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The King's Justice
The Histories of King Kelson, Volume Two
By Katherine Kurtz OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1985 Katherine Kurtz
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3123-3
CHAPTER 1
With arrows and with bow shall one come thither.
— Isaiah 7:24
"Kelson," Alaric Morgan said, as he and his king looked down on the bustling yard at Rhemuth Castle, "you're becoming a hard, cruel man." He ignored Kelson's startled stare and continued blithely. "Half the ladies of this kingdom and several other realms are pining for you, yet you hardly give them a second glance."
Across the sunlit courtyard, bright as finches in their spring silks and satins and sarcenets, nearly a score of young females ranging in age from twelve to thirty chattered and postured among themselves along an overlooking balcony — ostensibly come to observe and applaud the men honing martial skills in the yard below, but equally to see and be seen by Gwynedd's handsome and eligible young king. Admiring glances aplenty there were for others of the keen young men drilling with sword and lance and bow, for practicality recognized that the chance of any single one of them winning the king's favor was slim, but their wishful glances always darted back to him, nonetheless.
Self-consciously, Kelson spared them not only the glance Morgan had accused him of begrudging, but a strained smile and a nod of acknowledgment, eliciting excited twitterings and preening among his admirers. He gave Morgan a sour grimace as he turned back to his own survey of the yard, raising one leather-clad knee so that he could half sit on the wide stone balustrade of the landing.
"They're not pining; they're after a crown," he said in a low voice.
"Aye, most certainly," Morgan agreed. "And eventually you're going to have to give it to one of them. Or if not one of these, then someone else like them. Kelson, I know you're tired of hearing this, but you are going to have to marry."
"I did marry," Kelson muttered, pretending avid interest in a quarterstaff bout between two of Duke Ewan's squires. "My bride didn't live long enough to have the crown placed on her head." He folded his arms over the somber black he wore. "I'm not ready to marry again, Alaric. Not until I've brought her murderers to justice."
Morgan compressed his lips in a thin, hard line and recalled one such bringing to justice: the defiant Llewell of Meara standing with his back to the executioner on a bleak morning in February, wrists bound behind him, chin lifted proudly heavenward in stubborn assertion that his act had been justified. The Mearan prince had declined to make any statement after his sentence was pronounced, disdaining either assistance or the solace of a blindfold as he knelt on the snow-scoured scaffold. Only in that timeless instant before the headsman's sword rendered final justice did his eyes dart to Kelson's — accusing and defiant to the last.
"Why did he look at me that way?" the shaken king had whispered plaintively to Morgan, as soon as they were out of public view, "I didn't kill her. He committed sacrilegious murder in front of several hundred witnesses — his own sister, for God's sake! There was no question of his guilt. No other verdict was possible."
Nor did ultimate guilt rest on Llewell alone. Equal responsibility must be shared by his parents, the pretender Caitrin and her traitor husband Sicard, now leading Meara in open rebellion against their lawful sovereign. Where Kelson's great-grandfather had sought to unite the two lands peacefully by marriage with the eldest daughter of the last Mearan prince — a settlement never recognized by a large portion of the Mearan nobility, who held another daughter to be the rightful heiress — Kelson had attempted to reassert that union through marriage with a captive daughter of the current rival line: the fifteen-year-old princess Sidana.
Granted, Sidana had two brothers who might have disputed that succession. But Llewell, the younger, was already in custody by then, and the eventual neutralization of Caitrin, Sicard, and the remaining brother would have left Sidana sole heiress of the cadet house. Her and Kelson's children could have claimed unquestionable right to both crowns, finally resolving the century-long dispute over the legitimate succession.
But Kelson had not reckoned on the vehemence of Llewell's hatred for anything Haldane — or dreamed that the Mearan prince would slay his own sister on her wedding day rather than see her married to Meara's mortal enemy.
Thus, of necessity, had Kelson's marital solution to the Mearan question become a martial one — the campaign for which all Gwynedd now prepared. Llewell's father and his remaining brother, Prince Ithel, were said to be raising an army in the Mearan heartland west of Gwynedd even now — and deriving dangerous support from Edmund Loris, former Archbishop of Valoret and Kelson's bitter enemy, who lent religious zeal and anti-Deryni fanaticism to the already explosive Mearan situation. And Loris, as once before, had lured a number of other bishops to his side, making of the coming conflict a religious as well as a civil question.
