The Bishop’s Heir Read online

  “Of course. My men will assist.”

  Most of the injuries were slight—the minor cuts and bruises expected of any rough and tumble altercation—but a few of the men, Trurill and prisoners alike, sported more serious wounds. One man was dead, despite the apparent restraint shown by all. Kelson detailed his battle surgeon and the squires to work with the bordermen and, when it became clear that Gendon did not intend to return to Trurill that night, gave orders for camp to be made. Conall he assigned to Ewan’s supervision, to observe how the old duke integrated his command with Gendon’s.

  Kelson himself wandered in the forming Trurill camp with only Jodrell for escort, saying little but watching everything with interest. Recalling Dhugal’s comment about the “stories” which had come westward in the past three years, he wondered what preconceptions these highland men might have about him as a result. In the eyes of men such as these, that Kelson was a Haldane was reason enough to suspect him. What further suspicion might have been generated by tales of his magic?

  But when he tried chatting with a few of them, he sensed that their reticence had as much to do with his lowland origins as with his rank or any vague uneasiness they might have because he was part Deryni. They were respectful enough, in their rough, border way, but they offered no more than was asked for, never volunteering information.

  The prisoners volunteered no information either, though that was hardly surprising. Nor was the information which was extracted, sometimes forcefully, of anything but local interest. Kelson Truth-Read a few of them while others asked the questions, but there seemed no point in flaunting his Deryni abilities when the interrogators were getting exactly the same answers he was. The distance between these men and himself had little to do with magic, but the loneliness was just as real. Eventually he found himself watching Dhugal from behind and signalled Jodrell not to speak.

  Dhugal was kneeling beside the most seriously wounded of his own men, Kelson’s squire Jatham assisting him, unaware of the royal scrutiny. His plaid lay discarded in a heap beside him, sword and baldric atop it, and Kelson could see that he had unbuckled the front of his brigandine for greater ease of movement as he bent to his surgeoning duties.

  Dhugal’s patient was a sturdy mountain lad hardly older than himself but half again as large, sporting a gash from wrist to elbow which would probably render him useless as a swordsman in the future, if he even kept the arm. His other brawny arm was pressed across his eyes, the bearded face beneath it drained of color. As the squire poured water over the wound and Dhugal loosened the tourniquet above it just slightly, bright blood pumped from deep within. Even from where he stood, Kelson could see that the cut had severed deep muscles and probably arteries.

  “Damn!” Dhugal muttered under his breath, tightening the tourniquet again and muttering an apology as his patient sucked in breath between his teeth in pain. Neither he, his assistant, nor his patient seemed to notice Kelson’s presence as he picked up a needle trailing a length of gut threat.

  “Ye must nae move now, Bertie, if we’re tae save yer arm,” Dhugal said, his earlier court accents blurred with the lilt of the highlands now, as he positioned the bloody arm to his liking and shifted Jatham’s grip. “Hold him steady as ye can, lad.”

  As Bertie braced himself and young Jatham clamped down at wrist and bicep, Kelson touched the squire’s shoulder and nodded as he looked up, startled. Dhugal, too, blinked as he suddenly became aware of Kelson’s presence.

  “Why don’t you let me take over here, Jatham?” he said to the boy, smiling and signalling him to move aside. “He’s a little big for you to hold. Go with Baron Jodrell.”

  As Jodrell and the boy withdrew, Kelson dropped to his knees across from Dhugal and rinsed his hands in the basin of clean water near the patient’s head, permitting himself a little smile as Dhugal stared at him in amazement.

  “I was beginning to feel useless,” Kelson explained. “Besides, it looked as if young Bertie, here, nearly outweighted you both. Hello, Bertie,” he added, as their patient uncovered his eyes to squint at him suspiciously.

  “Well, then.” Dhugal grinned, the lilt of the highlands muted to only a slight blurr as he shifted to court dialect. “Last I heard, you weren’t a battle surgeon.”

  “Last I heard, neither were you,” Kelson countered. “I suspect we’ve both learned some things in the past few years. What would you like me to do?”

