“That’s what I was thinking of earlier, when I told you that Nigel might be persuaded to let the succession return to Albin.” He allowed himself a sigh. “It was a genuine pleasure to tell Rory that I’d found a way to reconcile the prompting of his heart with the needs of state.”
She glanced at her lap, lips lightly compressing, and Kelson suddenly realized what he had said.
“Araxie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that the way it must have sounded.”
“I understand,” she said, lifting her chin. “Just because there isn’t anyone else for me, though, please don’t forget that, by marrying you, I’ll be closing myself off to the likelihood of ever knowing the kind of love you’ve felt for Rothana. It isn’t necessarily any easier for me, Kelson. Only different.”
He nodded regretfully, determined not to let himself forget that again.
“I’m truly sorry,” he murmured. “I am aware of the sacrifices you’ll be making—and I have no right to assume that your sacrifices will be any less than the ones I’m forced to make.”
“Perhaps we should talk about possible dates, then—at least for the betrothal. So far, we’ve mostly talked about things that aren’t possible.”
Numbly he glanced at his hands, at the rings on his fingers.
“Well, I suppose we could set the betrothal for—Christmas Court?”
“Half a year from now,” she said quietly. “And when, for the wedding?”
He looked up. She was gazing into the fire.
“Perhaps—next spring, at Eastertide?”
She turned to look him squarely in the eyes. “My lord,” she said quietly, her tone softening the formal address, “I quite agree that the public announcement must be delayed until after Richelle’s wedding. But I must warn you not to let delay build false hopes. She isn’t going to change her mind. Not when she’s chosen her successor, and persuaded me to accept her choice—and persuaded you to agree to it. And the fact remains that Gwynedd still needs an heir of your body.”
The stark logic of her statement was inescapable—as was his sudden, sick recognition that a part of him still was hoping that Rothana might yet relent. But that was not going to happen, especially given what Richenda had told him the night before. Abruptly he wanted it all to be over, decided, done.
“You’re right,” he said decisively. “I shall make the public announcement at Richelle’s wedding feast, after I’ve announced Rory’s betrothal. Shall we marry at Michaelmas? That’s hardly two months later, and only three months from now. Can a queen arrange a wedding and a coronation in that short a time? Can your parents bear to see two daughters married in the space of six weeks?”
She was staring at him in astonishment, her mouth agape, and he knew he must look and sound like a madman.
“Kelson, we don’t have to do it that fast—”
“I think perhaps we do. You’re right, it’s pointless to hold out false hope—and once we’ve gone and done it, maybe we can get on with our lives. Making the public announcement at Richelle’s wedding feast is excellent timing. And in the meantime, I—I am prepared to plight my troth to you tonight, before witnesses.”
“Tonight?” she whispered. “Are you sure?”
He drew a deep breath and forced himself to meet her gaze squarely, remembering his conversation with Azim.
“Araxie, anything could happen in Torenth. I could even die. What we do here tonight won’t change that, but I feel that I ought to make this at least semi-official, before I go. Rothana and I had made no formal promises, and I—shall probably regret that for the rest of my life.”
“Would it really have made any difference?” she asked. “She still would have thought you were dead—and she still would have done what she felt was best for Gwynedd. And we still should be in our present situation. You mustn’t torture yourself further over what wasn’t meant to be.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It would have given me some measure of comfort, if that was to be the only time we stood before God and declared—But if you don’t want to do it yet, if you’d like more time to think about it . . .”
“Good gracious, it isn’t that!” Araxie declared. “I’ve had months to think about it, to get used to the idea. I just thought you might need more time. But if you wish to do it tonight . . .”
He nodded slowly. “I think we should,” he said. “If I cannot promise you my heart entire, at least you should have my unqualified friendship, sealed before God and witnesses, as befits my intended queen. We mustn’t let ourselves find excuses to avoid doing what we know must be done. So if you are willing . . .”
“I am willing,” she whispered, and gently set her hand on his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
If a man commit himself unto her, he shall inherit her; and his generations shall hold her in possession.
