In the King's Service

by Katherine Kurtz

  In the meantime, in the days until the stonemasons had finished their preparations, the coffined body would lie atop the table-like tomb-slab of another long-ago good servant of the Haldane Crown: Sir Ferrol Howard, slain with King Urien more than fifty years before at the Battle of Killingford. A tattered banner from that battle hung above Sir Ferrol’s tomb, honoring his sacrifice, and its edge trailed over the floral tributes now laid atop the polished oak of Sief’s coffin, after the pall was removed. Before leaving, Jessamy had offered lilies on behalf of her absent daughter, and a single red rose for the infant Krispin, who would never know the man whose name, but not blood, he bore.

  Afterward, up in the cathedral narthex, she and her daughters lingered briefly to receive condolences from a few of those who had come to pay their last respects—though not many showed such fortitude. While mere association with Deryni no longer carried quite the stigma it once had done, most deemed it prudent not to attract unwelcome scrutiny from those less tolerant of such associations. Archbishop William was known to be one such individual, though he had chosen not to offend the king by declining to celebrate Sief’s Requiem Mass; but even the power of a king might not be enough to protect those who fell into the archbishop’s active disfavor.

  Both king and archbishop were standing on the cathedral steps as Jessamy and her daughters emerged through the great west door, the queen and her ladies already heading down to the horses waiting in the square below. Maintaining a façade of meekness, Jessamy paid her respects to the archbishop and followed, the king trailing behind with several retainers when he, too, had taken his leave.

  THAT night, while Jessamy cradled her infant son and pondered his future—and hers—and the king likewise considered what might come of what he had done, two men of whom both of them had cause to be wary were making their way back to Rhemuth Cathedral. The pair’s mission required that neither of them be seen, so they came by way of the Portal in the cathedral’s sacristy.

  They arrived after the last of the night offices, when the monks of the cathedral chapter were likely not to be about again until Matins, several hours hence. The cathedral was deserted, as they had hoped it would be after the day’s obsequies. Racks of votive candles in the various side chapels spilled wavering patches of illumination across the cavernous darkness of the nave as Seisyll Arilan and Michon de Courcy made their way silently back to the mouth of the stairwell that led to the royal crypts. There, while Michon kept watch, Seisyll used his powers to shift the tumblers in the lock that secured the gate to the stair, stilling any sound it might have made as they swung it open far enough to slip through.

  Quickly they ghosted down the worn steps, their way now dimly lit by the faint violet glow of handfire that Seisyll conjured for that purpose. He kept it small, and shielded it with his hands as best he could, for brass grilles pierced the ceiling of the crypt to admit air and light from the nave above—and would also betray their presence, if anyone entered the nave and noticed light from below. But some light they must have to make their way among the tombs to where Sief’s coffin lay.

  Threading their way between the tombs of generations of dead Haldanes, they came at last to the side vault where Sief’s coffin awaited proper interment. Here were no ceiling grilles to betray them, but the scent of the wilting floral tributes was strong, and Seisyll found himself stifling a sneeze as he and Michon eased to either side of the coffin. He was already pulling a pry bar from his belt as Michon began moving the flowers to one side. They had known the coffin was sealed, so they had come prepared.

  You can put a damping spell on this, while I pry? Seisyll asked, as Michon laid his hands flat on the coffin’s polished top.

  Give me a moment, came Michon’s reply.

  The pale eyes closed. A slowly released breath triggered a working trance. Soon a faint, silvery shimmer began to crawl outward from Michon’s hands, gradually covering the lid of the coffin and then spilling down the sides. After another slow-drawn breath, Michon opened his eyes, moving his hands apart but still touching the coffin lid. At his nod, eyes vaguely unfocused, Seisyll applied his pry bar and began to work the nails out of the oak.

  There was no sound save Seisyll’s increasingly labored breathing as he prised each nail free. Michon collected them as they were removed, dreamily laying them beside the flowers on a nearby tomb-slab, keeping the muffling spell intact until the coffin lid moved under their hands.

