Kelson - The Bishop's Heir Part 1

THE BISHOP'S HEIR.

Kurtz, Katherine.

PROLOGUE.

And he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal for a cloak.

- Isaiah 59:17.

Edmund Loris, once the Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of All Gwynedd, stared out to sea through the salt-smeared windowpanes of his tower prison and allowed himself a thin smile. The rare display of self-indulgence did nothing to diminish the fury of the wind shrilling at the ill-fitted gla.s.s, but the letter secreted in the breviary under his arm gave its own grim comfort. The offer was princely, befitting even the exalted status he had enjoyed before his fall.

Exhaling softly of his long-h.o.a.rded bitterness, Loris bowed his head and s.h.i.+fted the book to hold it in both hands, wary lest the gesture seem to make it too precious in the eyes of his jailers, who could look in on him at any time. For two years now they had kept him here against his will. For two years his existence had been defined by the walls of this monastic cell and the token partic.i.p.ation permitted him in the life of the rest of the abbey: daily attendance at Ma.s.s and Vespers, always in the company of two silent and all-too-attentive monks, and access to a confessor once each month - seldom the same man twice, and never the same one any two months in succession. Were it not for one of the lay brothers who brought his meals, whose fondness for intrigue Loris had early discovered, he would have had no contact whatsoever with the outside world.

The outside world - how he longed for it again! The two years spent in Saint Iveagh's were but an extension of the outrage which had begun a full year before that, with the death of King Brion. On just such a chill November day as this had Brion Haldane met his doom - blasted from life by the h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.ned magic of a Deryni sorceress, but leaving an unexpected legacy of forbidden powers to his son and heir, the fourteen-year-old Kelson.

Nor had young Kelson hesitated to seize his unholy patrimony and use it to overturn almost everything Loris held sacred, not the least of which was the Church's stand against the use of magic in whatever form. And all of this had been done under the guise of his "Divine right" to rule and his sacred duty to protect his people - though how a king could justify consorting with the powers of evil to effect that protection was beyond Loris' comprehension. By the end of the following summer, with the help of the Deryni heretics Morgan and McLain, Kelson had even managed to turn most of Loris' fellow bishops against him. Only the ailing Corrigan had remained true - and his faithful heart had given out before he could be subjected to the humiliation Loris finally endured. The rebel bishops actually believed they had done a great kindness by allowing Loris to attend the travesty of a trial at which they stripped away his offices and banished him to a life of forced contemplation.

Bitter still, but heartened by the prospect of a chance to set things right, the former archbishop tapped the edge of his book lightly against his lips and thought about its secret contents - yet another communication from folk with similar cause to feel uneasy at what the new king had wrought. The wind whining in the roof slates of Saint Iveagh's sea-girt towers sang of the freedom of the open seas whence it came, bearing the tang of salt air and the cries of the wheeling gulls that circled the abbey during all but the darkest hours of night, and for the first time since his imprisonment, Loris allowed himself to hope that he, too, might soon be free. For many, many months, he had feared never to taste freedom again except in death.

Oh, he was not fool enough to think there would not be a price - but he could afford to promise anything, for now. With care and craft, he might play more than one side to his advantage, perhaps eventually becoming even more powerful than before his fall. Then he would make himself the instrument of G.o.d's retribution, driving the cursed Deryni from the land once and for all.

And the Deryni taint was in the very blood of the king - perhaps in all the Haldane line, not in Kelson alone. In the very beginning, Loris had thought Kelson's forbidden magic strictly the legacy of his Deryni mother - that poor, conscience-hounded lady who even now kept strict seclusion in another remote abbey, praying for the soul of her Deryni son as well as her own and devoting her life to penance for the evil she carried. She had confessed her guilt before them all, that solemn day of Kelson's coronation, prepared to sacrifice life and even soul to protect him from the sorceress who had already been responsible for his father's death.

But Queen Jehana, though she had the will, had not the power to fight Kelson's battle for him; and in the end, the young king had had to face the challenge with his own resources - prodigious resources, as it happened, easily equal to the challenge, but frightening in their implications. While granting that his mother's Deryni blood might have made its contribution. Kelson had publicly claimed sacred right as the source of his newfound abilities. Loris had feared otherwise, even at the time, for he remembered stories about the boy's father.

