The Bishop’s Heir Page 2

  No such majority prevailed in the consistory Morgan now watched in the chamber below, assembled in Culdi to elect old Carsten’s successor. The unexpected vacancy in the See of Meara had touched off old, old controversies regarding its tenure. Mearan separatists had been agitating for a Mearan-born prelate for as long as Morgan could remember, and had been agitating in vain through the reigns of at least three Haldane kings. This was the first time that young Kelson had had to face the ongoing argument, but with the king less than a fortnight past his seventeenth birthday, it was not likely to be the last. Even now, he was addressing the assembled bishops in the chamber below, outlining the factors he wished them to consider in weighing the many candidates.

  Suppressing a cough, Morgan shifted forward on the hard stone seat in the listening gallery and eased aside the heavy curtain to peer down. He could see only Kelson’s back from this angle, stiff and formal in a long scarlet court robe, but Conall, Prince Nigel’s eldest son and second in line to the throne after his father, was visible in profile to Kelson’s right, looking very bored. The bishops themselves seemed attentive enough, but many of those watching from the tiered benches along the walls wore stormy faces. Morgan could identify several of the principal aspirants to the vacant Mearan See.

  “We wish, therefore, to reassure you that the Crown will not interfere unduly in your election, my lords,” the king was saying, “but we enjoin you to consider well the candidates who shall come under your examination in the coming days. The name of the individual eventually chosen matters little to us, personally, but the peace of Meara matters a great deal. That is why we have spent this past season progressing through our Mearan lands. We recognize that a bishop’s principal function is to provide spiritual guidance—yet we would be naive in the extreme if we did not also acknowledge the temporal power wielded by the incumbent of any such office. All of you are well aware of the weight your opinions carry in our own secular deliberations.”

  He went on, but Morgan released the curtain with a bored sigh and folded his arms along the railing, allowing his attention to drift as he laid his head on his crossed forearms and closed his eyes.

  They had gone over all of this before. Morgan had not been along on the royal progress, having business of his own in Corwyn, but he joined the king as soon as word arrived of old Carsten’s death. His first night back in the royal entourage, Archbishop Cardiel had briefed him on the political ramifications and acceptable successors, while Kelson listened and Duncan occasionally added his own observations. Duncan was down there now at Cardiel’s side, poised and attentive in his clerical black—at thirty-one, young even to be serving as a bishop’s secretary, much less an incipient bishop himself, though he had shown sufficient promise even a full five years ago to be appointed the then-Prince Kelson’s chaplain and given the rank of Monsignor.

  Not that Duncan would be Carsten’s successor—though many might have feared that, had they known of his impending change of status. Fortunately, most did not. The bishops knew, of course. Cardiel had determined to make Duncan his assistant even before Carsten’s death, and had spearheaded his election as one of the first items of business when the convocation convened a few days earlier.

  But partially because Duncan’s secular status already presented complications in the deliberations ahead, and partially because he wished to delay his formal consecration until the following Easter, no public announcement had yet been made. Duncan’s very presence at the convocation, ostensibly as secretary for the proceedings, had been enough to raise eyebrows among the Mearan clergy and lay observers in attendance.

  Nor did Mearan uneasiness spring from the fact that Duncan, like Morgan, was Deryni—though the Deryni question had certainly presented problems of its own in the beginning, and doubtless would continue to be a factor of varying importance. For nearly two centuries, no known Deryni had been permitted ordination to the priesthood. Discovery that Duncan was Deryni and had been so ordained had sparked a panicked flurry of ecclesiastical speculation as to how many other Deryni might have served in the clergy secretly, to the possible detriment of uncountable human souls to whom they might have ministered—and how many might be serving now? No one knew how virulent the infection might be, if Deryni consorted unbeknownst with decent Christian folk. The very thought had sent men like Edmund Loris into near-apoplectic fits on more than one occasion.

  Fortunately, cooler logic than Loris’ had eventually prevailed. Under the physical protection of a part-Deryni king, both Duncan and Morgan had managed to convince a majority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that they, at least, did not fit the image of evil for so long attributed to Deryni—for surely evil men would not have put themselves so thoroughly at risk to save their king and kingdom from another of their race.

  But while Morgan could quickly return to a status not unlike that which he had enjoyed before the death of Brion—known and sometimes feared for what he was, but nonetheless grudgingly respected, if only for the threat of what he might do if provoked—Duncan’s situation required more delicate handling. Once he and Morgan had even made peace with the bishops, the Deryni priest had spent many agonizing weeks reconciling his own conscience on the matter of having accepted ordination to the priesthood when he knew it was forbidden to Deryni. He had resumed his priestly function only after Kelson’s victory at Llyndruth Meadows.

  In Duncan’s favor, at least, was the fact that few outside the confines of consistory and court definitely knew he was Deryni; and whatever rumor and innuendo might be whispered beyond that circle of intimates, scrupulous avoidance of any public display of magic had enabled Duncan not to confirm anything. He was not known to be Deryni by most; he was only known to consort with them—Morgan and the king, in particular. Arilan, now the Bishop of Dhassa, was Deryni too; but among the bishops only Cardiel knew that—as did a meager handful outside the episcopal ranks—for neither Arilan nor Duncan had had to reveal their powers against Wencit at the Llyndruth Meadows confrontation two years before. Morgan did not fully trust Arilan, but he was sure he and Cardiel were largely responsible for Duncan’s cautious acceptance among the clergy. Certainly, Duncan could not have been elected bishop without their support.

