Camber the Heretic

by Katherine Kurtz

  The boy dropped his hands then, swaying a little on his feet as his father handed off the cup and took a step nearer. Camber could feel the tension building in the very air between father and son, a static energy which arced with an almost visible spark just before Cinhil’s hands touched his son’s head. The very air seemed to blur around the two of them. Camber blinked and passed a hand in front of his eyes in an attempt to clear his vision. It did no good.

  He was aware of Joram’s and Evaine’s expressions of surprise, their involuntary steps backward, away from what was happening between Cinhil and his son, and Camber, too, felt almost compelled to back off. He could not decide whether the exchange was just sloppy because of Cinhil’s fatigue or actually more intense, but whichever was the case, it was not comfortable to be as close as Camber was. He yielded to the pressure and let his feet carry him back a step, two steps, not because he must but because he chose to, until he could endure without discomfort the slippage of energy which was spilling over the link which Cinhil was forging with his son.

  It was soon over. Finally he saw Rhys Michael stagger, as the contact was withdrawn and Cinhil’s hands left his head. Instantly Joram moved in to catch the boy as he started to crumple, endurance spent for the moment. And as the boy was swept up in the strong arms of the Michaeline priest, Cinhil, too, faltered, reaching out a blind hand toward Camber.

  “Alister, I need you!”

  The voice was weak but penetrating in the silence of the warded circle, and Camber was at his side before he could take another breath. The royal legs buckled at the knees as Cinhil turned his head to look at Camber in surprise, not comprehending why his body should suddenly cease to obey him. Gently Camber eased him to the floor, motioning for Evaine to cradle the failing king’s head against her knees as he scrambled to his feet again and dashed to the northeast quadrant where the sword lay. Rhys was waiting outside the circle, Joram approaching from behind with the spent Rhys Michael, as Camber kissed the sacred blade, touched it to the floor, and swept it up and down to cut the doorway once again.

  Then Rhys was inside and racing to tend Cinhil, Joram stepping outside to deposit his unconscious charge gently beside the two older boys. Camber remained at the threshold, the sword motionless under his hands.

  “Joram, we’ll need the holy oils and the ciborium. The oils are in the aumbry, there to the left of the altar.” He turned to the inside of the circle. “Evaine, come tend the boys. Rhys will manage what little can be done for him.”

  Without demur, Evaine came out of the circle, settling down among the sleeping children. Joram opened the cupboard Camber had indicated and removed a black leather-bound box which he brought to his father, along with a sleeping-fur to pillow Cinhil’s head. Then he returned to the altar and made a deep genuflection before opening the door of the tabernacle. Camber knelt as the ciborium was removed from its sanctuary, bowing his head as Joram passed back into the circle with it and placed it on the little table. He stood as the priest came back to his side.

  “Shall I leave?” Joram murmured, glancing from his father to the supine Cinhil stretched by Rhys’s knees.

  Camber shook his head. “No, I think he would want your assistance in these Last Rites.” He passed the sword to Joram and picked up the holy oils. “Wait here and close the gate when I tell you it’s time.”

  Briskly he moved to Rhys’s side and knelt, laying the leather-bound box aside. The Healer gave a deep sigh and raised his head slowly, removing his hands from Cinhil’s forehead. The king seemed to be resting easily, his eyes closed, though his face was pale against the dark fur of his pillow.

  “I’ve done what I can,” Rhys murmured. “It’s up to you now.”

  “Thank you. You’d best go outside with Evaine. This is best suited to priestly hands.” He raised his voice as Rhys moved toward the threshold. “Joram, close the gate and then join us.”

  Cinhil’s breathing had eased with his reception of the Sacraments, and now he gave a small, contented sigh and raised his eyes to Camber’s. Joram had withdrawn to the closed gateway to give them privacy, and stood now with his back to them and his head bowed over the quillons of the broadsword. Cinhil glanced in his direction, then returned his gaze to Camber. The bishop still wore the narrow purple stole he had donned in his priestly office, and Cinhil raised a feeble hand to finger the strip of fabric fondly.