In fact, the more Loris thought on it - and he had had ample time for that in the last two years - the more convinced he became that Brion and hitherto unsuspected Deryni ancestors were as much to blame for Kelson's condition as Jehana. The full extent of the taint could only be guessed. Certainly both Brion and his father before him had harbored Deryni at court from time to time. The detested Morgan and McLain were but the most recent and blatant of many such - and the latter a priest all the while, hypocrite to the core - on both of whom Loris wished only the vilest of fates, for the two were largely responsible for his present situation.

As for Brion, who could deny that the late king once had faced and killed a Deryni sorcerer in single combat? Loris, then but a parish priest of rising prominence, had heard of the incident only at second and third hand, but even in the first throes of public jubilation at the king's victory, he had been chilled by the recurring suggestion that Brion's opponent, father to the woman eventually responsible for his death, had fallen not alone to Brion's sword but to strange powers wielded by the king himself. In the taverns for months afterward, haunted eyewitnesses with tongues loosened by ale whispered fearfully of magic worked upon the king by young Morgan before that fateful confrontation - the unleas.h.i.+ng of awesome forces which Brion said were benign, the royal legacy of his father - but even that admission cast grave suspicions on the king, so far as Loris was concerned. Though a man of honest if rigid religious conviction, he was not naive enough to concede that purity of intent and fervence of faith - or Divine favor to an anointed king - had been Brion's salvation, though he kept his misgivings to himself so long as Brion lived.

Now Loris knew that only power such as the Enemy himself wielded could have given Brion victory against such odds, and over such a foe. And if that power had been granted, or even merely released, by one of the accursed Deryni, then its source was clear: an evil legacy from years of dark alliance with that unholy race.

The double inheritance of evil from Brion and Jehana was doubly d.a.m.ning in their son. Kelson was beyond redemption, and must be eliminated.

Nor, by the same logic, were Brion's brother Nigel and his brood to be spared - for though uncontaminated by Jehana's blood, still they, like Kelson, traced their ancestry back through the generations of Haldane kings who had carried forward some other variant of Deryni curse from the time of the Restoration. The land must be freed of this evil, cleansed of the dark Deryni taint.

A new royal line must be raised to rule in Gwynedd - and what better source, and who with better legal claim, than the old royal line of Meara, human to the core, one of whose supporters even now offered a.s.sistance to Gwynedd's rightful Primate, if that Primate would support Mearan independence?

With a s.h.i.+ver, Loris slipped his breviary into the breast of his homespun woolen robe and drew his meager cloak around his shoulders - he, who had worn fine linen and silk and furs before being deprived of his office! Two years of the spa.r.s.e, simple fare of the Fratri Silentii had pared a handspan from an already trim waist and honed the hawk-like features to even sharper definition, but the hunger which gnawed at Loris now had nothing to do with physical appet.i.tes. As he laid one hand flat against the window gla.s.s, his eye was caught by the amethyst on his finger - sole reminder left him of his former rank - and he savored the words of the letter next to his heart.

Meara will bow no more to a Deryni king, the missive had said, echoing his own determination. If this plan meets with your approval, ask shriving of a monk named Jeroboam who shall come within the week to preach, and be guided by his advice. Until Laas....

Laas. The very name conjured images of ancient glories. It had been the capital of an independent Meara a hundred years before the first Haldanes came to Gwynedd. From Laas, sovereign Mearan princes had ruled as proudly as any Haldane, and over lands by no means less fair.

But Jolyon, the last Mearan prince, had sired only daughter? by the time he lay dying a century before, and the eldest, Roisian, was only twelve. To prevent the rending of his lands by avaricious guardians, regents, and suitors, Jolyon willed his coronet and the hand of Roisian to the strongest man he could find: Malcolm Haldane, newly crowned King of Gwynedd, a respected former adversary.

