Camber the Heretic

by Katherine Kurtz

  “Not as hard as if we wait and I get to think more about it, without knowing how it’s done,” Queron interjected, shaking his head vigorously. “Let’s do it now, Rhys, before I lose my nerve. Do you want me here?”

  “Let’s try the couch,” Rhys said, getting up as Camber rose to make room for Queron to recline. “Lie down and really make yourself comfortable this time. I’ll try to go more slowly, so Emrys can have a chance for deeper reading.”

  “Just don’t go too slowly, or the suspense will have me gibbering,” Queron said with a nervous grin, stretching his wiry frame on the couch and arranging his body for maximum relaxation as Rhys came around to sit on his left.

  “And Alister,” Queron added, “why don’t you pull up a chair on my right and keep me from edging into hysteria while Emrys studies me like a prize beetle?” His voice held more than a hint of tension, and Camber realized he was deliberately using speech as a means to channel off some of it. “Emrys, you link with Rhys and try to figure out what he does.”

  Emrys looked dubious, but he came around and stood in the angle between Rhys and the head of the couch, resting one weightless hand on Rhys’s shoulder. Camber laid his right hand over Queron’s right, then watched as Rhys took the first of his centering breaths to begin easing into Healing mode. Matching his rate of descent with Rhys’s, he extended to sense Queron’s shields, felt them already beginning to collapse as Rhys began to work.

  “Excellent,” Rhys murmured, slipping his hands lightly along either side of Queron’s head. His thumbs came to rest firmly on the temples, the long fingers threaded in the wiry, reddish-brown hair.

  “Good. Now let’s show Emrys what we did before, all right? Take another deep breath and let it out, and let the shields go with it. You know it’s safe here, even though you know what’s coming this time. Don’t tense up. That’s right, let go. I’m going to allow you to keep your awareness of what’s happening, so you can describe it to Emrys, once it’s done. That’s right,” he continued, as Queron closed his eyes.

  “Now, Emrys, follow where I go, and watch what I do—watch carefully, or you’ll miss it. It’s—now.”

  And again, seeming even more quickly than he had done it the first time Camber witnessed the feat, Rhys reached out and gave that little wrench—and Queron was once more bereft of Sight. The eyelids trembled, but they did not open. Rhys glanced up quickly at Emrys.

  The Master Healer’s pale, unlined face had taken on a look of concentration such as Camber had never seen before. As Rhys withdrew his hands, making way for Emrys’s more direct probe, Queron opened his eyes and hesitantly met Emrys’s gaze, very uneasy, but with his panic in control this time. Rhys pulled back discreetly from all rapport, until finally Emrys sank to his knees beside the couch and turned to stare him full in the face, slowly shaking his head.

  “I’m afraid I missed it again,” Emrys murmured. “It’s truly incredible. I saw it before, but I still can’t believe it. He even let me read his memory, his sensations, of what you did before. None of it prepared me for this.”

  “It must be a frightening experience,” Rhys agreed.

  “You just—reached out and—twisted something,” Emrys said, searching Rhys’s golden eyes with his pale, colorless ones. “Don’t you have any idea how you do it?”

  “A little,” Rhys admitted. “I’ve had my wife read me, and Alister, and several others, but never another Healer. They could only give me hints. I was hoping that you would be able to see what I did.” He sighed. “Emrys, if you or Queron can’t learn this, I’m not sure it can be learned. Maybe this is to Healers what Healing is to other Deryni.”

  “Well, let’s not jump to conclusions, son. No one said anything about not being able to learn it,” Emrys retorted, sounding almost a bit annoyed, though Camber could not be sure. “I simply wasn’t watching closely enough; and Queron was in no position to watch.” He glanced at Queron, who was studying them all tensely from his frozen position on the couch. “Remove the block again, and let’s take another crack at it. Alister, you watch this, too. A Michaeline point of view could be very useful. I may be missing something entirely obvious.”

