King Kelson's Bride

by Katherine Kurtz

  “Or you?” Morag countered. “With Mahael dead, you are now heir presumptive after Ronal Rurik, until he should produce an heir. Mahael killed my first son—and who knows whether you had a hand in that? You’re now proposing that I countenance the killing of my second son. What is to prevent the killing of the third as well?”

  “Then, take the crown yourself,” Teymuraz whispered, resting both hands on the table to lean closer to her, “and breed more sons. You could be a formidable queen—and empress, if you chose. No woman may rule Torenth, but by Festillic House law, a woman could rule Gwynedd—and then she could conquer Torenth. Even now, you are titular Queen of Gwynedd, if only you will reach out and take it! In fact, you and I could rule an empire uniting all the Eleven Kingdoms of old!”

  “You’re mad!” she stated flatly. “Why am I even listening to you? Do you really think that I could harm my sons, or allow you to do so? And for what? To rule beside you?” She drew herself up proudly. “My son rules, Teymuraz, and his sons will follow him. And if not this son, I have another—and he shall have sons!”

  “And meanwhile,” Teymuraz purred, “the Haldane and my treasonous little brother will overcome them both, by kind words and insidious alien ideas and treacherous half-truths, and Torenth will be changed forever! Do you not see that they must be stopped?”

  “You are mad,” she whispered, real fear stirring in her breast, fatally aware, between one heartbeat and the next, that she had greatly underestimated him; that, very likely, she would not be granted time enough to throw magic between them before he killed her.

  She bolted anyway, in a sudden shimmer of tiny golden bells at throat and ears—for the door, for the Portal—for anywhere that would take her from this viperous presence. But he was moving even as she moved, overturning the table in a deluge of shattering glass to catch her by one wrist and wrench her around like a drover cracking a whip, seizing her head between his hands and giving it a sharp twist.

  The sound of her own neck snapping was the last thing she heard. But the last thing she felt was the brutal thrust of his mind into hers, ripping it asunder—a searing conflagration that scoured into the depths of sanity in a long-drawn agony that went on . . . and on . . . and on. . . .

  He revelled in his moment of triumph. With her head lolling bonelessly on her broken neck like a broken doll, light and life fading from the startled, staring eyes, he held her limp body tenderly to his own, as a lover holds his beloved, one hand clasped behind her back and the other thrust into her hair as focus for his rending while he ruthlessly tore from her every vestige of what had made her what she was, regretting that she had driven him to do what he had done—for she had been a handsome and spirited woman.

  But the power was sweet, and the knowledge sweeter still—secrets he had not dreamed she possessed, keys to greatly further his ambitions.

  “You should have joined with me, brother’s wife,” he whispered, when it was done, finally letting her down beside the stain of wine spreading upon the priceless Bhuttari carpet. “I fear you shall not live to regret that decision.”

  Crouching there beside her lifeless body, he gently shifted her head to an angle of mere repose, then covered her face with her veil of royal purple. Only then did he take from her hand the heavy iron ring—Wencit’s ring; he remembered it well. He had long wondered what became of it.

  He closed it briefly in his hand, smiling, then rose and went to a locked cupboard secreted behind a tapestry of rich Vezairi work, broken glass crunching beneath his boots. Both the lock and less ordinary safeguards yielded at once to his touch, and he breathed a silent whistle under his breath as he ran a hand down the stack of bound volumes.

  “So, brother’s wife, this is what became of Wencit’s notes. And all these years, you kept them from me. . . .”

  Pulling the books from their safe place, he cradled them possessively to his chest and carried them to the Portal square, casting a final look at the sprawled, purple-clad form lying beside the overturned table.

  “Greet my brothers for me in hell, dearest Morag,” he said aloud. “And say that I shall send the other one to join them, as soon as I may.”

  The body was not discovered until the morning, when Morag’s servants came to draw her bath and bring a light repast. Their screams brought guards, who summoned other guards and sealed off the room. Mátyás was there within a quarter-hour, summoned from Beldour; Liam-Lajos soon after, closely accompanied by four bodyguards with drawn scimitars, sent by his uncle to fetch him.