But Jolyon's final act found little favor with Meara's native sons; the prince had read his n.o.bles well. Before Malcolm could even bed his young bride, dissident Mearan knights abducted both of the queen's sisters and proclaimed the elder, Roisian's twin, Meara's sovereign princess. Malcolm put down the ensuing rebellion in less than a month, capturing and hanging several of the ringleaders, but he never did locate the stolen princesses - though he encountered their heirs many times in the years which followed. He moved Meara's territorial capital from Laas to the more central Ratharkin the following summer, both for greater ease of administration and to lessen the importance of Laas as a symbol of former Mearan sovereignty, but the ancient city remained, from time to time, a rallying point for cadet lines of the old royal house which waxed with each new generation and as swiftly waned whenever Haldane expeditions swept into the princ.i.p.ality to quash the beginnings of revolt - and execute pretenders. Malcolm and his son Donal were scrupulous about their periodic "Mearan housecleaning," as Donal called it, but King Brion had taken such action only once during his reign, shortly after the birth of his own son. The venture, while necessary, had been so personally distasteful that he had avoided even considering the need for a repeat campaign a generation later.

Now Brion's softness was likely to cost his son a throne. The current Mearan Pretender had no cause to love King Kelson, for she had lost a husband as well as a child the last time a Haldane flexed his strength in Meara. It was even rumored in Meara that an impa.s.sive Brion had watched the baby prince put to the sword - a lie promulgated by Mearan dissidents, though it was true that the child had died. Soon afterward, the self-styled Princess Caitrin of Meara, descendant of Queen Roisian's twin, took as husband and consort the ambitious younger brother of one of Gwynedd's earls and disappeared into the mountains to breed rebellion and more pretenders - until Brion's death brought them out of hiding. It was one of Caitrin's agents who had contacted Loris.

Sighing, Loris pressed his nose against the gla.s.s of his prison and watched an autumn squall-line crawl toward the sh.o.r.e from the northwest, well aware that many would regard what he was about to do as treason. He did not. It was a means to an end. If he had learned one thing in more than half a century of service to his faith, it was that the integrity of Holy Mother Church depended upon temporal dealings as well as spiritual ones. Higher loyalties than those binding him to any temporal lord bound him to his future course, for as bishop as well as priest he was duty-bound to root out evil and corruption. Inevitably, the source of that corruption lay in the devil's brood called the Deryni.

The Deryni must be eradicated - every last one of them. The time was past for leniency, for trying to save their souls. Though Loris' mind recoiled at the thought of raising hand against an anointed king - Kelson, whom he himself had crowned - the thought of not raising hand against a servant of darkness on the throne repelled him even more.

The boy had put on a bold charade, but blood would always run true, in the end. For the sake of every soul in Gwynedd, the Deryni heresy must be stamped out - and Edmund Loris would use whatever means he must to accomplish that end.

CHAPTER ONE.

He made him a lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance: to bind his princes at his pleasure.

- Psalms 105:21-22 The Bishop of Meara was dead. In more stable times, that fact might have elicited little more than academic interest on the part of Duke Alaric Morgan, for his duchy of Corwyn lay far on the other side of Gwynedd, well beyond the reach of any Mearan prelate's influence. Bishops there were whose pa.s.sing would have meant a personal loss to Morgan, but Carsten of Meara was not one of them.

This is not to say that Morgan had regarded Carsten as an enemy. On the contrary, even though the old bishop had been of a very different generation, bred in an age when fear of magic had made far greater men rabid in their intolerance of such as Corwyn's Deryni duke, Carsten had never succ.u.mbed to the open hostility displayed by some. When, on the premature accession of Kelson Haldane to the throne of Gwynedd, it had become increasingly clear that the young king was somehow heir to magical abilities which the Church had come to condemn as heretical over the years - powers that Kelson intended to use for the protection of his kingdom - Carsten had retired quietly to his episcopal holdings in Meara, rather than choose between his fanatically anti-Deryni archbishop and his more moderate brethren who supported the king despite the questionable status of his Deryni soul. The king's party had eventually prevailed, and the deposed Archbishop Loris languished even now in the secure Abbey of Saint Iveagh, high in the sea cliffs north of Carbury. Morgan himself thought the sentence far too lenient to balance the harm Loris had done human-Deryni relations by his venom, but it had been the recommendation of Loris' successor, the scholarly Bradene of Grecotha, and was actively supported by the majority of Gwynedd's other bishops.

No such majority prevailed in the consistory Morgan now watched in the chamber below, a.s.sembled in Culdi to elect old Carsten's successor. The unexpected vacancy in the See of Meara had touched off old, old controversies regarding its tenure. Mearan separatists had been agitating for a Mearan-born prelate for as long as Morgan could remember, and had been agitating in vain through the reigns of at least three Haldane kings. This was the first time that young Kelson had had to face the ongoing argument, but with the king less than a fortnight past his seventeenth birthday, it was not likely to be the last. Even now, he was addressing the a.s.sembled bishops in the chamber below, outlining the factors he wished them to consider in weighing the many candidates.

