The King’s Justice

by Katherine Kurtz

“I need to know where Caitrin’s gone to ground. This war isn’t over until she’s taken, you know.”

  “Ah, weel, if that’s all,” Ewan said, a sly grin splitting his bristling red beard as Kelson turned to stare. “Take ’em to Laas, an’ try ’em there. That’s where she is.”

  “Caitrin?”

  “Aye. An’ Judhael an’ what little remains of the rest o’ the rebellion as well—yer bishops, too, Cardiel.”

  “But, how did you find out?”

  Ewan made a snorting sound through his nose. “D’ye think only Deryni can make prisoners talk, lad, or that Loris an’ Gorony are th’ only ones we took?”

  “No, but—”

  “Believe me, Caitrin an’ the rest’re in Laas. I wouldna’ tell ye if I wasna’ sure.”

  “We’ll want to leave first thing in the morning, then,” Kelson said, starting to get up again.

  “Nay, Sire, we’ll rest th’ army tomorrow, an’ ride for Laas the day after.”

  “But, she could get away—”

  Ewan shook his head. “She willna’ flee,” he said. “She willna’ even fight, if ye handle her the way ye handled Sicard.”

  “You mean, shoot her?” Cardiel asked, shocked.

  “Nah. What has she t’ fight for, wi’ her bairns all gone, an’ her husband slain? Mark me, Sire. She’ll na’ fight. An’ yer army needs rest. An’ its king need his rest, too.”

  “There’re still things to be done,” Kelson said stubbornly, beginning to buckle the front of his brigandine again. “I need to get reports off to Rhemuth, and—”

  “And on the other side of that curtain,” Cardiel said firmly, “are men who you will not be able to help if you tire yourself out doing things others could do, Sire.”

  Kelson’s eyes flew to the curtain, as if he could pierce it with eyes alone. He nodded. “Duncan.”

  “And Alaric and Dhugal,” Cardiel added.

  “But—they’re not injured.”

  “No. In a few hours, however, when the worst of the Deryni drug has passed from Duncan’s system, I believe Alaric means to try a more—satisfactory healing. He—seemed concerned that he have support from you and Dhugal when he attempts it. He won’t be able to count on that from you, if you’ve pushed yourself too far. You already collapsed once from the heat and overexertion.”

  Sighing, Kelson let his hands fall away from the buckles and bowed his head, suddenly feeling very tired.

  “You’re right. Both of you are right. I’ve been pushing myself so hard, for so long, it’s sometimes difficult to realize there’s a time to rest, too.”

  “That’s my braw lad,” Ewan muttered approvingly, detaching the plaid from his shoulders and shaking it out to lay under Kelson. “Dinna’ ye worry about a thing.”

  “Make sure a report gets off to Nigel, though,” Kelson said around a yawn.

  Ewan only nodded patiently as Kelson laid back on the plaid, Cardiel tucking a folded corner tenderly under his head.

  “I do have one last question, Sire,” Cardiel murmured, glancing meaningfully at Ewan as Kelson closed his eyes and the old border chief leaned nearer. “Is it true that Dhugal is really Duncan’s son?”

  Kelson barely had the energy to open his eyes and look at the archbishop.

  “Who said he was?”

  “Dhugal did, Sire,” Ewan said. “Everyone’s talkin’ about it. He said he was Deryni, an’ that Duncan was his father.”

  Smiling, Kelson closed his eyes again and sighed.

  “It’s true, Ewan,” he breathed. “And it couldn’t please me more that it’s finally out in the open.”

  “It pleases you that your foster brother is a bastard?” Cardiel gasped.

  “He isn’t a bastard,” Kelson said around another yawn, “though damned if I know how we’ll ever prove that to anyone else’s satisfaction. There was a secret marriage. His mother died soon after he was born, and Duncan didn’t even know there’d been a child until a few months ago. That was all long before his ordination, of course.”

