The King's Deryni

Deryni books available from Ace

DERYNI
RISING

DERYNI
CHECKMATE

HIGH
DE
RYNI

KING
KELSON
'
S
B
RIDE

IN
THE
KING
'
S
S
ERVICE

CHILDE
MORGAN

THE
KING
'
S
DERYNI

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2014 by Katherine Kurtz.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-17199-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kurtz, Katherine.

The king's deryni / by Katherine Kurtz. — Ace hardcover edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-425-27668-6 (hardcover)

1. Deryni (Fictitious characters)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.U69K495 2014

813'.54—dc23

2014016850

FIRST
EDITION
:
December 2014

Cover illustration composite by SFerdon/Shutterstock, Christopher Brewer / Shutterstock, Christos Georghiou / Shutterstock, Fun Way Illustration / Shutterstock, Sign N Symbol Production / Shutterstock.

Eleven Kingdoms map copyright © 2003 by Grey Ghost Press, Inc. www.derynirealms.com. Graphic design by Daniel M. Davis, Ann Dupuis, James A. Davis, Martine Lynch.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For the many followers of the Deryni, and especially the fans who faithfully gather in Chat on Sunday evenings at 7:00 p.m. (eastern standard time) at rhemuthcastle.com, especially Bynw, Shiral, Evie, The Bee, Jemler, Desert Rose, cynicalmedic, Alkari, AnnieUK, Laurna, kirienne, Elkhound, DomMelchior, Aerlys, Jerusha, and the many others whose names have momentarily slipped my mind. (It's been a long day.) You know who you are!

“That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born. . . .”

—PSALMS 78:6

I
N
the four years immediately following the accession of Brion Haldane King of Gwynedd, the new sovereign perforce focused his energies on perfecting the statecraft learned at his father's knee, and also honing the martial skills he would need as a warrior and leader of men. He had come to the Crown at fourteen, of age in law; but for a warrior-king, the true rite of passage into adulthood came only with the accolade of knighthood.

He would receive that accolade on his eighteenth birthday, conferred by both his royal uncles. Richard Haldane Duke of Carthmoor, younger half-brother of the late King Donal, was reckoned one of the most accomplished knights of his generation, and had ultimate responsibility for the training of all the young boys and adolescents who came to court to hone their warrior skills in royal service. In his hands, Brion Haldane had been but another squire as he completed his apprenticeship, wearing no crown when he bowed himself to the discipline his uncle imposed; and he had learned his lessons well.

Slated to assist Duke Richard was King Brion's other uncle: his mother's brother, Illann King of Howicce and Llannedd, come with his son and heir, Prince Ronan (himself only recently knighted), to likewise lay his royal hand on the sword that conferred this public recognition of his nephew's true coming of age.

Many were the noble witnesses to this royal rite of passage. In addition to his family—his mother, his surviving brother, and two younger sisters—some were young men like the king himself: Ewan Duke of Claibourne, but three-and-thirty; Sir Phares Donovan and Sir Jaska Collins, among the last knights to be made by Brion's late father; Sir Joris Talbot, eldest son of Meara's royal governor; and Sir Jamyl Arilan, a favored companion of the king, knighted by Duke Richard but two years before, whose late uncle Seisyll had served both Brion and his father before him.

Others had been his father's friends and confidantes: Tiarnán MacRae and Jiri Redfearn, both with sons now preparing for royal service, and several of the great earls: Jared McLain Earl of Kierney, Caulay MacArdry Earl of Transha, and Sir Kenneth Morgan, now Earl of Lendour, who had come to his title through his young son, Alaric Morgan, who was sired on a Deryni heiress and destined to become the king's magical protector and companion—if he could be kept alive that long. For though young Alaric was heir to a great duchy, one of only four in the land, he also was not yet eight years old, with powerful enemies who would risk much to see him dead.

Meanwhile, Brion King of Gwynedd had enemies of his own, both east and west. Happily for his young reign, none of these had yet dared any overt measures to undermine his crown—none, at least, that had required direct intervention. Separatist factions in Meara, to the west, continued to skirt the edges of rebellion, but nothing had flared that was beyond the ability of the provincial royal governor to quell it. That would change, as it always did in Meara—King Donal had been obliged to mount expeditions into Meara on a regular basis—but for now, all was quiet in the province.

So it was, as well, in Torenth, to the east—at least so far as anyone knew. Not long before Brion's accession, the Kingdom of Torenth had suffered serious upheavals in the highest echelons of power: the still-unexplained death of King Nimur's eldest son, Crown Prince Nimur, and the subsequent setting aside of the second son, Prince Torval, in favor of Prince Károly, the meek and bookish third son. Torenth had offered no official statement beyond the bare announcement of Prince Nimur's passing, but the House of Furstán was Deryni, and used its magic openly—which could explain much. Persistent rumor had it that the true cause of Prince Nimur's death had been a magical experiment gone horribly wrong, and that his brother Torval had been present, and was driven mad by what he had seen and experienced.

Whatever the cause, this unforeseen shift in the Torenthi succession had left Torenth ill equipped to take advantage of the youth and inexperience of Gwynedd's new king. Both Prince Nimur and his brother had been grown men, well capable of backing up an aging sire in declining health; and neither would have hesitated to take up the Torenthi cause, which was the eventual re-conquest of Gwynedd.

That assumption appeared not to hold true for Prince Károly, the new Torenthi heir, who was a decade older than Brion, but had received only a rudimentary portion of the education for kingship that was lavished on his two elder brothers—and his own heir was young yet, and certainly lacking in the training of a future king. Of a certainty, Károly would have set about remedying that deficiency while Brion scrambled to complete his own training for kingship, but thus far, Torenth had made no move beyond the usual border incursions that tested periodically at Gwynedd's eastern defenses.

Old King Nimur had even sent an envoy bearing his congratulations on King Brion's knighting—Count János Sokrat, aged but little since his visit for Brion's fourteenth birthday observances—but no Torenthi royalty accompanied him this time around. The king's advisors duly noted the Torenthi presence, and the absence of any over-large escort, and concluded that the visit was unlikely to spawn any great threat. Brion, so advised, put the matter out of his head and set about readying himself for the ceremony.