  Together, he and Seisyll slid the lid partway toward the foot of the coffin, exposing the shrouded body nearly to the waist. The waxed linen of the cerecloth had molded itself to the dead man’s profile, and retained something of its outline as Michon reverently peeled it aside. A whiff of beginning corruption joined the stink of wilting flowers and the dank tomb-scent of the vault, and Seisyll drew back a little in distaste.

  You’re welcome to go first, he whispered in Michon’s mind.

  Michon merely gazed on the dead man’s face, obviously still deep in trance. In repose, Sief’s features were sunken and yellowed, bearing little resemblance to his appearance in life, but Michon’s touch to the dead man’s forehead was gentle. Again his pale eyes closed.

  For a long moment, only the gentle whisper of their breathing stirred the silence of the tomb—until a little gasp escaped Michon’s lips.

  “Jesu!” came his breathy exclamation, quickly stifled.

  What is it?

  Read with me on this, Seisyll, Michon ordered, shifting back into mindspeech. There isn’t a great deal left, but I’m not liking what little I’m seeing.

  Without comment, Seisyll put his repugnance aside and laid his fingertips beside Michon’s on the dead man’s forehead, extending his Deryni senses for a deep reading. His first impulse was to recoil, for Sief had been dead for several days, and physical decay had left little in the way of a matrix to hold his memories to any coherence. But he mastered his distaste and made himself delve deeper, following the pathways already broached by Michon’s probe—and began touching on fragments of memory that he liked no better than Michon had done.

  For images from the time of Sief’s death showed disturbing glimpses of Sief’s wife and her infant son—and the king’s presence, as well—and harsh words exchanged between the two men, though Seisyll could not pin down the sense of them.

  Far worse was to follow. Harsh words had quickly escalated beyond mere anger. The clash had never reached the point of a physical exchange, but the result was just as deadly—and unexpected. Little to Sief’s credit, he had started to lash out at the king with his magic—and was answered by Donal’s response in kind, summoning magical resources of a magnitude they had not dreamed him to possess.

  Very quickly the king’s reaction had pressed beyond any merely physical defense both to rip at Sief’s mind and close a psychic hand around his heart. Nor had the king relented, even as the damage went beyond the level of any possible repair, dragging Sief through an agony that was at once physical and psychic, down into unconsciousness and then beyond, into death, until the silver thread was stretched to the breaking point—and snapped.

  Seisyll was gasping as he surfaced from the probe, turning blank, unfocused eyes on Michon, reeling a little in backlash from what Sief had suffered.

  “That isn’t possible,” he whispered, lifting shaking hands to look at them distractedly—and shifting back to mindspeech. Donal did it? He has the ability to mind-rip one of our own number? A member of the Council?

  Apparently he does, Michon returned. Setting aside the question of How, the further question is, Why? The presence of Jessamy, and the fact that she apparently made no effort to interfere, suggests that she condoned the attack—or at least had cause to allow it.

  Shaking his head, he drew the cerecloth back over Sief’s face and began pulling the coffin lid back into place, Seisyll belatedly assisting him. The nails he drove back into place with his mind, silently, letting his anger and horror defuse with each one.

  “YOU’RE certain of what you saw?”
Dominy asked, stunned, when Michon had reported back to the Camberian Council later that night.

  “I am certain of what I saw,” Michon replied. “I am not necessarily certain of what it means.”

  Oisín Adair, their previously absent member, drummed calloused fingers on the ivory-inlaid table, blue eyes animated in the darkly handsome face. His eyes were a startling sapphire hue above a neatly trimmed beard and somewhat bushy moustache, the night-black hair drawn back neatly in the braided clout favored by Gwynedd’s mountain folk. By his attire, clad in oxblood riding leathers and with a whiff of the stable about him, he had come but lately from the back of a horse.

  “It would appear that the canny Donal Haldane has gained access to the powers anciently attributed to his Haldane forefathers,” he said quietly, the soft burr of the north softening his words. “Can none of you venture a reasonable surmise as to who might have helped him?”