  “It is nearly finished, old friend,” the king whispered. His hand moved on, to search for Camber’s, and Camber took it between his own.

  “You have been good to stay beside me,” the king continued. “I could not have completed this night’s work without you.”

  “I think your thanks should be to Rhys, not to me,” Camber replied gently. “And to yourself, for realizing in time what needed to be done.”

  “Was it in time?” Cinhil asked, searching Camber’s face. “Will my sons be able to follow me as they ought, Alister? They are still children. And what if you are right about Murdoch and the others? I have trusted them, but perhaps I shouldn’t have. Alister, what—”

  “Rest easy, my liege,” Camber murmured, with a little shake of his head. “You have done what you could, what you thought best. Now it is for the future to decide what will come of them.”

  Cinhil coughed, then shuddered a little, his hand tightening on Camber’s.

  “It’s cold, Alister.” He closed his eyes briefly. “I feel as if my body were no longer my own. Is—is this what it is to die?”

  “Sometimes,” Camber whispered, remembering the only other death he had come close to experiencing, when Alister Cullen’s dying at Iomaire had had to be relived, that awful night so many years ago. “They say, though, that when one comes easily to death, and at peace, it is a moment of great joy—that the passing is gentle and most welcome.”

  Carefully Cinhil took a deep breath and let it out, a look of delighted surprise slowly coming across his face. Incredulously he raised his eyes to Camber once more, but already he was seeing otherness which was not caught within the confines of the magical circle or the world it held back.

  “Oh, ’tis true!” he breathed in awe, searching his friend’s eyes. “Oh, Alister, come with me for just a little while and see! ’Tis a most fair realm that I would enter!”

  “Cinhil, it is not yet my time. I dare not—”

  “Nay, be not afraid. I shall not compel you past what place is safe for you to go. I would not take you untimely from my sons. But, oh, the wonder! Have we not shared other marvels in our lives, my dearest friend? Let me share this with you, please!”

  With a weary nod, Camber closed his eyes and let his thoughts cease, let himself open along the old, familiar link which the Alister part of him had formed with the king so long ago. He felt Cinhil’s presence, somehow refined and different from what it had been before. And then, gradually, his mind began to fill with what he could only describe as sound, though he knew it was not that—a light, hollowly resounding tinkle as if of tiny bells mingled with the hush of many voices chanting a single Word on tones which blended in indescribable harmony.

  The music of the spheres, a part of him thought sluggishly—or perhaps the voices of the heavenly hosts—or both—or neither.

  For a moment, there was a swirl of foggy, opalescent color, a feeling of disjointure—and then he seemed to be looking down at Cinhil through eyes somehow more perceptive, though objectively he knew that his physical eyes were still closed.

  With his Sight which was not sight, he Saw the years melt away from Cinhil’s face, knew Cinhil’s awe as the king gazed up at the form which was no longer quite the Alister Cullen whom he had seen and known for the past twelve years. Whatever was happening had stripped away the facade, leaving his psychic form naked, for Cinhil to see in all its many facets.

  Camber? came the king’s tentative query, somehow past shock or anger or fear.

  And Alister, in part, came Camber’s meekly tendered answer.

  And with that, he offered up the rest of th
e story to Cinhil’s clearing consciousness, leaving out no detail—for he could conceal nothing in this dreamlike, awesome realm in which they both hovered now. In an immeasurable stretch of time, the deed was done, the tale told; and Cinhil’s awed expression had changed to one of beatific acceptance.

  Through double vision now, as Camber and Alister, he watched Cinhil sit up, seemed to feel the feather-brush of Cinhil’s hands on his shoulders as the king embraced him like a brother. Then Cinhil was on his feet and stretching out his hand to Camber, and Camber was taking that hand and rising.

  A part of him knew he still knelt by the dying king, the royal hand clasped in his; but the more important part now rose and walked with Cinhil toward a brilliant light which seemed to come from outside the circle, just beyond where Joram stood. He could see Joram’s shadow-shape silhouetted against that light, head bowed over the quillons of a sword which glowed with ruby clarity against the golden light of what lay just beyond.