  What gave the Mearans cause to distrust Duncan, then, had almost entirely to do with Duncan’s secular status; for following his father’s death without other heir, Duncan had assumed the ducal and county titles of Cassan and Kierney—titles which had once belonged to Old Meara. To Mearan separatists, working to establish a powerbase for a Mearan restoration, a Cassani duke loyal to the crown of Gwynedd was merely a political annoyance across the northern border, to be worked around and watched, as Duncan’s father had been watched for years; but if that duke was also a high-ranking priest, and Meara’s only bishopric fell suddenly vacant, matters instantly became more complicated. A Cassani royalist duke who also became Bishop of Meara would wield both spiritual and temporal authority over two vast areas.

  Indeed, Duncan’s election to any bishopric would be viewed with suspicion in Meara; for even if he himself had no aspirations in that direction, his politically motivated wishes could carry great weight in the selection of the man who was chosen to occupy the Mearan See. Monsignor The Duke of Cassan represented a threat, then, for all that he seemed to be an innocuous-looking priest-secretary seated quietly beside the Archbishop of Rhemuth.

  Smothering another cough, Morgan glanced down at the consistory chamber again—Kelson was winding up his speech—then allowed his gaze to drift lazily over his own form, reflecting on the effort which had gone into making his image less threatening in the past two years. Gone was the somber black attire which a younger, more arrogant Morgan had affected in those days as Brion’s shadow and confidant. Cardiel had told him quite frankly that such affectations only tended to reinforce the sinister notions most people still entertained about Deryni.

  “Why dress as the Adversary?” Cardiel demanded. “You’ve shown amply by your actions that you’re a servant of Ligh
t, not Darkness. Why, with your pale hair and fair features, you could have come off my chapel ceiling: one of the Lord’s messengers—maybe even blessed Michael himself!”

  And Lord Rathold, his wardrober at Coroth, had badgered him no less mercilessly about his ducal image.

  “You must think of your people, Your Grace!” Rathold had said stubbornly. “You dress like a common soldier, when you have your way. No one wishes to think he serves an impoverished master—or to have others think it! ’Tis a matter of pride!”

  And so, unless there was a need for stealth, the sable leathers had been put aside and replaced with color: a deep burgundy cloak at first, as a self-conscious concession to his rank as King’s Champion—he could not bring himself to adopt the crimson Kelson favored—but worn over muted, conservative grey, with little embellishment. Deep blues followed, and eventually greens and golds and even particolors—the rich jewel-tones rather than bright shades. Eventually, he even learned to like them.

  His body squire had chosen verdant hues for him today: a blue-green cloak collared and lined in silver fox drawn over a nubby wool robe in a slightly lighter shade, ankle-length and slit front and rear for riding. The borders and cuffs were stiff with dozens of his Corwyn gryphons worked in gold bullion, the throat clasped with a silver penannular brooch which had been his mother’s.

  He still wore a mail shirt beneath his finery, as he always had: fine, supple chain which would turn aside all but the most direct dagger thrust. But where once the metal would have gleamed openly at wrists and throat, boldly belligerent and just a little too ready for trouble, now it was hidden beneath an undertunic of rich, slubbed silk, with soft wool between the chain and his skin. The scabbard of the sword at his left hip was mounted with silver-set Cassani cairngorms the size of a man’s thumbnail—Duncan’s birthday gift to him two months before: civilized splendor, even if the blade the scabbard sheathed was as serviceable as ever.

  A shorter blade was thrust into his right boot-top, the hilt never far from his gloved hand, and he still carried a narrow stiletto in a wrist-sheath strapped along his left forearm, underneath the mail. Around his neck he wore the gilded captain-general’s chain Kelson had given him at last year’s Christmas Court, each link engraved with Haldane lions and Corwyn gryphons chasing one another’s tails. The old Morgan would not have understood the joke.

  He sighed and shifted, and the sound of the chain chiming against the stone railing brought him back to awareness of his surroundings. Kelson’s voice in the chamber below had been replaced by another while Morgan daydreamed, and a quick glance between the curtains confirmed that the speaker was Archbishop Bradene. Seconds before the door latch lifted, Morgan sensed the king approaching even as he quested outward with his mind. He was already rising to incline his head in a slight bow as Kelson stepped inside.

  “Well, no sense trying to take you by surprise,” the boy remarked with a rueful smile. “You always seem to know it is I. How did I do?”

  Morgan shrugged and returned the smile.

  “The part that I heard was fine, my prince. I must confess that my attention wandered, toward the end. We went over this so many times in Droghera.”

  “I know. I nearly bored myself as well.” Kelson flashed a more wistful grin as he drifted over to peer through the curtains as Morgan had done. “Still, it had to be said.”

  “Aye.”