Suppressing a cough, Morgan s.h.i.+fted forward on the hard stone seat in the listening gallery and eased aside the heavy curtain to peer down. He could see only Kelson's back from this angle, stiff and formal in a long scarlet court robe, but Conall, Prince Nigel's eldest son and second in line to the throne after his father, was visible in profile to Kelson's right, looking very bored. The bishops themselves seemed attentive enough, but many of those watching from the tiered benches along the walls wore stormy faces. Morgan could identify several of the princ.i.p.al aspirants to the vacant Mearan See.

"We wish, therefore, to rea.s.sure you that the Crown will not interfere unduly in your election, my lords," the king was saying, "but we enjoin you to consider well the candidates who shall come under your examination in the coming days. The name of the individual eventually chosen matters little to us, personally, but the peace of Meara matters a great deal. That is why we have spent this past season progressing through our Mearan lands. We recognize that a bishop's princ.i.p.al function is to provide spiritual guidance - yet we would be naive in the extreme if we did not also acknowledge the temporal power wielded by the inc.u.mbent of any such office. All of you are well aware of the weight your opinions carry in our own secular deliberations."

He went on, but Morgan released the curtain with a bored sigh and folded his arms along the railing, allowing his attention to drift as he laid his head on his crossed forearms and closed his eyes.

They had gone over all of this before. Morgan had not been along on the royal progress, having business of his own in Corwyn, but he joined the king as soon as word arrived of old Carsten's death. His first night back in the royal entourage. Archbishop Cardiel had briefed him on the political ramifications and acceptable successors, while Kelson listened and Duncan occasionally added .his own observations. Duncan was down there now at Cardiel's side, poised and attentive in his clerical black - at thirty-one, young even to be serving as a bishop's secretary, much less an incipient bishop himself, though he had shown sufficient promise even a full five years ago to be appointed the then - Prince Kelson's chaplain and given the rank of Monsignor.

Not that Duncan would be Carsten's successor - though many might have feared that, had they known of his impending change of status. Fortunately, most did not. The bishops knew, of course. Cardiel had determined to make Duncan his a.s.sistant even before Carsten's death, and had spearheaded his election as one of the first items of business when the convocation convened a few days earlier.

But partially because Duncan's secular status already presented complications in the deliberations ahead, and partially because he wished to delay his formal consecration until the following Easter, no public announcement had yet been made. Duncan's very presence at the convocation, ostensibly as secretary for the proceedings, had been enough to raise eyebrows among the Mearan clergy and lay observers in attendance.

Nor did Mearan uneasiness spring from the fact that Duncan, like Morgan, was Deryni - though the Deryni question had certainly presented problems of its own in the beginning, and doubtless would continue to be a factor of varying importance. For nearly two centuries, no known Deryni had been permitted ordination to the priesthood. Discovery that Duncan was Deryni and had been so ordained had sparked a panicked flurry of ecclesiastical speculation as to how many other Deryni might have served in the clergy secretly, to the possible detriment of uncountable human souls to whom they might have ministered - and how many might be serving now? No one knew how virulent the infection might be, if Deryni consorted unbeknownst with decent Christian folk. The very thought had sent men like Edmund Loris into near-apoplectic fits on more than one occasion.

Fortunately, cooler logic than Loris' had eventually prevailed. Under the physical protection of a part-Deryni king, both Duncan and Morgan had managed to convince a majority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that they, at least, did not fit the image of evil for so long attributed to Deryni - for surely evil men would not have put themselves so thoroughly at risk to save their king and kingdom from another of their race.

But while Morgan could quickly return to a status not unlike that which he had enjoyed before the death of Brion - known and sometimes feared for what he was, but nonetheless grudgingly respected, if only for the threat of what he might do if provoked - Duncan's situation required more delicate handling. Once he and Morgan had made peace with the bishops, the Deryni priest had spent many agonizing weeks reconciling his own conscience on the matter of having accepted ordination to the priesthood when he knew it was forbidden to Deryni. He had resumed his priestly function only after Kelson's victory at Llyndruth Meadows.