  “Well, I’d realized that from the timing,” Cardiel said, indignation in his voice. “I wasn’t concerned for Duncan’s priestly status. But the implications for Dhugal—”

  “Tell you all about it in the morning, Thomas,” Kelson murmured. “Ewan, don’t forget that report for Nigel.…”

  He was asleep before Ewan’s reply could register, only vaguely aware of the buzz of their voices, as they continued to speculate about Dhugal, and gentle hands beginning to remove his armor as he slipped deep into dreamless, exhausted sleep.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

  —Proverbs 25:25

  One Deryni who could not yet allow himself the luxury of sleep was Bishop Denis Arilan, back in Rhemuth. Nor had he slept much the previous night. As Richenda and Nigel went out of the room, he settled back in his chair and closed his eyes, wearily running a spell to banish fatigue as one hand absently fingered the cross around his neck.

  He did not envy Richenda and Nigel their next task. Since breaking the Torenthi assassination plot the afternoon before, all three of them had taken turns interrogating the prisoners—though the Deryni among them, three in all, were kept apart in a specially warded cell until Nigel should decide what to do with them. The others even Arilan could interview with impunity, since their memories could then be blurred to keep his Deryni identity secret.

  It did not take long for a pattern to develop to the answers, though no one man had full details of the plot. But careful correlation of all the information gradually confirmed a convoluted scheme to kill Nigel (and as many of his three sons as might conveniently be arranged), rescue the captive King Liam, and then lie in wait for Kelson’s return, so they could kill him, too. Or perhaps it was to kill Nigel and young Liam and place Liam’s brother Ronal on the throne of both kingdoms, with his Uncle Mahael as regent. There were even hints that Morag had, indeed, known of the plot and approved it, in all its permutations.

  She would deny everything, of course. Richenda and Nigel were on their way now to confront her on the issue; but because she was Deryni, they would not dare to force her to the question. The notion that Morag might have condoned the murder of her own son was too monstrous for Arilan to give it very serious credence, but some lesser degree of participation in the plot was almost certain. Captive queens were ever wont to intrigue for their escape, and a Deryni queen would be more adept than most.

  Oh, why could the Torenthi question not have lain dormant for a few more years? With Wencit dead, young Alroy dead, and a child-king now on the Torenthi throne once more—and another child-heir in the wings—would it have been asking too much for the Council’s worries to be confined to Gwynedd for a change?

  Sighing, Arilan pressed his palms across both eyes and took a last deep breath to set his spell, feeling the fatigue wash out of his brain like indigo running from fresh-dyed cloth in a mountain stream, finally clear. He sighed again as he got slowly to his feet. The Council would be waiting.

  But as he headed for Duncan’s study, and the Portal there, passing the dim-lit household chapel on the way, he found a different Deryni queen than the one who had been most lately on his mind: Jehana, veiled head bent in prayer, her white raiment washed palest azure by the glow of the votive lights that burned before a statue of the Virgin close by the altar.

  Surprised, for the basilica was Jehana’s more usual place for devotions when she left her apartments, Arilan paused in the doorway and cast out cautiously with his mind—and recoiled as quickly, as he read the guilt and spiritual anguish radiating from her.

  The effort of shutting his shields to the disharmony set his head to throbbing just behind his eyes, all of it magnified because of too little sleep, undoing much of what he had accomplished with his fatigue-banishing spell. He considered simply moving on, pretending he had not seen her, for any delay would make him late for the Council meeting, but he knew he would regret i
t if he passed up this opportunity to find out more about her motivations of the day before. From what Nigel had told him, he had already deduced that she must have learned of the plot through some use of her powers, else the decision to tell Nigel of it would not have presented so anguished a proposition. He wondered how she had justified her action, if only at the time—for she obviously was regretting it now.

  So he made his shields nearly transparent as he moved quietly into the chapel, trusting that measure to keep him from being recognized as Deryni if she was, indeed, beginning to use her powers. He saw her tense as the rustle of his cassock intruded on her meditation, but he kept his eyes downcast as he approached to within a few feet of her and sank to his knees at a prie-dieu.

  He prayed for wisdom and patience as he bowed his head in a brief prayer of his own. When he looked up, she had just turned to glance at him furtively. She flinched as their eyes met; but his acknowledgment of the glance made it impossible for her not to acknowledge in return.