  “The daughter of Lewys ap Norfal,” Vivienne said, venom in her tone.

  “We don’t know that,” Barrett reminded her. “There is always the possibility that it was someone else entirely, in which case, we have a far greater problem on our hands than we could have imagined—though the thought of Jessamy following in her father’s footsteps is sobering enough.”

  “Which ‘someone else’ did you have in mind, dear brother?” Dominy asked. “Given that it’s unlikely to have been Sief, that leaves only four other Deryni with regular access to the court of Gwynedd—and I believe we can eliminate the two sitting at this table.”

  “And I point out, in turn, that both of those remaining are the children of Lewys ap Norfal,” Barrett said.

  “Yes, and we began grooming Morian ap Lewys well before his father’s death,” Seisyll said sharply. “That was before some of you were out of leading strings, but I assure you that our predecessors did not take this responsibility lightly.”

  The grudging silence that met this declaration was broken by Michon clearing his throat.

  “It appears I should remind everyone that Morian was squired to the court of Gwynedd at the age of ten, even before the death of his father. Never has he put a foot wrong, in all the years since then. I can, of course, bring him in for examination, if that is your wish, but I assure you that his loyalty has never been in question, to the crown or to his blood.”

  “I think that none of us question either loyalty,” Oisín said. “Where is he now?”

  “In Meara, on the king’s business, as he has been for most of the past year,” Seisyll supplied. “In truth, he has never spent much time at court—or in his sister’s company. I think it highly unlikely that Morian was involved, or even knew.”

  “Which brings us back to his sister, who perhaps has had more access to the king than the rest of us combined,” Vivienne said coldly.

  “That does appear to be the case,” Oisín said. “I find it disturbing that she was present when Donal killed her husband. There can be no doubt that she is of a powerful bloodline, whether or not she shares her father’s aberrations. That should have given her the ability to protect Sief, even from a Haldane. Unless, of course,” he added thoughtfully, “unless there was some other bond between Jessamy and the king that was stronger than her duty to her husband, the father of her . . . children. . . .”

  These last words fell into a sudden, deathly silence. After a moment, it was Barrett who dared to voice the suspicion that had begun to take shape in all their minds.

  “It would not be the first time that a king has sired a child on a woman not his queen,” he said. “His father did it. More than once.”

  “So has Donal,” Seisyll whispered, chilled. “I know of several others.”

  “You’re suggesting that Krispin MacAthan is actually the king’s bastard,” Dominy said flatly, not wanting to believe it.

  “I believe we are suggesting,” said Oisín, “that the prospect certainly bears further investigation. If the child is, indeed, Donal Haldane’s by-blow, and Sief found out, I think we need look no further for a motive for his killing.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how Donal acquired the power to overcome a fully trained Deryni mage,” Vivienne said.

  “I think that much is clear, if the rest is true,” Barrett replied. “Jessamy must have helped the king to enable his full Haldane powers—whether before or after the conception makes little difference.”

  “It makes a difference if she did it in the hopes that he would kill her husband for her,” Vivienne pointed out. “She knew Sief’s temper. She must have guessed how he would react, if he found out her child was not his. I think we can all imagine his rage when he discovered that his long-awaited ‘son’ was not his son at all.”

  “Poor Sief,” Dominy murmured after a moment. “And he would have had no inkling that the king had powers to match his own.”

  “To exceed them, apparently,” Barrett retorted.

  “He does seem to have been taken by surprise,” Michon said quietly. “And circumstances do suggest that the king was responsible—though I think it may have been a reaction of the moment, when Sief guessed the truth of his ‘son’s’ paternity. But I saw nothing to suggest that Jessamy had any direct part in her husband’s death.”

  Seisyll slowly nodded. “I agree. And I very much doubt that there was premeditation on the king’s part. He can be a devious man—a king must be—but I have never known him to be a murderer.”

