King Kelson's Bride

by Katherine Kurtz

  That, no doubt, was why Mahael also drifted in and out of Kelson’s troubled dreamscapes, even though Kelson had never actually met the man: a murky, brooding presence whose face he could never quite see clearly, sometimes resembling an older, more devious Mátyás and sometimes a muddled composite of the slain Lionel, who had been Liam’s father, and the sly and treacherous Wencit, both of whom Kelson had been obliged to kill. Sometimes Kelson sensed a second presence behind Mahael’s—perhaps the other brother, Teymuraz, whom he also had never met. Whatever the true alignment of the three Furstán brothers, Kelson had no doubt that they represented varying degrees of potential threat to Liam.

  The boy’s mother also figured in Kelson’s troubled reveries, and was not above suspicion. That face, at least, was known, from the several months she had spent under house arrest at Rhemuth, following the seizure of Liam as hostage. Though co-regent with Mahael, as she had been for the dead Alroy, her eldest son, the true degree of collaboration between the duo remained unclear, as did any part Morag herself might have had in Alroy’s death.

  Even if Morag were entirely innocent of Alroy’s blood, Kelson did not see how she could fail to be aware of the rumors regarding Mahael’s involvement. Her continued silence on the question might bespeak an abysmal unawareness of the truth—or a blind refusal to deal with it; or tacit support of the dynastic ambitions of her brother-in-law, regardless of their cost; or some other game as yet unguessable. That a mother might have countenanced the killing of her own son seemed incredible; but so long as the question of Alroy’s death remained unanswered, Kelson could not rely on any normal assumption regarding the Princess Morag Furstána.

  Mingled with these images of menace were gentler visages as well, no less alarming for being no danger in the same sense, but emblematic of his thwarted yearnings for some measure of fulfillment that answered only his needs, his longings.

  Rothana, her dark eyes filled with tears, turning her face away from his . . . The slain Sidana, drowned in her own blood, limp and lifeless in his arms . . . A jumbled succession of other female faces, dark-haired and fair, echoing the endless parades of marriageable hopefuls that were constantly thrust upon him by a host of the well-meaning . . . or the galleries of painted likenesses that his council set before him with increasing urgency, begging him to choose, to marry, to provide an heir . . .

  And ever among them, at the same time elusive and oddly tantalizing, a fair-haired girl with a face little more distinct than Mahael’s, though something in the eyes somehow reminded Kelson of his aunt Sivorn. . . .

  After a while, he abandoned any real attempt to either sleep or put his worries from mind, and gazed up unseeing at the underside of the canopy above his bed, mentally reviewing the likely course of the evening and the departure on the morrow, liking none of it, only adding to his unease. When Ivo at last came to dress him for the evening’s social duties, he felt little more rested than when he had lain down, and certainly no more reassured.

  But the evening went well enough. To honor Torenth, he wore the fine enamelled cross that Rasoul had presented to him on the occasion of his knighting four years before: the gift of Liam’s regents, and blessed by the Torenthi patriarch. Rasoul noted the courtesy at their first exchange and made comment to Count Mátyás. The younger man smiled faintly, touching the icon hanging on his own breast as he made Kelson a slight bow.

  Seated at Kelson’s right hand, between him and Morgan, both Mátyás and Rasoul proved mannerly if sometimes distant table guests, dutifully commending the quality of the fare, the comeliness of the ladies, and offering gracious toasts to the prosperity of both lands; and only twice did any of Kelson’s lords bring their daughters or sisters to be presented to the high table. All things considered, Kelson could hardly have wished for more.

  Even Liam could have little cause for complaint, for the decision of the afternoon was allowing him to retain the relative anonymity afforded by squire’s livery for at least a while longer. Initially self-conscious, he waited upon the king and his two countrymen with competence and a growing confidence as the evening progressed, while Payne and Brendan did the same for their fathers and the remaining guests seated at the high table.