Ecclesiasticus 4:16
As Kelson re-entered the room where he had left Morgan and Dhugal with Azim and Araxie’s mother, all four of them rose, anticipation writ upon each face, though no one said a word. Without speaking, Kelson crossed directly to Sivorn and made her a stiff little bow.
“My lady,” he said quietly, “it is my honor to inform you that your daughter Araxie has graciously consented to become my wife. With your permission, I should like to formalize the betrothal before a priest, before I leave for Torenth. May I send Duke Alaric to fetch Bishop Arilan?”
Sivorn gave him a searching glance, then dipped in a deep, graceful curtsy. “Sire, you honor my daughter and your House,” she murmured. “If you prefer, however, we may delay this until your return from Beldour. I am aware of the gravity of your mission there.”
Kelson very nearly smiled, finding it strange that, after years of being urged to marry, he now was being invited to delay.
“I am grateful for your concern, but I think it best that this be done tonight—perhaps in my quarters. For honor’s sake, I would make my promises before God and witnesses—but not before the possibly public scrutiny of the Orsal’s chapel.”
“Sire,” Azim said, “I am obliged to point out that excessive movement to and from your quarters may well be noted, despite my best efforts to the contrary. Might I suggest that you consider, instead, the private oratory adjoining these apartments?”
“Point taken,” Kelson agreed. “However, I—do wish to return briefly to my quarters.” He drew a resolute breath. “Very well. Alaric, please ask Arilan to join us here in an hour’s time. Aunt Sivorn, Araxie’s sister may join us—and you may invite your husband and Létald, if you wish. For now, however, I would prefer to keep this private beyond that.”
“As you wish, Sire. We shall await your return.”
Desperate to escape, Kelson allowed Azim to escort him and Dhugal back to the quarters allotted them. The Deryni mage agreed to return within the hour. When the door had closed behind him, Kelson gave his coronet into Dhugal’s keeping and took momentary refuge before a little shrine niche set into one wall, sinking onto its prie-dieu with face buried in his hands, fighting back the tears as he mourned what he had done—and was about to do. As king, he knew he was making the decision that best served Gwynedd—for Gwynedd must have a worthy queen, and Kelson the king must always take precedence over Kelson the man.
But Kelson the man grieved for what now would never be; grieved for what another’s duplicity, coupled with cruel happenstance, had changed beyond redemption, forever denying him the woman whose touch had stirred unfathomed and now unfathomable depths of possibility. With God’s grace, he prayed he might at least find contentment with Araxie; but his heart declared that there would never be another like Rothana.
He heard Dhugal cough, and knew he dared not long indulge in self-pity. Raising his head at last, he dashed at his tears with the backs of his hands. As he did so, light glinted on the rings on his left hand—on Sidana’s ring, next to his Haldane signet, yet another poignant reminder of what he was about to do.
For a long moment, as he turned it to
the light of the votive candle that burned before the little shrine, he thought back on what the ring had symbolized, over the years: the tiny Haldane lion engraved in the flat oval pared from along the thickness of the golden band. From within that remembrance came sure and certain knowledge of what he must do before he made any further vows before God.
“Dhugal?” he called, as he pulled the ring from his finger.
Dhugal came at once, from where he had been waiting silently just inside the door, clearly reluctant to intrude on the king’s private grieving.
“Sire?”
“Not ‘Sire,’ for what I need from you now,” Kelson said. “Dealing with this requires the assistance of a brother, not a subject. I should have destroyed it after Sidana’s death—and I certainly never should have given it to Rothana.”
Dhugal eyed it and Kelson appraisingly, then dropped to his knees beside the king.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Hopefully, just melt it down.” Kelson cast a speculative glance at the little tabernacle within the aumbry niche, shaped like a golden church and resting on a fine cloth of embroidered silk. Turning back the edge of the cloth, he saw that the niche itself, though lined with wood, had a stone floor. “Ah, good.”
