King Kelson's Bride

by Katherine Kurtz

  “I never expected that I would have any say in who I married,” she said after a moment. “Princes and especially princesses learn from birth that their marriages must satisfy dynastic needs before needs of the heart. I grieve for Kelson, that his own heart has been obliged to endure such disappointments in his young life, but I hope and pray that he and Araxie may find contentment together. In some respects, she reminds me of the woman I might have become, had things been different.”

  “Does she?” Barrett murmured, though the words were not really a question.

  “Aye, she has spirit and grace, and I think she cares for him more than he knows. They greatly enjoyed one another’s company when they were children. And she has willingly embraced what she is, determined to put her gifts to the service of this land.” She glanced down at her hands. “I could not always admit that we bear gifts, in our powers. For far too long, I thought mine were a curse.”

  “You have come a very long way, Jehana,” he said.

  “Yes, but is it far enough?” she asked with a tiny sigh.

  He smiled and reached across to pat her hand again, then leaned back in the cushions of their window seat, closing his eyes to the warm summer sun.

  “I remember days like this, when I was young,” he said. “My father’s castle had the most extraordinary gardens. I remember a particularly enticing arbor, thick with fragrant vines. As a very young man, I was fond of slipping away from my tutors to hide away there. I would stretch out in the dappled shade of a summer’s afternoon, lulled by the buzz of honey-heavy bees, and practice herding clouds while I gorged on grapes that I had hidden to cool in a nearby spring that morning.”

  “You can herd clouds?” Jehana said in amazement.

  “In those days, I could,” Barrett said with a shrug. “It is not as frivolous as, perhaps, it sounds. The skill is useful in weather-working, as is the ability to change the shapes of clouds. But both require physical sight. That was before I learned the cost of power that could be turned to such benevolent purposes.”

  “Has that something to do with how you lost your sight?” she dared to ask.

  He smiled faintly and shook his head. “Not cloud-herding, or any form of weather magic. But I was young and impetuous then, and probably thought myself invincible, as the young often do, especially if blessed with abilities above the ordinary.”

  “That night we first met,” she said softly, “you said something about saving children, and your sight having been the cost?”

  “Some other time, perhaps,” he said almost brusquely.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—”

  “It isn’t that. One day, I shall tell you, if you really wish to know.”

  “Then—”

  “You reminded me of yet another thing I miss: the chance to see the wonders of God’s creation, the colors and textures of a beautiful garden. I have a garden where I now dwell, and the scents convey something of the colors I used to know—but it isn’t the same.”

  A silence fell between them for a score of heartbeats, underscored by the poignancy of Barrett’s loss, until suddenly Jehana found herself conceiving a notion that, before, would never have occurred to her.

  “The gardens here at Rhemuth are very beautiful,” she said tentatively. “I could—show you my memories of them. Or perhaps I could even take you through the Veil to walk through them in person!” she suddenly blurted. “Oh, Barrett, do you really suppose that I could? I can’t imagine that Kelson would mind.”

  “I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t!” Barrett retorted. “But on the other hand,” he said, after a beat, “it should be possible, at least in theory—to pass through the Veil in conjunction with someone like yourself, who is permitted to pass. It’s frankly never occurred to me to wonder, because I simply respected your son’s wishes that no outside Deryni should have access to the rest of the castle.”

  “You never thought to ask or wonder about that?” Jehana said, amazed.

  “I honestly did not. But I cannot ask you to compromise your son’s intentions.”

  “You didn’t ask; I offered,” she replied. “He obviously has great regard for you, or he wouldn’t allow you to be here. Oh, Barrett, I would like to try, to see if it’s something that I can actually do! You’ve taught me so much. Let me try; allow me to return some of the gift you’ve given me, by sharing my garden.”

  As she reached across to take his hand again, she felt him shudder faintly. But then his hand closed on hers and he bowed his head.

  “Very well, let us try,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Yes, come!” She rose and urged him to his feet. “Who knows? Perhaps we can simply walk through, hand in hand—I have no idea. But on such a wonderful summer’s day, would it not be a shame not even to try?”

  He said nothing as he let her lead him to the Veil. She could feel his hand cold and trembling in hers, and she turned to watch him as she eased backward into it and tried to draw him through as well. But as his hand in hers drew near the Veil, he drew it back with a hiss of discomfort.

  “I cannot!” he gasped.

  “Did it hurt you?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  Lips pressed tightly together, he shook his head and reached out blindly to test the limits of the Veil, grimacing as he finally drew back a pace.

  “I did not expect it to be easy,” he murmured. “Take my hand and try again to draw me through—but slowly. If this can be done, it will require considerable adjustment on my part.”

  She did as he asked, but with no better success. As he bowed his head, nursing a hand obviously still in some discomfort, she came back through the Veil to lightly touch his arm.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had hoped—”

  “And I had hoped,” he replied. “But there might be another way.” He threw back his head, the emerald eyes flicking upward almost as if they could see, then turned his face to her again, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. In that moment, he looked half his age.