  Dhugal made a grim attempt at a chuckle. “Hold his arm steady, then—just there,” he said, repositioning the arm and guiding Kelson’s hands into place as his patient continued to stare.

  “Unfortunately,” Dhugal went on, “battle surgeoning isn’t one of the things I’ve had time to learn as well as I’d like—more’s the pity for friend Bertie, here. Just because I’ve made something of a reputation patching up horses, he’s convinced I can put him back together, aren’t ye, Bertie?” he added, lapsing into border dialect again for just a few words.

  “Ach, just watch who yer comparin’ to a horse, young MacArdry,” Bertie replied good-naturedly, though he hissed through his teeth and then tried to curl up on his side in reflex as Dhugal probed in the wound.

  Moving nimbly, Dhugal helped Kelson immobilize the arm and again attempted to place his first suture, shifting from court speech to border dialect and back again with ease, though his face reflected the strain of the other.

  “Bertie MacArdry, ye may be as strong as a horse, in smell if not in muscle,” he ranted, “but if ye wish sommat besides a sleeve-filler, ye must lie still! Kelson, you’ve got to keep his arm from moving, or it’s little use. I can’t control his bleeding if he thrashes around.”

  Kelson did his best, slipping easily into the old camaraderie he and Dhugal had enjoyed so long ago, as boys, and which remained so comfortable now that they were men. But as Dhugal continued to probe, and Bertie gasped and tensed again, Kelson glanced over his shoulder and, in a moment of sudden decision, shifted the back of one bloodied hand to the man’s forehead, reaching out with his Deryni senses.

  “Sleep, Bertie,” he whispered, slipping his wrist down over the man’s eyes and feeling the tense body go limp. “Go to sleep and remember nothing of this when you wake. No pain. Just sleep.”

  Dhugal’s hand faltered and paused in midstitch as he sensed the change come over his patient, but when he looked across at Kelson there was only wonder—not the fear the king had come so often to expect in the past few years. After a few seconds, Dhugal returned to his task, working more quickly now, a faint smile playing across his lips.

  “You have, indeed, learned a few things in four years, haven’t you, Sire?” he asked softly, when he had tied off the last of the internal sutures and cut the gut thread close to the knot.

  “You didn’t use my title when we were boys, Dhugal, and I wish you wouldn’t in the future, at least in private,” Kelson murmured. “And I would have to say that you’ve learned a few things yourself.”

  Dhugal shrugged and began rethreading his needle with bright green silk. “You probably remember that I was always good with animals. Well, after Michael died and I had to come home from Court, one of the things they had me study was surgeoning—part of the training of a laird, they said: to be able to patch up one’s animals and men.”

  He flushed out the partially sutured wound again, pausing when Bertie moaned and stirred a little—and Kelson had to reach out with his mind once more—then dusted the raw flesh with a bluish grey powder and had Kelson press the lips of the wound together from either side. Carefully, meticulously, he began drawing them together with neat, green silk stitches.

  “Is it true that Duke Alaric healed himself at your coronation?” Dhugal asked after a moment, not looking up from his work.

  Kelson raised one eyebrow, wondering why Dhugal was asking.

  “Is that one of the stories that’s come west?”

  “And others—aye.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Kelson said, a little defensively. “Father Duncan
helped him. I didn’t see it happen, but I saw the result—and I did see him heal Duncan later on: a wound that should have killed anyone else.”

  “You actually saw this?” Dhugal asked, pausing to stare at Kelson.

  Kelson shivered a little, and had to look away from the blood on his own hands to shake the memory.

  “They took a terrible chance,” he whispered. “We needed to convince Warin de Grey that Deryni weren’t necessarily evil. Warin claims that his own healing comes from God, so Duncan decided to show him that Deryni can heal, too. He let Warin wound him in the shoulder, but it was almost too severe. I hate to think of what would have happened, if it hadn’t worked.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if it hadn’t worked?’” Dhugal asked softly, his needle half-forgotten in his fingers. “I thought you said he and Morgan could heal.”