As he laid the ring on the stone, Dhugal eyed him dubiously. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just stand by, I think. When Arilan had this made, he told me it was of Deryni crafting—which means that melting it down may not be as simple as one might hope. This is one of those spells I only know in theory, from my Haldane empowering, so don’t be surprised at anything you may see or hear.”
As Dhugal nodded and set one hand on the king’s forearm, Kelson drew a deep breath and exhaled gustily, then crossed himself and laid his cupped hands to either side of the ring, focusing his intent and entwining it with a whispered invocation.
“Holy Lord,” he breathed, “I here offer up the shattered dreams symbolized in this ring of gold, which was born of fire, forged in power, given and received in hope. Now send forth Thy mighty archangel, holy Michael, to purify with fire, that new dreams may answer old, and new hope kindle from the ashes of the past. Amen. Selah. So be it. Veni, Sanctus Michaél.”
So saying, he invited the presence of elemental Fire, visualizing the fiery archangel—stiffened as he sensed a presence suddenly towering behind him, simply there, which swept invisible pinions around his shoulders and cupped fiery hands beneath his own, though the fire neither burned nor could be seen. He heard Dhugal’s faint gasp, but the other’s clasp on his forearm held steady.
“Fiat!” Kelson whispered, never wavering.
The fire now bulging visibly upward between his palms resembled handfire, but he knew it was far more than that. Holding his focus, he turned his cupped hands to compress this supernal fire over the ring, containing its power within the compass of his two hands and molding it downward. He could feel a semblance of heat as the ring began to smoke and then to glow—red-gold, white-gold, its rising temperature distorting the air around it.
Closing his eyes, Kelson began drawing from deeper within his reservoir of Haldane power—willed the refining fire to burn away all dross, all imperfections, all former associations, to cleanse all pain—at last sinking back on his heels to breathe out with a slow sigh, the spell’s course run. When he opened his eyes again, the ring had become a flat roundel of molten gold, like a thin, new-minted coin, shimmering slightly in its own heat.
“Jesu,” Dhugal breathed, only then releasing Kelson’s arm, as the king reared back onto his knees to look.
“Well, it appears I did melt it, didn’t I?” Kelson said, with a ragged grin. Of the tiny rubies that had been the lion’s eyes, he could see no trace. “Now we’d better pick out something to replace it.”
Leaving the remains of Sidana’s ring to cool, he sent Dhugal to fetch his jewel casket from the room where the squires were sleeping, summoning a bright sphere of handfire as Dhugal set the casket on the table and opened it. His mother’s letter to his aunt Sivorn lay atop the contents, and Kelson handed that to Dhugal before lifting aside the padding that normally protected the jewelled circlet he had worn earlier.
Beneath, amid a sparse assortment of personal items and another, simpler circlet, his chancellor had packed a selection of trinkets intended as guesting tokens, in case the king should wish to bestow gifts in the course of his visit. From among these he must select something suitable to give to Araxie: something to symbolize new hopes, new associations, new loyalties—and sufficiently anonymous that she might wear it safely in his absence without betraying their connection prematurely.
He laid aside the enamel cross he had worn at his final court in Rhemuth and began rummaging amid the coral prayer beads his mother had given him, fingering through the smaller items in the bottom of the casket. He examined and discarded an emerald and several rubies; pondered a band of granulated gold encrusted with golden cairngorms; held to the light another ring set with a limpid sapphire, water-pale, polished en cabochon like the moonstones on either side; eliminated a dusky baroque pearl that would have suited Rothana, but not Araxie . . .
Then his fingers disturbed a tangle of three narrow rings with no stones at all, one each of yellow, white, and rose-gold, the three of them intertwined. Intended to be worn together, the rings had been the gift of Father Irenaeus, a memento of the first time Kelson had witnessed the Eastern manner of celebrating the Eucharist. Irenaeus had told him that such rings symbolized the Trinity, and were sometimes given in the East as wedding tokens.
As Kelson weighed them in his hand, to a faint, musical chiming of the three, it occurred to him that they might also symbolize the lives being bound together by what he was about to do—for Rothana would always be there, in the marriage, along with Araxie and the memory of Sidana, no matter what he did.