  “Tell me, are you feeling exceptionally brave today?”

  She looked at him with no little apprehension.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I propose to show you my garden, since you cannot show me yours. But to do that, you must trust me enough to let me to take you through the Portal.”

  Her stomach did a queasy flip-flop, and her eyes darted at once to the Portal square. They had avoided discussing Portals thus far, but she had known this moment would come, or one like it. Oddly, the prospect of actually using a Portal did not fill her with nearly as much dread as she had expected.

  “I would very much like to see your garden,” she found herself saying, far more calmly than she felt. “Will you forgive me for being just a little frightened?”

  He smiled faintly. “If you are only a little frightened, we have come far, indeed.”

  “I suppose I have.” She drew a steadying breath and squared her shoulders. “What must I do?”

  Unerringly he moved onto the Portal square and extended a hand in invitation. “Join me here, and stand in the circle of my arm.”

  She obeyed, laying her hand in his and letting him turn her away from him, his hands resting on her shoulders from behind. She stifled a little gasp as he drew her gently against his chest, his right hand slipping lightly around to bracket her throat in the angle of thumb and fingers. She could feel her pulse fluttering within the compass of that embrace, but she closed her eyes and made a conscious effort to relax, for she trusted him utterly.

  “Perfect,” he whispered, lips close beside her ear. “Now, still your mind and think of nothing at all. . . . See those white clouds I mentioned earlier, drifting lazily in the dappled sunlight. . . and let your thoughts drift with them. Draw a deep breath and let it all the way out, very slowly. And now another.”

  Gladly she let herself be guided by his voice.

  “Good. Drift amid the shifting clouds . . . and very soon, you shall feel my mind enfolding yours, soft as
those clouds . . . but don’t resist. Just relax and let me do all the work . . . relax. . . .”

  Despite her apprehension, she could feel herself stilling inside, akin to that serenity that, only a fortnight ago, had been approachable only in prayer. It had come to her, in a moment of awed wonder, that the two states were not at odds. The touch of his mind, when it came, was gentle but sure, coaxing her into greater stillness. She hardly felt the brief shifting of energies, only staggering a little as the floor seemed, momentarily, to drop from under her feet.

  But he was there to steady her, his arms close around her shoulders, and she never felt a trace of fear. Breathing in a whiff of mellow leather and damp and a hint of sweetness that reminded her of church incense, she opened her eyes to a dimness quickly dispelled by the flare of handfire immediately before them—conjured for her benefit, she knew at once, for the chamber in whose corner they stood was uniquely suited to one without physical sight.

  It seemed to have no windows, but its walls were hung with textured tapestries and carved wood panels: artistic embellishments to please the hand as well as the eye. Across the room, two thickly upholstered chairs were set within the embrace of a huge inglenook, a thick sheepskin rug at the foot of each, a round table nestled between the pair. On this table were stacked half a dozen heavy, leather-bound volumes bristling with bits of parchment marking places in the text: clear indication that Barrett’s scholarly pursuits were not confined to the library at Rhemuth.

  “The décor, perhaps, is not to your taste,” he said beside her, quite aware of her perusal of the room around them.

  “On the contrary,” she said, “the room reflects its owner.” She reached out a tentative hand to stroke the silken satin stitches delineating the curve of a courser’s sleek flank, then fingered the gold laid-work on the rider’s raiment. “Even if you couldn’t see these things with your mind, you could see them with your fingers, couldn’t you? Barrett, it’s beautiful.”

  He smiled and took her hand, threading it through the crook of his elbow as he began leading her slowly toward the door.

  “I am told that it is,” he said quietly. “It serves this old bachelor well enough. I can speak with greater authority regarding my gardens.”

  The door opened before them as they approached, admitting them to an arched cloister walk opening onto an expanse of garden in a riot of colors and textures and scents. The air was cooler than in Rhemuth, touched with a clean salt tang as she filled her lungs with it.

  “We’re near the sea,” she murmured, eyes half-closed. “There’s a freshness to the air that reminds me of summer days in Bremagne. Barrett, where are we?” she asked, turning to face him.

  He smiled with faint irony. “Not so very far from Bremagne, as it happens—but perhaps it is best if I do not tell you precisely where.”

  “Is it home, then?” she asked.

  “As much of home as I have now,” he replied. “I was born in the Purple March, but I have not lived there for a very long time.”

  “Not since—you lost your sight?” she dared to ask.

  His lips tightened, pain flickering briefly in the emerald eyes as he turned his face toward the path ahead and started them along a walkway laid with crushed clam shells of a startling whiteness. The garden’s sweet perfumes accompanied them as their garments brushed against close-growing lavender and sage and comfrey.

  “There is nothing more precious than the young of a people,” he said quietly, when they had walked along for several dozen strides in a silence broken only by the crunch of their footsteps against the distant cry of sea birds. “Twenty-three young ones would have burned that day, had I not intervened.”

  Horrified, she stared at him open-mouthed.

  “Someone would have burned children?”

