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Overview
For six years, forces of evil and repression have ruled medieval Gwynedd after eliminating two rightful kings of the Haldane line. Keeping the current young liege, King Rhys Michael, weak with wine, the council of regents and its fanatical allies in the church have been virtually unstoppable in their quest to dominate and destroy the mystical Deryni who share their land. But now a credible threat has arisen: A Deryni claimant to the throne has taken up arms against the cruel oppressors of his magical race. With a mighty army at his command, Prince Marek—the bastard son of King Imre, Gwynedd’s last Deryni ruler—has challenged the Haldane reign, and Rhys Michael’s masters realize the young king must be roused from his stupor to confront the interloper. However, the young Haldane monarch is not the malleable, drunken puppet the regents imagine—and when his long-dormant arcane powers are awakened, Rhys Michael will put his own clandestine plans in motion to right the wrongs of recent history no matter what the cost.
The fourth trilogy in Katherine Kurtz’s magnificent chronicles of the Deryni concludes with awesome power in this stirring tale of war, faith, magic, and justice. Populated by a large cast of unforgettable characters, the thrilling history of an alternate medieval world unfolds in all its epic splendor and tragedy, strongly reaffirming Kurtz’s well-deserved place among the finest storytellers and world-builders in all of fantasy fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504031288 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2016 |
| Series: | Deryni Series , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 435 |
| Sales rank: | 311,994 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
While working on the Deryni series, Kurtz further utilized her historical training to develop another sub-genre she calls “crypto-history,” in which the “history behind the history” intertwines with the “official” histories of such diverse periods as the Battle of Britain (Lammas Night), the American War for Independence (Two Crowns for America), contemporary Scotland (The Adept Series, with coauthor Deborah Turner Harris), and the Knights Templar (also with Harris).
In 1983, Kurtz married the dashing Scott MacMillan; they have a son, Cameron. Until 2007, they made their home in Ireland, in Holybrooke Hall, a mildly haunted gothic revival house, They have recently returned to the United States and taken up residence in a historic house in Virginia, with their five Irish cats and one silly dog. (The ghosts of Holybrooke appear to have remained behind.)
Read an Excerpt
The Bastard Prince
The Heirs of Saint Camber, Volume Three
By Katherine Kurtz
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1994 Katherine KurtzAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3128-8
CHAPTER 1
Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.
— Psalms 73:6
The Eastmarch messengers exhausted a succession of mounts in the days that followed, galloping into Gwynedd's capital less than a week after the taking of Culliecairn. Almost incoherent with exhaustion, the pair made their initial report to a hastily gathered handful of Gwynedd's royal ministers, then were whisked away for further interrogation in private by Lord Albertus, the Earl Marshal, and certain members of his staff. The king was told of their news, but was not invited to join the impromptu meeting now in progress in Gwynedd's council chamber.
"Aside from the military implications, this is going to raise certain practical complications," Rhun of Sheele said, sour and suspicious as he sat back in his chair. "For one thing, the king is going to want to go."
Lord Tammaron Fitz-Arthur nodded patiently. As Chancellor of Gwynedd, it was his duty to preside over meetings of the king's council when the king was not present — and in fact, he presided even when the king was present — but formalities hardly seemed necessary with only four of them seated around the long table.
"Of course he'll want to go," Tammaron said. "It's only natural that he should wish to do so — and were the decision up to him, there would be no question. There's a risk involved, of course. Not only might he be killed, but he might be tempted to assert his independence. However, I believe that both possibilities pale beside the very real prospect that this is the challenge we've been hoping to postpone."
At Tammaron's right, quietly imposing in his robes of episcopal purple, Archbishop Hubert MacInnis nodded his agreement, one pudgy hand caressing the jeweled cross on his ample breast. Those who did not know him well saw what he wanted them to see: an affable if oversized cherub, ostensibly godly and devout, rosy face framed by fine blond hair cut short and tonsured in the clerical manner, tiny rosebud lips pursed in a languid pout.