  Bringing his hands to Queron’s head again, Rhys took another deep breath and let the linkage settle in with Emrys and Camber, deftly guiding both of them to the location where he thought the function was occurring. With a reassuring smile at Queron, projecting what he hoped was his best bedside manner, he reached out mentally and took Queron down as easily as if he were dealing with a human child of no training whatsoever. All trace of the formerly magnificent Healer was undetectable.

  Then, as he had done before, he shifted that ineffable something—and Queron was restored. Emrys, like Camber, could only shake his head.

  “Damn, I missed it,” Emrys whispered, almost to himself. “Do it again?”

  And Rhys did.

  He did it to Queron. He did it, after several more repeats, to Emrys. He did it as slowly as he could to each of them, while the other watched and tried to learn. He did it to each of them while in an almost normal state, and even while resisting. His only limitation seemed to be the necessity for physical contact between Rhys and his subject—but then, that was a limitation under which Healers had always had to work. The laying on of hands was an established requisite for the Healer’s vocation.

  He did it to two different student Healers, leaving their memories blocked after it was over. He even, as Emrys’s suggestion and Queron’s exasperated agreement, did it with Queron sedated to the eyeballs, as Gregory had been the first time. He did not do it to Camber, but he explained that by saying that at least one of them should remain neutral and untouched by the phenomena, and that Alister was not a Healer. They accepted that.

  But nothing seemed to work, so far as learning was concerned.

  “I can only conclude,” Emrys finally had to admit, while they sipped at wine, “that this may, indeed, be a talent which is unique to you, Rhys. We’ve certainly tried to learn it, but in this, I’m afraid you’ve far outstripped your teachers. I honestly don’t know what to tell you.”

  Exhausted, Rhys stretched and craned his neck from side to side to ease cramped muscles. It was late afternoon, and other than the present wine and a slab of hard yellow cheese which Camber was slicing, all of them had been working without proper respite for far too many hours.

  “Well, maybe our baptizer cult wasn’t such a good idea, after all,” he said, gnawing at the rind-end of a piece of cheese which Camber handed him. “If I’m the only one who can do this, we’re going to have to rethink the whole concept. I said, somewhat facetiously, that I’d play the role of religious fanatic if there were no other way—and the stage is set for it to work, regardless of who takes that role—but I’d sure like to find an alternative.”

  “I’m sure we all would,” Camber replied, passing cheese to Queron and then to Emrys. “We’ll have to see what can be done.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Strangers conspired together against him, and maligned him in the wilderness.

  —Ecclesiasticus 45:18

  Unfortunately, the Council had no ready answer to Rhys’s dilemma. A philosophical setting was being established by Revan’s presence among the Willimites, ready for a Healer of Rhys’s gifts to step in and activate it; and Joram and Evaine, in turn, kept secretly feeding Revan more and more information to build his cover more tightly; but only time would tell whether Rhys’s talent could be taught or whether he himself would be forced to assume the role of associate messiah. The slim chance also remained that the plan might never have to be set in motion.

  But if Deryni were not yet setting drastic plans in motion, during the nearly four months between Cinhil’s death and Alroy’s coronation, others certainly were. Though the actions of the new regime were no more outwardly spectacular than those of the Camberian Council, they were no less precise and efficient, bespeaking serious long-term implications for those not in the regents’ favor. No violence broke out
during those early months of spring, much to the relief of Camber and his colleagues, but change was definitely in the air, and not to the advantage of Deryni.

  One of the first and most insidious changes had to do with the army of Gwynedd. The regents well understood the importance of the army as a power base, and knew that here, among Jebediah’s Michaeline-trained officers, human as well as Deryni, lay the most likely seeds for a successful Deryni revolt. It was therefore necessary that the army be cleansed of all taint of Deryni and Deryni sympathy.

  Accordingly, the army underwent a massive reorganization at all levels of rank, with younger, less experienced officers and commanders—humans, all—gradually being phased in to replace Jebediah’s seasoned troops. Helpless to prevent it, Jebediah watched his army change into a conscienceless tool which might eventually be used against him and his people. All he could do was to despair and try to find positions for his displaced men.

