King Javan’s Year Read online

  Somehow that knowledge did little to ease Oriel’s sense of helplessness, of failure, the cosmic injustice that, even given the almost godlike powers that condemned him to the servitude of the lords of state, else he suffer death the first time he used them unauthorized, those powers were not sufficient to save the boy beneath his hands.

  Alroy stirred and moaned as Oriel withdrew, the grey eyes flickering and then opening in another of those increasingly rare lucid moments. His pupils were wide from the drugs they had given him, but he made a gallant effort to focus on Oriel, one fragile hand shifting from under the sheet to reach toward the Healer’s wrist.

  “Oriel, what time is it?” he whispered.

  “Near midnight, Sire,” the Healer replied, taking the king’s hand and leaning closer to hear. “You should go back to sleep. If you talk too much, you’ll set yourself coughing again.”

  “I want to see my brother,” Alroy murmured. “Have they called him?”

  Setting his lips, Oriel gently chafed the royal hand between his own, knowing that the brother the king’s ministers had called was not the brother Alroy wanted to see. The Haldane Ring of Fire shifted under his fingers, for Alroy had refused to set it aside, even in his illness, even though loss of weight had made it loose on his hand and likely to fall off—though somehow, it never did.

  “Prince Rhys Michael is without, Sire,” Oriel murmured, choosing his words with care, lest young Fulk relay it back to his father as some criticism of the royal ministers’ handling of the situation. “Shall I ask him to come to you?”

  At the same time, he set the psychic suggestion that Alroy should make his request of Rhys Michael, for Oriel dared not—and Rhys Michael was the one person who might be able to insist that the king’s wishes were carried out.

  Alroy gave no outward sign that the suggestion had registered, but he gave a weak nod. “Yes. Please. I should like to see Rhys Michael.”

  Bowing over the royal hand, Oriel pressed his lips to it briefly, then laid it gently at the king’s side.

  “Stay with the King’s Grace, Fulk,” he said to the squire, “and continue changing the compresses. I’ll summon his Highness.”

  He braced himself for almost certain unpleasantness as he withdrew, at least pulling his sleeves into place and doing up the wrists before he went into the anteroom outside the king’s bedchamber.

  Lord Tammaron, young squire Fulk’s father, was there, along with Archbishop Hubert and one of Hubert’s nephews, Lord Iver MacInnis. Rhys Michael, the king’s younger brother, was standing before the dark opening of an empty fireplace, one arm laid along the cool stone of its mantel and chimney breast, and looked up anxiously as Oriel came in.

  “How is he?” Tammaron demanded, before the prince could speak.

  “He’s resting as peacefully as may be expected, my lord,” Oriel replied. “However, he’s asked to see his brother.” He turned his gaze pointedly toward Rhys Michael, three months short of his fifteenth birthday, but already nearly grown to the adult stature his elder brother would never live to achieve. “If you’d care to come with me, your Highness?”

  Before any of his elders could forbid it, Rhys Michael was bolting toward Oriel and the door, slicking his sweat-damp hair back over his ears and tugging at a fold of his long, belted tunic of royal blue. The wide sleeves were rolled to his elbows against the heat, and Oriel could see the clean-limbed flash of long, bare legs and sandals through the high-slit sides—sensible attire in the heat, even for a prince. Archbishop Hubert looked to be stifling in a cassock of purple silk buttoned right up to his multiple chins, sweat darkening a streak down the center of his chest and extending crescent-wise underneath both heavy arms.

  “Your Highness, please allow me to accompany you,” Hubert began, the edge to his voice quite belying the formal words of courtesy—though he did not manage to set his own bulk into motion until Rhys Michael was already halfway across the room.

  A cringing look of apprehension flashed across the prince’s face at the words, though only Oriel could see it, but Rhys Michael did not turn until he had reached the Healer’s side.

  “Actually, I’d prefer to see my brother alone, if you don’t mind,” he said, lifting his chin in an uncustomary show of spirit. “I—may not have many more chances.”