But the apparent innocence of the wide blue eyes was deceptive, and the cunning mind behind them had contrived the death of more than one person who stood in his way. In the last decade, the Primate of All Gwynedd had become the single most powerful man in the kingdom.
"This is damnably inconvenient, if it is the challenge," Hubert muttered sullenly." Damn, why couldn't they have waited even another year? A second son would make all the difference."
"You're assuming that the queen carries another son and not a daughter," said the archbishop's elder brother, Lord Manfred MacInnis, seated across from Hubert. He was a beefy, red-faced man in his mid-fifties, muscled where Hubert was merely fat, his sunburned hands scarred and callused from years of wielding a sword. "I wouldn't worry so much about potential heirs as I would about the man who wears the crown right now. If this is the challenge we've been dreading, 'tis we and the present king who will have to meet it. And if he can't do that, not even another prince will be enough to ensure the continuance of the Haldane line in power — and us as the power behind the throne."
It was no more than a simple statement of fact. The men seated around the table, the core of the Royal Council of Gwynedd, had been virtual rulers of Gwynedd for six years now, since plotting the slaying of the sixteen-year-old King Javan Haldane in an "ambush" far to the north — blamed on Deryni dissidents — and simultaneously masterminding the coup that put his brother, Rhys Michael, on Gwynedd's throne, though king only in name.
The cost had come high, for the hollow crown this youngest Haldane prince had never sought. Not alone had he lost a beloved brother and king, but the shock of the sudden and brutal slayings surrounding the coup at Rhemuth had caused his young wife to miscarry of their first child — a supreme irony, for eventual control of an underage Haldane heir had been a large part of the ultimate purpose behind the coup.
The new king had not truly comprehended the scope of his captors' ambitions in the beginning. It was horror enough that he must fall under their control. Drugged nearly to senselessness during the coup itself, he had been kept drug-blurred for some months thereafter, all through the public spectacle of his brother's burial and then the sham of his own coronation.
Only when he had been safely crowned did they make their intentions clear — and underlined their demands with threats of the most abhorrent nature concerning the fate of his queen if he did not comply. He had been spared to be a puppet king and to breed Haldane princes who, in due course, would fall totally under the sway of the great lords — and under the sway of regents, if their father made himself sufficiently troublesome that he must be eliminated before a tame heir came of age.
Fortunately for all concerned, especially the king, the prospect of another regicide became less and less likely as the first few months passed. Though dispirited at first, the new king gradually seemed to become reconciled to the inevitability of his situation, allowing himself to be shaped as the docile and biddable figurehead they required.
Compliance slowly bought small indulgences. Once the king ceased to be argumentative or to display stubborn flashes of independent thinking, permission was granted for him to attend routine meetings of the council. A satisfactory history of behavior at council meetings earned him the privilege of presiding over formal courts, though always closely attended and working from a carefully rehearsed script. Very occasionally, the queen and later their young son were allowed to appear at his side on state occasions. After the first year or so, when it appeared that he had accepted the restrictions placed upon him and decided to make the most of royal privilege, they had even allowed him to resume his training in arms, against just such a threat as now seemed to be materializing. The queen's new pregnancy seemed to confirm Rhys Michael's capitulation, though there were some seated around this table who still had reservations.
"Let's get down to specifics," Tammaron said. "This hardly comes as any great surprise, after all. We've been aware of increased Torenthi troop movements up along the Eastmarch border since last fall."
Several of the others nodded their agreement, and Rhun muttered something about having warned them long before that.
"It's just the sort of beginning we might have expected," Tammaron went on. "A test incursion into —"
The door to the council chamber slammed back without preamble to admit Paulin of Ramos, black-clad and predatory looking as he stalked into the room. The mere presence of the Vicar-General of the Ordo Custodum Fidei produced no dismay, for he was as heavily involved in intrigue as the rest of them, and one of the architects of their rise to power, but he had been expected to remain with his brother Albertus, questioning the messengers.
"A Torenthi herald has just arrived under a flag of truce," Paulin announced, flouncing angrily into his usual place to Hubert's right. "The man demands an immediate audience of the king and declines to reveal his business except in the king's presence."
