The Bishop’s Heir (49 page)

“I'm waiting for an answer, Llewell. Why Sidana? Why didn't you go for me? You had the chance.”

The cords of Llewell's neck were knotted with tension, but he did not flinch from Kelson's stare.

“Kill a Deryni?” He spat contemptuously and glared at Morgan and Duncan. “
They
would have stopped me, somehow. And even if they hadn't, and I'd killed you, it wouldn't have saved Sidana from a Haldane marriage.
He
would have been king after you,” he jerked his chin toward the shocked Nigel, standing directly behind Kelson, “and he has three greedy little sons. I didn't want my sister besmirched by Haldane hands.”

Kelson started to rise at that, anger beginning to smoulder away the grief, but Duncan grabbed his sleeve and stopped him.

“Kelson, no!”

“If you don't intend to kill him, then give me the pleasure!” Morgan muttered, a stilleto appearing in his hand as he twisted Llewell's collar tighter and glanced beseechingly at the king.

“No!” Cardiel interjected. More boldly than Kelson had ever seen him, the archbishop grabbed Morgan's wrist and put himself between the prisoner and the king. “Let there be no more bloodshed in this house of God! Couldn't you have let it be, Llewell?” he added, shaking his head in pity as Morgan released the Mearan's throat and put away his blade. “She would have been Queen of Gwynedd as well as Meara. It could have ended almost a century of bloodshed. Do you realize what you've done?”

“I've given my brother back the chance to take his crown,” Llewell said doggedly. “With another Meara-Haldane alliance, his claim always would have been in doubt. Let the King of Gwynedd find another queen. My sister was meant for a better mate. She is with the angels now.”

“And you shall see her nevermore,” Arilan said quietly, joining Cardiel. “There's a special place in hell reserved for murderers, Llewell.”

Llewell only shook his head. “Hell will be welcome, if I've saved my sister from what
you
had planned for her, Bishop. Better she die than be queen to a curst Deryni king.”

“I wish you well of it, then,” Kelson said in the stunned silence. “But curst or not, I was prepared to love and honor your Sidana—and I think she meant to try, at least, to love and honor me.”

Llewell spat. “She never loved you!”

Kelson only shook his head sadly as Morgan, with cool efficiency, snatched the bloody stole that had bound the couple's hands and bade one of the knights to gag Llewell with it.

“You may be right, Llewell,” the king whispered. “You may, indeed, be right. But she
was
my queen, if only for a little while, and she shall be honored as a queen, at least in her final sleep.”

He glanced at Morgan, blinking back the tears, then lowered his eyes.

“Take that—
person
out of here, Alaric. I don't want to see him again until after my queen has been laid to rest. I'll sit in judgment then. There can be no doubt of the outcome, but even Llewell shall receive the full benefit of the law.”

“It shall be done, my prince,” Morgan murmured, signalling the knights to carry out the order.

“And now, if you don't mind,” the king continued in a failing voice, “I'd like to be alone with her for a few minutes. Uncle, take the rest of the family out as well, please.”

Soon only Morgan, Duncan, and Dhugal remained in the blood-spattered choir with the grieving king, Nigel and his family lingering in sight but out of earshot near a side door, reluctant to leave completely. Meraude and Richenda wept quietly in one another's arms, and even the three royal cousins looked subdued: Conall genuinely regretful and the two younger boys wide-eyed and still a little frightened at the violence they had witnessed. Sighing, Morgan crouched down beside the silent king, where Duncan also knelt. Dhugal stood white-faced and mute behind his father, helpless to offer comfort.

“Is there anything else you'd like me to do, my prince?” Morgan asked, resting a brief, sympathetic touch on the rigid shoulders.

Kelson only bowed his head and closed his eyes, mind tightly shuttered against intrusion.

“Go to your wife, Alaric,” he whispered. “Please. She needs you now, and I—need to be alone.”

“Very well. Duncan, Dhugal, are you coming?”

“In a moment,” Duncan answered. “We'll meet you in the sacristy.”

