now to support the rebel leader’s bid for power.

It betokened another, more immediate, danger, too. For the presence of Gorony at this ambush—not one of his high-ranking episcopal masters—perhaps indicated that the archbishops had washed their hands of Morgan, had written him off, that they were now prepared, after a token semblance of ministering to his soul, to give him over to Warin’s authority.

Warin had never suggested anything but death for men of Morgan’s race. Warin’s mission, so he believed, was to destroy Deryni, however repentant they might be. And he was not likely to let Morgan, the arch-Deryni of all, in his eyes, escape the fate he believed destined for all of his kind.

Morgan controlled a shudder, somewhat heartened that he was able to do so, then flicked his gaze back to Warin as the rebel leader returned to his original place. Warin’s eyes were cold and stern and glistening jet as he addressed his captive.

“I shall not waste time, Deryni. Have you anything to say before I pronounce judgment on you?”

“Pronounce ju—” Morgan broke off in consternation, realizing he had spoken the words aloud as well as in his mind, and trying with only partial success to mask the fear and indignation the words had invoked.

Merciful saints, had he gotten that strong a dose of merasha, that he could not even control his tongue? He must be wary, try to stall for time until the drug began to wear off and he could think clearly.

Even as he thought it, he realized he was not thinking clearly at all, that he would be lucky at this rate to even last out the next few minutes without totally betraying himself. He wondered where Duncan was—his cousin would surely be looking for him by now—but of course, Morgan wasn’t even sure when now was. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. Further, he might not even be at Saint Torin’s anymore. He dared not count on Duncan to rescue him. If only he could stall, could bluff until some measure of power returned.

“You were about to speak, Deryni?” Warin said, observing Morgan’s face and beginning to realize that he did, indeed, hold the upper hand.

Morgan managed a wry grimace and tried to nod, but the arm across his throat was heavy and mailed, and he could feel the metal links bite into his neck as the guard tensed.

“You—have me at a disadvantage, sir,” he said shakily. “You know me, but I do not know you. Might one inquire—?”

“I am your judge, Deryni,” Warin replied curtly, cutting Morgan off in mid-sentence and studying him with cold deliberation. “The Lord has appointed me to rid the land of your kind forever. Your death will be an important step in the accomplishment of that mission.”

“Ah, now I know you,” Morgan said. His voice had steadied, but his knees trembled with the effort of concentration. He tried, successfully this time, to keep his tone light.

“You’re that Warin fellow who’s been raiding my northern manors and burning out crops. I understand you’ve been burning out a few people as well. Not in keeping with the benevolence you claim, I must say.”

“Some deaths are necessary,” Warin replied coolly, refusing to be rattled. “Of a certainty, yours is. I will grant you one grace, however. Against my better judgment, I have promised that you should have the opportunity to repent your sins and seek absolution before you die. Personally, I feel that such is a waste of time for your kind; but Archbishop Loris disagrees. If you do wish to repent, Monsignor Gorony is prepared to hear your confession and attempt to salvage your soul.”

Numbly, desperately, Morgan flicked his gaze to Gorony, a further stalling technique coming to mind. “I fear you may have jumped to some hasty conclusions,” he said. “If you had taken the trouble to ask before resorting to ambush, you would have found that I was on my way to Dhassa to submit myself to the archbishop’s authority. I had already decided to renounce my powers and lead a life of penance,” he lied.

Warin’s black eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I find that highly unlikely. From all that I have heard, the great Alaric Morgan would never renounce his powers, much less do penance.”

Morgan attempted to shrug, and was heartened to find that the guards had relaxed their hold just a bit.

“I am in your power,” he said, telling the truth now to give weight to the lie he had just told, and to the lies he intended to tell if necessary. “As whoever procured the Deryni drug will have told you, I am quite helpless under the influence of the merasha. Not only are my arcane powers suspended, but my physical coordination is hampered. Nor, I think, could I lie to you in this condition if I wanted to.”

That was a lie, for as Morgan had discovered when he told the first falsehood, he could lie under the influence of the merasha. Now, if Warin would only believe him.

Warin frowned and pushed at a clump of straw with his boot, then shook his head. “I don’t understand what you hope to gain. Nothing can save your life now. You shall burn at the stake in just a short while. Why do you compound your sins by perjuring yourself even as death approaches?”

The stake! Morgan felt his senses reel again. Am I to be burned as a heretic, without even a chance to defend myself?