"Do you think he comes from King Arion?" Manfred asked.
"No, I do not. I thought so at first, but the Torenthi arms on his tabard are differenced. The black hart is gorged of a coronet. That's Arion's brother."
"Miklos!" Rhun muttered.
"And the Eastmarch messengers claim that Miklos was behind the taking of Culliecairn," Tammaron said, enlightenment dawning on the angular face.
"Precisely," Paulin agreed. "I'd say that the timely arrival of Miklos' herald tends to confirm their story. The question now becomes, is Miklos acting alone, or for King Arion, or for Marek of Festil, as he has in the past?"
Uneasiness murmured around the table at that, for the prospect of an eventual Festillic bid to take back the throne of Gwynedd had loomed with increasing probability since 904, when Cinhil Haldane, the present king's father, had ended a Festillic Interregnum of more than eighty years by ousting and killing the unmarried King Imre. There it might have ended, except that Imre's sister, the Princess Ariella, had been carrying his child when she fled. Later legalists had tried to claim that the royal pregnancy derived from a dalliance with one of her brother's courtiers, by then conveniently dead, for mere illegitimacy was not necessarily a bar to inheritance in Torenth, but everyone knew that Imre was the father.
The child born of this incestuous union the following year had been christened Mark Imre of Festil, though he now went by Marek, the Torenthi form of his name, and was accorded the title of prince among his Torenthi kinsmen. The House of Festil was descended from a cadet branch of the Torenthi royal line — Deryni, all — and Torenth had provided troops for Ariella's unsuccessful attempt to take back the throne lost by her brother. Following her death in that endeavor, her son and heir had been brought up among the Deryni princes of Torenth, biding his time until conditions were right to make his own try for his parents' throne. Prince Marek now was twenty-three, a year older than his Haldane rival in Rhemuth, recently married to a sister of the King of Torenth and lately the father of a son by her.
"I would think it very likely that Marek is, indeed, behind this," Tammaron said thoughtfully. "Having said that, however, I am not altogether certain we can assume that this is a serious bid to take back the crown. Marek is yet unblooded. He has an heir, but just the one; and many's the infant that dies young."
"Yet Culliecairn has been taken," Manfred pointed out.
"Yes, but I suspect Miklos has done it on Marek's behalf," Tammaron countered. "And I seriously doubt that King Arion supports it. He certainly doesn't want a war with us right now, because he hasn't got adult heirs yet either.
"No, I would guess this to be a drawing action, almost a field exercise, to see what we'll do. Marek hasn't the support to make a full-scale invasion and won't until his heir is of age. I think he wants to flex his muscles and size up his enemy — and perhaps test to see whether it's true, that the King of Gwynedd is not his own man."
"Which means," Hubert said, "that the king must be seen to be his own man, and a competent one, by riding with an expeditionary force to free Culliecairn. I'll grant that there is some small risk, if he should take it in his head to actually try to lead," he added, at the looks of objection forming on several faces. "On the other hand, he knows full well that if he should meet his death in such a campaign — for whatever reason — young Owain would become the next king, with the certainty of an actual and open regency until the boy reaches his majority."
"I can't say I'd mind a ten-year regency," Manfred said, grinning as he leaned back in his chair.
"No, but the queen would," Tammaron said. "And she'd sit on the regency council by right. Would her brother sit as well, Hubert? He's the boy's uncle; it's customary."
"The king, ah, has been persuaded not to name his brother-in-law to the regency council," Hubert said, pretending to study a well-manicured thumbnail. "Something about concern for the young man's health, I believe — the strain of the office, and so forth."
"And it won't be a strain to keep him on at court?" Rhun said archly. "If I'd had my way, he would have been killed six years ago."
