The Quest for Saint Camber

by Katherine Kurtz

  So Kelson ordered the company to assemble in the abbey yard as planned, if a few hours later than he would have wished. And, as if in answer to his optimism, sunshine did break through the clouds just as he signaled the column forward to ride out the gates of Saint Bearand’s.

  An unexpectedly welcome addition to their number was the monk who accompanied them to point out the way—one Brother Gelric, a garrulous, almost comically thin individual mounted on a shaggy piebald pony, who soon had everyone in his vicinity laughing at his assessments of the court life he had known in Llannedd before his profession as a monk. His good humor, added to the clearing weather, soon lifted the spirits of the entire expedition. It was not long before young Jass MacArdry had half the knights, all his borderers, and most of the Haldane lancers joining in the refrain of a jaunty border ballad that told how the bonnie Earl of Kilshane once had ridden day and night, night and day, for near on a week, to warn an earlier chief of Clan MacArdry of a terrible sea invasion.

  They made good time for the first hour or so, easily climbing the smooth, gentle grade that was the approach to the proper ascent to the pass. The weather remained cold but clear, though it became more overcast as they climbed higher. The going got harder, too. Gradually, as they turned along the bank of a wide, fast-running mountain stream, swollen with rain and early runoff from the mountains whose slopes they climbed, the footing and the grade got worse. On a rocky plateau, close beside the icy-cold spill pool of a spectacular waterfall cascading down the mountainside to their left, Brother Gelric called a short halt to let men and horses rest.

  “You’d best have everyone check their girths and other equipment before we move on, Sire,” he told Kelson, as the king and Dhugal walked the kinks out of their legs, and Dolfin took their horses over to the pool to drink. “Make sure everything is well strapped down. The footing gets far worse before it gets better. This is the last reasonably flat spot until we reach the summit, and it will be single file very shortly.”

  “How much farther is it?” Kelson asked.

  “Another hour and a half,” the monk replied. “Perhaps a little less, if it doesn’t start raining again.”

  From a little farther along the bank, Conall watched and listened nervously, giving his sword to Jowan to strap to his saddle as he sprawled on a sun-warmed rock and tried to pretend that he was not interested in whether or not Dhugal drank from the flask slung across his chest. With the sun shining, albeit weakly, and the exertion of the past hour, Conall was sweating a little in his riding leathers. In addition, he had begun to have second thoughts about what he had done. While Dhugal and Kelson fiddled with their equipment, dutifully shifting loads and tightening down straps with Dolfin, Conall unlaced the throat of his tunic and bade Jowan bring him a cupful of the cold, sweet water coming off the mountainside. If Dhugal did drink, Conall would need a cool head to make sure no shadow of suspicion was turned on himself.

  But like most of the party, Dhugal, too, chose to slake his thirst from the stream, stretching out on his stomach on a flat rock to drink from one hand, like any common peasant. Conall found himself becoming annoyed all over again when Kelson also followed suit, in most unkingly fashion. It almost made Conall wish that both his rivals would go ahead and drink from the flask. That would solve even more problems, for no one else in the royal party was in a position even to recognize the effects of the drugs in the wine, much less to counteract them, and fate might well run its course in the next few hours.

  And if neither drank through the day and Conall could retrieve the flask tonight, he would do that, he decided. No harm would be done, and Conall could pretend he had never even thought of doing anything wrong.

  The greatest danger to Conall accrued if only Dhugal drank and Kelson intervened before Dhugal could meet a mishap. For, while there was nothing to link Conall with the drugs in the flask, their discovery would alert the king that someone with access to such substances was up to no good. Kelson had no reason to suspect Conall, but the fact that Conall had purloined the letters about Tiercel’s death eventually would have to lead to uncomfortable inquiries—and Conall did not think he could withstand a direct Truth-Read, if brought to the question.

