"Katherine Kurtz - Kelson 3 - The Quest for Saint Camber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

THE QUEST FOR SAINT CAMBER
PROLOGUE
Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.
-Job 4: 3
Thunder rumbled not far away, low and ominous, as Prince Conall Haldane,
first cousin to King Kelson of Gwynedd, pulled up with his squire in the
meager shelter of a winter-bare tree and huddled deeper into his oiled leather
cloak, squinting against the spatter of increasingly large rain-drops.
"Damn! I thought we'd finished with storms for a while," he muttered,
jerking up his fur-lined hood. "Maybe we can wait it out."
Conall's comment was more a wishful aside than a statement of real
belief, for March in Gwynedd was notorious for its unpredictable weather. An
hour before, when the two young men rode out from Rhemuth's city gates, the
sky had been reasonably clear, but all too quickly fast-moving clouds had
closed the countryside in a flat, grey gloom more appropriate to dusk than
noon, plummeting the temperature accordingly. As thunder rolled closer and
shower turned to deluge, Conall could taste the acrid bite of lightning-
charged air moving just ahead of the storm. Had it continued only to rain,
Conall still might have borne the situation with reasonable good humor-for the
day's outing was one of Conall's choosing, not someone else's notion of royal
duty. But his fragile forbearance quickly evaporated as the icy downpour
turned to hailstones the size of a man's thumbnail, pelting prince, squire,
and horses hard enough to sting.
"God's teeth! It's hailing plover's eggs!" he yelped.
"Shouldn't we make a dash for it, sir?" came the plaintive entreaty of
the squire, Jowan, shivering on a drenched bay palfrey crowded next to
Conall's grey. "I don't think it's going to let up very soon-and we can't get
much wetter. Besides, your lady will have a warm fire on the hearth to dry us
out. And the horses will be glad for her snug little barn."
Smiling a little, despite his increasing vexation with the weather,
Conall nodded his agreement and set spurs to his mount, charging into the
hailstorm with his squire right behind him.
His lady. Ah, yes. The lady to whom Jowan referred was not the principal
reason Conall had decided to venture forth today, but she was pleasant enough,
a side benefit. Nor was she a lady, in the genteel sense usually meant in
court parlance. The pretty and pliant Vanissa was his leman, his doxy, his
light o' love, or his mistress, depending on his mood, and he sometimes called
her his "lady" in the throes of love-making; but even she knew she would never
be his wife. That honor was reserved for a royal princess Conall had already
picked out at court-though the object of his more honorable intentions had yet
to be enlightened in that regard.
No, Vanissa would give him a child before summer's end, and Conall would
see that mother and bairn were provided for, but visiting Vanissa was
primarily a convenient cover for other activities that would raise far more
questions than a royal mistress, were they to become known by the wrong
people-and the wrong people, at least for now, included Cousin Kelson and all
his closest confidants, especially those of the magically endowed race called
the Deryni.
Conall often wished he were Deryni, despite the opprobrium and abuse
heaped upon them by Church and State for most of the past two hundred years,