"Katherine Kurtz - The Deryni Archives" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

the apparatus for ruling his new kingdom. But Deryni excesses and abuse of
power in high places became increasingly blatant, eventually leading, in 904,
to the ouster of the last Festillic king by fellow Deryni and the restoration
of the old human line in the person of Cinhil Haldane, grandson of the Prince
Aidan who had escaped the butchery of the Festillic invaders.
Unfortunately, Deryni magic itself, and not the ill judgment and avarice of a
few individuals, came to be blamed for the evils of the Interregnum. Nor, once
the Restoration was accomplished, did the new regime waste overmuch time
adopting the aims, if not the methods, of their former masters. After the
death of the restored King Cinhil, regency councils dominated successive
Haldane kings for more than twenty years, for Cinhil's sons were young and
died young-within a decade-and the next heir was Cinhil's four-year-old
grandson Owain.
Such an enticing opportunity to redistribute the spoils of the Restoration to
their own benefit could hardly be overlooked by regents nursing memories of
past injustices. With lands, titles, and offices in the offing, the Deryni
role in the Restoration soon became eclipsed by more emotion-charged
recollections of the Deryni abuses that had triggered the overthrow of Deryni
overlords. In the space of only a few years, Deryni remaining in Gwynedd found
themselves politically, socially, and religiously disenfranchised, the new
masters using any conceivable pretext to seize the wealth and influence of the
former rulers.
The religious hierarchy played its part as well. In the hands of a now human-
dominated Church, political expedience shifted to philosophical justification
in less than a generation, so that the Deryni soon came to be regarded as evil
in and of themselves, the Devil's brood, possibly beyond the salvation even of
the Church- for surely, no righteous and God-fearing person could do the
things the Deryni did; therefore, the Deryni must be the agents of Satan. Only
total renunciation of one's powers might permit a Deryni to survive, and then
only under the most rigid of supervision.
None of this happened overnight, of course. But the Deryni had never been
many; and with the great Deryni families gradually fallen from favor or
destroyed, most individuals outside the immediate circles of political power,
both temporal and spiritual, failed to realize how the balance was shifting
until it was too late. The great anti-Deryni persecutions that followed the
death of Cinhil Haldane reduced the already small Deryni population of Gwynedd
by a full two-thirds. Some fled to the safety of other lands, where being
openly Deryni did not carry an automatic death sentence, but many more
perished. Only a few managed to go underground, keeping their true identities
secret; and many who did go underground simply suppressed what they were,
never telling their descendants of their once proud heritage.
This, then, is a very general background of the Deryni, much of which is woven
into the stories in this volume; it is told in far greater detail in the
novels of the three trilogies set in the Deryni universe. THE LEGENDS OF
CAMBER OF CULDI-Camber of Culdi, Saint Camber, and Camber the Heretic-recount
the overthrow of the last Festillic king by Camber and his children, and goes
on to show what happened immediately after the death of King Cinhil Haldane,
thirteen years later. THE CHRONICLES OF THE DERYNI-Deryni Rising, Deryni
Checkmate, and High Deryni-take place nearly two hundred years later, when
anti-Deryni feeling has begun to abate somewhat among the common folk, but not