  “Who has done this thing?” Liam whispered, from the open doorway of his mother’s apartment. The vizier and two of his officers were crouched beside the sprawled body of his mother while a fourth man, robed all in white, probed for evidence of the violence done to her mind, his slender hands set lightly along her temples. From farther across the room, Mátyás looked up from examining the Portal square, rising to come to Liam and draw him into the room, bidding the guards stay outside as he drew the door shut.

  “It was Teymuraz, without a doubt, my prince,” he said softly. “I have taken steps to ensure that he cannot return the same way, but he does have access to a Portal now, I know not where. I have already sent Janos Sokrat and Amaury Makróry to ward such others as are most strategic, beginning with your own in the royal apartments.”

  “I passed them on the way here,” Liam said, nodding numbly, grief like a grey veil upon his face as he turned to look back at his mother. “Did she suffer?”

  “Not physically,” Mátyás replied. “Her neck was snapped. The end would have come very quickly.”

  “But he mind-ripped her, didn’t he?” Liam said through tight jaws.

  “I fear he did,” Mátyás admitted. “I cannot lie to you.”

  “Nor would I wish it.” Liam drew a deep breath and let it out. “You must tell Bishop Arilan what has happened—and Lord Azim—and they must inform King Kelson. If Teymuraz would kill his own kin, God knows what else he might do. I now do not doubt that he played some part in my brother’s death; I feared it before, but I did not really think he could have done it—though that was before Mahael’s treachery.”

  He glanced around the room, trying to think what Kelson would do—or Duke Nigel—trying not to think about who lay there amid the shards of a shattered life. “Was anything else disturbed? Can you tell yet whether anything is missing?”

  “Among a woman’s trinkets, who can say?” Mátyás replied. “These were her very private quarters. A wall-safe stands open, there behind the tapestry, but we do not know yet what it contained. All the servants will be questioned. I have sought already for traces in the Portal, as to where he might have gone, but without success. Beyond that, I confess I know not what else to do.”

  Nodding numbly, Liam walked over to the trellised window and gazed out through the brass grillwork, resting his hands at head level on the wooden frame that held the screen in place. After a moment, with a glance at the white-robed mage still working on Morag’s body, Mátyás came quietly to join him, slipping an arm close around his shoulders but saying nothing.

  “Tell me, Uncle,” the young king whispered after a moment, “is a land worth saving, when it can spawn such as killed my mother this way?—and from the bosom of our own family. Perhaps I was too long in Gwynedd, but we of Torenth seem a murderous lot. The pages of our history are filled with regicides and fratricides and patricides and other kin killing kin. And I am expected to rule such men, when I cannot restrain my own House!”

  A stifled sob rose in his throat, his loss welling up, and his hands slid down from the window frame to cover his averted face, shoulders shuddering in silent grieving—all at once, not the puissant sovereign of a powerful and ancient kingdom, but a fourteen-year-old boy mourning the loss of his mother. Containing his own sorrow, offering what comfort he could, Mátyás let his shields enfold the pair of them and drew his nephew gently away from the glaring light of the window, his body shielding the boy from the covert glances of the vizier�
��s men as they moved into the sheltering privacy of the next room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

  Proverbs 5:5

  Kelson received the news of Morag’s murder toward midday, as he prepared to ride down to the cathedral with Dhugal and Morgan and Derry. The latter was particularly pleased to be included in the king’s company, and well content to be back in Rhemuth, for he had not much liked the idea of going into Torenth with Morgan—or the manner of returning from there!—and facing up to the fears residual from his long-ago experience at the hands of a Torenthi king.

  Happily, nothing had happened to frighten him unduly. And he had gone as Morgan’s aide—a duty he greatly enjoyed under normal circumstances, and for which he had first entered Morgan’s service as a green young knight, on the very day of his dubbing by Kelson’s father—for it was not often that he was free to resume that early role as aide and boon companion. He had enjoyed the part of the Torenthi venture that involved serving Morgan, as he was enjoying these past days spent in Rhemuth, often at Morgan’s side.

