Read Online The Bishop’s Heir by Katherine Kurtz - Free Book Online Page A

mouth which gaped beneath a beardless chin. The bloody face could not have been more than fourteen.
    â€œWhy, it’s a boy!” Cardiel murmured.
    â€œAs God is my witness, I had no choice,” Duncan whispered, closing his hand again and slumping back to sit on his heels. “Until he actually cut me, I thought he was legitimate.”
    â€œYou don’t know him?” Arilan asked.
    â€œNo—but I wouldn’t expect to recognize every last page or squire in my service. And with—with the merasha in me, I was afraid that if I didn’t kill him while I still could, he might be able to outwait me, until I was helpless from the drug. Why did he do it?”
    Morgan shook his head, reaching out gingerly with his mind as he slid a hand around the back of the boy’s neck, where there was less blood. Sometimes it was possible to read just a little from a dead man’s mind, if he had not been dead too long, but Morgan could detect nothing beyond a few hazy images of dim childhood memories, fading even as he read them. While Arilan and a monk began gathering up the scattered dispatches, he carefully searched the body for anything which might give them a clue as to the boy’s identity or origin, but there was nothing. Duncan was beginning to weave as Morgan glanced over at him again, his blue eyes glassy from the drug, keeping them open only by the sheerest force of will. Cardiel had an arm around his shoulder to support him, but it was obvious that Duncan was slipping fast into the chaos of the merasha . Whoever the assassin had been, he had known his quarry to be Deryni.
    â€œThomas, why don’t you take Duncan back to your quarters and see to his wound?” Arilan suggested softly, touching a hand to Cardiel’s shoulder and including Morgan in his glance. “I’ll see to the clean-up here and try to find out more about our boy-assassin.”
    Cardiel nodded, he and Morgan helping Duncan to stand.
    â€œVery well. You might check with the guards who let the boy into the compound. Perhaps someone may have recognized him. It would also be interesting to know whether he was the original messenger sent with the dispatches, or if the real one is lying dead in a ditch somewhere—or, at the least, relieved of his livery.”
    Duncan went completely limp as Cardiel finished speaking, and Morgan and the archbishop together had to carry him back to the episcopal apartments. An hour later, washed and bandaged, Duncan was sleeping soundly in his own room, an exhausted Morgan running himself through a brief spell to banish fatigue.
    â€œI’ll try to heal him in the morning, when he’s over the worst effects of the drug,” Morgan whispered, as he turned at last from Duncan’s bed. “It’s a nasty wound, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to put my fingers into all that merasha .”
    His hands were trembling as he took the cup of wine which Cardiel gave him, for going into Duncan’s merasha -muddled mind had been a great personal trial, as well as a physically taxing one, forcing him to relive much of his own terrifying experience. He still kept flashing on the worst of it, unless he kept his mind on short leash. He knew he would have nightmares for days to come.
    But Cardiel’s touch on his shoulder conveyed genuine compassion and even understanding as he guided Morgan to one of the cushioned chairs beside the fireplace. Morgan guessed that the archbishop was remembering his own part in the later aftermath of that ordeal, when Morgan and Duncan had come to him and Arilan in Dhassa and disclosed all in desperate confession, seeking to make peace with the Church which had declared them excommunicate for what they had done to escape.
    Morgan sat and sipped silently at his wine for several minutes, staring blindly into the fire and feeling himself gradually unwind, then laid his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes until