The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change - By S. M. Stirling Page 0,74

the Queen of Heaven whose knight I am. How could I do otherwise, when she laid that charge on me herself?”

“That One could have bound you to duties far worse than being Matti’s guard and guide,” Artos observed.

And I pray to the Lord and Lady and to my Luck that your duty as you see it never clashes with mine. For you make an excellent friend and a rare comrade, knight-brother of the Shield of St. Benedict; but you would be a very dangerous foe indeed. And I would very much regret the day I had to kill you.

Ignatius laughed softly. “No, that One could not have bound me to a duty that was other than good. But I know what you mean. She has the seeds of greatness in her, our Mathilda; her mother’s cleverness, her father’s strength of will and ability to dream grandly, but also a sound heart which—frankly—neither of her parents did or do, and a nature that seeks truth and justice strongly, not counting the cost to herself and not forgetting that to others. Nurturing those seeds and seeing them come to their fullness is a task worthy of everything a man can give; or a priest. So does God turn even great evil to lasting good.”

He inclined his tonsured head towards a little fire off to one side, where the man who’d been a Major of the Sword of the Prophet sat brooding and staring into the flames, and Dalan the ex-High Seeker whittled industriously at a stick and whistled.

“Even in those men there is good; buried, crippled, twisted by the perversions of the Adversary, but there. The Church teaches us that no living man is ever beyond redemption.”

“And you’ve made me think better of your Church, for producing such a man as yourself. My lord Chancellor.”

Ignatius shrugged off the compliment, then did an almost comical half-step as the rest of it sank in, like a stutter made with the feet.

“That . . . I’m far too young! Other men, wiser and more experienced—”

Artos laughed and shook a finger at him. “Take up your cross, knight-brother of the Order! Yes, I’ll have wise older advisors; my mother, and my foster father Sir Nigel, and Matti’s mother, and your Abbot-Bishop, and many another. But if I’m to be a young High King in a kingdom younger still, I’ll want a young man to help me lay the foundations and shape the timbers. A Changeling, like myself.”

“Technically I’m not—”

“Do you remember the old world? Do you, Father?”

A sigh. “Not really. Perhaps a few glimpses, and I am not sure if they’re memories or things I was told often when I was very young.” He paused. “Do you really think me capable of filling such a post, Your Majesty?”

“Yes,” Artos said crisply. “What you don’t yet know, you can learn. We’ve been in each other’s sporrans for two years now, man! I think I know your quality, if I’m any judge of men. And if I’m not, I’m not fit for a throne myself.”

The cleric sighed. “When we called you King, you told us, you warned us, that you would spare neither yourself nor us. I see you meant it. Not that I had any doubts. I would rather be a simple monk following the Rule of Saint Benedict . . .”

“I know you would,” Artos said. “And I’d rather stay home and let the world rave as it will. Neither of us will or can do that.”

The dark eyes turned shrewd. “And the fact that I am Catholic . . . and a religious . . . and that it is, by now, generally known that I was granted the high honor of a vision of the Blessed Virgin . . .”

“None of those hurt at all, at all,” Artos conceded. “Better than half the folk in Montival are Christians, the most of them Catholic ones these days, while only a quarter follow the Old Religion and they’re nowhere a majority outside the Clan Mackenzie’s lands. Mathilda helps there, of course. But with a witch-boy for a High King, it takes a Queen and a Chancellor to balance it, wouldn’t you say? And while you’re a Catholic, you’re not from the PPA.”

“Quite the contrary,” the man from Mt. Angel said.

They both smiled; the fortress-monastery’s rulers had been stout opponents of Norman Arminger’s ambitions and even more of his schismatic Antipope Leo all through the wars with the Association.

Ignatius put his hands in the wide sleeves of