King Kelson's Bride

  In the semidarkness, she could not find flint and steel. For that, too, she had a remedy, reluctant though she was to use it. But having come so far, she was not ready to abandon her mission simply because of timidity. If she could justify tampering with the door lock, she supposed that relighting her candle was not apt to damn her any more irrevocably than what she had already done.

  Schooling herself to a calm she did not feel, she pulled the drape back into place, lest her light be seen from the stable yard outside, then gathered her intent and passed her hand over the candle in her other hand. Flame smoldered and then caught at the candle’s tip, settling to a cheery, reassuring flame. Her sigh of relief nearly blew it out again, but she shielded it with her hand until it steadied, then moved over to the suspect corner, where she carefully pulled back the curtain and swagged it behind the iron finial on the wall.

  By candlelight, the wall that was common to the next room still showed what appeared to be a blocked-up doorway filled with cut-stone; but when Jehana turned her head to let it slip into peripheral vision, she caught an impression of an open archway with perhaps another dark curtain on the other side.

  She turned her head toward and away from the wall several times, trying to discern more as she wavered between the solid image of stone, when she looked at it head-on, and the ghost-ripples of dark archway that could only be glimpsed indirectly, now certain that the wall was some kind of illusion. She reached out to touch it—controlled her instinct to flinch and draw away when her fingers encountered nothing—then pushed slightly.

  The fingers seemed to sink into solid stone, but she felt nothing. She drew back and examined her fingers, waggled them experimentally, then set the candlestick on the edge of the latrine and again cautiously reached her right hand into the wall, this time turning her head so that she might catch some impression of where she was reaching. This time, her fingers did, indeed, touch the fabric she had glimpsed before.

  She closed her eyes briefly, allowing her hand to close on a fold of that fabric—real, real! a part of her mind gibbered—but then she opened her eyes again and shifted her hand to the right, searching for the edge of the curtain. Finding it, she gently drew it toward her until her hand and part of the curtain emerged from the “solid” stone. The red damask was the same as the garderobe curtain and the heavy drapes over the long windows. It crossed her mind that Father Nivard’s quarters might lie beyond the curtain, but she thought that unlikely. A sidelong glance into the room beyond suggested the dark shapes of more bookshelves—perhaps an annex to the main library, then.

  She dared not give herself time to consider too fully what she was about to do. Not releasing the fold of curtain in her right hand, she leaned back with the other to pick up her candlestick, then drew a deep breath and ducked her head as she turned and shouldered the curtain aside, sheltering the candle behind her body as she pivoted through the archway and into the room beyond. Thankfully, it did appear to be very much like the one she had just left, with bookshelves lining the wall common to the corridor, on the right, and a reading table hard against the far wall. Indeed, no more than an adjunct to the main library.

  But, why the elaborate measures to hide it? The range of bookshelves had been built right over where the door to the corridor should have been—which meant that the only way into the room was the way she had come, guarded by magic. If this was, indeed, an extension of the library, it followed that whatever was contained here was not for the eyes of just anyone. And only Deryni works were likely to fall into that category.

  Kelson, Kelson, what have you done? she whispered to herself, releasing the curtain as she approached the bookshelves immediately to her right, holding her candle closer as she scanned a finger along a row of books. None of the titles were familiar, but a few caught her eye:

  Haut Arcanum . . . Liber Ricae . . . Codex Orini . . . Annales Queroni . . .

  Her finger stopped on the latter, and she pulled it from the shelf with a mixture of fascination and dread, opening it at random.

  “Always in mind should be this precept,” she read softly aloud. “That the Healer’s magic must respect the free will of his patient as a sacred trust. Yet sometimes may a mind be so sorely wounded that no willing access may be gained. Then must he make insistent ingress into that mind, even in the face of resistance, easing pain and making whole, and with reverence and due care—”

  Both taken aback and intrigued, for this clearly was a Deryni text—and one suggesting a moral dimension that she had not hitherto considered—she glanced around for a safe place to set the candle and started toward the reading table—and stumbled amid a faint tingle of power at her feet.

  She caught her breath and stepped back in alarm, and the tingle stopped. Looking down for an explanation, she saw that the flagstone on which she had trodden looked just like the others around it—except that it seemed to be the only square one—yet she knew what it was, by some deep-seated surge of recognition that she could not begin to explain. Nor, once she began to breathe again, did she even feel inclined to further retreat. She could still sense the tingle of power, right at her toes, but it neither threatened nor horrified. On the contrary, it fascinated.

  A Transfer Portal. As she gazed down at it, faintly agleam in the light of her candle, she had no doubt that was what it was—and far more potent magic than any she had dared to summon tonight. She had not wanted to hear, when Kelson told her that he meant to use such Portals to send home reports during his absence, but this, almost certainly, was one such that he meant to use. Which meant that Father Nivard, as keeper of this place, probably was Deryni, as she had feared.

  And yet, even that did not alarm her as it once would have done. Could it be that repeated exposure to the forbidden made it somehow less repellent? Certainly, it could not mitigate the inherent evil of such things. And yet . . . and yet . . .