  Other squires and pages of the court attended to the rest of the hall. All of the boys performed their duties with diligence, determined that their Torenthi guests should carry away glowing reports of the grace of King Kelson’s court. And whenever a lull in service permitted them to congregate in the antechamber behind the dais, they whispered and snickered among themselves like the boys they still were, though the sharp eye of Lord Pemberly, the deputy-chamberlain, ensured an appropriate level of decorum.

  The array of other guests dining in the great hall included some of the most illustrious names in Gwynedd, many of them not normally resident at court, summoned to serve on the regency council over which Duke Nigel would preside during his royal nephew’s absence from capital and kingdom. Assisting Nigel, and maintaining Deryni links with the king and his party, would be Bishop Duncan McLain—to be sorely missed on the mission to Torenth, but Kelson dared not leave his regent without the protection of at least one powerful Deryni, much though he would have wished Duncan’s company and counsel along with that of Morgan and Dhugal. The young Deryni priest, John Nivard, would also provide Deryni clout, if necessary.

  Nigel would be further assisted by his wife, the astute and level-headed Meraude, whose brother Saer would be accompanying the king. Queen Jehana had also returned to take up her rightful place on the regency council. Likewise, Thomas Cardiel, the Archbishop of Rhemuth, had agreed to make himself available on a regular basis; he was seated tonight just beyond Nigel and Archbishop Bradene, far on Kelson’s left side.

  Kelson had even called his most senior duke out of semiretirement: Ewan, the grizzled and irascible Duke of Claibourne—at nearly sixty-two, still Marshal of Gwynedd, though his eldest son and heir, Earl Graham, had been taking on increasing responsibility for management of the family interests in Claibourne for close to a decade, and was ready to step in when required. These days, the old man only put in the odd appearance at court, usually in the summer; but his mind was as sharp as ever.

  Given that the king’s plans regarding Liam had been known for more than a year in advance, and Ewan’s eldest grandson, Angus, had been scheduled to be knighted the previous Twelfth Night, the duke had travelled south the previous autumn by easy stages, there to winter at Rhemuth Castle, serve as a sponsor for young Angus at his knighting, and stay on as a member of the regency council. Since the knighting, Angus and several of the other young men dubbed at the same time, including Rory, had been serving as Ewan’s aides—and his legs.

  This combination of rank, office, and physical limitation, then, had given Ewan and his grandson places at the high table tonight, just beyond Rasoul. At one point, over joints of wildfowl and a pottage of dumplings and legumes, young Angus boldly engaged a somewhat amused Count Mátyás in well-mannered but occasionally vigorous discussion regarding the relative merits of Kheldish garrons versus the steppe ponies of distant Östmarcke. Lest discussion become too heated, Ewan and Rasoul kept attentive vigil from either side, as did Morgan and the king himself, all of them exchanging the occasional indulgent glance; but the conversation never crossed the boundaries of courtesy. From what Kelson could gather, only catching snatches from behind Mátyás, Angus fared surprisingly well against a man probably a decade his senior, at an age when even two or three years more experience could mean a great deal. Or perhaps it was Mátyás’s forbearance.

  The evening’s lone note of discord, which Kelson had known was probably unavoidable, came when, partway through the last course but one, he turned in response to an approach at his left elbow to see his mother’s chaplain, Father Ambros, who bent with a whispered request that he please join her briefly down in the garden. Kelson had been all too aware of her presence in the hall earlier in the evening—not at his left side, where protocol would have suggested, but
seated at the far left end of the high table, flanked by the two archbishops—and as far as possible from the two Deryni seated at Kelson’s right. He had not noticed when she made her quiet departure, but he had hoped he might be spared the personal interview that now seemed inevitable.

  Making his excuses to Mátyás and Rasoul, Kelson followed Father Ambros down the stair at that end of the hall, emerging in the cloister walk that skirted the garden. It was twilight still, on this mild midsummer evening, the air heavy with the scent of roses and jasmine, lilac and lavender. Gravel crunched under their boots as he and Ambros headed deeper into the garden, bypassing a tinkling ornamental fountain to branch off down a side path.