  On the other hand, far rougher terrain was coming up. Perhaps, if he rode close to Dhugal, Conall could simply nudge Dhugal’s horse over the edge at a crucial point, claiming that his own mount had spooked at something. And he could make the big grey spook. No one would ever think to ask him directly whether he had done it deliberately. And with Dhugal would go the telltale flask of wine as well as a dangerous rival.

  Ahead, the trail did become more difficult, and narrower, climbing slowly above the level of the flood-swollen streambed. As he had hoped, Conall managed to get behind Dhugal when they funneled down to single file. The footing, never good, changed from muddy to sandy, but any improvement in consistency was canceled out by an increase in the number of sharp, hoof-bruising rocks that might provide a fatal stumble. The farther they went, the more Conall began to wonder whether he would dare to do anything untoward, for fear of following his intended victim over the edge. A sheer cliff face loomed hard on their right—mostly rock, but slick in spots with mud and tiny rivulets of runoff from the days of rain. The embankment on their left sloped down in an increasingly steep and treacherous drop to rocky rapids below. The higher they climbed, the faster the stream ran, deeper and narrower, studded with massive, stream-scoured boulders and more jagged rocks jutting out of rushing, seething white water.

  Then the rain began again, perhaps half an hour out of the last rest stop. At first, light sprinkles only prompted men to glance around suspiciously and wonder whether the droplets had come from the raging stream; but then came large, splattering drops that demanded that hoods be pulled over heads ducked down in collars. And the large drops quickly became a downpour.

  Conall hunched down in his cloak and muttered to himself as he squinted against the rain. Even if the trail had been wide enough to turn around, which it was not and had not been for some time, he would not have relished the thought of retracing the route they had already come, and especially not going downhill. Nor did he particularly want to make the climb again, tomorrow or the next day. They had almost lost a pack horse a little way back, and the trail here was worse than it had been there. Besides, they surely must be at or near the halfway mark. Silly, to go back.

  Not that the going looked appreciably better ahead—what little Conall could see ahead for the pelting rain. Dhugal’s red dun was directly in front of him, with Dolfin between Dhugal and Kelson, who followed close on the heels of their guide. The rest of the company was strung out behind Conall, Jowan immediately behind. Just before a curve in the trail would have put the monk out of sight, Conall saw him pull up his piebald pony and turn to mouth something to Kelson in the rain; but then the man and Kelson were moving on, and Conall supposed they had decided not to turn back.

  Very well. That was fine with him. They could hardly get wetter than they were, he supposed. And even if what lay ahead was worse than what they had already passed, there was the promise of the abbey at the top, warm fires, dry clothes, and hot food …

  He daydreamed about hot mulled wine as he hunched down in his saddle and prayed for it all to end, concentrating only on the even plop-plop of his horse’s hooves as it followed Dhugal’s, nose to tail, wincing occasionally when his mount would falter, trying not to look at what lay so very close at their left. The rain washed down the trail in torrents, so that, in spots, the horses were fetlock-deep in muddy water. On the opposite side of the canyon cut by the stream, several tributary streams tumbled down in smaller versions of the waterfall they had already passed. Their din, plus the roar of the rapids below them, drowned out all possibility of verbal communication, and Conall dared not use what he knew of mind-speech, so he had to content himself with trying to read the hand signals and facial clues that he could note on the riders ahead. Kelson, he was pleased to note, did not appear to be at all happ
y, and Dhugal looked downright worried.

  The rain finally began to slack off, at least. Conall supposed that was something of an improvement. The footing ahead looked no firmer or less muddy, but the trail seemed to be slightly wider. Conall even had the impression that it was not quite as steep as it had been, though he was to decide later that it had been an optical illusion. Whatever the true state of the slope ahead, so far as steepness was concerned, the forces of nature at work chose that moment to precipitate disaster.

  The piebald pony was the first animal to founder, suddenly up to its knees in shifting, rain-sodden mud and starting a chain reaction that soon had the horses of Kelson, Dolfin, and Dhugal mired to the belly as well, squealing and thrashing as that entire section of the trail began to dissolve under them.

