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sleeve-filler, ye must lie still! Kelson, you’ve got to keep his arm from moving, or it’s little use. I can’t control his bleeding if he thrashes around.”
    Kelson did his best, slipping easily into the old camaraderie he and Dhugal had enjoyed so long ago, as boys, and which remained so comfortable now that they were men. But as Dhugal continued to probe, and Bertie gasped and tensed again, Kelson glanced over his shoulder and, in a moment of sudden decision, shifted the back of one bloodied hand to the man’s forehead, reaching out with his Deryni senses.
    â€œSleep, Bertie,” he whispered, slipping his wrist down over the man’s eyes and feeling the tense body go limp. “Go to sleep and remember nothing of this when you wake. No pain. Just sleep.”
    Dhugal’s hand faltered and paused in midstitch as he sensed the change come over his patient, but when he looked across at Kelson there was only wonder—not the fear the king had come so often to expect in the past few years. After a few seconds, Dhugal returned to his task, working more quickly now, a faint smile playing across his lips.
    â€œYou have, indeed, learned a few things in four years, haven’t you, Sire?” he asked softly, when he had tied off the last of the internal sutures and cut the gut thread close to the knot.
    â€œYou didn’t use my title when we were boys, Dhugal, and I wish you wouldn’t in the future, at least in private,” Kelson murmured. “And I would have to say that you’ve learned a few things yourself.”
    Dhugal shrugged and began rethreading his needle with bright green silk. “You probably remember that I was always good with animals. Well, after Michael died and I had to come home from Court, one of the things they had me study was surgeoning—part of the training of a laird, they said: to be able to patch up one’s animals and men.”
    He flushed out the partially sutured wound again, pausing when Bertie moaned and stirred a little—and Kelson had to reach out with his mind once more—then dusted the raw flesh with a bluish grey powder and had Kelson press the lips of the wound together from either side. Carefully, meticulously, he began drawing them together with neat, green silk stitches.
    â€œIs it true that Duke Alaric healed himself at your coronation?” Dhugal asked after a moment, not looking up from his work.
    Kelson raised one eyebrow, wondering why Dhugal was asking.
    â€œIs that one of the stories that’s come west?”
    â€œAnd others—aye.”
    â€œWell, it’s true,” Kelson said, a little defensively. “Father Duncan helped him. I didn’t see it happen, but I saw the result—and I did see him heal Duncan later on: a wound that should have killed anyone else.”
    â€œYou actually saw this?” Dhugal asked, pausing to stare at Kelson.
    Kelson shivered a little, and had to look away from the blood on his own hands to shake the memory.
    â€œThey took a terrible chance,” he whispered. “We needed to convince Warin de Grey that Deryni weren’t necessarily evil. Warin claims that his own healing comes from God, so Duncan decided to show him that Deryni can heal, too. He let Warin wound him in the shoulder, but it was almost too severe. I hate to think of what would have happened, if it hadn’t worked.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘if it hadn’t worked?’” Dhugal asked softly, his needle half-forgotten in his fingers. “I thought you said he and Morgan could heal.”
    â€œThey can,” Kelson replied, “only they don’t really know how they do it, and the gift isn’t always reliable. Maybe that’s because they’re only half-Deryni. From Father Duncan’s research, we now believe that some Deryni were able to do such things on a regular basis during the Interregnum, but the art apparently has been lost since.