The Quest for Saint Camber by Katherine Kurtz

proper knight and prince.
    But Conall’s loyalty was not in question today. Nor was he at all un worthy of the honor soon to be bestowed upon him. Like all of the young men being dubbed today, Conall had more or less proven himself during the Mearan campaign the previous summer. If he had not precisely distinguished himself, at least he had not disgraced himself or his family. Following in the footsteps of a father like Nigel was asking a great deal of any novice knight.
    The king scanned the hall again, impatient to continue, as old Duke Ewan bowed himself from the dais and went to escort the troop of young boys who would be sworn to pages’ and squires’ service next. The break also would set off Conall’s knighting further from the shadow of following Kelson’s, by making him first of the remaining knightings. Only now, with the first, personal intensity of the day safely past, did Kelson truly have time to notice that the great hall was filled almost to capacity by those who had come to see their king and his companions knighted. Even the side galleries were thronged with ladies and pages—and watchful Haldane archers, gently dressed and with bows well concealed behind arras and railings, but ready to deal with anything untoward that might transpire later on—for there were political ramifications to the taking of one of the squires a little later in the ceremony.
    The youngest boys came first, ages six to ten, to kneel and pipe their carefully rehearsed oaths in chorus at the foot of the dais steps before Nigel and Ewan invested each with the crimson tabard of Haldane pages’ livery. After that, the new crop of junior squires approached, a dozen or so, most of them twelve to fourteen years of age and already seasoned by several years’ duty as pages.
    These swore their oaths individually, each one being assigned to a particular knight who would act as his sponsor until he achieved full knighthood. Kelson took two into his direct service, one to replace the junior squire moving into the place vacated by Jatham’s forthcoming knighting and another simply to assist with the increasing work as Kelson became busier and in need of more assistance.
    Nigel also took a new squire—the ten-year-old King Liam of Torenth, a vassal of Kelson since the death of his elder brother two summers before, whom Kelson had taken hostage the previous summer to ensure Torenthi neutrality while he fought his Mearan campaign. It was this squiring that was likely to cause an uproar when Kelson revealed it to the Torenthi ambassador waiting for audience just outside the keep, for Liam’s regents expected both Liam and his mother, the Lady Morag, to be released by summer’s end. Negotiations to that end were to be held in Cardosa, at the conclusion of Kelson’s summer progress, but the Torenthi were not yet aware that only Morag’s release would be discussed—and that was contingent upon the king’s satisfying himself that Morag and her children’s uncle, Duke Mahael of Arjenol, were not plotting treachery against him, with Morag’s sons the first victims. The youngest, Prince Ronal, was in Mahael’s hands already, but the Torenthi duke would not get his hands on Liam as well.
    As for Liam himself, Kelson had plans that he hoped would make the young king an ally rather than an adversary by the time he came of age. The boy was Deryni, like his mother, but he was ill-trained in the use of his powers and tamed by a year’s exposure to the more normal pursuits expected of a noble-born boy of his age. Kelson expected no trouble from Liam, now receiving his blued-steel squire’s spurs from Nigel; and the Lady Morag was not even at court anymore, having been secretly moved to Coroth during the winter. Richenda was Morag’s gaoler now, ably guarding her Deryni hostage while she awaited the birth of her and Morgan’s second child.
    No, trouble today, if it came,