Sighing, Morgan rose and joined the others waiting for him, embracing Richenda for a few seconds, then simply letting his wife hold him before shepherding Nigel and his family out a side door. Kelson opened his eyes as Dhugal eased down silently beside Duncan, but he did not look up.

“Kelson, we have a lot to learn about a lot of things,” Duncan said softly. “We tried, Alaric and I, but there simply wasn't time. If we were better trained—but who knows how to train healers, these days?”

“No one could have saved her,” Kelson whispered. “She wasn't meant to live. It was all too easy. The perfect solution: for the king to marry the fair princess and unite the two lands, bringing peace.…”

Dhugal swallowed audibly, tears springing to his own eyes. “It's my fault,” he said. “I should have been watching Llewell more closely. If I'd—”

“It wasn't your fault,” Kelson dully. “No one could have known Llewell would kill his own sister, rather than see her wed his mortal enemy. But when we'd gotten through the vows, I thought he'd accepted it.”

“Kelson is right, son,” Duncan said softly. “You couldn't have known. I doubt even Llewell knew, before the actual instant. One of us would have caught some hint.”

Kelson shrugged and gave a heavy sigh. “It doesn't matter now, anyway. We did our best, with the best of intentions—and it wasn't enough. The Fates obviously have something else in store for us.”

“Perhaps,” Duncan said.

A taut silence fell between them, Dhugal unconsciously easing closer to his father for comfort, but Kelson was oblivious to them. After a moment, Duncan slowly rose, gathering his blood-caked surplice in his arms and motioning for Dhugal to join him.

“We'll leave you alone for a few minutes, then, Sire,” he said softly. “I'll be back when I've changed. Dhugal, will you help me?”

“In a moment,” Dhugal whispered, not moving.

“Very well.”

Without further words, Duncan retreated slowly up the altar steps and through the sacristy door, leaving only Dhugal still kneeling beside the king.

“Kelson, I'm so sorry,” Dhugal managed to whisper.

“I know. So am I.”

“Did—did you really fall in love with her?” Dhugal asked.

“Fall in love?” Kelson shrugged dejectedly. “How should I know? I never had the time to find out. I think I'd convinced myself that I
could
love her, and I was prepared to do everything within my power to make her a good husband. Perhaps a king hasn't the right to expect more than that.”

“A
man
has the right,” Dhugal said indignantly. “Is a king any different?”

“Yes, damn you! A king
is
different. He—” Kelson lowered his eyes, fighting back the tears. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I
am
a man as well as a king, and I grieve for both my brides today. This girl, who I might have come to love as wife as well as queen—and the thwarted union of our two lands, which might have brought peace a little sooner. I—”

His voice broke, threatening to sob, and he set aside his crown and buried his face in one bloodied hand.

“
Please
leave me, Dhugal,” he managed to choke out.

He even managed to keep control until Dhugal had gotten up and left, shaking his head hopelessly as he let his eyes pass once more over the still, pitiful form before him.

O God, they mean well, but how could they possibly understand?
he thought numbly.
It's over before it even had a chance to begin
.

Vision starting to blur, he reached out one trembling forefinger to lightly touch a lock of her hair that was not slick with her blood. He lifted it to his lips as the tears welled in his eyes, fighting back the sobs which threatened to reduce him to a weeping ruin.

Sidana
… he whispered only in his mind.
Sidana, my silken princess. I would have tried to make you happy. You might have been …

Tenderly he slid his arms under her shoulders and lifted her to rest against his chest, heedless of the blood, cradling her head against his shoulder and rocking her, whispering her name as the tears made him blind and the sobs shook both their bodies.

“
Sidana
…”

And thus, set apart by his blood and his crown, as he would always be, Kelson of Gwynedd crouched in the ruin of shattered dreams and wept bitter tears, holding the dead hope of peace in his trembling arms.

Here ends Book I of
The Histories of Kelson the King
.

Book II,
The King's Justice
,

will continue the struggle of Kelson against the conspiracy

of Archbishop Loris and Caitrin of Meara,

bring the return of Jehana,

Kelson's Deryni mother, and develop new themes and

problems

for the young King and his counsellors.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Histories of King Kelson

C
HAPTER
O
NE

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.