The Bastard Prince Read Free Page A

confirm Rhys Michael’s capitulation, though there were some seated around this table who still had reservations.
    â€œLet’s get down to specifics,” Tammaron said. “This hardly comes as any great surprise, after all. We’ve been aware of increased Torenthi troop movements up along the Eastmarch border since last fall.”
    Several of the others nodded their agreement, and Rhun muttered something about having warned them long before that.
    â€œIt’s just the sort of beginning we might have expected,” Tammaron went on. “A test incursion into—”
    The door to the council chamber slammed back without preamble to admit Paulin of Ramos, black-clad and predatory looking as he stalked into the room. The mere presence of the Vicar-General of the Ordo Custodum Fidei produced no dismay, for he was as heavily involved in intrigue as the rest of them, and one of the architects of their rise to power, but he had been expected to remain with his brother Albertus, questioning the messengers.
    â€œA Torenthi herald has just arrived under a flag of truce,” Paulin announced, flouncing angrily into his usual place to Hubert’s right. “The man demands an immediate audience of the king and declines to reveal his business except in the king’s presence.”
    â€œDo you think he comes from King Arion?” Manfred asked.
    â€œNo, I do not. I thought so at first, but the Torenthi arms on his tabard are differenced. The black hart is gorged of a coronet. That’s Arion’s brother.”
    â€œ Miklos! ” Rhun muttered.
    â€œAnd the Eastmarch messengers claim that Miklos was behind the taking of Culliecairn,” Tammaron said, enlightenment dawning on the angular face.
    â€œPrecisely,” Paulin agreed. “I’d say that the timely arrival of Miklos’ herald tends to confirm their story. The question now becomes, is Miklos acting alone, or for King Arion, or for Marek of Festil, as he has in the past?”
    Uneasiness murmured around the table at that, for the prospect of an eventual Festillic bid to take back the throne of Gwynedd had loomed with increasing probability since 904, when Cinhil Haldane, the present king’s father, had ended a Festillic Interregnum of more than eighty years by ousting and killing the unmarried King Imre. There it might have ended, except that Imre’s sister, the Princess Ariella, had been carrying his child when she fled. Later legalists had tried to claim that the royal pregnancy derived from a dalliance with one of her brother’s courtiers, by then conveniently dead, for mere illegitimacy was not necessarily a bar to inheritance in Torenth, but everyone knew that Imre was the father.
    The child born of this incestuous union the following year had been christened Mark Imre of Festil, though he now went by Marek, the Torenthi form of his name, and was accorded the title of prince among his Torenthi kinsmen. The House of Festil was descended from a cadet branch of the Torenthi royal line—Deryni, all—and Torenth had provided troops for Ariella’s unsuccessful attempt to take back the throne lost by her brother. Following her death in that endeavor, her son and heir had been brought up among the Deryni princes of Torenth, biding his time until conditions were right to make his own try for his parents’ throne. Prince Marek now was twenty-three, a year older than his Haldane rival in Rhemuth, recently married to a sister of the King of Torenth and lately the father of a son by her.
    â€œI would think it very likely that Marek is, indeed, behind this,” Tammaron said thoughtfully. “Having said that, however, I am not altogether certain we can assume that this is a serious bid to take back the crown. Marek is yet unblooded. He has an heir, but just the one; and many’s the infant that dies young.”
    â€œYet Culliecairn has been taken,” Manfred pointed