"Katherine Kurtz - Deryni 2 - Deryni Checkmate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

and taverns, inns and roadhouses, inhabitants of the city huddled around their
firesides to take their evening meals, sipped good ale and traded yams while
they waited for the storm to subside.
At the north of the city, the archbishop's palace was likewise under siege
from the storm. In the shadow of palace walls, the massive nave of Saint
George's Cathedral loomed dark against the blackening sky, stubby bell tower
thrust brazenly heavenward, bronze doors sealed tightly against the onslaught.
Leather-cloaked household guards patrolled the ramparts of the palace proper,
collars and hoods muffled close against the cold and wet. Torches hissed and
flared under sheltered eaves along the battlements as the storm raged and
howled and chilled to the .bone.
Inside, the Lord Archbishop of Rhemuth, the Most Reverend Patrick Corrigan,
was snug and warm. Standing before a roaring fireplace, pudgy hands extended
toward the flames, he rubbed his hands together briskly to further warm them,
then pulled his fur-lined robe more closely around him and padded on slippered
feet to a writing desk on the opposite side of the room. Another man, also in
episcopal violet, was poring over an elaborate parchment manuscript, squinting
in the light of two yellow candles on the desk before him. Half a dozen candle
sconces placed around the rest of the room made a feeble attempt to further
banish the gloom encroaching from the darkness outside. And a youngish-looking
priest-secretary hovered attentively over the man's left shoulder with another
light, ready to apply red sealing wax when he was told to do so.
Corrigan peered over the reader's right shoulder and watched as the man
nodded, picked up a quill, and scrawled a bold signature at the foot of the
document. The secretary dripped molten wax beside the name, and the man calmly
imprinted the wax with his amethyst seal of office. He breathed on the stone
and polished it against his velvet sleeve, then looked up at Corrigan and
replaced the ring on his finger.
"That should take care of Morgan," he said.
Edmund Loris, Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of Gwynedd was an impressive-
looking man. His body was lean and fit beneath the rich violet cassock he
wore, and the fine silvery hair formed a wispy halo-effect around the magenta
skullcap covering his clerical tonsure.
The bright blue eyes were hard and cold, however. And the gaunt hawk-face was
anything but beneficent at the moment. For Loris had just affixed his seal to
a document which would shortly cause Interdict to fall upon a large portion of
Royal Gwynedd. Interdict which would cut off the rich Duchy of Corwyn to the
east from all sacraments and solace of the Church in the Eleven Kingdoms.
It was a grave decision, and one to which both Loris and his colleague had
given considerable thought in the past four months. For in all fairness, the
people of Corwyn had done nothing to warrant so extreme a measure as
Interdict. But nor, on the other hand, could the true cause of the measure be
ignored or tolerated any longer. An abhorrent situation had existed and
continued to exist within the archbishops' jurisdiction, and it must be
stamped out.
And so the prelates salved their consciences with the rationalization that the
threat of Interdict was not, after all, directed against the people of Corwyn,
but against one man who was impossible to reach in any other way. It was
Corwyn's master, the Deryni Duke Alaric Morgan, who was the object of
sacerdotal vengeance tonight. Morgan, who had repeatedly dared to use his