King Javan’s Year

by Katherine Kurtz

Tavis bent to slip the bloody ring into the cup at that. A little dreamily, Javan watched the blood diffuse in the water, wondering what it would taste like—this intinction of blood and ash. Another part of him seemed to know. His eyes did not seem to be focusing quite properly. The cup seemed to draw him, so that he swayed a little on his feet, and Joram set a steadying hand on his elbow.

  “Steady,” he murmured. “In addition to everything else, you’re feeling the effects of the first cup. Just go with it. Let yourself take it all in, but don’t try to analyze.”

  Joram gave him into Queron’s keeping then, moving around to take up the sword lying in the northeast quarter of the circle. Tavis went with him.

  “Tavis will leave the circle now,” Queron murmured, smiling slightly as Javan’s eyes followed the path of Joram’s sword-tip, tracing up and across and down, cutting an arched doorway in the circle. “We’re about to move on to the dramatic bit. Don’t worry; he’ll be right outside,” he added as Tavis reluctantly stepped though and went to crouch on the altar steps close behind Javan. “He wasn’t in the circle that night, so he shouldn’t be there now. I shouldn’t be here, except that I’m part of the process. Joram is the key to this part, since he’s the only one remaining who was present and coherent that night.”

  Joram cast him a wary glance before closing the gate again with three swift strokes of the sword along the floor, replacing it on the floor again before heading back toward his place in the South.

  “Now,” Queron went on, standing easily at Javan’s left, between him and Joram. “In order to re-create as accurately as possible what happened on the night in question, I plan to use a technique Joram has seen me use once before, many years ago. I trust he will not find it as startling this time as he did that other time. You, however, my prince, may find it very startling indeed.”

  Before Javan could even react, Queron’s hand had reached out to touch his forehead, seizing controls as he did, taking Javan several levels deeper into trance than his own efforts and the drugged cup had already carried him.

  “Deeply centered and at peace, my prince,” Queron murmured.

  An even greater stillness seemed to settle around him, and a part of him watched, detached, as Queron turned his attentions to Joram.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In a trance I saw a vision.

  —Acts 11:5

  Despite his utter faith in Queron, Joram could not help a brief surge of uneasiness as the Gabrilite Healer moved before him and set both hands on his shoulders. Queron had told him precisely what was involved and reassured him that he would retain a detached awareness of exactly what was happening, even as Queron tapped his memory in so dramatic a manner; but the specter of that other time he had watched it done evoked a dread that was totally irrational.

  “You can let go of that fear,” Queron whispered, sliding his hands up to cup around Joram’s neck and the back of his head, thumbs resting on his temples as the dark eyes compelled. “When you saw me do this before, you had cause to be wary. This is totally different.”

  Relax and open to me, Joram, he went on, shifting to mind-speech as Joram let fall his shields and gave the other access.

  Good, came Queron’s encouragement. And now go deeper still, to the memory of that night … Standing in the little chapel adjoining Cinhil’s bedchamber … you and Cinhil and Evaine and Alister … And be in that chapel …

  Joram was there. A part of him remained detached, well aware that it was but memory he relived, standing a little apart, as if observing from over his own shoulder. But the greater part of his conscious awareness had returned to that night in Cinhil’s chapel, standing in the presence of persons now dead. That part saw them already: father and sister and sister’s husband and ill-fated king.

  But as Queron moved around to his right to stand slightly behind him, retaining contact with a hand on that shoulder, the detached part of Joram’s mind began to see them, too. An armspan farther to the right, a slightly dazed-looking Javan stood watching and waiting—and beside him, where memory supplied the likeness of the boy’s father, a more solid form began to materialize.

  It was not the form Queron had summoned that other time, in the chapter house at Valoret, when his conjuration had unwittingly confirmed the illusion of a visitation by the recently deceased Camber MacRorie—and sealed his sainthood. A variation on that form eventually would materialize as well, but it would be as Alister Cullen, Camber’s alter ego, not Camber himself.