  Held from further flight by a strange fascination, intrigued by the Portal despite her aversion to any taint of magic, she even found herself wondering what it would be like to use one—though she quickly stifled that speculation with a deliberate recalling of other magic she had once tasted, all too horribly. It had begun at Kelson’s coronation, when the Deryni sorceress Charissa had used her terrible powers first to blast Jehana into an awful limbo state, from which she could do nothing to protect Kelson; and then Charissa had attacked Kelson himself. Jehana’s joy at her son’s eventual victory had been soured by her fears that the victory might have been bought at the price of his soul, for her own forced taste of magic had been bitter, revolting.

  She winced at the memory—far worse than more recent memories of what she herself had done since that time—and different, she suddenly realized. For she had begun to discover that her own power, stirred to wakefulness that day, was within her, whether she willed it or not, and it could sometimes be used for good cause. Once, in Kelson’s absence, it had enabled her to warn Nigel of a planned attempt on his life. And for many years, she had experienced flashes of unexplained insight that she now knew were called Truth-Reading, by the Deryni. And she certainly had not scorned using her undoubted powers to come here tonight.

  Nor would the gentle allure of the Portal at her feet be dispelled. The power glittering there, just beyond sight, seemed to beckon gently—not the seductiveness of temptation, to be denied whatever the cost, but the wistful calling of a friend—benign and reassuring, surely not evil.

  Like one in a trance, she found herself sinking to her knees to lay aside book and candle, setting her hands flat on the square stone. The song it began singing softly to her soul seemed gradually to surround her with peacefulness, poignant and joyful, like kneeling in a chapel in the Presence. The sheer wonder of it made her weep, like being reunited with a loved one after a long absence.

  She lifted her hands in awe, turning her palms to stare at them in the candlelight, suddenly beginning to comprehend who and what she was—no monster or creature of evil, but one gifted with powers she could choose
to use for good. She cupped her two hands together and willed the power to manifest, caught her breath in silent delight as a firefly-flicker began to glow between her hands, cool and golden.

  “Dear, sweet Jesu,” she breathed, as she raised the growing sphere of handfire before her face—and in that instant, caught sight of the dark silhouette of the man sitting far back in the embrasure of the room’s single window, only just visible in the light of her candle and the light she had called forth.

  She muffled a wordless cry as she reared back from him, the handfire dying, nearly overturning her candle in the course of scrambling to her feet, clutching her cloak around her and at the same time wiping her palms guiltily against her skirts. Had he seen?

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  Only the man’s hairless head moved, dipping in apology.

  “Please forgive me if I startled you, my lady—or, should I say, Your Majesty?” His voice was soothing and gentle, somehow lower than she had expected. “I assure you, I am but a harmless scholar, come to use the library. The king gave me leave.”

  “The king? But . . . Well, you should have spoken up!” she blurted. “You frightened me half to death. And you still haven’t told me who you are. And why are you here at this hour, lurking in the dark?”

  “I fear I must have dozed off,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “I confess that Kitron sometimes puts me to sleep—though that is, perhaps, a blessing, in these twilight years of my life. I am called Barrett. And I do beg your pardon if I gave you a fright. May I suggest that the fright is mutual?”

  Barrett. The name meant nothing to Jehana. And if he had, indeed, been asleep, could it truly be that he had seen nothing?

  “Well, that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here at this hour,” she said, trying to regain her composure. “The library was closed and locked, and—” she glanced guiltily at the archway. “How did you even get in here?”

  He chuckled gently and shook his head, beginning to roll up the scroll in his lap. “How did you?”

  “Why, I—I had a key!” she lied. “Don’t be impertinent. What were you reading, anyway?”

  “Kitron, as I said. Do you know his work? This is a very recent find—far more accessible than his Principia Magica. But I question his premise regarding the origins of the Healer’s Adsum. He and Jokal both credit Orin, with influence from several lesser Lendouri masters, but I’ve always preferred Sulien’s exegesis. Of course, if we had more than fragments of Orin’s original texts . . .”

  She stared at him aghast, hardly able to believe what she was hearing.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “I’m sure your own selection will provide more lively reading,” he went on, continuing to roll up his scroll. “May I ask what it is?”

  She felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment, and she glanced furtively at the book still on the floor before her.

  “I—don’t recall. I was just browsing. I didn’t even know this room was here. I—why am I explaining? I don’t have to justify myself to you. I think you’d better leave.”

  “If you wish,” he replied, rising. “But I must ask you to stand clear of the Portal.”

  She gasped and scuttled backward at his movement, stifling another gasp as she was brought up short against the bookshelves behind her. How had she not anticipated that he had to be Deryni—right here in the palace, and apparently with Kelson’s sanction!

  “How dare you come here?” she whispered. “Stay away from me!” she warned, as he laid his scroll on the seat and began moving toward her.

  “I mean you no harm,” he said quietly. He came to the edge of the window embrasure and stopped, sinking to steady both hands on the stone to either side as one foot probed for the step-down onto the floor, but he did not look down. In a shocked rush, Jehana realized that it was because he could not see anyway. His gaze was fixed quite unfocused in her direction.

  “You’re blind!” she blurted.