  “Good evening, daughter,” he murmured, rising gracefully to fold his hands benignly at his waist. “I had thought all the household would be abed by now—and you usually pray in the basilica. I hope I haven’t disturbed your devotions.”

  Her mind was as tightly shuttered as any Council Lord’s; but if the shields protected her from any would-be intrusion by him, they also protected him from closer scrutiny.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, so low he almost could not catch the words. “I can’t pray in the basilica anymore. It’s all a sham anyway. God will not listen. I am evil.”

  “Oh?” He cocked his head and looked at her more closely, certain now that her part in the previous day’s events had triggered this latest depression. “And why do you say that?”

  Smothering a little sob, she sat back on her heels, bloodless fingers partially masking her face.

  “Oh, God, don’t you mock me, too, Excellency,” she cried. “You cannot have forgotten what I am. And yesterday I—I—”

  “Yesterday, you saved the prince regent from a most terrible threat,” Arilan said smoothly. “I have just come from speaking with him. He is very grateful.”

  “Grateful that I discovered the plot by use of my cursed powers?” she replied. “Aye, that is like Nigel of late. He is too much among Deryni, and he cannot see the danger. What does he care if I endanger my immortal soul to save his mortal flesh? He is my husband’s brother, and I could not fail to warn him, once I knew, but—but—”

  “But you fear that to use the powers God has given you, even in a good cause, is somehow suspect,” he ventured.

  She looked up at him more directly, uncertainty and shock playing in her tear-bright green eyes.

  “How can you, a bishop, even suggest that God has anything to do with it?”

  He smiled gently and eased down to sit on the kneeler of the prie-dieu beside her, hands now folded carefully on his knees.

  “Allow me to ask a question in return, daughter,” he said. “If a man were granted extraordinary physical strength, and found his friend slipping over a precipice, and could save him by means of his strength, bodily dragging him back to safety, should he not do it?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “In fact, would he not be remiss if he did not do it?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Another example,” Arilan continued. “An innocent man is on trial for his life, accused by those who would do him ill. A king’s magistrate has been told of an eyewitness who can prove that the accused is innocent. But the informant is a tax collector—honest and diligent in the performance of his duty, but despised by men. Even so, should the magistrate not use the knowledge given him to produce the witness, arrive at the truth, and set the innocent man free?”

  “Do you mean to imply that the Deryni are honest and diligent?”

  “Some undoubtedly are. But it is only a parable, my lady.” Arilan smiled. “One more. If a woman learns of a plot against an innocent man, but has always believed the source of the knowledge to be wicked—if reliable—should she not, even so, give warning, and thereby save an innocent life?”

  “You’re making it sound so clear-cut, so logical. It isn’t the same!” she replied, tears welling in her eyes. “Bishop Arilan, you can’t know how I suffer with such knowledge—how I long to be the same as other mortals. How can I make you understand?”

  Still smiling, shaking his head in compassion, Arilan cast beyond the doorway with his powers to be sure of privacy and projected a glamour to repel idle intrusion.

  “Oh, believe me, I understand, child,” he said softly, letting his shields fall away and the silvery light of his aura begin to glow around him.

  She gaped at him, dumb with shock, as he cupped his hands before him and conjured handfire: cool, quicksilver light brimming in his hands and spilling in a sharp radiance that lit his face from below and cast his handsome features in light-limned relief.

  “A child’s trick,” he conceded, as he let the light contract and closed it in one hand, quenching its fire—though the nimbus around his head remained. “But it serves a purpose. It’s time you knew me for what I am—and that I view what I am as a blessing, an enhancement of my relationship with the Creator—not a detriment.”

  Bonelessly Jehana collapsed sideways to a sitting position, both hands pressed to the stones on either side of her, as if contact with the earth might help to ground her bewilderment and shock. Her colorless face seemed carved of alabaster as she stared up at him, appalled.

  “You’re Deryni, too.”

  “Yes. Nor, I think, is that a terrible thing to be.”

  Shaking her head, tears spilling from her lashes, Jehana glanced over her shoulder at the Virgin gazing down from her star-studded pedestal, carved hands outstretched in compassion.