  Meanwhile, there were the other players to re-create. As Joram watched, the detached part of him utterly fascinated, the figure of Cinhil Haldane slowly took solid shape in the East beside his son, appearing as he had that fateful night he set his Haldane seal on Alroy and Rhys Michael as well as Javan, holding a ghost-echo of the physical cup set on the little altar table before him.

  But the young king was staring across the circle at another form beginning to solidify, his joy and surprise evident even through the heavy controls and the drugs. Joram glanced left to behold the likeness of Evaine, graceful form enveloped in a dark cloak, the gold of her hair gleaming from inside its hood.

  And across from him began to form the shape and semblance of one whom Joram and Queron both knew in two guises, though it was solely as Alister Cullen that he had appeared that night and as he now appeared, in the purple of his episcopal rank. Joram’s immersion in the memory intensified as the figure crossed his arms on his breast, directing his gaze toward the larger altar as he had done that night, and Joram followed suit, watching the oddly solid ghost-Cinhil face that way as well, and raise his ghost-cup in salutation. In that instant Joram truly was back in that chapel adjoining Cinhil’s bedchamber in Valoret, reliving the moment as Cinhil seemed to speak.

  “O Lord, Thou art holy indeed: the fountain of all holiness. In trembling and humility we come before Thee with our supplications, asking Thy blessing and protection on what we must do this night.”

  The voice sounded exactly like the dead Cinhil, though a part of Joram knew that the words came from Queron’s lips, projected across the space separating them. But as Cinhil turned to face the awestruck Javan, lowering the cup to extend his right palm flat above the rim, fact and illusion blurred and it was Cinhil, setting the pattern for the rest of their invocations, summoning the attributes of Air to permeate the contents of the cup.

  “Send now Thy holy Archangel Raphael, O Lord, to breathe upon this water and make it holy, that they who shall drink of it may justly command the element of Air. Amen.”

  As he shifted the summoning hand to help support the cup, a breeze seemed to stir in the East, cycling gently at first but then gathering in intensity, stirring hair and robes, sweeping the hood from Evaine’s hair in a shower of golden pins, even buffeting at Javan and Joram—but not touching so much as a hair on Queron’s head. Indeed, Queron seemed hardly even aware of what he was calling up, head half bowed, eyes half closed, left hand still resting quietly on Joram’s shoulder.

  The storm condensed into a whirlwind that sucked at a blue-tinged curl of smoke spiralling upward from the thurible which, in reality, was hardly smoking at all anymore. It swirled above the ghost-cup in Cinhil’s ghost-hands and tightened down, faintly stirring the surface of the water and then dying away.

  The Cinhil figure closed his eyes briefly and passed the cup across to Joram. To Joram’s senses, melded of reality and recall, the ghost-cup seemed to have real weight and substance in his hands. He held it beside the entranced Javan and extended his right hand flat over the rim as he had done that other night, repeating the same words, and with the same intent.

  “O Lord, Thou art holy indeed: the fountain of all holiness. We pray Thee now send Thy holy Archangel of Fire, the Blessed Michael, to instill this water with the fire of Thy love and make it holy. So may all who drink of it command the element of Fire. Amen.”

  He moved his right hand a little aside from the cup as he had done before, cupping the palm upward, but the fire that grew to egg s
ize in the hollow of his hand was not of his own crafting; rather, it was spun from the memory that Queron invoked, yet as substantial as if Joram had conjured the flame it represented.

  He tilted his hand above the cup and watched the fiery sphere float slowly downward, steam hissing upward as fire permeated the water, lingering as a cold blue flame that frosted the surface and played about the white-glazed rim. With no less reverence than he had that first time, Joram turned to offer the ghost-cup to the image of his sister, standing at his left. She shook her wind-tousled hair back off her face in a graceful and fondly remembered gesture and took the cup. Their fingers brushed as it passed—warm and alive!—and Joram found himself staring at her as she bowed her head over it for a moment, then raised it in supplication.

  “O Lord, Thou art holy indeed: the fountain of all holiness,” she seemed to say. “Let now Thine Archangel Gabriel, who rules the stormy waters, instill this cup with the rain of Thy wisdom, that they who shall drink hereof may justly command the element of Water. Amen.”