  As the king stood there poised and listening, Morgan was reminded once again how much had changed in the past three years. Kelson had grown more than a handspan since that day Morgan had come to help a grief-stricken boy of fourteen keep his throne. The boy was a man now—still not as tall as Morgan, but already taller than his father had been, if more slightly built. In other ways than size, he would also be a bigger man than Brion. Already he knew more of his magical heritage than Brion ever had, and more of the ways of people.

  The eyes were the same, though—the grey Haldane eyes that could pierce all subterfuge and read a man’s soul, even if the vigor of merely human potential were not enhanced by Haldane magic. The silky black hair was Brion’s, too, though Kelson wore it far longer of late than his father ever had—short across his forehead, but almost brushing his shoulders on the sides. A golden circlet chased with an interlace design bound the long part off his face, but the back was rumpled where it had caught the high-standing collar of his formal court robe. Kelson raked the fingers of one hand through the snarls and glanced aside at Morgan with a mischievous grin as he let the curtains fall back into place.

  “I’ve a mind to do something that I know will vex you,” he said, beginning to shrug out of his heavy outer robe. “Would you be terribly cross if I went off and left you here for a few days to supervise the bishops?”

  Adopting the bland expression as well as the stance of a valet, Morgan caught Kelson’s robe before it could slip to the floor and laid it aside, gathering up the fur-lined cloak of scarlet that the king had worn earlier in the day.

  “I shan’t deny that listening to a pack of bishops argue is among my least favorite occupations—or that I should prefer you didn’t go too far afield, this close to Meara,” he said neutrally. “On the other hand, you generally have good reasons for the things you want to do. Where, specifically, did you plan to go?”

  Still grinning, the king took off his circlet long enough to rub his forehead where the band had pressed, before turning to back into the cloak Morgan extended. In the process, one long strand of hair caught on the wire of the great ruby winking in his right earlobe, and he tossed his head to free it as he settled the circlet back on his head.

  “Why, Morgan, you’re beginning to sound like a true courtier,” he said, adjusting the cloak on his shoulders and snapping the clasp as Morgan freed his hair from the sable collar. “I need to go to Trurill, though. I’d planned to include it in my progress this summer, but Carsten’s death interrupted that, as you know. It occurs to me that this might be my last chance to poke about before the rains start.”

  “Why Trurill, in particular?” Morgan asked. “Do you have reason to suspect trouble there?”

  “No. But if Meara should go more sour than it already has, I’d like to be certain of my border barons. Brice of Trurill says he’s loyal—all of them do, when I’m nearby and they’re this far from Rhemuth—but in another few weeks, he’ll be beyond my reach until the spring.”

  Morgan grimaced, personal distaste for the job Kelson was leaving him giving way to very real concern for the royal safety.

  “Are you sure this isn’t just an excuse to get out of an onerous job?” he murmured. “I hasten to remind you that the troops we brought from Rhemuth are not accustomed to the ways of the bordermen. Up here, they fight an entirely different kind of skirmish. If Brice isn’t loyal—”

  “If he isn’t loyal, then I need to know,” Kelson interrupted. “I’m taking Duncan’s Jodrell as guide. He’s familiar with the area.” He paused to grin. “And of course it’s an excuse to get out of an onerous job. You don’t think I’d be fool enough to go into the borderlands without you if I really thought Brice was vacillating, do you? You taught me better than that.”

  “I should like to think so,” Morgan returned, little reassured. “I just hope you’re as good a judge of character as you think you are. I’ve met this Brice. He’s a tricky devil.”

  “Tricky enough to lie to me and get away with it?”

  “Probably not. But he might not tell all the truth, either. Halftruths can sometimes be more dangerous than outright lies—and Truth-Reading isn’t much defense against that.”

  Kelson shrugged. “That’s true. But I fancy I know enough to ask the right questions.”

  Morgan said nothing, but he was thinking that sometimes Kelson did now know quite as much as he thought he did. The boy was more experienced than many other young men of far more years, and mature for his age, God knew—he could not have survived the past three years if he were not—but he sometimes tended to take his newly gained maturity
for granted and to overestimate what could be done. Age and further experience would compensate for that in time, but meanwhile, the king sometimes gave Morgan the odd, anxious moment.

  Still, Morgan supposed that Kelson could not get into too much trouble this close to Culdi, and with the local barons aware that the king’s champion was not far away and expecting a prompt return. In all ages, fledglings must be permitted to try their wings—even if the trying sometimes turned their mentors prematurely grey. Morgan was suddenly grateful that his hair was already light, so Kelson would never know the extent of the anxiety he caused.

  “You aren’t really worried, are you?” Kelson asked after a few seconds, when Morgan did not speak, apparently sensing the other’s reservations. “Nothing is going to happen. Ewan is dying to get away to the mountains for a few days—I think he dislikes being cooped up at court even more than you do—and I thought I’d take Conall along, as well. Maybe a little patrol work will teach him patience. It’s a courtesy call, Alaric—that’s all. I want to see how Brice operates when he isn’t expecting me to see.”

  “Do as you wish, then,” Morgan muttered. “You will, anyway. I don’t know why I bother worrying.”