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with the cope her father had wrapped around him where he first fell—a princely vestment of ivory silk and rich embroidery work, stiff with bullion, fit for a king. In fact, it had been the gift of a king—Cinhil Haldane, for whom most of the suffering of the past decade and more had been endured.
    Now Cinhil was nearly a year dead himself, along with the others who had joined him since: Archbishop Jaffray, and Bishops Davet Nevan and Kai Descantor, and Jebediah—and Rhys. Evaine had not cried as they laid him away, but she cried now. She told herself that crying did no good, that she but squandered energy better hoarded for the living, but the tears still came, runneling silently down her cheeks to drip off her chin and splash on the list she had written, blurring the ink.
    The destruction brought her back to reason, though, for in the words she had written lay hope for at least one of the men she mourned.
    The Annales of Sullen , she read. The Protocols of Orin. The Liber Sancti Ruadan. Tomes by Leutiern and Jorevin of Cashel . And she knew that Camber himself had written commentaries on some of the texts. She even knew where some of them were.
    Wiping her tears on the edge of her sleeve, Evaine picked up her quill again and dipped it, making several more notations. When the tiny Jerusha stirred and began to fuss a little, demanding to be held, Evaine gathered her to her breast, continuing to tick off items on the list.
    All of the texts were likely sources of information. Copies of a few of the documents lay hidden beneath the flooring in the Portal at her and Rhys’ former manor house of Sheele, where she had left them for safe-keeping when she and Ansel fled with the children. Some of the rarer texts might be available through the Varnarite library at Grecotha—though gaining access to the library might be a problem, since the nephew of one of the regents was now Grecotha’s new bishop.
    Other clues perhaps lay in the ancient ruins underneath Grecotha itself. She had never been there personally, but Joram had. Perhaps the ancient Deryni who built and then abandoned the site had left information. The chamber where she now sat was their work—though she suspected that she and her family had hardly begun to plumb the depths of the secrets hidden just in this one place.
    One other consideration must come before even these, however—and that was one of the reasons she kept watch now in this chamber. The Healer Queron Kinevan was expected—an odd ally, he, for it had been Queron who pressed so earnestly and so effectively for Camber’s canonization, so many years before, to Joram’s enduring dismay. What irony that they now should be considering Queron for a rôle that would surely shatter his faith in the cause to which he had devoted this latter part of his life.
    Sighing, Evaine put her list aside and pushed her chair back from the table, laying little Jerusha in her lap, head on knees, and echoing the baby’s smile as she ran a gentle fingertip along the downy cheek.
    â€œHow are you, little darling?” she whispered to the child, slipping a hand under layers of blanket to check the diaper. “Shall Mummy feed you some more before the others come back? You seem to be dry enough.”
    But she had no more than started to pick the baby up again when she was nearly staggered by a wave of grief and shock—not her own, this time, but someone else’s.
    Queron , she confirmed, as she raised her eyes to the great crystal sphere suspended above the table, locking through it to the ripple that continued to reverberate through the link she had set. “And about time, too,” she breathed, shifting her focus to Call the others.
    Queron trembled near collapse on the Portal at Saint Mary’s. The knowledge imparted by the medal throbbing in his hand had staggered him, leaving him psychically as well as physically devastated. He had no idea how long he stood