  Joram could feel the tension rebuilding as it had that long-ago night, and he flinched a little as lightning crackled in the air above their heads and thunder rumbled, and a small, dark cloud began to take shape above the cup. Power smouldered in Evaine’s blue eyes, contained yet potent; and as the thunder spoke again, more softly this time, the little cloud gave way to a brief thundershower. Most of the rain fell into the cup, but some of it ran down the sides and a few drops splashed on those watching. The drop that hit Joram’s upper lip had been real that other time; and as he tasted of this one, it was just as sweet as he remembered.

  She lowered the cup, and Joram watched her pass it to the Alister Cullen figure, who was their father. He watched Camber-Alister raise the cup to eye level with both hands, the sea-ice eyes fixed on a point above, and knew the coming of the One he called.

  “O Lord, Thou art holy indeed: the fountain of all holiness,” the familiar voice murmured, wrenching at Joram’s heart. “Let Uriel, Thy messenger of darkness and of death, instill this cup with all the strength and secrets of the earth, that they who shall drink hereof may justly command the element of Earth. Amen.”

  The earth did not really tremble under their feet this time, but a part of Joram was convinced that it did. He seemed to hear the dull rattle of the altar candlesticks and the chains of the thurible, as he had before, and the light tinkle of the Ring of Fire vibrating at the bottom of the white-glazed cup in Camber-Alister’s hands.

  But as he watched and listened, another part of him became convinced that he was hearing the actual ring vibrating at the bottom of the actual cup on the little altar table. He looked at it sharply, and it stopped as quickly, as the Camber-Alister figure lowered the ghost-cup in its hands.

  But now events diverged from memory. Where before Camber-Alister had passed the cup back to Cinhil for the culmination of the ritual, he now turned his sea-ice gaze upon Queron, who had not been present that night, raising the cup to him in bidding and compulsion.

  Joram could feel his heart beginning to pound as a sense of immanent Presence seemed to surge over him like a wave. Queron obviously realized that events were diverging, too. Still sunk in his own deep trancing, but impelled now by direction not of his crafting, the Healer let his hand slip from Joram’s shoulder and moved forward to pick up the physical cup from the little table. Joram could see him quite clearly, but could do no more than watch, struck motionless and dumb.

  Queron straightened, holding the cup in his two hands, and turned his face slightly toward the right, toward the Cinhil figure. The figure wavered, then dissolved into a disembodied mist that flowed over and enveloped him like a cloak, transparent yet substantial, giving his face a very near likeness to Cinhil’s. That face was expressionless as he continued across the circle toward the North and held out the physical cup to that quarter’s representative. Bowing slightly, the Camber-Alister figure set his ghost-cup over the real one, so that the two merged into one.

  “The cup is ready, Sire,” the Camber-Alister figure said. “What remains is in your hands.”

  Gravely Queron bowed to him, turning then to approach the wide-eyed Javan, still trembling where he had been left. From his expression, Joram guessed that the boy now was seeing Queron as his father. As Queron lifted the cup between them and spoke, the voice was certainly Cinhil’s.

  “Javan, you are my son and heir,” he said, paraphrasing slightly, for the words he recited had been for Alroy that first time. “Drink. By this mystery shall you come to the power that is your Divine Right, as king of this realm; and even so shall you instruct your own sons, if that should some day come to pass.”

  Under the compulsion of his father’s eyes, Javan lifted his hands to rest on the hands that held the cup, tipping it to drink. Joram could hear the Ring of Fire tumbling along the side of the cup as Javan drained it, and he found himself moving in to take the cup as Javan’s hands fell away. He moved behind Javan when he had set the cup down, catching him under the arms when the king began to sway on his feet, an odd expression on his face as he stared at his “father.”

  Then he saw the reason for Javan’s expression. For beyond Queron-Cinhil, who now slowly raised his hands to clasp them to Javan’s head the way Cinhil had done, the Camber-Alister figure had now become wholly Camber, pale eyes serene and compassionate, quicksilver hair gleaming in the candlelight as he glided in beside Queron to set his hands atop the Healer’s, just as they made contact with Javan’s head.

