Arilan, though more inclined to Sofiana’s reasoning than to anyone else’s, stopped his impatient turning of his bishop’s ring and furrowed his brow.
“Take care, Sofiana, or soon you will be asking us to believe that everyone is Deryni.”
Sofiana smiled and leaned back in her chair, silvery earrings chiming melodically as she shook her head.
“Never that, my friend, though it would certainly solve many problems—and doubtless create other worse ones,” she added, at Vivienne’s look of horror, “Consider, too, that the Haldane potential could be just such an obscure facet of our Deryniness as Morgan and McLain’s ‘rogue’ healing talent, both gifts requiring special training and handling, and both sometimes arising spontaneously.”
Arilan whistled low under his breath, and Laran glanced at Barrett in astonishment as the others buzzed among themselves. Privately, Arilan himself had examined that very possibility more than once, and felt certain he was not alone in that, but no one had ever dared to voice it in full Council. Laran, as a physician, and Barrett, whose sight might conceivably be restored if the healing gifts could be re-leashed, also would have given the subject ample consideration, Arilan felt sure.
“But, that, too, is a topic for another day,” Sofiana went on. “Our immediate concern, if I understand correctly, is that Kelson is about to act against our better judgment. Short of our physical intervention, however, I fear there is little we can do to prevent it, in this particular instance.”
“I believe you’ll receive no argument on that point,” Barrett said. “But your choice of words suggests some future remedy.”
“If we are bold enough to take it—yes. If, as we seem to agree, there is no question that Kelson is to be regarded as ‘of the blood,’ as Vivienne so quaintly put it, then I suggest that we have the means totally within our power to control him—and have had it for several years, in fact. Bring him into the Council.”
She ignored their gasps as she raised a hand toward the high-backed chair standing empty between Tiercel and Vivienne.
“Bring him into the Council and bind him by the same oaths that bind the rest of us. Or are you afraid of him?”
“Of course not!” Vivienne said indignantly.
“He is strong enough,” Sofiana countered. “He is mature far beyond his years.”
“He is untrained.”
“Then, let us take his training upon ourselves, and make sure he receives proper supervision.”
“He lacks other qualities.”
“Such as?”
“Do not push me, Sofiana, I warn you!”
“What qualities does he lack?” Sofiana persisted. “I am willing to be persuaded that he is not, indeed, ready, but you must give me a specific reason.”
“Very well.” Vivienne lifted her head in defiance. “He is not yet sufficiently ruthless.”
“He is not yet sufficiently ruthless,” Sofiana repeated. “I see. Then, would you rather have Morgan or McLain?”
“Are you mad?” Laran gasped, the first one bold enough to intervene in the exchange.
“It’s absolutely out of the question!” Kyri said, with an emphatic shake of her fiery mane.
“Then, elect some other Deryni willing to accept the responsibility,” Sofiana replied. “We operate at less than our full potential, with our number incomplete. How long must Stefan Coram’s seat sit vacant?”
“Better vacant than filled by one unready to wield its power,” Vivienne snapped.
Arilan watched and listened in some amusement as reaction continued to run its course around the table: Vivienne and Kyri continuing to challenge Sofiana over the very notion; Laran deeply disturbed; Tiercel excited but thoughtful, not saying anything for once; only Barrett unreadable, sitting still and solitary in his own mind between Arilan and Sofiana.
Nor was bringing Kelson into the Council a bad idea—someday. In the beginning, though the Council quickly agreed to acknowledge the king as full Deryni, no one even tried to argue that he was skilled or experienced enough. But in the three years since truly securing his throne, Kelson had learned many a hard lesson of kingship and of manhood. Arilan was in a unique position to report to them on that. In fact, it was Arilan who had first broached the subject of Kelson’s candidacy; Arilan who had continued to pursue the notion, albeit far more gently than Sofiana’s efforts of late; Arilan who, alone of all the seven of them, had ongoing contact with the king and knew, better than any, just how hard and disciplined—and powerful—the king was becoming. No Haldane king had ever sat on the Council before; but no Haldane had ever displayed Kelson’s abilities, either.
