"Kurtz, Katherine - Heirs of Saint Camber 02 - King Javan's Year" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

Joram was already scanning the curl of parchment Jesse had handed him, and allowed himself a heavy sigh as he sat back and looked up at the newcomer.
“I can’t say I haven’t been expecting this,” he said. “Sit down, sit down. I’d hoped we might make it through the summer, but-” He shrugged and shook his head. “Well, we’ll just have to move our plans ahead. Will you send the other copy on to Ansel?”
Jesse nodded, wiping a sheen of perspiration off his brow with the back of a sunburned hand. Even in the relative cool of the underground Michaeline sanctuary, clad as he was for the summer heat, the air seemed close and still. He found it mildly comforting to note that even the usually fastidious Joram had loosened the collar of his black cassock.
It still jarred Jesse not to see Michaeline blue when he looked at Joram. Since the suppression of the Order, Joram increasingly had taken to wearing the plain black working cassock of an ordinary priest-not that much was ordinary about Joram MacRorie. Though Joram now was into his forties, with most of his waking hours taken up in the coordination of their various efforts, he still managed to convey the keen, battle-ready image of the Michaeline knight he once had been.
Like the old Michaeline blue, clerical black set off Joram’s lean form to perfection, a dramatic contrast to the famous silver-gilt hair. It had gone more silvery than gold, perhaps, in the last few years, but he still wore it short-cropped for battle ease, with the small, coin-sized Michaeline tonsure shaven at the crown- a reminder, if primarily to himself, that he remained a Michaeline in spirit. The blue eyes still missed nothing, but a fine network of tiny lines around them told of new stresses that had not been his in the old days, when he had served his famous father as secretary and aide.
Joram heaved a heavy sigh and ran both hands through the silver-gilt hair, then sat back wearily in his chair.
“The timing on this is rotten,” he said, “but then, I suppose so is dying.”
“Do you think it’s time to call in Queron and Tavis?” Jesse asked.
“I’m afraid so. I wanted to minimize any movement that might jeopardize their cover, but we knew this was only a matter of time. Contact Queron and tell him what’s about to happen. I don’t see how it can be more than a few days. Ask him and Tavis to come as soon as they can do so without arousing suspicion. If it becomes more urgent than that, we’ll let them know. At least we’ll have gotten our part in motion.”
Jesse nodded. “I’ll try to get through at midday. It may have to wait until tonight, though.”
“Can’t be helped.” Joram crumpled the curl of parchment into a stiff little ball, then opened his hand to gaze at it sitting on his palm. After a few seconds, it burst into flame with a bright flare and a pop that made Jesse start.
“So, for poor Alroy,” Joram whispered as he tipped the burning parchment off his hand. “The king is about to be dead; long live the king. Let’s just hope it’s the right king.”

