Read Online The King’s Justice by Katherine Kurtz - Free Book Online

affair on more neutral ground, however, he asked Nigel and Meraude to host it, and had the meal sent to their quarters. That arrangement would also prevent Nigel from dwelling overmuch on what was to come. Half spitefully, he deputized Morgan and Richenda to preside at table in the great hall in his absence, since Morgan himself was at least partially responsible for Jehana’s attitude. Duncan and Dhugal could more than handle what few arrangements had to be made.
    And so, he sat that evening with his mother, Nigel, and Meraude in his uncle’s supper chamber and tried to make pleasant small talk while he longed to be almost anywhere else. The chamber was stuffy—or perhaps it was only him—and he toyed distractedly with Sidana’s ring while his mother’s conversation meandered over half a dozen old themes. Almost all of them returned ultimately to her hatred and fear of Deryni.
    â€œSo when the news reached me at Saint Giles’,” Jehana went on, “I could hardly believe my ears. Continuing to keep Alaric Morgan around you is perilous enough; but to receive his wife, whose first husband was a traitor and apparently Deryni as well—”
    â€œBran Coris wasn’t Deryni, Mother,” Kelson said peevishly, suddenly concerned for the direction this conversation could take if he were not careful.
    â€œBut they say he stood by Wencit of Torenth in a magical circle—”
    â€œAnd Bishop Arilan stood by me . Does that make him Deryni?” Kelson countered boldly.
    â€œBishop Arilan? Certainly not! But—”
    â€œOf course it doesn’t.” Which was not precisely a lie, but it was sufficiently misleading to redirect any suspicions Jehana might have had about Arilan. “I asked his and Father Duncan’s presence—and Morgan’s—because the trial permitted four persons on either side. It was Wencit and I who were contending. We chose whom we willed to give us company and courage, but the power, if it had come to the Duel Arcane, would have come from Wencit and myself.”
    â€œAccording to whose authority?” Jehana challenged. “Those strangers who came on white horses? I heard about them, Kelson. Who were they? They were Deryni, weren’t they?”
    Kelson lowered his eyes. “I may not speak of them.”
    â€œThen, they were Deryni,” she whispered. She turned a pinched, desperate face toward her dead husband’s brother. “Nigel, you were there. What saw you? Who were they? Are there so many of them that they may walk unrecognized among us with impunity?”
    Nigel, of course, knew little more than Jehana in that regard, for he had not been privy to the intentions of the Camberian Council—only their actual intervention. But his uneasy dissembling was sufficient to lead Jehana back to the old, relatively safe topic of Morgan, whose Deryni proclivities were a secret to no one. As Jehana launched into yet another variation on the old fears, Kelson let his thoughts turn to a delicious contemplation of the Deryni at court that Jehana did not know about.
    She had not yet made the connection about Richenda, of course—though she had skirted uncomfortably close. And it obviously had not occurred to her to question Arilan. The knowledge that a Deryni had risen through the ecclesiastical ranks unbeknownst and attained the rank of bishop would shake her faith to the core; surely such a deception could only be the work of the Devil, an attempt to destroy the Faith from within. Of course, Duncan had managed a similar rise—but few outside episcopal ranks were certain that he was Deryni, and much could be blamed on his Deryni cousin Morgan.
    Dhugal, of course, was an entirely different matter. Outside Kelson’s immediate circle of close confidants—Morgan, Richenda, Duncan, and Dhugal himself—only Nigel and Arilan even knew that Dhugal was Deryni, much less that he was Duncan’s son; and