  His task was not an easy one. Such a political climate as the regents were engendering did not bode well for men born and bred to live by the sword. Most Deryni nobles already had a surfeit of retainers, Deryni and human, and were disinclined to take on any more, especially in light of the apparently declining opportunities at Court for those of their race. Some were even letting men go, no longer anticipating the wherewithal to pay large numbers of private troops.

  As for the human nobility, they were becoming increasingly reluctant to employ fighting men dismissed by the regents. Where once Michaeline military training had been prized for producing outstanding soldiers, tacticians and strategists, human and Deryni, now it became more and more a stigma connected with the old days of Deryni domination, a liability instead of an asset.

  Fortunately for Gwynedd, Michaeline training also instilled discipline and responsibility, so the land was not plagued by bands of masterless Michaelines riding aimlessly through the countryside as their noble counterparts still did. Most actual members of the Michaeline Order, Deryni and human, simply retreated to the commanderie at Argoed, or one of the provincial houses in Gwynedd or without, there to hold themselves in readiness or, in some cases, to return to duties related to the teaching which had long been the other Michaeline specialty besides fighting. A few of them began organizing small, clandestine groups to preserve Deryni and Michaeline training and tradition, ready to become islands of refuge, if the worst came to pass.

  It was only a matter of time, Jebediah guessed, before the Order would be suppressed as brutally as it had been in the last year of Imre’s reign. The plans for the entire Order going underground again must be brought up to date and readied. At least until Alroy came of age and the regents were out of power, Michaelines would have to tread almost as carefully as Deryni, and Deryni Michaelines must be doubly careful.

  Among those only Michaeline-trained, however, without the formal guidance and protection of the Order, there were far fewer options available, especially to men with families to support. As a consequence, many of these of Jebediah’s officers simply disappeared, taking their families with them into Torenth, Forcinn, Llannedd, Howicce, and further lands where others unlike the Festils had left gentler memories of Deryni living among them, and where no one knew of their former Deryni connections. Human and Deryni alike, they went, taking some of the finest military minds of their generation out of Gwynedd forever. Jebediah regretted their going, but he could not, in conscience, bid them stay. At least in foreign lands, they might have a chance to survive unmolested.

  Domestically, too, there were changes in Gwynedd, beginning slowly in the weeks right after Cinhil’s death. Deryni household retainers and officers at Court, never really numerous even under Cinhil, were gradually given leave to return to their homes, as new human replacements were rotated in. Rhys and Evaine, most prominent of the Deryni formerly in Cinhil’s personal service, were among the first to be dismissed, with the excuse that they deserved lives of their own after so many years of faithful service; but it was clear that if Deryni were no longer desired at Court, then the daughter and son-in-law of a Deryni saint were doubly unwelcome.

  So Rhys and Evaine moved out of the quarters in the castle which they had occupied intermittently for the past twelve years and took up temporary residence at Rhys’s townhouse in Valoret, the house he had bought as a young Healer and had maintained through the years as a hostelry for Healer’s apprentices. Periodically, they travelled back to Sheele to see the two younger children and check on the new tutor they had hired. There, during one idyllic week in mid-May, they conceived their fourth child—a daughter, to be born early the following year. But they would not return to Sheele permanently so long as Camber still lodged in the archbishop’s palace by the cathedral—and Camber could not leave until after the new king’s coronation late in May.

  Rhys’s departure from Court left the post of royal physician vacant, but the regents chose to fill it with two human physicians. Humans, they said, could tend the young king’s colds and other ailments just as well as Deryni, for in treatment of illnesses, magic had little edge over medical knowledge. It was in the Healing of physical injury that the Healers were clearly superior—and in that eventuality, the regents still had Tavis O’Neill.

  Not that they wanted him. He was Deryni, after all. But given Prince Javan’s proclivity for throwing tantrums which made him ill, whenever the possibility of Tavis’s leaving was even mentioned, the regents decided it best to wait at least until after the coronation to resolve the issue. Javan must appear to be the picture of princely decorum on his brother’s coronation day.