Signing, Morgan hooked his thumbs in his swordbelt and let his gaze wander back to the yard below, idly fixing on an archery match in progress between Prince Nigel's three sons and young Dhugal MacArdry, the new Earl of Transha, since that seemed to have captured Kelson's attention in preference to the watching ladies. Both Dhugal and Conall, the eldest of Nigel's brood, were giving an impressive exhibition of marksmanship this morning, Dhugal's the more remarkable, in Morgan's eyes, because he shot left-handed — "corrie-fisted," as they called it in the borders.
That Dhugal had managed to retain this idiosyncrasy was a source of recurrent amazement to Morgan — not because Dhugal was skilled, for Morgan had met skilled left-handers before, but because the young Earl of Transha had received a major part of his early schooling here in Rhemuth, some of it under Brion himself. And Brion, despite Morgan's repeated objections to the contrary, had held that left-handed swordsmen and lancers wreaked havoc with conventional drills and training formations — which was true, as far as it went, but neglected to acknowledge that warriors in an actual combat situation, if accustomed to fighting only other right-handed opponents, often found themselves at a distinct disadvantage when faced with a left-handed enemy, whose moves were all backward from what was familiar and, therefore, predictable to some degree.
Brion had finally agreed that training should extend to both hands, in case injury forced shifting weapons in midbattle, but maintained until his death that left-handedness was to be strongly discouraged in his future knights. The trend persisted, even more than three years after Brion's death. Far across the yard, Morgan could see Baron Jodrell putting some of the current crop of squires through a drill with sword and shield — none of the lads unfashionably corrie-fisted.
Not so Dhugal, of course. Though fostered to court as a page when only seven, even younger than most boys of his rank and station, he had been recalled to the borders before he was twelve, serving out his apprenticeship in an environment where survival, not style, was important. And survival demanded a far different fighting style than what Dhugal had learned at court. Border conditions dictated fast, highly mobile strike forces, lightly mounted and armored — not the more ponderous greathorses and armor of the lowland knight. Nor did anyone care which hand the future Chief of Clan MacArdry favored, as long as the job got done, whether meting out the justice of the sword with the patrols that policed the borders against reivers and cattle thieves, or practicing the skills of a battle surgeon afterward.
None of that made shooting a bow left-handed look anything less than awkward to Morgan, however, accustomed to more conventional shooting stance. And as he shook his head and glanced again at Kelson, who was still gazing raptly at the archers, he knew it was not Dhugal's unorthodox shooting that was troubling the king, either. Nor was it their earlier discussion of the necessity for remarriage, though that was sure to bring a rise, even under the best of conditions, whenever the subject was broached.
No, today's preoccupation had to do with what Kelson was — Deryni as well as king — and the necessity, this very night, to make Deryni confirmation of the man who would succeed him on the throne of Gwynedd, should Kelson not return from the Mearan campaign. For failing an heir of Kelson's body, which he did not yet have, the crown and the Haldane legacy of magic would pass to Prince Nigel, Kelson's uncle and brother of the dead King Brion.
Brion. After more than three years, the emptiness of the former king's loss no longer ached in Morgan's chest in quite the way it once had, but the uncompromising loyalty once visited on the father now lay upon the royal son — this slender, grey-eyed youth, only now verging on true manhood, who prepared to face yet another test that should have been reserved for one of greater years and experience.
At least the physical shell better matched the test. The boy-king who had been was gone forever. Intensive weapons training for the coming campaign had stretched and hardened boyish muscles to more manly proportions, and a winter's growth spurt had given him another hand-span of height, in addition to chiseling the rounded facial planes of youth to sharper angles. He now stood nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with Morgan, and had recently been obliged to employ a razor several times a week to maintain the clean-shaven appearance that he, like Morgan, preferred.