  Then Conall’s mount lost its footing under the near foreleg and nearly pitched him off over its head as he tried to recover. Squire Jowan, riding directly behind his master, crowded closer to reach out a hand to Conall, in case he had to get off, but that set Jowan’s bay to slipping and sliding, its entire hindquarters suddenly over the edge and scrambling wildly to regain decent footing while Jowan tried to crawl up its neck.

  Conall grabbed instinctively at the animal’s reins, trying at the same time to steady his own beast, but it soon became obvious that he might not even be able to get himself out of this alive. The whole cliff face seemed to be disintegrating, too long waterlogged and then subjected to too many horses and too much weight.

  He heard someone go over the edge ahead—whether man or beast or both together, he had no time to find out, because he was fighting to keep from following. Dhugal’s horse, whinnying and plunging ever more wildly for footing, pitched Dhugal over its near shoulder and managed to put a hind leg through the reins of Conall’s, jerking the poor animal’s head down flat against the muddy trail. Conall could not see where Dhugal landed, because his own mount’s gyrations jerked Jowan’s reins out of his hand, and he twisted in the saddle to see the consequences.

  Jowan screamed. Conall saw him and his mount beginning to slide slowly over the edge, but his own straits were desperate, and he dared not make any more aggressive attempt to try to save Jowan, or he would overbalance and both of them would go over. As it was, his horse was slipping and scrambling past the point of no return and making matters no better by trying to break free from the leg Dhugal’s horse had through its reins.

  Some of the horses were going to go over the edge. Up ahead, at least one already had done so. Conall heard its scream and the muted splash its body made as it hit the rapids far below, but he was too busy scrambling for firmer ground to look and see whose it was—Kelson’s or Dolfin’s, most likely. And he could not see either of them.

  But his own horse was about to follow. Seeking any feeble chance to save himself, he launched himself from the saddle to hug the cliff face, twisting his gloved fingers around a few spindly tree roots and bushes exposed by the rain and praying that they would hold his weight. Mercifully, they did, though his grey, relieved of the extra weight in the saddle, reared up in a desperate attempt to break free of Dhugal’s red dun and went over backwards, taking the dun with it.

  Conall was quick enough to see his and Dhugal’s horses disappear over the edge and could only assume that Jowan had gone over, too. And ahead, a tangle of russet and mud, equine and human, slid and tumbled down the face of the embankment—Dhugal, surely—followed by the flailing figure of Dolfin, all into roiling white water below. Of Kelson he could see no sign.

  Then, suddenly, his Uncle Saer was at his side, edging along the cliff face on foot and passing a rope around his waist, sobbing—and Conall dared to look over the side again, where a frantically struggling red dun horse was disappearing around a bend, toward the waterfall that raged beyond. His own horse lay battered on the rocks below, not moving, several of its legs at impossible angles, and a little farther along, he spotted the body of the piebald pony floating belly-up, temporarily wedged against some rocks. It appeared that a few of the sumpter horses had gone over, too.

  Afterward, Conall never quite remembered just how Saer got him back down to the rest area near the falls, or precisely when it stopped raining. But he would remember, for the rest of his days, the looks on the faces of the survivors gathered there, gradually retrieving bodies of men and beasts from the pool of stiller water that lay a little beyond the waterfall’s crashing spillway. The only living things to come from that pool of flood-wrack were the plucky Squire Dolfin, half-drowned and with a broken wrist and several cracked ribs, not to mention bruises over most of his body, and Dhugal’s horse, shuddering and heaving, one leg dragging pitifully as it made a game try to follow the servant leading it away from the water.

  Dolfin, at least, would mend. No so the red dun, who had to be put down. Once they had gotten Dolfin to cough up the water he had swallowed, Father Lael bound up the boy’s wrist and ribs, poured a hot posset down his throat, and pronounced his survival a miracle.