In Duncan's favor, at least, was the fact that few outside the confines of consistory and court definitely knew he was Deryni; and whatever rumor and innuendo might be whispered beyond that circle of intimates, scrupulous avoidance of any public display of magic had enabled Duncan not to confirm anything. He was not known to be Deryni by most; he was only known to consort with them - Morgan and the king, in particular. Arilan, now the Bishop of Dha.s.sa, was Deryni too; but among the bishops only Cardiel knew that - as did a meager handful outside the episcopal ranks - for neither Arilan nor Duncan had had to reveal their powers against Wencit at the Llyndruth Meadows confrontation two years before. Morgan did not fully trust Arilan, but he was sure he and Cardiel were largely responsible for Duncan's cautious acceptance among the clergy.

Certainly, Duncan could not have been elected bishop without their support.

What gave the Mearans cause to distrust Duncan, then, had almost entirely to do with Duncan's secular status; for following his father's death without other heir, Duncan had a.s.sumed the ducal and county t.i.tles of Ca.s.san and Kierney - t.i.tles which had once belonged to Old Meara. To Mearan separatists, working to establish a powerbase for a Mearan restoration, a Ca.s.sani duke loyal to the crown of Gwynedd was merely a political annoyance across the northern border, to be worked around and watched, as Duncan's father had been watched for years; but if that duke was also a high-ranking priest, and Meara's only bishopric fell suddenly vacant, matters instantly became more complicated.

A Ca.s.sani royalist duke who also became Bishop of Meara would wield both spiritual and temporal authority over two vast areas.

Indeed, Duncan's election to any bishopric would be viewed with suspicion in Meara; for even if he himself had no aspirations in that direction, his politically motivated wishes could carry great weight in the selection of the man who was chosen to occupy the Mearan See. Monsignor The Duke of Ca.s.san represented a threat, then, for all that he seemed to be an innocuous-looking priest-secretary seated quietly beside the Archbishop of Rhemuth.

Smothering another cough, Morgan glanced down at the consistory chamber again - Kelson was winding up his speech - then allowed his gaze to drift lazily over his own form, reflecting on the effort which had gone into making his image less threatening in the past two years. Gone was the somber black attire which a younger, more arrogant Morgan had affected in those days as Brion's shadow and confidant. Cardiel had told him quite frankly that such affectations only tended to reinforce the sinister notions most people still entertained about Deryni.

"Why dress as the Adversary?" Cardiel demanded. "You've shown amply by your actions that you're a servant of Light, not Darkness. Why, with your pale hair and fair features, you could have come off my chapel ceiling: one of the Lord's messengers - maybe even blessed Michael himself!"

And Lord Rathold, his wardrober at Coroth, had badgered him no less mercilessly about his ducal image.

"You must think of your people. Your Grace!" Rathold had said stubbornly.

"You dress like a common soldier, when you have your way. No one wishes to think he serves an impoverished master - or to have others think it! 'Tis a matter of pride!"

And so, unless there was a need for stealth, the sable leathers had been put aside and replaced with color: a deep burgundy cloak at first, as a self-conscious concession to his rank as King's Champion - he could not bring himself to adopt the crimson Kelson favored - but worn over muted, conservative grey, with little embellishment. Deep blues followed, and eventually greens and golds and even particolors - the rich jewel-tones rather than bright shades. Eventually, he even learned to like them.

His body squire had chosen verdant hues for him today: a blue-green cloak collared and lined in silver fox drawn over a nubby wool robe in a slightly lighter shade, ankle-length and slit front and rear for riding. The borders and cuffs were stiff with dozens of his Corwyn gryphons worked in gold bullion, the throat clasped with a silver penannular brooch which had been his mother's.

He still wore a mail s.h.i.+rt beneath his finery, as he always had: fine, supple chain which would turn aside all but the most direct dagger thrust. But where once the metal would have gleamed openly at wrists and throat, boldly belligerent and just a little to ready for trouble, now it was hidden beneath an undertunic of rich, slubbed silk, with soft wool between the chain and his skin. The scabbard of the sword at his left hip was mounted with silver-set Ca.s.sani cairngorms the size of a man's thumbnail - Duncan's birthday gift to him two months before: civilized splendor, even if the blade the scabbard sheathed was as serviceable as ever.