  “I am,” he agreed, “though not so blind as some. My sight was the price I paid to ransom the lives of many children.”

  “To ransom children?” she repeated stupidly. “Who would demand a man’s sight, to ransom children?”

  “Those more blind than I am now,” he said gently, as he found his footing and stepped down, then straightened before her. “That was long ago. They were not ordinary children, and I was not an ordinary man. One does what one must, to save the lives of little ones.”

  But before he could continue, a soft light flickered between them, and then another old man in flowing black scholar’s robes was standing on the Portal square, a scroll tucked under one arm. He and Jehana gasped simultaneously as they saw one another, but his reaction echoed only her surprise, not her alarm. She shrank even harder against the bookcases behind her, considering a dash for the safety of the curtained doorway that led back into the main library.

  “Good God, what is she doing here?” the newcomer demanded of Barrett, eyeing Jehana as he backed protectively toward his friend. “Do you know who that is?”

  “We’ve made informal introductions,” Barrett replied, his tone easy and soothing, aimed at disarming Laran’s hostility. “Since I know of only one woman the king specifically granted access to this room via the Veiled doorway—and I assume the Duchess Richenda to be safely in residence in Coroth—this lady had to be the one woman in the world related to the king by blood, for whom specific authorization would not be necessary.” He smiled disarmingly in Jehana’s direction. “I apologize if I misled you, my lady, but it had not occurred to me that you would enter here—or even that you could. I have no wish to cause you distress. We shall leave immediately.”

  “You’re Deryni,” she whispered. “Both of you are Deryni. Sweet Jesu, how long has this been going on? Coming and going at will, right here in the palace!”

  She shrank back as Barrett merely moved closer to the newcomer and took his arm—contained a little gasp as the latter glared at her, just before the pair of them vanished in a faint flash.

  Then she was alone with her candle and her fear, blinking into soft silence, trembling in after-reaction. Numbly, mechanically, she picked up the book she had discarded and replaced it on its shelf. She did not dare to chance a look at the one the man named Barrett had left on the window seat. When she had returned to her quarters, she knelt long beside her bed, but prayer would not come. At last she fell asleep on her knees, forehead resting against the edge of the bed—and dreamed of the man with the emerald eyes, silently reaching out to her, almost as if the emerald eyes could see. . . .

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness, and he is waited for of the sword.

  Job 15:22

  That same day, while Jehana made her first foray to the library with Meraude, Kelson and his party sailed for Torenth, now the guests of Létald Hort of Orsal aboard one of the ships of his coastal fleet, capable of penetrating farther upriver than Morgan’s Rhafallia—even as far as Beldour itself.

  Many of the Orsal’s family had accompanied the royal party down to the quays to see them off—most of them, save Létald’s pregnant wife. Araxie was among them, standing between her mother and her sister and dutifully waving a brightly colored kerchief with the other women as the ships set sail.

  The departure was more festive than Kelson might have expected, given the previous day’s attempt on the lives of two kings, but Létald seemed very sure of what he was doing. As they moved away from the quay, the green sail of Létald’s caïque, the Niyyana, caught the wind and bellied above them, bringing to life the white sea-lion emblem of Tralia painted on the canvas; his personal colors streamed from the masthead with those of Gwynedd and Torenth. A pair of Tralian war galleys waited to pick them up as they skimmed between the black galleys drawn up in salute, perhaps in pointed statement that Létald would not countenance another breach of hospitality to guests under his protection. It occurred to Kelso
n that only on that stretch of road between port and palace could such a breach have been even contemplated—and to ensure that there would be no repetition, Létald had caused every member of staff accompanying them on the journey to be re-vetted during the night.

  “I cannot think that anyone will dare to breach the peace again,” he told Kelson, as Niyyana and her escort cleared the pharos and headed north, the black ships falling in behind. “Leastways, not while we are at sail. I don’t know Count Mátyás at all, but Rasoul has always played honest with me, and it’s he who now heads this Torenthi delegation. I cannot hold him or Torenth responsible for yesterday, but if anything goes amiss from those”—he gestured toward the ships ranged around them—“he risks war with me. But I cannot answer for Beldour.”

  Kelson only hoped that Létald was right about Rasoul. Here in Tralian waters, it was easy enough to posture bravely; and for a time, once they started upriver toward Beldour, they would still be skirting Tralian territory, for the river was Létald’s northern boundary with Torenth.

  But if both Létald and Azim were mistaken, and more overt treachery should surface before they reached Beldour, the six black galleys were more than enough to easily overwhelm any physical resistance by Létald’s much smaller party. But as Létald had said, to do so was to risk war with Tralia as well as Gwynedd. No, they were safe enough until they reached Beldour.

  Accordingly, having taken all due precautions, Létald seemed determined to put aside further worry and enjoy the journey, anxious that his guests should do the same. Kelson could not but admire his aplomb—though perhaps that came of living cheek by jowl with Torenth for centuries. Létald had even allowed his eldest son and heir, Prince Cyric, to join the royal party as planned, nominally commanding the second of the Tralian vessels—further evidence of his confidence that nothing further would happen.