“I think not,” Dhugal said quietly. “No one would miss the symbolism, who knows the background of this betrothal.”
Kelson bowed his head, closing his hand on the triple-ring, silencing their music.
“I hadn’t thought to give it to Araxie,” he said. “She doesn’t need reminding, any more than I do.”
With a shake of his head, he poured the triple-ring back into the jewel casket and took up the sapphire again.
“This one, I think.” He did not add that the cloudy moonstones flanking it were the color of her eyes. “Sapphires symbolize fidelity—and I will be faithful, once I make my vows. And I’ll—speak with Arilan about having a new ring made for the wedding.”
“An excellent choice,” Dhugal said, taking the ring and slipping it onto his little finger for safekeeping. “Do you wish to change clothes, before we go back?”
Kelson shook his head.
“Why don’t you wash your face, then, and we’ll get on with it. There’s no point prolonging this.”
A quarter-hour later, again wearing the gemmed circlet of his rank, Kelson once again made his reluctant way to Sivorn’s apartments, Dhugal at his side. Azim had done his work well, because they passed no one. Without comment, he showed them into the adjoining oratory, which as yet was peopled only by a silent procession of long-faced saints painted life-size on the walls all around them. The wavering light of a dozen hanging lamps of polished brass shimmered across the gold leaf adorning the images, lending them a semblance of life. Above the little altar table with its gilded tabernacle, a sweet-faced Queen of Heaven gazed down with compassion from a painted triptych, flanked by adoring angels and balancing a big-eyed Child on her knee. A hint of frankincense hung on the air.
Azim left them briefly amid the hushed beauty of the place, but returned almost immediately to admit Morgan and Arilan before withdrawing again. Kelson straightened as the two entered, inclining his head to the Deryni bishop in formal greeting.
“Thank you for coming,” he said quietly. “I apologize for the lateness of the hour.”
Arilan nodded and handed off a bound book to Dhugal, divest
ing himself of a dark, hooded cloak. Underneath, he had donned a white surplice and stole over his bishop’s cassock of purple, with his bishop’s cross bright against the snowy linen.
“I cannot imagine that this is any sudden whim, so I wonder why you did not see fit to mention it last night,” he said, taking back the book from Dhugal. “When did you decide to do this? I approve of the choice—who could not?—but we all might have avoided some of what obviously was a painful charade.”
Kelson lowered his eyes, vaguely aware of Morgan in the shadows behind Arilan, likewise removing a cloak that concealed attire appropriate to the betrothal of a king.
“Believe me, I would have preferred it otherwise,” he said quietly. “But last night, it had not yet been decided. Rothana told me, on the night of Jatham’s marriage to Janniver, that she had chosen me a bride. I’ve thought about it, I’ve prayed about it—but even when I went to meet Araxie tonight, I wasn’t sure that I was actually going to ask her.”
“You’re about to make promises before God,” Arilan said. “Do you intend to keep those promises?”
Kelson swallowed and slowly nodded, still not meeting Arilan’s gaze. “I must. For the sake of Gwynedd. I require an heir. I daren’t put it off any longer.
“Besides, nothing is going to change. Rothana has made up her mind, and she’s offered me her own choice to take her place. It’s—an astute match. No one in Gwynedd can possibly object. And I—was fond of Araxie, when we were children. Perhaps we can learn to be fond again.”
“Perhaps you can,” Arilan replied. “It is more than many kings and queens are given. And you know that I am sorry about—the other brides that might have been.”
“I do know that,” Kelson whispered. He found that he had been toying with the remains of Sidana’s ring, which he had brought along to return to Arilan. Abruptly he offered the bright circle of it on his open palm: the coin of his sorrow.
“Know this for a token of my commitment in this decision, now that it has been made,” he said quietly. “It used to be Sidana’s ring.” And Rothana’s, he added to himself. “I thought it best not to keep it, since I’m about to make new promises. I’ll need something different made for—for my queen.”