  He turned away at that, eyes averted, anxiety for his brother clouding the handsome Haldane face. Oriel made a point of not meeting the eyes of any of the others in the anteroom as he stood aside to let the prince pass—though he expected he would answer for the defiance later—only following close behind and closing the door.

  The prince was already at the royal bedside as Oriel turned, picking up Alroy’s slack left hand to kiss it. The king’s eyes opened at the touch, his grey gaze locking on his brother’s as Oriel slipped in on his other side—unobtrusive as possible, but knowing he must remain nearby, for Alroy almost certainly would begin coughing if he said very much. The Healer had no need to resort to Deryni perceptions to perceive the brothers’ genuine love for one another. The squire Fulk had withdrawn to a side table with the basin of water and cool compresses, trying not to look as if he were watching and listening.

  “Alroy?” Rhys Michael whispered.

  The king managed a thin, taut smile.

  “You’re here,” he said weakly. “I’m glad. But where is Javan? I have to see him.”

  Rhys Michael swallowed once, the sound almost startling in the still, heavy night, and ducked his head over the hand he held cradled to his chest.

  “He’s at Arx Fidei, in the seminary,” he murmured. “You know that.”

  “But he’s my heir,” Alroy insisted, wide, drug-dilated eyes searching his brother’s face. “I’m dying—”

  “No, you’re not!”

  “Rhysem, I am,” Alroy went on, reverting to the pet name that had developed between them these last few years. “I’m going to die, and there’s nothing that the stupid court physicians or even our good Master Oriel can do to prevent it.” His eyes flicked briefly to Oriel, who hung his head in helplessness. “Don’t you remember how our father went?”

  As the king paused to stifle a cough with his free hand, his exertion already stirring up his illness, Oriel let his left hand ease unobtrusively to the royal shoulder, where young Fulk hopefully would not notice, daring to extend his powers just a little to give the king ease. At the same time, Rhys Michael tightened his grip on the hand he held, trying to will strength across the link of their fraternal love. Whether from that or from Oriel’s ministrations, Alroy did manage to stop coughing.

  “I must see our brother before I die, Rhysem,” the king continued, when he had caught his breath. “You must make them send for him.”

  “But I can’t. They’ll never listen—”

  “They’ll listen if you insist,” Alroy said. “You’re not a child anymore. You’re nearly a year past your legal majority. And if they should manage to bypass Javan and make you king—as is certainly their intention, if you let them—then they’ll have to answer to you in your full authority, without recourse to regents. Remind them of that—and that Haldane memories are long!”

  As Alroy had spoken, increasingly fighting to get each word out, a kind of hope had begun to light Rhys Michael’s eyes—for he truly did not want the crown that, by rights, should pass next to the king’s twin.

  “You’re right,” he murmured. “I am of age. They aren’t our regents anymore. And if I did become king, I could really make them sorry they’d disobeyed me!”

  “Whereas, if they send for Javan,” Alroy rasped, “as is my deathbed wish, the new king may be inclined to be clement, whoever he may be.” Alroy coughed again, and Oriel knew he could not control it much longer.

  “Go now,” Alroy gasped, around another cough. “If a rider leaves now, he can be back by dawn. I don’t know that I can last much past then.”

  As coughing took him again, so that Oriel had to roll him on his side and then into a sitting position, motioning fo
r Fulk to bring more of the extract of poppies, a moist-eyed Rhys Michael gave his brother’s hand a final squeeze, then turned on his heels and fled. He drew himself up just before he got to the door, pausing with both hands on the latch and head bowed for just a moment to draw deep breath and gird himself for the confrontation ahead. Then he raised his head like the Haldane prince he was and pushed down the latch, moving through and closing the door behind him before the three men waiting could even get to their feet.

  “The king commands that our brother Javan be summoned,” he said, his face taut but composed. “This is my command, as well. And before you consider defying the command of a dying king,” he added, holding up a hand to still the objection already forming on the lips of young Iver MacInnis, “consider whether you also wish to defy the man you desire to have as your next king. For if I should ever become king, gentlemen—though that is not my desire—I assure you that I shall not forget this night.”