Chapter One


And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
-Isaiah 3:4


King Alroy was dying. The Healer Oriel had tried to persuade himself otherwise for days, but the sweat-drenched sixteen-year-old fretting feverishly under even a single layer of limp sheeting was no longer even conscious much of the time-though there were occasional lucid moments.
It was during one of those lucid moments, earlier in the day, that Alroy had rallied enough to ask that his bed be moved into one of the ground-level rooms opening onto the castle gardens, where the windows might admit a little breeze. A breeze had come, with the setting of the sun, spilling the heady perfume of roses into the room, but there still was little enough respite from the heat, even this late at night. Summer had arrived early this year, and with uncharacteristic harshness. These first weeks of June had seemed more like August at its worst, the air still and stifling, heavy with humidity. Even the usually proper Oriel was stripped down to breeches and a thin linen shirt, open at the throat, the full sleeves pushed well up above his elbows.
A young squire offered a basin of cool water, and Oriel wrung out another cloth in it, touching the back of one hand against his royal patient’s cheek before laying the cloth across the brow. Alroy Haldane had never been robust, and fever had burned away what little spare flesh there once had been on the boy’s slight frame, so that what remained resembled all too closely the stark planes of the effigy even now being prepared to lie beneath Rhemuth Cathedral. The sable hair, cut short around his face, was plastered to his skull like a glistening ebon cap.
The king moaned and stirred a little, teeth clenched as if against a chill, even though the fever burned still, and the heat of the summer night as well. The court physicians had given him syrup of poppies earlier in the evening, when even Oriel’s feared Deryni powers had not been able to stop a particularly bad bout of hacking that seemed actually apt to end in the king coughing up part of his lungs. He slept now, but his breathing was labored and liquid-sounding; Oriel, like the king’s human physicians, knew that the king’s illness and his life were drawing inexorably toward their close.
“He-isn’t getting any better, is he, sir?” the squire whispered, turning worried eyes on the Healer as Oriel wrung out another cold compress. The boy’s name was Fulk Fitz-Arthur, and he was two years younger than the king. His father was one of the lords of state waiting for word in the anteroom outside.
Oriel sighed and shook his head as he changed the compress, pausing then to set his fingertips to the king’s sweat-drenched temples. Though he had no doubt what he would find, he sent his Healer’s senses deep into the ailing king, reading again what he already knew, to his heart’s despair-that the boy’s lungs were nearly eaten away with disease and filling with fluid. Court gossip had it that the boy’s father had perished of a similar ailment, with Healers far more skilled than Oriel helpless to save him.
Somehow that knowledge did little to ease Oriel’s sense of helplessness, of failure, the cosmic injustice that, even given the almost godlike powers that condemned him to the servitude of the lords of state, else he suffer death the first time he used them unauthorized, those powers were not sufficient to save the boy beneath his hands.
Alroy stirred and moaned as Oriel withdrew, the grey eyes flickering and then opening in another of those increasingly rare lucid moments. His pupils were wide from the drugs they had given him, but he made a gallant effort to focus on Oriel, one fragile hand shifting from under the sheet to reach toward the Healer’s wrist.
“Oriel, what time is it?” he whispered.
“Near midnight, Sire,” the Healer replied, taking the king’s hand and leaning closer to hear. “You should go back to sleep. If you talk too much, you’ll set yourself coughing again.”
“I want to see my brother,” Alroy murmured. “Have they called him?”
Setting his lips, Oriel gently chafed the royal hand between his own, knowing that the brother the king’s ministers had called was not the brother Alroy wanted to see. The Haldane Ring of Fire shifted under his fingers, for Alroy had refused to set it aside, even in his illness, even though loss of weight had made it loose on his hand and likely to fall off-though somehow, it never did.
“Prince Rhys Michael is without, Sire,” Oriel murmured, choosing his words with care, lest young Fulk relay it back to his father as some criticism of the royal ministers’ handling of the situation. “Shall I ask him to come to you?”
At the same time, he set the psychic suggestion that Alroy should make his request of Rhys Michael, for Oriel dared not- and Rhys Michael was the one person who might be able to insist that the king’s wishes were carried out.
Alroy gave no outward sign that the suggestion had registered, but he gave a weak nod. “Yes. Please. I should like to see Rhys Michael.”
Bowing over the royal hand, Oriel pressed his lips to it briefly, then laid it gently at die king’s side.
“Stay with the King’s Grace, Fulk,” he said to the squire, “and continue changing the compresses. I’ll summon his Highness.”
He braced himself for almost certain unpleasantness as he withdrew, at least pulling his sleeves into place and doing up the wrists before he went into the anteroom outside the king’s bedchamber.
Lord Tammaron, young squire Fulk’s father, was there, along with Archbishop Hubert and one of Hubert’s nephews, Lord Iver MacInnis. Rhys Michael, the king’s younger brother, was standing before the dark opening of an empty fireplace, one arm laid along the cool stone of its mantel and chimney breast, and looked up anxiously as Oriel came in.
“How is he?” Tammaron demanded, before the prince could speak.
“He’s resting as peacefully as may be expected, my lord,” Oriel replied. “However, he’s asked to see his brother.” He turned his gaze pointedly toward Rhys Michael, three months short of his fifteenth birthday, but already nearly grown to the adult stature his elder brother would never live to achieve. “If you’d care to come with me, your Highness?”
Before any of his elders could forbid it, Rhys Michael was bolting toward Oriel and the door, slicking his sweat-damp hair back over his ears and tugging at a fold of his long, belted tunic of royal blue. The wide sleeves were rolled to his elbows against the heat, and Oriel could see the clean-limbed flash of long, bare legs and sandals through the high-slit sides-sensible attire in the heat, even for a prince. Archbishop Hubert looked to be stifling in a cassock of purple silk buttoned right up to his multiple chins, sweat darkening a streak down the center of his chest and extending crescentwise underneath both heavy arms.
“Your Highness, please allow me to accompany you,” Hubert began, the edge to his voice quite belying the formal words of courtesy-though he did not manage to set his own bulk into motion until Rhys Michael was already halfway across the room.
A cringing look of apprehension flashed across the prince’s face at the words, though only Oriel could see it, but Rhys Michael did not turn until he had reached the Healer’s side.
“Actually, I’d prefer to see my brother alone, if you don’t mind,” he said, lifting his chin in an uncustomary show of spirit. “I-may not have many more chances.”
He turned away at that, eyes averted, anxiety for his brother clouding the handsome Haldane face. Oriel made a point of not meeting the eyes of any of the others in the anteroom as he stood aside to let the prince pass-though he expected he would answer for the defiance later-only following close behind and closing the door.
The prince was already at the royal bedside as Oriel turned, picking up Alroy’s slack left hand to kiss it. The king’s eyes opened at the touch, his grey gaze locking on his brother’s as Oriel slipped in on his other side-unobtrusive as possible, but knowing he must remain nearby, for Alroy almost certainly would begin coughing if he said very much. The Healer had no need to resort to Deryni perceptions to perceive the brothers’ genuine love for one another. The squire Fulk had withdrawn to a side table with the basin of water and cool compresses, trying not to look as if he were watching and listening.
“Alroy?” Rhys Michael whispered.
The king managed a thin, taut smile.
“You’re here,” he said weakly. “I’m glad. But where is Javan? I have to see him.”