But where Morgan still wore his fair hair cropped short for ease of care in the field, as most fighting men chose to do, Kelson had allowed his to grow during the past two years of relative peace — "like any common borderer," as Dhugal had laughingly noted, when first reunited with the king the previous fall. For bordermen traditionally wore their hair pulled back in a braid at the nape of the neck and tied with the colors of their clan; no one remembered why.
Unexpectedly, however, the whim of a few seasons of peace soon became a political asset, for it had enabled Kelson to sleek his black hair into a neat border braid like those sported by Dhugal and his kinsmen, underlining his own border connections with Dhugal as well as the clan and thereby binding his border allies more firmly to his support. Only after it had served its political purpose did Kelson discover that the affectation was also both comfortable and practical, working as well under a helm or mail as the bowl-shaped cut or the Roman style that most seasoned warriors favored.
Since then, many of the younger men and boys had begun to adopt the king's border braid as their hair grew long enough, though lowland purists and those of a more conservative persuasion still considered short locks to be the mark of genteel civilization. Conall was one such purist, and wore his hair accordingly, though both his younger brothers boasted stubby border braids tied with ribbons of Haldane scarlet — somewhat less consequential than Dhugal's coppery braid, to be sure, but meant as fervent compliment, both to their royal cousin the king and to his dashing foster brother, who took the time to coach them at archery, and did not laugh when their arrows went wide of the mark.
A patter of applause and girlish laughter from across the yard shifted Morgan's focus back to Dhugal himself, who had just placed an arrow very near the center of the target. The young border lord lowered his bow and leaned on it like a staff as he glanced at Conall, watching in silence as his royal opponent carefully drew and let fly, placing his shot directly beside Dhugal's — though no nearer the center.
"He's quite good, isn't he?" Kelson breathed, gesturing with his chin toward his eldest cousin.
As Conall's brothers, thirteen and eight, moved forward to take their turns, Dhugal giving the younger boys helpful pointers, Conall stepped back from the line and glared sourly at his chief rival.
"Aye, he's skilled enough," Morgan agreed. "Perhaps one day he'll learn to compete gracefully as well. I wonder where he gets his temper. Certainly not from Nigel."
Kelson smiled and shook his head, glancing instinctively across the yard where his uncle, Conall's father, was working with a pair of pages under his tutelage — lads too young to go along on the coming campaign. While an old, retired battle stallion plodded a patient circle in the mud, one youngster straddling its broad back behind the massive war saddle while a second attempted to stand and balance on the moving animal's back, Nigel walked alongside and barked instructions. Jatham, Kelson's own squire, led the horse.
"Watch it ..." Kelson murmured to himself, as Nigel's pupil teetered and started to tumble headfirst into the hoof-churned mud — only to have Nigel snatch him in midair by his belt and a handful of tunic and boost him back into position.
They could not hear what Nigel said to the lad, though his words brought an immediate flush of scarlet to the downy cheeks. Almost at once, the boy found his balance and was standing up, erect if shaky, but moving more and more confidently with the gait of the horse. Lent new bravery by his companion calling encouragement from behind him, he even began to grin as Nigel nodded approval and started slowly backing toward the center of the circle the old stallion trod.
"God, I'm glad I've got Nigel," Kelson whispered, echoing Morgan's own appreciation of Gwynedd's Iron Duke. "I suppose kings have always had to ride off to battle not knowing how their heirs will handle things if they don't return, but at least with Nigel after me, Gwynedd will be in good hands."
Morgan glanced at him sharply. "No prescience of impending doom, I hope?"
"No, it isn't that."
Morgan raised an eyebrow at the note of distraction in the royal answer, but he said nothing, only noting how the king had begun twisting at a gold ring on the little finger of his left hand. Briefly it had been Kelson's bridal token to the Mearan princess who now slept eternally in the vaults below Rhemuth Cathedral; the ring had a tiny Haldane lion etched on a facet pared from along the top of the band, the eyes set with miniscule rubies. He had worn the ring constantly since the day of her burial. Likewise, when court protocol did not dictate otherwise, he had taken to wearing black. He was so attired today, not even a circlet adorning his royal head.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The King's Justice by Katherine Kurtz. Copyright © 1985 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.
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