  No such miracle had attended the other lost squire, however. Conall was among those who found Jowan’s body wedged in rocks at the far edge of the pool—drowned, even if his skull had not been fatally split open by collision with a jagged rock. And as they watched, Conall still a little dazed from his own near brush with death, the body of the unfortunate Brother Gelric bobbed out of the roiling rapids at the base of the waterfall, swirled around for several minutes, then was sucked under, never to emerge again, as was the feebly struggling form of Jowan’s bay.

  Within the next few hours, the carcasses of Dolfin’s chestnut, Conall’s grey, two sumpter horses, and the piebald pony also came over the falls, long drowned and battered to death. And later, farther downstream, they recovered the drowned and broken body of Kelson’s grey, with the Haldane sword still strapped to its saddle. But of the king and his foster brother they found no trace, though they kept looking as long as the light held, and by torchlight thereafter, for several hours more.

  Even after Saer had called off the search until morning, the MacArdry men kept their own vigil at the edge of the pool, old Ciard O Ruane keening softly as he rocked back and forth in his grief—for Ciard had regarded his young chief almost as a son of his own. Taking a cue from the old gillie, Father Lael assembled the entire company nearby and led them all in prayers for Jowan’s soul, with added supplications for the safe return of the king and Dhugal. Afterward, while the servants threw together a makeshift supper, Jass and the other MacArdry men remained with Ciard, Dhugal’s sword thrust into the ground like a cross, Jass with his hands on the quillons and forehead bowed against the pommel, as he had watched with his chief and their king during their knights’ vigil not three weeks before, weeping as if his heart would break.

  It was not until well after dark, huddled under a borrowed cloak beside one of the fires of their miserable campsite, that it suddenly struck Conall, through the numb shock of the entire afternoon’s events, that they were not likely to find Kelson or Dhugal—not alive, at any rate. And that made Conall’s father king, and Conall himself heir to the throne!

  Nor need Conall suffer any pangs of guilt over his shift in fortune, for it honestly had been none of his doing. Forget about the fact that, but for the accident, Dhugal and even Kelson might have drunk from the flask that Conall had drugged. That flask was now gone forever into whatever watery grave had claimed Dhugal and the king.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid,

  neither shall my hand be heavy upon thee.

  —Job 33:7

  Dhugal fought his way feebly back to consciousness with the certain conviction that he was dying. Or perhaps he was dead already. Even though he struggled to open his eyes, it was pitch dark, and he certainly was cold and wet—though, if he were truly dead, why could he hear this roaring in his ears?

  Besides, he hurt too much to be dead. Every part of his body ached, where it was not numb from the cold. He was lying on his stomach, water lapping
at his face, and he managed to lift his head enough to draw a ragged breath, but his lungs burned with the water he had already inhaled. All at once, his entire body convulsed in violent spasms that curled him hard on his side, coughing and choking. Water spewed from his mouth, from his nose, and it was all he could do to keep his head high enough to avoid breathing it in again.

  Somehow, he managed to haul himself to hands and knees—or, rather, to elbows and knees, for his left wrist twinged with a terrible pain whenever he tried to put any weight on it. But then he could only cough up more water, gagging and retching helplessly until he was sure that either his guts or his lungs must come up.

  Finally, though, his body seemed satisfied. His chest ached as if a giant had been sitting on it, and he did not even want to think about how badly he might have damaged his wrist, but at least he was alive. He let himself collapse down on his calves and forearms, bracing his forehead against his good wrist to keep from breathing water again—for he was awash in it, several fingers deep—and made himself take a slow, steadying breath while he willed his pounding heart to subside to something approaching normal rate and blinked the sand out of his eyes, trying to pierce the darkness of his surroundings. The roaring sound behind him continued to be a mystery—until suddenly, without preamble or further prompting, memory came flooding back.