The Bastard Prince by Katherine Kurtz Page B

mentors from moving in the king’s behalf long ago.
    But it simply had not been possible to establish contact with the new king during those precarious days and months immediately following the death of King Javan. Not only was Rhys Michael closely guarded, but no one was sure what reception a Deryni contact might receive, for no one knew how much Javan had confided to his brother before riding out on his final journey north.
    Furthermore, the reshuffling of power that had put Rhys Michael on his brother’s throne had also cost his would-be supporters dearly. Though several well-placed Deryni had established a precarious foothold in Javan’s court, keeping their true identities secret and slowly beginning to erode the great lords’ influence, Javan’s fall had brought their deaths as well. It was believed that the great lords had not suspected the Deryni presence; and, indeed, they must never learn of it, else Rhys Michael himself must fall under closer scrutiny—if that were possible.
    It also had become clear, once those critical first months were past, that the new king probably was relatively safe where he was, for the time being—at least until he produced an heir or two, and so long as he did not take too long about it. Even the great lords did not desire the extinction of the Haldane line. They wanted another long regency, heralding a succession of grateful and biddable monarchs who would support the dispersal of royal power among the great lords who had engineered their very existence.
    But here, theory and expediency might well diverge. Preserving the legitimate succession was most desirable; but if Rhys Michael had declined to cooperate, the great lords had decided very early that it was sufficient for their purposes merely to keep the king alive until some willing surrogate ensured that the queen did, indeed, bear offspring that would be taken for Haldane. What the great lords most desired was a puppet Haldane king; but a puppet bastard carrying the Haldane name would suit them well enough, if it came to that.
    Rhysel guessed that the king would have come to understand this all too well, as the months spun on into years. From clandestine probes of Queen Michaela, she knew that the royal couple had delayed conceiving an heir as long as they dared, but the birth of a son in the second year of the king’s reign had made Rhys Michael’s continued survival that much more precarious. He now was no longer the only Haldane. The birth of a second heir, especially another prince, might well push the great lords to a second regicide, once they were certain the second child thrived; for a regency for a four-year-old heir, with a spare in the royal nursery, would require far less effort than maintaining the illusion that a grown king actually ruled his kingdom. Whenever it suited the great lords, whether sparked by actual transgression or mere pique, Rhysel had no doubt that the king would meet a convenient “accident,” as many had done before him.
    Thus had it become urgent that the king be brought to his full Haldane powers before the birth of his next child—and now it became essential that he be awakened before he left for Eastmarch, lest he perish at the hands of a Deryni enemy before he had a chance to clean his own house. The prospect would have been daunting enough with time for preparation, months from now, as they had planned. But if they were even to try, on such short notice, the king must be willing to cooperate without reservation, to give himself totally into the guidance of his Deryni allies with little time for wariness or explanations, for there was no time except for trust and the doing of what must be done.
    From what Rhysel had learned of the king by her own meager observations, securing that trust would be no easy thing. He had little reason to trust anyone besides his wife and her brother, and certainly not the Deryni who seemed to have abandoned him these