  But between Joram and the light lay the circle, a cold silver boundary which Camber suddenly knew Cinhil could not pass. Cinhil saw it, too, and came to a halt an armspan from Joram, his hand still clasped in Camber’s.

  You must help me to pass, Camber-Alister, he said. Beyond here you may not go, but I must. It is time. They are waiting for me.

  With a chill of knowing, Camber felt his image nod; and it was with a sense of profound loss that he let the king’s hand slip from his and backed a few steps toward the center of the circle. There he could see his body kneeling by Cinhil’s as he had left them. Wearily he let himself settle back into his own.

  He started as he opened his eyes. Cinhil lay silent beside him, a look of peace on his face, his breathing stilled. Across the circle Joram still stood unmoving over his sword, apparently oblivious to what was taking place behind him. He could not see Cinhil’s image with his eyes, but when he again shut them momentarily, he could See Cinhil standing there expectantly, one hand raised slightly toward Joram and the gateway he guarded.

  “Joram, open a gate,” Camber said softly, opening his eyes again and once more seeing only Joram.

  Joram started and turned slightly toward him in surprise, but Camber only shook his head to stave off any questions from his son.

  “Open a gate,” Camber repeated. “And then kneel down in homage to the one who passes.”

  With a strange look on his face, and a quick, stricken glance at the unmoving form of Cinhil, Joram gave a slight, confused bow, then turned back toward the circle. He raised the sword in salute, let the point fall to the edge of the circle at his left, then arched it up and back down in one smooth, graceful motion. Where the blade passed, the circle was breached, finally showing a high, arched doorway taller than a man. Outside and to the left, Camber could dimly see Evaine and Rhys kneeling and watching the gateway attentively, could sense their question as they watched Joram kneel with the sword still in his hands.

  Then Camber was closing his eyes a final time, turning his magical Sight toward the image of Cinhil once more.

  Once more he Saw Cinhil standing behind Joram, watched the king raise a hand in final farewell.

  Then Cinhil was moving through the gateway, his face transformed by a shining light which grew around him. Dimly, past the slowly receding Cinhil, Camber thought he could see others standing and reaching out to Cinhil—a beautiful young woman with hair the color of ripe wheat, two young boys who were Cinhil’s image, others whom Camber could not identify.

  In a rush of wind and the illogical impression of wings, four Presences seemed to converge around Cinhil then—Beings with vague shadow-forms and sweeping pinions of raw power which somehow sheltered rather than threatened.

  One loomed massive and overpowering, vibrant with the hues of forest tracts, feathered green-black wings shadowing the entire northern angle of the room as it passed over an apparently oblivious Evaine and Rhys. Another seemed to explode silently into existence right before the altar, bursting either from the gold-glass gleaming of the eastern ward candle or from the altar’s open tabernacle, shining like the rainbow fire of sunbeams caught in prisms, so bright Camber could hardly bear to look, even with his mind.

  The third was winged with fire and sighed with the roar of infernoes, the heart of the earth, though its great sword of flame was raised protectively over Cinhil’s head as he stepped outside the circle without a trace of fear. And from the fourth Presence—a shifting, liquid form of blue and silver shadow—a shimmering horn of quicksilver seemed to take form.

  A soundless, mind-deafening blast of titan resonance assailed Camber’s senses, reverberating in every particle of his being; and suddenly he could feel the circle beginning to fragment around him, as if the horn sounded some note which the fabric of the circle’s dome could not withstand. He heard the energies which rent the dome asunder—knew that all that saved him from eternal, mindless madness was the ciborium with its consecrated Hosts, resting on the table close beside him.

  Then, even as the shards of shattered circle were still falling to the tile, there to disperse and melt away like flakes of snow, Cinhil and his ghostly Escort began to recede—slowly at first, but then faster and faster until nothing remained but a shrinking point of rainbow light suspended between Camber and the altar candles.

  Then, even that was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Now I say, that the heir, so long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by his father.