  Javan reacted as if he had been bolted, body going rigid and then buckling at the knees, eyes rolling upward in their sockets. Joram, bracing the king from behind, had to shift his own balance to keep both of them on their feet. He gaped at the familiar figure, so near and yet so far, shrinking back a little in fear as, after a breathless heartbeat or two, the figure lifted the hand nearest him to touch it briefly to his brow.

  The touch was not quite physical, but the touch of the other’s mind was exquisitely real.

  You need not fear, the familiar mind spoke in his. Well have you wrought this night’s work.

  Joram reeled under the touch, for the mind that spoke to his undoubtedly was his father’s.

  Father, will he keep his crown? he asked. Will what we have done be enough?

  That knowledge is not given me, Camber returned. Many enemies will seek his life. Pray that the vessel bears no hidden weaknesses, and bid him remember that kings kin to those of our blood can die just as easily as humans, if sword or arrow take their toll.

  With that the hand withdrew and the voice faded from Joram’s mind, the figure also vanishing. In that same instant Javan went completely limp, and Queron as well, so that Joram had to shuffle quickly to ease both to the floor.

  “Joram, what’s happened!” he could hear Tavis calling, on his feet now on the other side of the circle, shading his eyes to squint past the veiling.

  “Javan’s fine,” Joram muttered, after a cursory pass of his hand over the king’s brow—for he had anticipated that the boy might pass out in the intensity of his experience; he had before. He had not expected it of Queron.

  He checked Queron next, pressing his fingers hard against the carotid pulse and probing with his mind. The pulse was steady, Queron’s unconsciousness apparently of the sort that often followed the conclusion of a profound inner working.

  “They’ve both just fainted,” Joram said, scrambling to his feet and staggering none too steadily over to the sword, which he swept up and across and down to cut a doorway.

  Tavis was past it as soon as it literally was possible to do so, darting in first to check Javan, then shifting to Queron, who was starting to stir. Joram reclosed the gate and went to join them, kneeling anxiously at Queron’s side as the elder Healer opened his eyes with a flutter, clearly startled to find himself lying flat on his back.

  “What happened?” he demanded, dark eyes flicking first to Tavis, whose hand was on his brow, then to Joram.

  “You—ah—got
into the ritual more than I think you planned,” Joram said, choosing his words carefully, since Tavis was listening. “After we’d re-created the charging of the cup, you came into the center of the circle and picked up the physical cup. Do you remember that?”

  “Aye.” He started to sit up, but Tavis’ hand stayed him. “Then you—assimilated the Cinhil-figure,” Joram said, sending him a mental image of what he had seen.

  Queron nodded. “Preparing to take that role, so that the real cup could be offered to Javan,” he said. “I remember that.”

  “Do you remember taking the ghost-cup from the Alister-figure after that?” Tavis asked, as Queron again made an attempt to sit up and this time was allowed, even assisted, by the younger Healer.

  “I remember that it seemed to have weight,” Queron said. He cocked his head as he gazed unfocused past them. “Odd—somehow it seemed like more than just the weight of the physical cup in my hands. You know, I’d always planned to do that part of the recreation—reciting Cinhil’s words before giving Javan to drink. But after he’d drunk …”

  His voice trailed off, memory apparently eluding him of the most important part of what had just happened.

  “It was somebody else who put his hands on your hands, Queron,” Joram prompted, looking at the elder Healer and willing him to a tight link that Tavis could not overhear.

  But Tavis nodded his head anyway, clearly having seen exactly what Joram had seen.

  “I’d been expecting you to take on the Cinhil façade,” Tavis said, awed. “We’d all agreed that was necessary, to maintain the illusion for Javan. But this was after that—and after you’d taken the cup overlay into the physical one. The Alister image followed you over to Javan while he was drinking, and then it—changed. Just before it touched him, it changed.”

  He glanced in question at the Michaeline priest, but Joram was saved from having to answer by a faint whimper and a twitch from Javan. At once recalled to his duty, Joram reached behind him to pluck the Ring of Fire out of the white-glazed goblet, hastily drying it on the hem of his cassock.