  “Several of my people had been teaching them in secret, against the Laws of Ramos. The penalty was death. The teacher with them that day paid with his life at the time they were discovered. They cut his throat and left him to drown in his own blood—and in the presence of those little ones. The local lord meant to burn the rest—and none of them more than ten years of age.”

  “And you stopped it?”

  He halted unerringly before a cut-stone bench and sank down on it wearily, loosing her hand as he did so.

  “Aye, but at greater cost than even I could have imagined at the time. In what I imagined was noble self-sacrifice, I offered to trade my life for theirs: a mature Deryni, trained and dangerous, for the lives of two dozen little ones, who might survive to replace me.” He closed his eyes briefly.

  “A few did. And I—expected to be burned, in place of the children. But they started with my eyes instead. Then one of the other hedge-teachers from the forbidden schola came charging in to rescue me—and paid with his life.” He dropped his head into his hands with a weariness come of having relived the horror all too many times.

  “He was bolder than I; he used his magic to free me. But the archers cut him down as we fled, and he later died of his wounds. His wife had been present, and soon miscarried of what would have been their first child—another life lost.”

  Jehana’s eyes had filled with tears as she listened, her thoughts flashing back to those halcyon months when she had carried Kelson beneath her heart—and the daughter who had survived only hours.

  “You did a brave thing,” she whispered.

  “Brave, or foolish?” he replied. “I was young and arrogant, and lost not only my sight—and, therefore, a great deal of my own effectiveness—but the life of another trained Deryni, and a child who might, one day, have followed in his work.”

  “But you saved all those other children,” Jehana ventured. “Surely that counts for something.”

  “Perhaps. But many of them died anyway, later on. For them, my folly only prolonged the inevitable—and lessened my usefulness to future generations of our people.”

  A silence fell between them, broken only by birdsong and the drone of bees and the distant boom of the surf.

  “I think,” Jehana finally said, “that you still have spent your life more fruitfully than I have done. By denying what I am, I threw away my heritage, the love of a good man—and have tried the patience of my only son almost beyond enduring, when what he needed most was my support.”

  “Ah, but when he needed that support the very most—at his coronation, when he still was vulnerable—you gave it to him,” Barrett said gently. “And would have given up your life for him, in that moment.”

  “That’s true,” she said wistfully. “My own moment of divine folly, I suppose—and I would not change one heartbeat of that hour, when I gambled my life for the life of my son. But there are other things I would change, if I could. How could I have been so bli—”

  She stopped as she realized what she very nearly had said, her cheeks flaming crimson, but thankfully he could not see them—though he reached across in that moment to gently take her hand.

  “Dearest lady, you are very brave, indeed—and believe me, it is far better to finally see clearly than to continue cursing the darkness. I have mostly made peace with my darkness—and I think, perhaps, that you are also making peace with yours. Believe me, the worst blindness does not come from a lack of physical sight.”

  With that, he rose and gently drew her to her feet, tucking her hand through the angle of his arm.

  “But come now, and let me show you more of my garden. Let me see it through your eyes. And I shall show you how it seems to me. . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Building an house unto the Lord, great and new, of hewn and costly stones, and the timber already laid upon the walls.

  I Esdras 6:9

  Finalizing the marriage contract between Rory and Noelie took the better part of a week, interspersed with the normal business of the court and the growing press of wedding guests, arriving almost daily, though the attachment of the pair was soon an open secret. It therefore came as no surprise when, at a formal court convened for that purpo
se, the official announcement was made that Prince Rory Haldane, first cousin to the king, would marry the Lady Noelie Ramsay of Meara a week hence, on the same day her brother married the Princess Richelle Haldane.

  “I think there can be no doubt that this will be a true union of hearts, in addition to the obvious dynastic benefits that will accrue to all,” Kelson said, smiling, when Archbishop Bradene had witnessed the exchange of their betrothal vows. “To seal the dynastic aspect of this union, I have decided to revive and bestow upon my noble cousin the ancient title and style of Duke of Ratharkin, on their wedding day . . . and I have it in mind that, during the next year, your new duke shall take up residence in this royal duchy as my viceroy in Meara.”

  A ripple of pleased surprise ran through the hall, especially among the Mearans, for even Jolyon had not known of Kelson’s plan to name Rory viceroy. The granting of viceregal status to Meara all but restored her ancient status as a principality, with the future Dukes of Ratharkin to spring from Mearan blood as well as Haldane. Oksana stood with mouth agape, for her daughter would be vicereine as well as duchess—all but a queen.

  “I gather that Meara is content,” Kelson said mildly, with a smiling glance across the still-murmuring Mearans—which elicited a cheer.

  “I have more to offer Meara,” he said, as they settled again. “In further token of the importance I attach to this double sealing of our joint fortunes, by virtue of the forthcoming marriage already arranged between Lady Noelie’s brother Brecon and my cousin Richelle, I have decided to somewhat amend what I announced at the time of their betrothal.” He glanced benignly at the couple, then at Brecon’s parents—still stunned at their daughter’s good fortune.