  His mother was waiting in one of the rose bowers with the black-robed Sister Cecile, the white of her royal widow’s mourning as stark as the garb of a novice nun, save for the plain circlet of gold set over her close-pinned white wimple. Jehana of Bremagne once had been a beautiful woman, but the harsh religious disciplines to which she had subjected herself in the decade since her husband’s death, in expiation of what she regarded as the taint of her Deryni blood, had left her gaunt and fragile, looking haggard far beyond her nearly forty years.

  “Kelson, my son,” she said, a hesitant smile lifting bloodless lips as she absently looped a string of coral prayer beads several times around one thin wrist. Beside her, Sister Cecile dipped him a curtsy, eyes averted, and then slipped past to join Father Ambros, the two of them moving just out of earshot but still in sight, though they turned their backs.

  “I cannot stay long,” Kelson said a little stiffly. “I have guests waiting.”

  “I have been waiting, too,” she said, offering her cheek for his kiss. “I trust you did not plan to leave tomorrow without a proper farewell.”

  He sighed as she drew him into the bower to sit beside her on the stone bench.

  “I would have seen you after Mass tomorrow,” he said. “I was afraid we might quarrel. I know that you don’t approve of my going.”

  She glanced away uneasily, hugging her arms as if against a sudden chill, though the night was warm. The prayer beads dangling against her robes looked like blood in the twilight.

  “It is not your going of which I disapprove—though that will be danger enough. It is your participation in the boy’s ceremony of installation. Nigel tells me that you mean to take an active part.”

  “You mean, I think, a magical part,” he said quietly.

  “If we discuss that, we shall quarrel,” she whispered.

  “Mother, I am what I am—and Liam is what he—”

  “He is a Furstán, and Deryni, and the enemy of Gwynedd!”

  “He is a fourteen-year-old king, as I once was, and he will be surrounded by his enemies, from among his own people, some of whom may try to take his life! He is also—though I never asked for it—my vassal. I cannot stand by and watch him slain.”

  “Oh, by all means, save him, so that he may return one day to destroy you!”

  He bit back an angry retort that only would have pulled them deeper into dissension, for this was an argument both long-standing and unlikely to be conceded by either side. Drawing a deep breath, he looked out across the darkening garden to where the chaplain and Sister Cecile had turned at the sound of the raised voices, though he doubted the actual words had been distinguishable. Not that Father Ambros, as the queen’s confessor, must not have heard it all before, at least from her perspective.

  “We wished not to quarrel,” he said quietly. “I will not discuss this further except to say that both Liam and I have very powerful enemies, who will use every resource available to them, to see us overturned. While it is possible that eventually he might turn out to be one of those I need to watch out for, I would like to think that in these four years at my court, we have managed to break some of the old patterns of enmity between our two lands, and begun to establish some groundwork for peace in the future. I have no designs on any lands beyond our eastern borders, and Torenth need not look west. We can coexist peacefully, and begin to rebuild some of what was lost after the Restoration.”

  “But, they are Deryni—”

  “So am I, Mother!” he retorted. “Even if I didn’t have that blood from you—regardless that you refuse to acknowledge it!—I feel more and more certain that my Haldane powers come from Deryni sources.”

  “Accursed powers,” she muttered.

  “No, the powers aren’t accursed!” he replied. “They simply are. It’s what one does with anything he has—how one uses one’s power—that makes him accursed or not. And I intend to use some of mine to make certain Liam gets properly installed in his kingship, able to wield his power for the betterment of his kingdom—as I have tried to do for Gwynedd, and as I will continue to try.”

  She turned her face away, rebellious still, one hand nervously fiddling with the coral beads wrapped round the other wrist.

  “I did not think I could sway you,” she said after several long seconds. “You are stubborn, as was your father—and Alaric Morgan encouraged both of you.”