“I think we’ve talked around this subject long enough,” Arilan finally said, when most of the outrage had died down. “Even if we were disposed to admit the king today—and you all know my feeling on that matter—that is not the time, with war imminent and a disputed ritual of magic in the offing for tonight. Nor do I think anyone is seriously arguing that Morgan or Duncan are viable candidates at this time.”
“Well, thank heaven for that,” Vivienne muttered.
“Don’t worry, Vivienne,” Arilan replied. “I am the first to agree that both of them are still very much unknown quantities. Besides—” He allowed himself a bitter grimace. “—they still haven’t forgiven me for our apparent abandonment of them, once Kelson’s throne was secure.”
“Are you saying they mistrust you, then?” Tiercel asked.
Arilan waggled one hand in a yes-and-no gesture.
“‘Mistrust’ is perhaps too strong a term,” he allowed. “Let us simply say they’re cautious where I’m concerned—and who can blame them? They resent the fact that I won’t talk about the Council—and of course, I can’t tell them why I won’t.”
“Three years ago, you brought them here without permission,” Barrett said stiffly. “They already know too much about us.”
Arilan inclined his head. “I accept responsibility for that—though I still maintain I did the right thing, under the circumstances. I’ve observed the Council’s restrictions scrupulously since then, however.”
“And see that you continue to do so,” Vivienne muttered.
“Let us not stray from the subject again,” Barrett said quietly. “This is an old, old argument. Let us return to tonight. Denis, if you cannot prevent it, can you at least control it?”
Arilan allowed himself a curt nod. “To the point that any trained practitioner can control the course of the outward ritual—certainly. I can make sure that we’re properly warded, that the forms proper to any serious working of high magic are observed. But what happens on the inner levels is and remains in Kelson’s control.”
“What of Richenda?” Laran asked. “Will she be able to assist you? Kelson trusts her, I believe.”
“He does.” Arilan shifted his attention to Sofiana. “And we now know that Richenda is possessed of both power and training we had not guessed before, don’t we, Sofiana?”
Sofiana gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Do not blame me for that, Denis. Had anyone asked at the time, I could have told you.”
“But she’s your niece,” Kyri said. “You knew she was formally trained, yet you let her marry a half-breed.”
“Oh, Kyri, I did not let her do anything! Richenda is a grown woman, and Deryni, fully capable of making her own decisions. And as for being my niece—” She shrugged again, shifting to a more whimsical mood. “—I’m afraid I hardly know her. My sister and her husband decided that Richenda should marry outside our traditions and faith, when they chose her first husband. I did not agree, but I respected their decision. I saw little of the girl after she became Countess of Marley.”
“But, to marry Morgan—”
Sofiana’s dark eyes flashed ebon fire. “Are you trying to make me condemn him?” she retorted. “I will not. Because he has made Richenda happy and has taken my sister’s grandson as his own child, and has given her a daughter as well, I cannot be but kindly disposed toward him—and
curious, make no mistake. And though I have heard that his powers are formidable, if largely untrained, I have met him only once. Needless to say, he was both on his guard and on his best behavior.”
“Ah, then, you do not trust Morgan either,” Vivienne said.
“How does one define trust?” Sofiana countered. “I trust him to be a proper husband and father to my kin; I trust my niece’s sincerity when she tells me of his honor in all that he has done since she has known him. Beyond that, all else is hearsay. How could I trust him in the way that I trust all of you? We of the Council may often disagree, but we all have bared our souls to one another in our oath-takings. That is trust.”
Laran raised a silvered eyebrow. “Do you trust Kelson, then?” he asked. “Or you, Denis? Has the king bared his soul to you?”
“In the sense that Sofiana has just reminded us?” Arilan smiled. “Hardly that. He has come to me for confession on occasion, when Duncan McLain was not available, but that is another matter entirely. I believe, however, that his ultimate goals are the same as our own.”
“And what of Nigel?” Tiercel asked impatiently. “In case anyone has forgotten, Kelson is going to attempt to pass on a part of his power tonight.”