“I have told you I would submit to the archbishop’s authority,” he said, incredulity edging his voice. “Will you not permit me to carry out that intention?”

“That possibility is no longer open to you,” Warin said coldly. “You have had ample opportunity to amend your life, and you have not taken it. Accordingly, your life is forfeit. If you wish to try to save your soul, which I assure you is in the gravest of danger, I suggest you do it now, while my patience still holds. Monsignor Gorony will hear your confession if you wish it.”

Numbly shaking his head, Morgan shifted his attention to Gorony. “Is it your intention to permit this, Monsignor?” he whispered. “Will you stand by and be party to an execution without proper trial?”

“I have no orders other than to minister to your soul’s needs, Deryni. That was the agreement. After that, you belong to Warin.”

“I do not belong to any man, priest!” Morgan snapped, his gray eyes flashing in anger. “And I do not believe the archbishop can be aware of this gross miscarriage of justice!”

“Justice is not for your kind!” Gorony retorted. His face was dark and malevolent in the torchlight. “Now, will you or will you not make a confession?”

Morgan wet his lips and mentally chided himself for losing his temper. Argument would do no good. He could see that now. Warin and the priest were blinded by their hatred of something they did not understand. There was nothing he could say or do that was likely to have any effect—except, perhaps, to hasten the execution if he wasn’t careful. He must stall for time!

He dropped his gaze and made a visible effort to adopt a suitably contrite expression. Perhaps he could stretch things out. There must be hundreds of things he could confess over thirty years of life. And if he ran out, he was sure he could invent a few.

“Please forgive me,” he said, bowing his head. “I have been rash, as so often in the past. Am I to be permitted private confession, or must I speak before all of you . . . ?”

Warin snorted disdainfully. “Surely you jest, sir. Gorony, are you prepared to hear this man’s confession?”

Gorony pulled a narrow purple stole from the sleeve of his robe and touched it to his lips, draped it behind his neck.

“Do you wish to confess, my son?” he murmured formally, averting his eyes and taking a step toward Morgan.

Morgan swallowed and nodded, and his captors sank to their knees, bearing him down with them. The arm across his throat was removed, and Morgan swallowed again with relief as he bowed his head. He tried to flex his left wrist experimentally as he settled on his knees—which was difficult because of the vise-grip on all his limbs—and amazingly, there was the reassuring pressure of steel along his forearm: his trusty stiletto, which he did not think the men could detect through his mail hauberk. Apparently they had not bothered to search him—Clumsy fools! he thought triumphantly as he prepared to speak—which might also mean that he hadn’t been unconscious for very long. Perhaps, if it came to that, he could at least take a few of these fanatics with him in death when the time came. For it appeared that there was, indeed, to be no escape.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he murmured, turning his attention back to Gorony standing before him. “These are my sins.”

Before Morgan could even draw breath to begin his enumeration, there was a sudden rumbling in the beamed ceiling overhead. Heads jerked backward to gape incredulously as a lean figure in brown hunting leathers came hurtling through a narrow opening to land with a thump in the straw where Morgan had lain.

As the priest rolled to his feet, blade whipping from its scabbard, he slashed out at the unprotected knee of one of Morgan’s guards. The man screamed and went down, clutching his leg in agony. At the same time Morgan flung his full weight to the left, carrying two more of his captors to the floor with him.

A fourth man, fumbling and caught off balance by the double offensive, tried to draw sword to protect his fallen comrade before Duncan could strike again, but his indecision cost him his life. Duncan cut him down before he could even get his weapon clear. Then the room erupted in confusion as Warin’s men overcame their initial shock and attacked.

Duncan fought with gusto, sword and dagger responding in his hands as though they were extensions of his own arms. Morgan, on the floor and still in the grip of two of his original captors, kicked viciously as one of the men attempted to rise. The man’s anguished collapse threw the second man off guard long enough for Morgan to free his stiletto and dispatch him. Then Morgan was shouting and slashing wildly at another attacker who had come flying out of nowhere to land squarely on top of him with a dagger poised.

As he wrestled for possession of the weapon, he was dimly aware of Duncan almost straddling his feet and fighting ferociously with half a dozen swordsmen, and that they could not possibly hope to hold their own against such odds.

Then Gorony’s harsh voice cut through the chaos shouting, “Kill them! The Devil take you, you must kill them both!”