  “A passion of the moment, then, on Sief’s part,” Barrett ventured, “a reflex reaction to the shocking truth of the child’s paternity, that escalated into a murderous attack—and self-defense to counter it.”

  “That would be my guess,” Michon said with a nod.

  “We cannot merely guess,” Oisín said. “We must know. And we must know the truth about the child.”

  “Dear God,” Vivienne whispered, “not only a grandson of Lewys ap Norfal, but a Deryni-Haldane cross. The notion doesn’t bear thinking about!”

  “Unfortunately, we must think about it,” Michon pointed out.

  Seisyll gave a nod. “I shall endeavor to meet privately with Jessamy,” he said.

  “An examination of the child might prove more useful, and more immediately possible,” Dominy replied.

  “I shall keep both options open,” Seisyll agreed. “And I shall exercise extreme caution in the king’s presence. In the meantime,” he glanced around the table at all of them, “we must give immediate consideration to Sief’s replacement. If the king has sired a Haldane bastard on the daughter of Lewys ap Norfal, we must be certain that we are operating at full strength.”

  Chapter 4

  “If children live honestly, and have wherewithal, they shall cover the baseness of their parents.”

  —ECCLESIASTICUS 22:9

  DESPITE Seisyll Arilan’s intentions, he could find no immediate opportunity to speak privately with Sief MacAthan’s widow or to examine her son. Within days, a border incident near Droghera caused the king to send him on an embassy to Meara, to observe and report on negotiations going on between the royal governor and increasingly militant partisans of Mearan separatism. As he set out on the road to Ratharkin, the Mearan capital, it occurred to him to wonder whether the timing was coincidental—whether Donal was, in fact, sending him from court because he feared he was under scrutiny regarding Sief’s death.

  Except that the Mearan situation was nothing new. Both Seisyll and Sief had been part of that last expedition into Meara with Donal’s father, which had claimed the lives of several of the old queen’s Mearan cousins. Perhaps Sief had even revealed or at least intimated to Donal that Seisyll was Deryni—or Jessamy had. But the balance in Meara had long been volatile; and Seisyll was one of the king’s most skilled negotiators.

  Accordingly, it was Michon de Courcy who contrived to be present at the christening of the widow’s son, a week after Seisyll’s departure. Though Michon had not actually been in residence at court when Sief died, he had explained his presence at Sief’s funeral by a chance
coincidence of business in the capital: a matter at law, concerning one of his properties in Ardevala. The pretext now served to justify remaining in Rhemuth while he carried out discreet investigations on behalf of the Council. Given that he was related to Jessamy by marriage, his attendance at the christening was not inappropriate. He knew, however, that it would put her on her guard.

  And probably for good cause, Michon decided, when he learned that the ceremony would take place in the chapel royal of Rhemuth Castle, and that Queen Richeldis had agreed to be one of the child’s godparents. That, in itself, was not unusual—that a member of the royal family should stand as baptismal sponsor to a child of a favored lord. Indeed, the child’s mother was one of the queen’s closest friends; and Sief had faithfully served the royal house for many years. Under the circumstances, even the venue might be regarded as a fitting tribute.

  Michon did find it disturbing that the king allowed the priest, Queen Richeldis’s own chaplain, to use the silver christening basin customarily brought out only for the baptism of royal princes, as the boy was christened Krispin Lewys Sief MacAthan. And afterward, the king let it be known that the widow, her younger daughters, and her infant son should have a home at court for as long as they chose.

  “I shall miss both the counsel and the companionship of Sir Sief MacAthan,” the king declared, when Father Angelus had finished welcoming young Krispin into the family of God. “This is the least I can do, as a mark of my continued appreciation for a family that has served me so loyally and for so long. Young Master Krispin shall be educated alongside Prince Brion and the child my lady wife now carries beneath her heart, and the Lady Jessamy shall continue in her service of the queen.

  “As for these two demoiselles,” he added, indicating the widow’s young daughters, “you both shall have proper dowries when you are ready to wed—which will also give you the choosing of just about any of the young squires at my court, I think. Does that please you?”