“Aye, we’ve not forgotten,” Arilan agreed. “And I know where your argument is headed, Tiercel. Fortunately, the notion that more than one Haldane might hold that full power at a time has not occurred to our headstrong young renegades. But if all of you would like something else to worry about, consider this: Kelson has decided to have young Dhugal MacArdry present tonight. Now, there’s a one for you. I don’t know where he got it, but he’s at least part Deryni as well; and just because he didn’t know that until a few months ago doesn’t mean he hasn’t been learning since then from Kelson, Morgan, and Duncan.”
Kyri made an expression of distaste, and Vivienne muttered something about “another half-breed.”
“And then there’s Jehana,” Arilan went on, ignoring both women. “When she returns to court.…”
All of them grew apprehensive at that, for the queen mother was of the same bloodline that had produced one Lewys ap Norfal—a Deryni of enormous ability and training who had defied the authority of the Council nearly a century before. Though Jehana knew nothing of that, and had spent a lifetime denying her Deryni blood, yet she had been able to flex long-unused potentials at Kelson’s coronation with sufficient strength to give serious pause to a highly trained sorceress who sought her son’s life.
Nor had she yet reconciled that act with her conscience, even after nearly three years in the seclusion of a cloister. Her imminent return to court presented but another unknown factor, for Jehana was still quite hostile to Deryni.
“She will have to be watched closely,” Barrett said.
Arilan nodded and sat back wearily in his chair, covering his eyes with his hand.
“I know that,” he whispered.
“And the king,” Vivienne joined in. “He must not be allowed to get the notion in his head that Nigel might keep his powers, once Kelson begets an heir of his own.”
“I know all of that,” Arilan replied.
But as the Council shifted its deliberations to other matters, Bishop Denis Arilan remained very much aware of the task laid upon him. He alone, of all the seven, must move regularly among the chaotic blending of uncertainties and try to maintain some sort of equilibrium.
CHAPTER ONE
With arrows and with bow shall one come thither.
—Isaiah 7:24
“Kelson,” Alaric Morgan said, as he and his king looked down on the bustling yard at Rhemuth Castle, “you’re becoming a hard, cruel man.” He ignored Kelson’s startled stare and continued blithely. “Half the ladies of this kingdom and several other realms are pining for you, yet you hardly give them a second glance.”
Across the sunlit courtyard, bright as finches in their spring silks and satins and sarcenets, nearly a score of young females ranging in age from twelve to thirty chattered and postured among themselves along an overlooking balcony—ostensibly come to observe and applaud the men honing martial skills in the yard below, but equally to see and be seen by Gwynedd’s handsome and eligible young king. Admiring glances aplenty there were for others of the keen young men drilling with sword and lance and bow, for practicality recognized that the chance of any single one of them winning the king’s favor was slim, but their wishful glances always darted back to him, nonetheless.
Self-consciously, Kelson spared them not only the glance Morgan had accused him of begrudging, but a strained smile and a nod of acknowledgment, eliciting excited twitterings and preening among his admirers. He gave Morgan a sour grimace as he turned back to his own survey of the yard, raising one leather-clad knee so that he could half sit on the wide stone balustrade of the landing.
“They’re not pining; they’re after a crown,” he said in a low voice.
“Aye, most certainly,” Morgan agreed. “And eventually you’re going to have to give it to one of them. Or if not one of these, then someone else like them. Kelson, I know you’re tired of hearing this, but you are going to have to marry.”
“I did marry,” Kelson muttered, pretending avid interest in a quarterstaff bout between two of Duke Ewan’s squires. “My bride didn’t live long enough to have the crown placed on her head.” He folded his arms over the somber black he wore. “I’m not ready to marry again, Alaric. Not until I’ve brought her murderers to justice.”
Morgan compressed his lips in a thin, hard line and recalled one such bringing to justice: the defiant Llewell of Meara standing with his back to the executioner on a bleak morning in February, wrists bound behind him, chin lifted proudly heavenward in stubborn assertion that his act had been justified. The Mearan prince had declined to make any statement after his sentence was pronounced, disdaining either assistance or the solace of a blindfold as he knelt on the snow-scoured scaffold. Only in that timeless instant before the headsman’s sword rendered final justice did his eyes dart to Kelson’s—accusing and defiant to the last.