  —Galatians 4:1–2

  Abruptly the spell was broken. Camber, his body reminding him at last that it was time to breathe, gave a gasp and shuddered, opening his eyes with a start. Through stunned and disbelieving vision, he saw Joram twisting around to stare at him in awed question, Evaine searching the air over their heads in vain for some vestige of their magical circle. Rhys was ministering to his three young charges, but it was clear that he, too, was aware that something extraordinary had just occurred, even by Deryni standards. The majority of his attention was on Camber and the king.

  “Father?” Evaine whispered.

  “What happened? Are you all right?” Rhys demanded.

  “Is he dead?” Joram questioned, laying down the sword and scrambling to his father’s side.

  “Rhetorical questions, all, I hope, in light of what I have just witnessed,” Camber murmured softly, disengaging his hand from Cinhil’s to touch Joram in reassurance before crossing the king’s arms on his breast. “But I think we may not all have seen the same thing. Evaine?”

  Evaine, getting slowly to her feet, took a few steps toward where the circle’s boundary had been and put out a tentative hand, as if to test what her other senses told her.

  “It was incredible. I never saw anything like that before,” she said, her voice edged with amazement. “It was as if the circle were made of glass and something struck it simultaneously from all directions at once—except that it didn’t fall straight to the floor; it slid down the curve of the dome, from the top. What did you do?”

  “That’s all you saw?”

  “There was more?”

  “I see. And you, Rhys?”

  Rhys shook his head from among the sleeping children. “Only what Evaine described. Did you break the circle?”

  With a sigh, Camber echoed Rhys’s headshake. “No. And if I told you what I thought I saw, I don’t know whether you’d believe me. You’d probably think I drank from the same cup as the children, and was seeing visions. No, don’t interrupt.” He held up a hand at their beginning protests. “We haven’t time to discuss it now. There’s work to do. The king is dead, and the new king must be told. And we have to put things back the way they were, before anyone else finds out what really happened.”

  “Understood,” Rhys said, slipping his hands under the sleeping Alroy and gathering him up with an armful of sleeping furs. “If the three of us take the boys back to their room, can you and Jebediah manage the rest?
”

  Camber nodded, patting his daughter’s hand lightly in reassurance. “I’ll manage. Evaine, after you’ve helped Rhys with the boys, you’d best go back to your quarters—make certain you’re not seen—and stay there until there’s sufficient commotion in the hall to have awakened you. I know you would rather be here, but it might appear suspicious. Joram, you and Rhys can come back here, since you had reason to be with Cinhil at the end.”

  After what had just occurred, they would not have thought of questioning him further. As Rhys carried the sleeping Alroy into the opening which reappeared in the chapel wall, Evaine leaned over to brush a kiss against her father’s cheek, then picked up Rhys Michael and followed her husband.

  Joram did not move until the others had gone, head bowed and eyes hooded in unreadable contemplation as he knelt by the dead king. Finally he lurched to his feet and went to pick up the remaining prince, muffling him in the last of the sleeping furs they had brought.

  “I have just one question,” he murmured, only half-facing Camber as he paused, just outside the opening of the secret passage.

  “Very well. One question.”

  “Did he know, before the end, the truth of you and Alister?”

  Slowly Camber let his gaze shift back to the face of the dead king, tears stinging his eyes.

  “Aye, he knew.”

  “And, did he accept that knowledge?” Joram insisted.

  “You said one question,” Camber replied with a slight smile. “But, yes, son, he accepted it. I will swear that he did not know before tonight, but we made our peace, he and Alister and I. I wish you could have shared it.”

  “That you and he shared it is sufficient,” Joram whispered, blinking back his own tears. “Somehow, it makes the lie vindicated, after all these years.” He swallowed, then shook his head. “I’d better go.”

  Camber remained kneeling there for several seconds, staring after Joram. Then he recalled himself to the tasks at hand. With a sigh, he took up the ciborium and rose, starting to make a perfunctory bow of respect before putting it away. But then he winced and almost gasped aloud as the image of the shattered dome of energy flashed into his memory.