  “They can,” Kelson replied, “only they don’t really know how they do it, and the gift isn’t always reliable. Maybe that’s because they’re only half-Deryni. From Father Duncan’s research, we now believe that some Deryni were able to do such things on a regular basis during the Interregnum, but the art apparently has been lost since. Only a small percentage of Deryni had the healing gift, even then.”

  “But that Warin fellow can do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he isn’t Deryni?”

  Kelson shook his head. “Not so far as we’ve been able to tell. He still insists his gift comes from God—and maybe it does. Maybe he’s a genuine miracle-worker. Who are we to say?”

  Dhugal snorted and resumed his work. “That sounds more capricious than being Deryni, if you ask me—working miracles! For myself, I think I’d gladly settle for being able to do your trick.”

  “My trick?”

  “To knock out a patient painlessly before trying to work on him. From a battle surgeon’s point of view, that’s a blessing, no matter where the ability comes from, though I suspect ecclesiastical opinion would argue the point. No reflection on friend Bertie’s courage, but if you hadn’t done—whatever you did—he wouldn’t have been able to hold still for me to do this. I suppose it was some of your … Deryni magic?”

  Almost hypnotically, Kelson watched the bloody hands move up and down, drawing the wound closed with Dhugal’s own almost magical ability, and he had to shake his head lightly to break the spell.

  “I think you have your own kind of magic,” he murmured, looking across at Dhugal in admiration. “And thank God you don’t seem to be intimidated by mine. You have no idea what a relief it is to be able to use my powers for something like this—which is what they were intended for, in the beginning, I feel sure—and not have you be afraid.”

  With a smile, Dhugal tied off the last of his sutures and cut the thread, then looked up at Kelson with the keen, frank appraisal of the borderman.

  “I seem to recall that we once swore a blood-oath to live as brothers all our lives,” he said softly, “and to do whatever good we might. Why should I fear my brother, then, simply because he has been given the means to do greater good? I know you would never harm me—brother.”

  As Kelson caught his breath in surprise, Dhugal ducked his head and returned to his work, sluicing clean water over the sutures and then binding a handful of dried sphagnum moss over the wound.

  That, at least, Kelson felt he understood, as he washed his hands and dried them on a corner of their patient’s tunic. He was not sure he understood the other kneeling across from him, but he did not think he cared to question what had just passed between them. He had forgotten what a comfort it could be to confide in a friend of his own generation. Conall was his age, and Payne and Rory only a little younger, but that was not the same. They had not been tempered with adult responsibilities the way he and Dhugal had. Morgan and Duncan understood, of course, and perhaps his Uncle Nigel, but even they were somewhat removed by age and experience—and they were not always around. He found himself heaving a sigh of relief as Dhugal finally rinsed his hands and dried them on a blood-stained grey towel.

  “That’s it, then,” Dhugal said, peering tentatively under one of his patient’s eyelids and glancing at Kelson inquiringly. “I think I did one of my better repair jobs, but only time will tell for sure. He’s still lost a lot of blood. Best if he simply sleeps through the night.”

  “We’ll see that he does, then,” Kelson said, touching the sleeping man’s forehead and making the necessary mental adjustments. “I’d have someone rouse him every few hours to drink some wine—Duncan says that helps to restore the lost blood faster—but otherwise, he shouldn’t stir until morning.”

  As the two of them stood, Dhugal gathering up his sword and plaid, Kelson signalled one of his men to attend. Dhugal gave brief instructions, but then he and Kelson moved off slowly toward the edge of the camp which had formed around them while they worked. Wordlessly, Kelson took the sword and plaid while Dhugal began adjusting his armor.

  The two were nearly of a height, side by side, Kelson perhaps a few fingers taller and a little heavier, though neither had yet come into their true man’s growth. Before, Kelson had thought Dhugal’s copper-colored hair cut short, but now, as Dhugal pulled off his mail coif and ran fingers under the neck of his brigandine in the back to free his hair, Kelson saw that it was even longer than his own, drawn to the nape of the neck in border fashion and plaited in a short braid tied with a leather thong. He took the coif as the young borderman began buckling the front closures of the brigandine, leaning against a tree to watch indulgently until Dhugal, with a roguish grin, reached out to finger a strand of Kelson’s shoulder-length hair.