  As he helped the groom hold Morgan’s horse for him to mount, it came to him that he would have preferred a less pastoral existence than the one his life gradually had become. For some years, duties of a more responsible nature than an aide’s—and far less fun!—had kept him based at Coroth, Morgan’s capital, there to assist in the smooth running of his lord’s household during his frequent and often prolonged absences from Corwyn in the service of King Kelson. In the early months of Morgan’s marriage to the Lady Richenda, Derry and a few trusted officers of Morgan’s staff had provided sympathetic companionship and support for their lord’s new duchess—Deryni, and the widow of a traitor, and mother of a possible rival for her affections among later children she hopefully would bear for Morgan—and very, very much alone. Derry soon had taken on a role of a surrogate younger brother for the lonely Richenda, and had quickly become “Uncle Séandry” to her young son, and to her children by Morgan, as these began to come along. By no word or action had Morgan or anyone else attached any blame to Derry for what he had been forced to do seven years before, under the compulsions of Wencit of Torenth. Nor had anyone around him any inkling that those compulsions had been renewed, and again sunk into abeyance, at the death of Morag of Torenth.

  Derry was swinging up on his own horse, the king and his two dukes already mounted, preparing to move out, when Father Nivard came dashing down the great hall steps with the first stark details.

  “There’s been murder done in Torenthály!” he said, puffing to a halt as he caught himself on Kelson’s stirrup.

  “Not—”

  “No, not Liam or Mátyás,” Nivard assured him, as the others kneed their horses closer. “Morag.”

  “Morag?!” Kelson repeated, stunned.

  “I have no details,” Nivard said, gulping for breath. “Thank God I caught you. Bishop Arilan and Prince Azim are waiting in the library.”

  They bailed off their horses and went at once, Kelson sending Derry to summon Nigel as well. In the library’s annex, close by the Portal by which he and Arilan had come, Azim quickly began a stark recital of the facts as then were known. He had hardly begun when Nigel arrived, though Derry remained with Father Nivard in the outer library, being reluctant to pass through the Veil again.

  “Certain it is that Teymuraz performed the deed, but his motive is uncertain,” Azim finally said, by way of summary. “It may have been vengeance, it may have been an instant’s decision. There is evidence of a sudden and violent struggle. He must have shaken her as a terrier shakes a rat, for her neck was snapped like a twig. But that manner of death is also one of the surer ways to facilitate a mind-rip.”

  Kelson exhaled forcefully, feeling a little queasy, trying not to imagine Morag’s final moments. Mind-ripping itself was a thing difficult to do and more difficult to justify. Most often, it occurred as an accidental side effect of too much power wielded with too little control and too little knowledge. Occasionally, it happened in the course of other necessity, as when Liam had ripped the mind of Mahael while taking back his purloined power, but deliberate mind-ripping was an obscenity abhorred by all Deryni of any scruples.

  “In practical terms,” Kelson asked Azim, with a sidelong glance at his companions, “what are the implications, if Teymuraz succeeded in taking on the full accumulation of Morag’s knowledge? I know it’s possible to extract specific information, even from an unwilling source, if one knows what one is looking for. It’s my understanding that Wencit himself trained his sister—and while I know it isn’t customary for women to receive the same training as men, I can tell you, from firsthand experience, that she was very, very strong. Does this mean that Teymuraz now has access to whatever Wencit taught her?”

  “I cannot answer that,” Azim said. “With intent and preparation, it is possible, in theory, to distill and integrate the flow of memory and knowledge as it is drawn. On a very small scale, this can be done without harm to the subject or to the one who seeks such knowledge; we do it every time we probe another mind. I have even heard it said that the ancients had the ability to tap the memories and knowledge of a dying mage and draw from him the essence of what should be preserved and passed on to succeeding generations.”

  All of them were gazing at the desert prince in wonder.

  “Mind-ripping, whether planned or incidental to some other intent, does not allow the leisure for such sifting and distilling,” Azim went on. “By its very nature, it is a very sudden and violent act. Hence, Teymuraz will also have obtained a great deal that is worthless, along with what he sought. An individual’s everyday thoughts and memories are of little interest to anyone else besides that person, even one such as Morag.