“Why did he look at me that way?” the shaken king had whispered plaintively to Morgan, as soon as they were out of public view, “I didn’t kill her. He committed sacrilegious murder in front of several hundred witnesses—his own sister, for God’s sake! There was no question of his guilt. No other verdict was possible.”
Nor did ultimate guilt rest on Llewell alone. Equal responsibility must be shared by his parents, the pretender Caitrin and her traitor husband Sicard, now leading Meara in open rebellion against their lawful sovereign. Where Kelson’s great-grandfather had sought to unite the two lands peacefully by marriage with the eldest daughter of the last Mearan prince—a settlement never recognized by a large portion of the Mearan nobility, who held another daughter to be the rightful heiress—Kelson had attempted to reassert that union through marriage with a captive daughter of the current rival line: the fifteen-year-old princess Sidana.
Granted, Sidana had two brothers who might have disputed that succession. But Llewell, the younger, was already in custody by then, and the eventual neutralization of Caitrin, Sicard, and the remaining brother would have left Sidana sole heiress of the cadet house. Her and Kelson’s children could have claimed unquestionable right to both crowns, finally resolving the century-long dispute over the legitimate succession.
But Kelson had not reckoned on the vehemence of Llewell’s hatred for anything Haldane—or dreamed that the Mearan prince would slay his own sister on her wedding day rather than see her married to Meara’s mortal enemy.
Thus, of necessity, had Kelson’s marital solution to the Mearan question become a martial one—the campaign for which all Gwynedd now prepared. Llewell’s father and his remaining brother, Prince Ithel, were said to be raising an army in the Mearan heartland west of Gwynedd even now—and deriving dangerous support from Edmund Loris, former Archbishop of Valoret and Kelson’s bitter enemy, who lent religious zeal and anti-Deryni fanaticism to the already explosive
Mearan situation. And Loris, as once before, had lured a number of other bishops to his side, making of the coming conflict a religious as well as a civil question.
Signing, Morgan hooked his thumbs in his swordbelt and let his gaze wander back to the yard below, idly fixing on an archery match in progress between Prince Nigel’s three sons and young Dhugal MacArdry, the new Earl of Transha, since that seemed to have captured Kelson’s attention in preference to the watching ladies. Both Dhugal and Conall, the eldest of Nigel’s brood, were giving an impressive exhibition of marksmanship this morning, Dhugal’s the more remarkable, in Morgan’s eyes, because he shot left-handed—“corrie-fisted,” as they called it in the borders.
That Dhugal had managed to retain this idiosyncrasy was a source of recurrent amazement to Morgan—not because Dhugal was skilled, for Morgan had met skilled left-handers before, but because the young Earl of Transha had received a major part of his early schooling here in Rhemuth, some of it under Brion himself. And Brion, despite Morgan’s repeated objections to the contrary, had held that left-handed swordsmen and lancers wreaked havoc with conventional drills and training formations—which was true, as far as it went, but neglected to acknowledge that warriors in an actual combat situation, if accustomed to fighting only other right-handed opponents, often found themselves at a distinct disadvantage when faced with a left-handed enemy, whose moves were all backward from what was familiar and, therefore, predictable to some degree.
Brion had finally agreed that training should extend to both hands, in case injury forced shifting weapons in midbattle, but maintained until his death that left-handedness was to be strongly discouraged in his future knights. The trend persisted, even more than three years after Brion’s death. Far across the yard, Morgan could see Baron Jodrell putting some of the current crop of squires through a drill with sword and shield—none of the lads unfashionably corrie-fisted.
Not so Dhugal, of course. Though fostered to court as a page when only seven, even younger than most boys of his rank and station, he had been recalled to the borders before he was twelve, serving out his apprenticeship in an environment where survival, not style, was important. And survival demanded a far different fighting style than what Dhugal had learned at court. Border conditions dictated fast, highly mobile strike forces, lightly mounted and armored—not the more ponderous greathorses and armor of the lowland knight. Nor did anyone care which hand the future Chief of Clan MacArdry favored, as long as the job got done, whether meting out the justice of the sword with the patrols that policed the borders against reivers and cattle thieves, or practicing the skills of a battle surgeon afterward.
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