Childe Morgan

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The fair-haired woman who paused in the doorway to the royal crypt was the Lady Alyce, Deryni heiress to the Duchy of Corwyn and now the wife of Sir Kenneth Morgan, and mother of his son. Fondly she watched as the black-cloaked Queen of Gwynedd touched a wax spill to the torch set in a cresset on a side wall, then used the spill to light a votive candle shielded in red glass.

The child sleeping beneath the stone lid of the sepulcher on which she placed the votive light had been gone more than a year now, but Alyce knew that a day never passed when Richeldis of Gwynedd did not remember this, the second-born of her four sons, and mourn his loss. Blaine Emanuel Haldane had been only nine when he passed into the care of God’s holy angels.

Nor did it much matter now just how or why Prince Blaine had met his premature death, though his bravery had saved his younger sister from drowning. Gallant though his action had been, the chill he took that day had been the death of him hardly a week later, wheezing for breath and finally succumbing to the illness that gradually filled his lungs with fluid and finally choked out his life. Though the royal physicians had done their best to save him, the boy’s condition had been beyond their skill, either to cure him or even much to ease his suffering. Only recently had his mother begun to smile again, and to emerge from the profound depression she had suffered following the young prince’s death.

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