  “Accordingly, he now will need to spend the time to sift and refine away the dross, before he can make much use of what he has stolen. Not to do so is to court madness, if he too long delays. I do not think he will be so brash as simply to run amok, without some plan. He has gone too far, risked too much. He could bide his time for a decade, even two, and still be in his prime. He will not throw that all away.”

  “You’re saying we have time, then?” Arilan asked.

  Azim inclined his head. “With luck, I think it likely—though there are no guarantees. A great deal depends upon the strength of the assistance he can rally. Mátyás is aware of some of those who might aid him—both the political supporters and those who might assist him in the magical work he must do—but we dare assume nothing.

  “Meanwhile—and this much is certain—he will have gained access to a Portal; my Order has already begun to make inquiries regarding the many sites known to us—some of them perhaps known to Teymuraz. It is now more than a week since he sailed from Saint-Sasile, so he could have made landfall almost anywhere; but there are few Portals in Gwynedd or the far West, and few likely to be known to him. This means it is probable he has sailed south and west, perhaps around the horn of Bremagne, until he reached a friendly port he knew and could make his way to a Portal.”

  Kelson’s heart sank, thinking of the many miles of coastline stretching southward along the Southern Sea. Finding Teymuraz now seemed even more impossible than he had first believed.

  “What next, then?” he asked. “How much at risk is Liam? And how is he holding up? He’s just lost his mother.”

  “He is a Furstán, and has faced far worse, in his young life,” Azim replied, though not without compassion. “But Mátyás is at his side, as are other good men, and as I shall be. He is no longer your concern. You are no longer his lord.”

  “I shall always be his friend, Azim,” Kelson answered. “I care very much what happens to him, and to Mátyás, and to their people.”

  Azim inclined his head in an eloquently Eastern gesture of assent. “I have never doubted that, my prince. But you must allow him to stand or fall on his own merits, assisted by his own people—the cause for which every true king will
lay down his life, if need be. If he cannot do that, Torenth shall never truly be his land.”

  Kelson briefly averted his gaze, knowing Azim was right.

  “Please convey my sympathy on the death of his mother,” he said quietly, “and say that if ever there is any way I may render assistance, of whatever kind, he has only to ask.”

  “I believe he knows that, Sire.”

  “Just tell him.”

  “I shall do so,” Azim agreed.

  After Azim and Arilan had gone, Kelson and his companions likewise quit the library annex, though by means of the Veiled doorway rather than the Portal. After sharing with Derry and Father Nivard an abridged account of the implications of Morag’s murder, focused on his concern for the now motherless Liam and the impact, on Torenth, of her death, Kelson asked Nivard to offer Masses for Morag’s soul for the next three days. Out of deference for Derry’s uneasiness regarding things Deryni and their magic, he did not go into the details he knew Nivard would want to know; but he had already asked Dhugal to brief the priest later on—and to share the news with his father, for Duncan should be told as well.

  The news of Morag’s murder, coupled with the arrival of the Tralian wedding ship at Desse later that day, forced him to abandon his earlier plans to ride down to the cathedral—for that had been their intended destination. After closeting himself for the afternoon with his council, he was obliged to carry out hosting duties in the great hall that night, for the day of the great Mearan wedding fete was fast approaching, and guests were arriving daily.

  Nor was he able to get away the following day, for he must make his appearance at the first of Morag’s Masses in the morning, followed by attending to a host of dreary duties related to the upcoming festivities, for Saer de Traherne brought the baggage train up from Desse, with the Tralian bridal finery. He also brought back the detachment of Haldane lancers who had accompanied the king to Torenth—and Ivo Hepburn, Kelson’s other senior squire. Kelson did deputize Morgan to ride down with Richenda and Araxie, to advise Archbishop Bradene that he wished the Servants of Saint Camber to be housed at the basilica when they arrived, not the cathedral; and having done that, he bade them return by way of that basilica, to make direct arrangements there.