A shorter blade was thrust into his right boot-top, the hilt never far from his gloved hand, and he still carried a narrow stiletto in a wrist-sheathed strapped along his left forearm, underneath the mail. Around his neck he wore the gilded captain-general's chain Kelson had given him at last year's Christmas Court, each link engraved with Haldane lions and Corwyn gryphons chasing one another's tails. The old Morgan would not have understood the joke.

He sighed and s.h.i.+fted, and the sound of the chain chiming against the stone railing brought him back to awareness of his surroundings. Kelson's voice in the chamber below had been replaced by another while Morgan day-dreamed, and a quick glance between the curtains confirmed that the speaker was Archbishop Bradene. Seconds before the door latch lifted, Morgan sensed the king approaching even as he quested outward with his mind. He was already rising to incline his head in a slight bow as Kelson stepped inside.

"Well, no sense trying to take you by surprise," the boy remarked with a rueful smile. "You always seem to know it is I. How did I do?"

Morgan shrugged and returned the smile.

"The part that I heard was fine, my prince. I must confess that my attention wandered, toward the end. We went over this so many times in Droghera."

"I know. I nearly bored myself as well." Kelson flashed a more wistful grin as he drifted over to peer through the curtains as Morgan had done. "Still, it had to be said."

"Aye."

As the king stood there poised and listening, Morgan was reminded once again how much had changed in the past three years. Kelson had grown more than a handspan since that day Morgan had come to help a grief-stricken boy of fourteen keep his throne. The boy was a man now - still not as tall as Morgan, but already taller than his father had been, if more slightly built. In other ways than size, he would also be a bigger man than Brion. Already he knew more of his magical heritage than Brion ever had, and more of the ways of people.

The eyes were the same, though - the grey Haldane eyes that could pierce all subterfuge and read a man's soul, even if the vigor of merely human potential were not enhanced by Haldane magic. The silky black hair was Brion's, too, though Kelson wore it far longer of late than his father ever had - short across his forehead, but almost brus.h.i.+ng his shoulders on the sides. A golden circlet chased with an interlace design bound the long part off his face, but the back was rumpled where it had caught the high-standing collar of his formal court robe.

Kelson raked the fingers of one hand through the snarls and glanced aside at Morgan with a mischievous grin as he let the curtains fall back into place.

"I've a mind to do something that I know will vex you," he said, beginning to shrug out of his heavy outer robe. "Would you be terribly cross if I went off and left you here for a few days to supervise the bishops?"

Adopting the bland expression as well as the stance of a valet, Morgan caught Kelson's robe before it could slip to the floor and laid it aside, gathering up the fur-lined cloak of scarlet that the king had worn earlier in the day.

"I shan't deny that listening to a pack of bishops argue is among my least favorite occupations - or that I should prefer you didn't go too far afield, this close to Meara," he said neutrally. "On the other hand, you generally have good reasons for the things you want to do. Where, specifically, did you plan to go?"

Still grinning, the king took off his circlet long enough to rub his forehead where the band had pressed, before turning to back into the cloak Morgan extended. In the process, one long strand of hair caught on the wire of the great ruby winking in his right earlobe, and he tossed his head to free it as he settled the circlet back on his head.

"Why, Morgan, you're beginning to sound like a true courtier," he said, adjusting the cloak on his shoulders and snapping the clasp as Morgan freed his hair from the sable collar. "I need to go to Trurill, though. I'd planned to include it in my progress this summer, but Carsten's death interrupted that, as you know.

It occurs to me that this might be my last chance to poke about before the rains start."

"Why Trurill, in particular?" Morgan asked. "Do you have reason to suspect trouble there?"

"No. But if Meara should go more sour than it already has, I'd like to be certain of my border barons. Brice of Trurill says he's loyal - all of them do, when I'm nearby and they're this far from Rhemuth - but in another few weeks, he'll be beyond my reach until the spring."

Morgan grimaced, personal distaste for the job Kelson was leaving him giving way to very real concern for the royal safety.