  “I was taught otherwise,” she said dully. “I have believed it all my life.”

  “Does belief alter truth, then?” Arilan asked. “Or is truth a constant, whether we believe or not?”

  “You’re confusing me! You play with the words!”

  “I don’t mean to confuse—”

  “Yes, you do! You twist the words to mean what you want them to mean! You even use holy writ to—sweet Jesu, was it you who made Father Ambros change the lesson yesterday?”

  “What lesson?” Arilan asked blankly.

  “The reading for Mass,” she murmured, her eyes going a little glassy as she remembered back. “Ambros changed it. It should have been the Commemoration of Saints Peter and Paul, but he read Paul’s conversion—and Saint Camber …”

  “So, whether or not it actually happened,” Arilan told the Camberian Council a short while later, “Jehana believes that she had a vision of Saint Camber, and that he rebuked her for persecuting Deryni.”

  “Is that possible?” Laran asked.

  “That Camber rebuked her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. Saint Camber talks to Duncan McLain, and Morgan—and now Jehana, apparently. He doesn’t talk to me.”

  “Really, Denis,” Vivienne muttered.

  “Well, he doesn’t. He hasn’t, so far, at least. But Jehana insists that someone—and she was convinced it was I, once she knew what I was—someone somehow induced her chaplain to read the story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.”

  “Ah, how the guilty heart can embellish,” Sofiana murmured. “And Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? becomes Jehana, Jehana …”

  “Precisely,” Arilan agreed, as Tiercel slipped quietly through the doors to the Council chamber and took his seat to Sofiana’s right. “I can’t explain it. Maybe she did see Camber, though.”

  Kyri, cool and tranquil as a summer forest at Arilan’s left, fingered a green glass bangle on one wrist and glanced languidly at the tardy Tiercel.

  “Denis has just come from revealing himself to Jehana,” she said, disapproval edging her tone. “And now he would have us believe that the Deryni-hating queen has been grac
ed with a vision of Saint Camber.” She favored him with a droll, weary grimace. “You have missed little, Tiercel.”

  “Kyri!” old Vivienne murmured reprovingly, as Arilan bristled, Laran scowled, and Barrett de Laney looked decidedly uncomfortable.

  Kyri only yawned delicately and leaned her head against the high back of her chair, bored.

  “Is it not true?” she asked, gazing idly at the crystal sphere hanging above the table, sparkling and cool in the purpled moonlight that filtered through the faceted dome above. “Why must we continue to waste time and energy on Jehana?”

  The remark produced a flurry of comments, pro and con, which did not diminish until Barrett rapped on the table for silence.

  “Enough,” he said. “We shall table all further discussion of the queen for the nonce. And of Saint Camber. More pressing matters require our attention. Denis, how stands the Torenthi question?”

  Twisting the amethyst on his hand, Arilan shrugged.

  “The prisoners have been questioned,” he said.

  “By?” Vivienne asked.

  “By Prince Nigel, with the assistance of Richenda and myself.”

  “Prince Nigel does Truth-Read, then?” Tiercel asked.

  Arilan nodded. “He does. Not as well as a Deryni, perhaps, but that could be as much from lack of practice as from lack of ability. He is yet new to what power he has been given. Time will temper him.”

  “What of the plot itself?” Laran ventured. “Is the Lady Morag involved, as we suspected?”

  Again Arilan shrugged. “Difficult to say. It seems most unlikely that she could not have known what her brother-in-law planned. Still, if she continues to deny—as I would deny, were I in her place—it will be impossible to call the question without a dangerous confrontation. I think neither Morag nor Nigel is ready to take that risk. Morag’s sons are young, after all—younger than Kelson. Time is somewhat on her side.”

  “I see,” old Vivienne murmured, her grey head cocked in an attitude of speculation. “You do not believe a Torenthi campaign will be necessary for a while, then?”

  “Not this season,” Arilan replied. “And perhaps not for several years, though Morag and Liam must be close-guarded, and Mahael will undoubtedly conduct border skirmishes from time to time. We shall have no immediate war on two fronts, if that is what concerns you.”