In the meantime, she and Marie spent many an hour starting to settle into other aspects of life at Rhemuth: making the closer acquaintance of the children, exploring the castle's corridors, daring occasional forays into the royal library and scriptorium, and praying daily for Ahern's safe return. Later, they would look back on those days as a welcome interlude of ordinary contentment, temporary respite from the renewed sorrow to come.

«Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father».[15]

It was early December when the bodies of the slain came back to Rhemuth, with the first snows powdering the rooftops and gusting down off the plains north of the city. For those whose loved ones had resided at the capital, that essentially would be an end to it, as their families laid them to rest from the churches where they had worshipped in life. For Keryell, there still remained the final journey home, and for his son and heir, the uncertainty of his own future.

Duke Richard and Seisyll Arilan rode at the head of the cortege, and retired immediately with the king, to give him an update on the situation in Meara. Most of the Haldane lancers had remained in Ratharkin with Earl Jared, in case he needed assistance in the immediate aftermath of what had happened there, but with winter setting in, it was unlikely that any serious trouble would erupt again until the following summer. The Dukes of Cassan and Claibourne had returned to their lands with their troops, and remained on alert, but they, too, would be locked down against any serious campaign until the weather eased late in the spring.

For Alyce and Marie, the reunion with their brother was tearful but joyous. Young Ahern had survived the initial crisis of his wound, despite his insistence on being moved, and thus far had even kept his leg; but he was exhausted and in great pain by the time he arrived in Rhemuth with the baggage train that brought the bodies. To everyone's great relief, the surgeons now predicted that amputation probably could be avoided, but the shattered knee would heal stiff and unbending. That was better, by far, than losing the leg, but he was well aware that his injury probably had put paid to any career as a warrior or, indeed, for any other activity requiring great mobility. Whether he would even ride a horse again remained another question yet to be answered.

Fortunately, Ahern possessed a keen mind and varied interests, as had many an earl and duke before him, and had received a solid grounding in the administrative skills necessary to his rank — and owned the distinction of belonging to the only ducal family in which his Deryni bloodline was at least tolerated. He also possessed a precocious grasp of military strategy that had already brought him to the attention of both the king and Duke Richard — acumen that, once he was fully recovered, might still enable him to make useful contributions as a tactician.

But few could see much trace of that promise in the gaunt, white-faced youth strapped to the horse-litter that Master Donnard led into the castle yard that bleak December day, shivering with fever and with splinted leg aching and rattled from the journey overland from Meara. And though his sisters bore up bravely at the sight of the shrouded bundle that was their father's body, wrapped in the red and white banner of his arms and escorted by Sé Trelawney and Jovett Chandos, it was Ahern for whom they now wept, for he scarcely knew them as they came to shower him with relieved kisses, so racked was he by fever.

Torn between duty to the living and the dead, Alyce delegated Marie and Se to go with Master Donnard and the king's own physician to see their brother settled into quarters in the castle. Meanwhile, she and Jovett accompanied her father's body to the chapel royal, where Father Paschal and the royal chaplains would keep watch through the night.

But they remained there only long enough for the obligatory prayers proper on receiving a body at the church before retiring to Ahern's bedside. There she and Marie kept tearful company beside him until he slid at last into merciful sleep, eased past pain by the physician's medicines but also helped along, when he slept at last, by Alyce's Deryni touch. The two of them stayed beside him — praying, hoping — until Jessamy finally insisted that they go to bed.

The following day, the king and queen and all the court of Gwynedd attended the Mass offered by Father Paschal for the soul of Keryell Earl of Lendour — in the chapel royal rather than Rhemuth Cathedral or even the basilica within the walls of Rhemuth Castle, for Ahern was insistent that he be allowed to stand upright before his father's coffin, braced on crutches and supported by the two young knights who had brought him from Ratharkin. His sisters stood to either side, gowned and veiled in black, and managed not to shed a tear where anyone could see.

Prince Richard Duke of Carthmoor led the cortege that set out the following morning for the Lendouri capital of Cynfyn, where Earl Keryell would be laid to rest with his ancestors. In addition to an honor guard of Haldane lancers, King Donal had sent along half a dozen of his senior knights to remain in Cynfyn and assist its seneschal in setting up the council that would advise the new Earl Ahern until he came of age, still ten years hence. The late earl's chaplain, Father Paschal, was also in the party, along with the sisters of the new earl, several of the queen's ladies as chaperones, assorted domestic servants, and the two young knights who had accompanied Keryell from Ratharkin.

During the week-long journey across the great plain east of Rhemuth, the two girls took turns keeping Ahern company, one sharing the wagon where he lay with his splinted leg pillowed and stretched before him, the other riding elsewhere in the party. Alyce made a point of varying her position in the cavalcade, riding sometime with the other ladies or Father Paschal and sometimes even at Duke Richard's side, but Marie, more often than not, could be found beside Sir Sé Trelawney.

The weather turned colder as they traveled eastward from Rhemuth, with occasional sleety showers, but at least the snow held off. By following the southern bank of the River Molling, they managed to avoid the worst of the weather already sweeping down from the north. Though the temperature plummeted at night, and their horses crunched through a heavy rime of frost every morning, any serious snowfall held off until they were making their final ascent into the Lendour foothills.

They arrived at Castle Cynfyn but a fortnight before Christmas, under a soft curtain of gently falling snow. Entering the castle bailey through the outer gatehouse arch, the cortege passed upward along a narrow avenue lined with Lendouri archers drawn up as an honor guard to admit the late earl to his capital for the final time. Interspersed among them were many of his retainers from Coroth, come to pay their respects, for Keryell had also been principal regent for Corwyn after the death of his children's mother, Stevana de Corwyn.

Deinol Hartmann, their father's seneschal, was awaiting their arrival on the steps of the hall, along with the wife their father had taken some three years previously. Now twice a widow, the Dowager Countess Rosmerta stood icy and remote in her widow's weeds, at her side a grown daughter from her first marriage, effusive in her greeting of Duke Richard, the king's brother, but according her stepson only the barest of curtsies as Sir Deinol bent to kiss the boy's hand in affirmation of his new status. Alyce and Marie she acknowledged hardly at all.

Keryell Earl of Lendour lay that night before the altar of the church within the castle walls, guarded by his men. The evening meal in his hall that night was a joyless, strained affair, with the bachelor Duke Richard seated in the place of honor at the right hand of the widow, whose attempts to engage his interest were politely turned aside; he and his knights retired as soon as could be reckoned seemly.