The Quest for Saint Camber by Katherine Kurtz

can’t say, ‘Yes, Dhugal, I definitely would have acknowledged the marriage and the son I didn’t know I had?’”
    â€œI—suppose not,” Dhugal said in a small voice. “As you said before, we’ll never know.” He swallowed noisily and raised his chin higher, but he could not sustain eye contact.
    â€œThere’s something else I have to ask, though,” he said. “And in light of how things have turned out, perhaps it’s even more important.”
    â€œI’ll answer if I can, son.”
    â€œYou went ahead and made your vows. You became a priest. But you knew you were Deryni.”
    â€œWell, of course, but—”
    â€œWhy do you continue to deny what you did, then, and what you are?” Dhugal blurted, turning to gaze at his father with the uncompromising eyes of youth. “You’re Deryni and you’re a priest. And you’re a good priest! You’ve proven by many years of faithful and righteous service that the two are not incompatible. There were Deryni priests before the Restoration, for God’s sake, and they were good ones, too!”
    â€œThat’s true,” Duncan whispered.
    â€œThen, why don’t you admit it? Why keep playing these games of not answering either way? What can they do to you?”
    Duncan could feel his heart pounding like a battering ram at the walls of his chest and he prayed Dhugal would drop the line of questioning.
    â€œThere are a great many things they could do, son.”
    â€œBut they won’t . They didn’t . Some of the bishops know, and all of them surely suspect. You heard Wolfram today! And they knew it before they elected you a bishop.”
    â€œYes, and Edmund Loris knew, too,” Duncan retorted, fists clenching involuntarily as the memory of the renegade archbishop’s tortures loomed unbeckoned in his mind’s eye. The nails had grown back on his fingers and toes, and his other wounds had healed, but the nightmare of being chained to the stake, with the flames leaping up around him, beginning to lick at his flesh, would be with Duncan McLain until the day he died.
    But the invoking of Loris’ name had brought Dhugal back to the reality of what could happen, for it was he who had fought his way through the fire and Loris’ men to save his father. Dhugal gasped as he realized what memories he had stirred and he shifted his gaze out to the rain again.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I have no right to ask that of you. I’m new to knowing what I am. You’ve had to live with it all your life. It has to be your decision. It’s just that Morgan and Kelson are able to be so open—”
    â€œAnd you’d like to be, too, wouldn’t you?” Duncan replied softly. “I know, son. Believe me, I’ve thought about it often, but—”
    He broke off as Morgan stepped into the opening of the alcove, clearing his throat to announce his presence.
    â€œSorry to interrupt,” Morgan said. “Duncan, had you forgotten we have some important further business with Bishop Arilan?”
    Duncan blinked and shook his head. He had not forgotten, but he was not looking forward to it. Dhugal and Kelson did not know it yet, but tonight was the night that Morgan and Duncan had agreed Arilan should expose the two young men to merasha for the first time. The very notion made Duncan’s stomach queasy, for Loris had given him the drug when he fell captive of the renegade archbishop the summer before. It acted only as a sedative in humans, but even a minute amount could render a Deryni totally incapable of using his powers. Morgan, too, had cause to know merasha ’s dangers from bitter firsthand experience, but it was important that both Dhugal and the king experience its disruptive effects in a safe, controlled setting before they chanced encountering it in less favorable circumstances. There was no antidote, but