  As he looked pointedly past Iver at Earl Tammaron and Iver’s uncle the archbishop, the rotund Hubert bit at his rosebud lips and made a short little bow.

  “The king’s wish is our command, of course, your Highness, but is it altogether wise to drag your royal brother from his studies? The king is not yet in danger of death; he has not requested the Last Rites. With all due respect, these final days could drag on for weeks or even months, as was the case for your Highness’ sainted father. Time enough, in due time, to send for Prince Javan, if that is still the king’s desire.”

  “It is the king’s command,” Rhys Michael said evenly, fighting back the panic he dared not allow himself to show—for it frightened him that Alroy himself had indicated that he might not last much past dawn. “Furthermore, it is the king’s command that our brother be summoned now. If you are unwilling to do it, then I shall do it myself. Guard!” he called.

  He was already moving toward the door to the outer corridor before any of the three truly believed he was going to do it. Only just in time did Earl Tammaron grab young Iver’s arm and stop him from trying to physically prevent the prince from leaving, earning the earl a sparse nod of acknowledgment from Rhys Michael and Iver a raking glance of disdain.

  “I suggest that you tread very softly, Iver MacInnis,” the prince said in a low voice, as the outer door opened to admit a guard liveried in Haldane crimson. “And if ever you dare to lay hands upon our royal person, I promise that you shall not live long to regret the impertinence.”

  Eyes as cold as only Haldane anger could make them, he turned back to the guard before giving Iver a chance to reply, pushing past when he saw who it was, for he doubted that most of the ordinary guards would take important orders from him without confirmation of one of the lords of state. He needed one of the younger knights.

  Quickly he glanced down the corridor outside. In the open passage beyond, which linked this wing of the castle with the next, perhaps a dozen lesser gentlemen of the court were lounging along the arched colonnade that faced the castle gardens, some awaiting word of the king, others simply seeking the promise of cooler air from the gardens beyond. Among them was a man whom Rhys Michael thought certain he could trust.

  “Sir Charlan!” he called, raising a hand in summons as the young man rose at the sound of his name.

  Nearly three years before, when Javan Haldane had withdrawn from public life to test a possible religious vocation—for so had been the official explanation—Charlan Kai Morgan had been the last squire to serve him. Despite the petty spying required of all the royal squires by the regents—and the squires had been quite open about telling their royal masters what they had been ordered to do—there had been mutual respect and genuine liking between squire and master. Though Charlan had readily accepted his transfer into the king’s household for the remaining two years before his knighting, Rhys Michael knew from talking to his own former squire, Sir Tomais, that Charlan still spoke fondly of his former master. Alroy had knighted both young men at the previous year’s Christmas Court.

  Now, as the young knight approached, blond head bobbing in respect, Rhys Michael wondered whether Charlan would dare to assert, as a man, that old loyalty he had shown to Javan as a squire. The regents were regents no longer, and all answered to a king now two years come into his majority—even if that king was dying.

  “You wish something, your Highness?” Charlan said.

  “Yes, I do.” Rhys Michael pitched his voice so that it could be heard by the others drifting closer, so that there would be witnesses. “What is more important, your king wishes something, on behalf of your future king.” Let his other listeners take that as they wished.

  “The king desires that Prince Javan be summoned to court immediately.” He watched Charlan’s face light at those words and knew he had chosen the right man. “Therefore, you are to take a dozen knights as escort, mount yourself and them, on the fastest horses in the royal stables, and proceed with all haste to Arx Fidei Abbey, where you will escort His Royal Highness back to Rhemuth with all possible speed.”

  He pulled the silver signet from the little finger of his left hand, the seal with the Haldane arms differenced by the label of a third son, and put it in the hand that Charlan held out to receive it.

  “This will be your authority to procure whatever is necessary for your journey,” he said. “Know that you travel with my goodwill as well as that of the king. And if my brother should question that this is, indeed, my desire—” He faltered briefly as he considered, then reached to his right earlobe. “I bid you give him this.”