"Are you sure this isn't just an excuse to get out of an onerous job?" he murmured. "I hasten to remind you that the troops we brought from Rhemuth are not accustomed to the ways of the bordermen. Up here, they fight an entirely different kind of skirmish. If Brice isn't loyal - "

"If he isn't loyal, then I need to know," Kelson interrupted. "I'm taking Duncan's Jodrell as guide. He's familiar with the area." He paused to grin. "And of course it's an excuse to get out of an onerous job. You don't think I'd be fool enough to go into the borderlands without you if I really thought Brice was vacillating, do you? You taught me better than that."

"I should like to think so," Morgan returned, little rea.s.sured. "I just hope you're as good a judge of character as you think you are. I've met this Brice. He's a tricky devil."

"Tricky enough to lie to me and get away with it?"

"Probably not. But he might not tell all the truth, either. Half-truths can sometimes be more dangerous than outright lies - and Truth-Reading isn't much defense against that."

Kelson shrugged. "That's true. But I fancy I know enough to ask the right questions."

Morgan said nothing, but he was thinking that sometimes Kelson did now know quite as much as he thought he did. The boy was more experienced than many other young men of far more years, and mature for his age. G.o.d knew - he could not have survived the past three years if he were not - but he sometimes tended to take his newly gained maturity for granted and to overestimate what could be done. Age and further experience would compensate for that in time, but meanwhile, the king sometimes gave Morgan the odd, anxious moment.

Still, Morgan supposed that Kelson could not get into too much trouble this close to Culdi, and with the local barons aware that the king's champion was not far away and expecting a prompt return. In all ages, fledglings must be permitted to try their wings - even if the trying sometimes turned their mentors prematurely grey. Morgan was suddenly grateful that his hair was already light, so Kelson would never know the extent of the anxiety he caused.

"You aren't really worried, are you?" Kelson asked after a few seconds, when Morgan did not speak, apparently sensing the other's reservations.

"Nothing is going to happen. Ewan is dying to get away to the mountains for a few days - I think he dislikes being cooped up at court even more than you do - and I thought I'd take Conall along, as well. Maybe a little patrol work will teach him patience. It's a courtesy call, Alaric - that's all. I want to see how Brice operates when he isn't expecting me to see."

"Do as you wish, then," Morgan muttered. "You will, anyway. I don't know why I bother worrying."

Kelson grinned, a boyish quirk of a smile which was quite at odds with his regal attire and bearing.

"I think you do. I do, if you don't. And the day you stop worrying is the day I'll start." He touched Morgan lightly on the shoulder.

"Just keep our wayward bishops in line for me, Alaric. I'll be back in a few days."

By the following afternoon. Kelson was beginning to wonder whether he had truly gotten the better end of the bargain. He had expected the weather to hold for at least another week; but as he and his warband rode west along the river toward Trurill - a full two dozen knights and men-at-arms, in addition to squires and servants - the air grew increasingly still and oppressive. An annoying drizzle set in just before noon, dampening dispositions as well as armor and equipment. Conall, riding beside his royal cousin, spent nearly all of their brief meal-break complaining about the weather, but at least the more important grumbling of the men was mostly good-natured. The road was still good, the rain only settling the dust as they resumed travel. At midafternoon they entered an area of spa.r.s.e forest, where the drizzle subsided to a less irritating drip as it filtered through the trees.

They heard the sound of fighting long before they came upon it. The shrill whinnies of horses in distress warned them first, setting their own blooded warhorses to prancing and snorting with antic.i.p.ation. As shouts and the clash of steel began to reach them. Duke Ewan signalled a halt and sent two advance riders spurring on ahead to investigate. Kelson, who had been chatting with several of'his younger knights halfway back along the column, eased his mount forward at once, tugging distractedlyat a gauntlet cuff.

"Jodrell, were you expecting any activity along here?" the king called softly, as he drew rein beside their guide.

The young Kierney baron only shook his head, still poised in a listening att.i.tude. When the outriders did not return within a few minutes. Kelson silently signalled Saer de Traheme to begin stripping the waterproof cover off the Haldane battle standard.

"What are we waiting for, Ewan?" Conall fretted, standing in his stirrups to peer ahead into the forest gloom. "If there's trouble, we should try to stop it!"

Old Ewan, sitting his horse ahead of the two Haldanes and at right angles to them, squeezed his eyes to calculating slits as he glanced in their direction, armored hand already fingering his sword hilt. His bushy red beard protruded beneath his helmet quite without discipline of razor or scissors.