  Besides, Tavis was among the most inoffensive of Deryni, never having shown evidence of any but Healing abilities for as long as anyone could remember. He might almost be human, were it not for the Healing gift. And as Bishop Hubert grudgingly pointed out, though the state of Tavis’s soul might definitely be in question because of his Deryni birth, at least he was only using his magic for good, for Healing. And so Tavis stayed, if rather closely watched.

  Archbishop Jaffray also stayed, even more closely watched—tolerated because he must be, at least for the present. However, the archbishop’s aides, human and Deryni, and even minor members of the human Court were already warning him to guard himself—that the regents desired nothing less than his terminal illness or fatal accident, so that death might oust him from the regency council, since they could not.

  But Jaffray flourished, despite their ill wishes, and continued to report regularly to the Camberian Council on the regents’ latest plans, at least so far as these were discussed with the full council and not just among the regents themselves.

  One topic which came to be discussed with alarming regularity, though nothing serious had yet come of it, was the regents’ increasing awareness of the roving bands of young Deryni such as Camber and Joram had encountered on the road near Dolban. The regents did not know of that particular incident; but they knew of the one involving Hubert’s brother. Fortunately, even Manfred had not been able to allege more than rowdiness and lewd conduct, but God knew what the summer might bring, after the excitement of the coronation was past and life settled down to a new and more restricted routine. The regents were already talking of harsher measures.

  The problem was not unique to the Deryni, though it was most apparent among their numbers. The position of younger sons had never been a strong one, and traditionally these men had ended up as clerics or soldiers or, if they were fortunate enough to gain some kind of inheritance, rakes and men-about-town. Some few managed to win titles on their own merit, but opportunities for this kind of advancement were rare, especially in times of peace.

  Under the guise of rotating appointments and positions at Court, the regents had shifted the human-Deryni balance of the Court from a nearly half-and-half arrangement to more than three-quarters human, in scarcely three months. Deryni who had patiently waited their turns to serve the Crown under Cinhil, and who depended upon royal stipends for part of their income, now found themselves without employment an
d without preferment—yet they were still expected to fulfill their feudal obligations of military service, tithe and tax, and peacekeeping in their areas. This Michaelmas, at the end of the summer would see not only the traditional tithes come due, but also a set of new taxes. The regents had already informed the peerage, human and Deryni, to be prepared for that.

  Such developments did not set well with many Deryni. And chief among those who were less discreet than they should have been about their dissatisfaction were the bands of Deryni younger sons who now began to roam the countryside, short of funds as well as bored and unfulfilled.

  In fact, there were probably no more than one hundred or so of these impetuous young men, comprising perhaps half a dozen bands; but they were conspicuous for being Deryni, and most still had sufficient connections of family, name, and title to ensure that disciplinary action was never carried out. Who were local sheriffs and constables to argue with the sons of earls and barons? These officers complained, but they had not yet been given the authority to deal with the problem.

  Increasingly, during the months before Alroy’s coronation, Jaffray brought his fears to the Camberian Council, and increasingly, Davin and Ansel and Jesse reported that they were doing the best they could; but three young men and Gregory, their mentor, simply could not be everywhere at once, even by delegating some of their patrol duties to their sworn men. Little more could be done on the Council’s behalf without risking exposure of their existence—and that, no human must ever know.

  Alroy Bearand Brion Haldane was crowned on his twelfth birthday, in a festival to celebrate both the installation of the new king and the coming of spring after the long and dismal winter. His father had run an austere and conservative court, but the regents had decreed that this was not to be the case for young King Alroy. Amazing things had been planned for the amusement of the king and his brothers, once the solemnities of the coronation were over, not the least of which were a tournament and a great fair. By comparison with these latter events, a coronation seemed tame. The boys could hardly wait until Alroy’s crowning was past and they could get on with more exciting things.