  Quickly he removed the earring of twisted gold, mate to one that Javan himself once had worn—though Javan had been forced to put aside both his earring and his signet when he entered the abbey. Javan would recognize it, though—and that his brother would not part with his unless there were dire cause, for their father had given them the earrings not long before his death.

  Charlan glanced at both items, the ring and the earring, then slipped the signet over the end of his middle finger for safekeeping and wrapped the earring in a handkerchief that he tucked into the pouch slung below the white belt of his knighthood. The sleeveless leather jerkin over his full-sleeved linen shirt would take him to Arx Fidei well enough, but he was bare-legged and sandaled like many of the men who had been lounging in the breezeway and now drifted closer to see what was amiss.

  “I shall be away as quickly as I may, your Highness,” Charlan said, joining his hands palm to palm and extending them to the prince, dropping to one knee as he did so. “I give you my renewed pledge, as I gave it at my knighting, that I am the king’s loyal man.”

  He bowed his head as Rhys Michael took the hands between his in the time-hallowed gesture of fealty accepted.

  “Not on my own behalf, but in the name of the king who is and the king who shall be, I bid you go, Sir Charlan,” the prince whispered. “Javan shall be king next—not me. Go to him now—quickly. Please!”

  As Charlan rose and turned away, already summoning those men to his side who would ride with him to Arx Fidei, Rhys Michael watched him go. He had asserted himself as a prince and as a man, as was his right and duty, but he felt like an errant schoolboy just the same. He wondered if Archbishop Hubert would have him whipped—and what he would do, if Hubert tried it. The archbishop once had had Javan whipped for disobedience—but Rhys Michael was not and never had been under obedience to Hubert the way Javan had been. He didn’t think Hubert would dare.

  Still, he did not relish the next few hours, or facing the men in the room between him and his dying brother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.

  Revelations 3:11

  Three hours’ ride from Rhemuth, the cloister garden attached to the seminary at Arx Fidei Abbey was still and silent—no less stifling than at the capital, but the Haldane prince who sought its refuge in the stillness of the summer night at least had fewer immediate concerns than his two brothers. Following M
atins, the Great Office of the night, after which every soul under the discipline of the abbey fell under the Great Silence until after Morning Prayer, Javan had passed quietly through the processional door and into the cloister garth rather than returning to his cell via the night stair.

  Now he settled quickly on the granite curbing around the carp pool—to meditate, should anyone inquire. It was one of the few indulgences he had gained in his two years here: permission to enjoy the gardens in solitude while the rest of the abbey slept. It had caused its own stir among the abbey’s hierarchy, for the abbot, a strict Custodes Fidei priest named Father Halex, did not approve of any divergence from the strict discipline and regimentation expected of his seminarians.

  Fortunately, Javan was no ordinary seminarian. Even though also a clerk in minor orders, he was also a prince. Royal blood could demand some privileges. Yet even this concession had taken the intervention of the archbishop, and then only after several months of exemplary behavior at Arx Fidei and as a grudging recognition of Javan’s having come of age and being, therefore, free to leave altogether, if he insisted.

  Though what a fourteen-year-old heir presumptive might have done better with his time for the next few years, even Javan had to agree was a moot point. Far better to spend those years between legal and actual manhood as he was doing, acquiring the formal education that would stand him in good stead if he eventually became king, as seemed more and more likely—so long as the lords of state did not manage some trick to bypass him and give the crown to his younger brother, now of age, as well, but who was thought to be less clever and more biddable.

  Sighing heavily, Javan pulled off the stiff, hooded scapular that was part of the habit of the detested Custodes Fidei, though long training bade him fold it neatly before dropping it on the parched grass beside the carp pool. The black soutane he wore as a seminarian fastened at the right shoulder and down the right side, and he undid enough of the buttons to loosen the standing collar, briefly pulling the opening away from his neck a few times to puff air inside. Then he hiked the garment’s hem up above his knees and shifted himself slightly around to the left so he could swing his sandaled left foot up onto the granite curbing and cradle his knee, idly turning his gaze over his shoulder to the water beside him.