  “Had he not encouraged me,” Kelson replied, “we should not be having this conversation, because both you and I would have perished at my coronation. The powers that he and Duncan helped me secure are what have kept me alive, what helped to save you, and what are enabling me to keep moving Gwynedd forward. The progress is slow, but now, after nearly two hundred years, there’s actually a chance of peace between us and Torenth—but only if I can keep Liam alive for long enough. If one has been given the power to assist such a purpose, doesn’t one have an obligation to use it?”

  “Peace is a gift,” she finally conceded, her head bowed over her beads, “but not, I think, at the price of one’s immortal soul.”

  “And I think,” Kelson countered, “that the state of my immortal soul is not something that you have any right to judge.”

  Another silence fell between them, and after a moment Jehana sadly shook her head and lifted it to look out over the garden.

  “I know you must go,” she murmured. “I know the duty of kings, and I know that you value the oaths you have sworn to your vassal. Might I—ask a favor, since you stop first at the Ile d’Orsal?”

  “What favor?”

  “Oh, nothing so onerous as what undoubtedly awaits you in Beldour.” She gave him a wan smile as she produced from within one sleeve a flat packet of folded parchment, sealed with scarlet wax that bore her crowned J cipher.

  “ ’Tis but a missive that I would have you deliver to your aunt Sivorn,” she went on. “Women’s gossip, mostly: trifling details of gowns and jewels and flowers and such, for the wedding of your cousin Richelle. But I know that the subject of weddings gives you no pleasure.”

  “I am well enough content regarding that wedding,” he said pointedly, his tone making it clear that he did not wish to discuss any other. He particularly did not want to discuss or even to think about the wedding plans of Richelle’s sister.

  Jehana sighed and shook her head, pretending to study the inscription on the outside of the letter.

  “You little reckon what you miss,” she mused. “It was good to winter there. The Orsal keeps a laughing, happy court, teeming with young children—and with all his brood, plus his sister’s younger four, how could it be otherwise? Seven, he has now, and soon another! When you are there, you must be sure to notice his eldest girl, now that she is grown. Elisabet, she is called—a lovely—”

  “Mother!” he said sharply.

  “Well, a mother cannot but try,” she replied with a shrug and a wan smile. “All apart from Gwynedd’s need for an heir, I would have grandchildren to dandle on my knee. Failing that, however—” She raised the letter in her hand, to silence the new protest on his lips.

  “Nay, I will not say it. I ask only that you give this to Sivorn, for I do miss her company. All the winter long, she and I did spend many a happy hour in contented stitchery, with her girls and the ladies of her brother’s household, sewing the garments for R
ichelle’s wedding finery. Pray God that you may live to see it worn, at summer’s end. And since the wedding will bring the sister of her bridegroom to Rhemuth . . .” she added, with a hopeful tilt of her head.

  “Mother . . .”

  “I know, I know. What I do not know is why you object to that match,” she went on. “An alliance with Noelie Ramsay—”

  “Mother!”

  She lowered her eyes and extended the letter wordlessly.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked, though his tone was less harsh than he had feared, as he took the letter and slipped it into the front of his tunic.

  She shook her head, not looking up. “Nay, only—” Impulsively, she unwound the prayer beads from her wrist and cupped them in one hand in timid offering. “Will you, for my sake, carry these on the day you stand protector with the King of Torenth? Mayhap the prayers that accompany them may offer you some protection.”

  Resignedly he held out his hand to receive the beads, briefly seeing a stream of blood spill from her hand to his. Among the beads twinkled a thumbnail-sized rondelle of enamelled gold that reminded him of the icon Count Mátyás was wearing—except that when he bent to look at it more closely, he saw that the glitter of blue enamel on gold was not the Blessed Virgin, but a wing-graced being with hands upraised in benediction, the palms set with twin flecks of some opalescent gemstone that somehow caught the light and almost seemed to glow from within.

  Caught in the compass of the beads themselves, he could feel the quiet thrum of power, somehow akin to the tinkling laughter of a sunlit freshet, clean and potent. He wondered if she guessed what she had just handed him: an artefact undoubtedly of Deryni origin, its reservoir of grace augmented through her own devotion.