"Katherine Kurtz - Kelson 2 - King's Justice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

KING'S JUSTICE
PROLOGUE
And the king shall do according to his will.
-Daniel 11:30
"I tell you, he isn't going to change his mind," the Deryni Bishop
Arilan said, slapping the ivory table with both palms for emphasis as his gaze
swept the three men and three women seated with him in the vaulted chamber.
"Not only will he not change-he refuses to even discuss it."
"But, he must discuss it!" Laran ap Pardyce, wizened and frail-looking
in his black scholar's robes, was clearly appalled. "No Haldane king has ever
done this before. Surely you've warned him what might happen."
In the wan, purpled light filtering through the room's great octagonal
dome, Arilan leaned his head against the high back of his chair and breathed a
forbearing sigh, praying for patience.
"I have-repeatedly."
"And?" the woman to his left asked.
"And if I continue to press the point, he may cease to confide in me at
all." He turned his head to look at her wearily. "You may not think that
likely, Kyri, but it could yet come to that. God knows, he certainly doesn't
trust us as a group."
The group was the Camberian Council, of course; and the subject of their
discussion was the seventeen-year-old King of Gwynedd: Kelson Cinhil Rhys
Anthony Haldane, now more than three years on his murdered father's throne.
Nor had the last three years been easy, for Council, king, or kingdom.
Any boy-king might have fostered uneasiness among those designated to advise
him-and despite the fact that few outside the room even knew of its existence,
the Camberian Council considered itself so designated for the House of
Haldane. But Kelson, unlike most sovereigns come prematurely to their thrones,
had fallen heir to magic: the puissant and forbidden Deryni bloodline of his
mother, Queen Jehana, her heritage unknown even to herself before she was
forced to use it at his coronation, and the equally powerful Haldane potential
for the assumption of magical abilities from King Brion, his father.
In anyone but Kelson, the combination might have been deadly, for Deryni
were almost universally feared throughout Gwynedd, and hated by many. Before
the Haldane Restoration two centuries before, Gwynedd had lain under Deryni
domination for generations, Deryni sorcery enforcing the will of a despotic
line that had not hesitated to advance Deryni fortunes over human in whatever
way was most expedient. So had Deryni magic come to be despised as well as
feared; and few knew or remembered any longer that Deryni as well as humans
had fought to overthrow the Deryni tyrants, or that a discredited Deryni
saint, besides giving his name to the Council that met in this secret chamber,
had first triggered the magic of the Haldane kings.
Kelson knew, of course. And like generations of Haldanes before him, he
had managed to represent that magic as an aspect of his divine right as king,
walking a narrow balance between impotence, if he did not use his powers, and
heresy, if he did-for much might be overlooked in the protection of people and
Crown. Such a ploy was vital camouflage in a land where many humans still
sought retribution for the years of Deryni persecution, and where any
extraordinary power not demonstrably come of divine favor was regarded with
fearful, often deadly, interest by a hostile and jealous Church.