Hubert favored the younger man with a droll smile. "Fortunately for him, dear Rhun, you were away supervising another killing at the time. But rest assured that Sir Cathan understands the precarious nature of his position and will do nothing to jeopardize his access to his sister. Nor will she do anything that might endanger his life — or even worse, from her perspective, force us to forbid her access to her son. So long as both of them maintain the utmost discretion and circumspection, I am content that Cathan Drummond should remain in the royal household, if only for the sake of appearances. Besides that, his presence reassures the queen, who will bear stronger princes if her mind is at ease. 'Tis a small enough inconvenience, I think — and one that is open to immediate reassessment, if either of them should abuse the privilege."
Rhun snorted and shook his head. "I'd still rather he were dead."
"That's as may be, but at very least, nothing must happen to him during the queen's pregnancy. Do I make myself quite clear?"
"You do."
"Good. Because whatever else happens, she carries the second Haldane heir, our backup for Prince Owain. Worry about that, if you insist upon worrying about something. Whether or not the king survives this current crisis, Michaela could die in childbed — or worse, the child might die. And if the king should die, whether on a campaign into Eastmarch or as a result of his own folly, the shock could cause her to miscarry again; it happened before."
"Aye," Tammaron breathed. "So all Haldane hopes ultimately hang on one small four-year-old."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Bastard Prince by Katherine Kurtz. Copyright © 1994 Katherine Kurtz. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Prologue He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him; he hath broken his covenant. — Psalms 55:20,I Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. — Psalms 73:6,
II Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. — I Corinthians 15:34,
III And if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me. — I Corinthians 16:4,
IV Miss not the discourse of the elders: for they also learned of their fathers, and of them thou shalt learn understanding, and to give answer as need requireth. — Ecclesiasticus 8:9,
V There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear. — I John 4:18,
VI Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice. — Job 4:15–16,
VII Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift. — II Corinthians 9:15,
VIII Who causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit. — Proverbs 28:10,
IX Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. — Micah 7:8,
X Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. — II John 1:8,
XI Keep thee far from the man who hath power to kill ... lest he take away thy life presently. — Ecclesiasticus 9:13,
XII Whereas thy servant worketh truly, entreat him not evil, nor the hireling that bestoweth himself wholly for thee. — Ecclesiasticus 7:20,
XIII Rejoice not over thy greatest enemy being dead, but remember that we die all. — Ecclesiasticus 8:7,
XIV I have seen the foolish taking root. — Job 5:3,
XV And that we may be delivered from unreasonable men. — II Thessalonians 3:2,
XVI With arrows and with bows shall men come thither. — Isaiah 7:24,
XVII Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. — Psalms 144:1,
XVIII For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. — Ecclesiasticus 2:5,
XIX Who will bring me into the strong city? — Psalms 60:9,
XX Righteous lips are the delight of kings; and they love him that speaketh right. — Proverbs 16:13,
XXI And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. — II Thessalonians 2:11,
XXII They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood. — Psalms 94:21,
XXIII Keep thee far from the man that hath power to kill ... lest he take away thy life presently. — Ecclesiasticus 9:13,
XXIV Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. — II Timothy 3:4,
XXV And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests murder in the way by consent. — Hosea 6:9,
XXVI For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. — II Timothy 4:6,
XXVII I have seen the wicked in great power. — Psalms 37:35,
XXVIII A wicked messenger falleth into mischief; but a faithful ambassador is health. — Proverbs 13:17,
XXIX For she is privy to the mysteries of the knowledge of God, and a lover of his works. — Wisdom of Solomon 8:4,
XXX And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you. — II Peter 2:3,
XXXI His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not. — Job 14:21,
XXXII Then the chief captain came near, and took him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains. — Acts 21:33,
XXXIII I speak of the things which I have made touching the king. — Psalms 45:1,
XXXIV Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore. — Ecclesiasticus 44:14,
XXXV But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. — Galatians 5:15,
XXXVI And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you. — Deuteronomy 19:20,
Appendix I: Index of Characters,
Appendix II: Index of Places,
Appendix III: Partial Lineage of the Haldane Kings,
Appendix IV: The Festillic Kings of Gwynedd and Their Descendants,
Appendix V: Partial Lineage of the MacRories,
About the Author,