  “So that’s what comes of having no wars for the past two years,” Dhugal said, dropping the lock and taking back the sword to loop its baldric over his shoulder. “Decadently long hair, like any common borderer. I wonder how you’d look in a border braid?”

  “Why don’t you invite me home to greet your father and sample highland hospitality, and perhaps you’ll see,” Kelson returned with a smile, giving him back his plaid and coif. “If I haven’t already scandalized my men simply by being Deryni, then playing at being a wild border chieftain will surely turn the trick. You’ve changed, Dhugal.”

  “So have you.”

  “Because I’ve acquired—magic?”

  “No, because you’ve acquired a crown.” Dhugal lowered his eyes, fingering the leather-lined mail of the coif. “Despite what you said before, you are the king now.”

  “And does that make a difference?”

  “You know it does.”

  “Then, let it be a positive difference,” Kelson said. “You yourself admitted that with the power I’ve been given, both temporal and—other—I now have the power to do greater good. Perhaps some of the things that we only dreamed about when we were boys. God knows, I loved my father, and I miss him terribly, but there are things I’d have done differently, if I’d been faced with some of the things he had to face. Now I have that chance.”

  “And does that make a difference?” Dhugal asked.

  Kelson shrugged. “I’m alive—and my father is dead. I’ve kept the peace for two years now.”

  “And the peace is being threatened in Meara. That’s part of what this was all about, you know.” Dhugal gestured around him at the resting men and the knot surrounding the prisoners across the glade. “We’ve always had a raiding problem in the high-lands—it’s part of our way of life—but some of these men, on both sides, are at least sympathetic to the Lady Caitrin’s cause.” He made a face. “She’s my aunt, you know.”

  Kelson raised an eyebrow. “Is she?”

  “Aye. My Uncle Sicard’s wife. Sicard and my father haven’t spoken for years, but border blood runs thick, as you know. Some wonder that we don’t support them, being so far from central Gwynedd and all. I’m surprised you didn’t catch some inkling of that during your progress this summer. Isn’t that the sort of thing you’re supposed to be able to do now, with your new powers?”

  The question was not
at all hostile, but it was clear that Dhugal was fishing for reassurance, as uncertain as any of his men about just what a Deryni king could and could not do.

  “I’m not omnipotent, Dhugal,” Kelson said quietly, looking the other in the eyes. “I can tell whether a man is lying, with very little effort—it’s called Truth-Reading—but to actually learn the truth, I need to ask the right questions.”

  “I—thought that Deryni could read minds,” Dhugal whispered. And though he did not break eye contact, Kelson needed no Deryni senses to know what courage that took, operating from ignorance as Dhugal was. That Dhugal trusted him, there was no question; but despite his earlier protestations that he was not afraid of what Kelson had become, certain fears could only be allayed by experience—and that, Dhugal did not have yet.

  “We can,” Kelson murmured. “But we don’t, among our friends, unless we’re invited. And the first time, even among Deryni, it almost always requires some kind of physical contact.”

  “Like the way you touched Bertie’s forehead?”

  “Yes.”

  Dhugal let out an audible sigh and lowered his eyes, self-consciously wrapping his plaid around his shoulders like a mantle and fussing with a brooch to secure it. When he had adjusted it to his satisfaction, he gave Kelson a brief, bright smile.

  “Well, then. I suppose we ought to see whether the others have gotten anything else out of the prisoners. You won’t forget what I said about highland loyalties, will you?”

  Kelson smiled. “I told you how I go about learning whether a man is lying. How do you do it?”

  “Why, we highland folk have the Second Sight, don’t you know?” Dhugal quipped. “Ask anyone in my father’s hall about Meara, and her greedy would-be princess.”

  “Well, then, if it’s Meara, I suppose I’d better be back there, come spring,” Kelson replied. “And with men beside me who understand what’s happening. Maybe even men who have this—Second Sight. Would your father let you come to court, do you think?”