Camber the Heretic

by Katherine Kurtz

Tavis gave a semblance of a nervous chuckle and shrugged helplessly. “Damned if I know. I don’t think so, though,” he concluded on a more sober note.

  Javan mulled that for a moment, then cleared his throat uneasily.

  “Maybe they only appear to their families.”

  “I suppose it’s as possible as any other speculation. But—why do you ask that?”

  “Well, Davin had a younger brother, didn’t he? Maybe we could ask him.”

  “About Saint Camber? Ansel?” Tavis shook his head. “He will be long in hiding by now.”

  “In hiding? Why? How could he know?”

  “The two were brothers, and Deryni, Javan,” Tavis whispered impatiently. “He will have known of Davin’s death the instant it occurred, and he will have known what that would mean, for he cannot have been unaware of the secret game his brother played.”

  “What about Father Joram, then?” Javan insisted. “He was Davin’s uncle, and he’s a priest. If anyone should know about Saint Camber, he should. Or, what about Lady Evaine, or Rhys?”

  “Rhys, my prince? After what he did to us the night your father died? And the others are no less involved, I feel more and more certain.”

  “But, how can we find out? Tavis, we must know the truth! We must!”

  But they were allowed no further time for discussion just then, for the royal party was filing along an open passageway running just beneath the rafters of the hall toward the gallery at the far end. That gallery overlooked the hall in one direction and, in the other, the pitched stone courtyard which lay between the hall and the great octagonal keep. There it was that the executions were about to take place.

  Sir Jason appeared in the side doorway with a cloak for Javan, for the afternoon was growing chill as evening approached, and Javan glanced plaintively at Tavis in appeal; but the Healer shook his head and helped the prince up with a hand under his elbow. Grisly though the executions would be, Javan must witness them; and Tavis would not leave the boy to face that alone. Already, the mutilation of the bodies would have started, the better to terrify the three living prisoners awaiting execution. They could delay no longer.

  Sir Jason laid the cloak around Javan’s rigid shoulders, then withdrew discreetly; and Tavis, with a grim expression, began walking the boy firmly up the hall, where another narrow stair led to the gallery where the others were already assembled.

  “Courage, my prince,” he murmured. “We shall find a way to get more information out of my fellow Deryni, I promise you. Let me think on it for a day or two. It may be that Rhys can be our key, after all. He and I are Healers, two of a kind. I may be able to use some of his own craft against him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  An enemy speaketh sweetly with his lips, but in his heart he imagineth how to throw thee into a pit: he will weep with his eyes, but if he find opportunity, he will not be satisfied with blood.

  —Ecclesiasticus 12:16

  In a dim underground passageway deep beneath Caerrorie, Rhys had his hands full trying to comfort the devastated brother of Davin MacRorie. From Camber to Joram the word of Davin’s death had gone, shattering Joram’s composure all the way in Argoed, where he and Jebediah had waited for Camber to join them for Michaelmas. The two Michaelines had returned to Camber, via Portals, as quickly as they could decently make their excuses to their vicar general. The details of the tragedy they read from a still-stunned Camber before deploying to gather the others, Joram to bring Rhys and Evaine from Sheele and Jebediah to try to find Gregory. To Rhys it befell to bring back the next MacRorie heir.

  Ansel had known, of course. Rhys found the seventeen-year-old Ansel huddled miserably in the passageway outside the Portal chamber, arms clasped around his knees, tear-bright eyes lifted in dread expectation as the panel slid aside to disclose Rhys. He scrambled to his feet as the Healer emerged, stumbling blindly into the older man’s arms and weeping bitterly as Rhys’s hand stroked the silver-gilt hair in futile comfort. Several minutes passed before Ansel regained sufficient composure to speak, but Rhys did not try to hurry him. The bond Ansel had shared with his older brother had been far stronger and of longer duration than even Camber’s tie.

  “Oh, God, I felt him go, Rhys!” Ansel finally managed to choke out. He sniffled and swallowed with difficulty, a loud, painful gulp. “I couldn’t tell exactly how it happened, but I knew! The master of horse must have thought I was having a seizure or something.”

  “I know,” Rhys murmured, keeping an arm around Ansel’s shoulders as the young man smeared an already damp sleeve across his eyes.

  “What—what did happen?” Ansel asked, after a few more deep breaths to regain better control.

  “There was a hawking expedition,” Rhys said quietly. “The princes’ party was ambushed by Deryni, at least six or so. We don’t yet know who they were or why they did it, but Davin took an arrow apparently meant for Rhys Michael. It—entered in the lower back, damaging his spine in passing, and lodged against one of the major blood vessels, Alister says.”

  Ansel winced and bit at his lip to keep from groaning, but he did not interrupt as Rhys took a deep breath and continued.

  “The injury was—very severe, and Davin knew it. He assessed the damage, and his chances of surviving, while still keeping his shield integrity from Tavis, and decided not to allow Tavis to try to Heal him. After the initial wound, there would have been very little pain. He was even able to receive the last rites through Alister before inducing an unwitting guard to ease him on his way.”

  “You mean, he—let himself die?” Ansel whispered incredulously.

  Rhys sighed. “Ansel, try to understand. He knew that trying to remove the arrow would almost certainly kill him. He also knew that Tavis would discover that he was Deryni, the instant the Healer tried to work on him, and that he would try to force his shields. There was also the probability of drugs being used to force his cooperation.”

  “Oh, God!” Ansel moaned.

  “So he set mental triggers to prevent Tavis from being able to work a death-reading,” Rhys continued softly, “and then he reached into the mind of the guard who was supporting him from behind and—had him jar the arrow, just slightly. Do I—have to go into the medical details of what happened next?”

  Ansel shook his head quickly and swallowed.

  “Was it—quick?”

  “He would have lost consciousness within seconds.”

  Ansel rubbed a shaking hand across eyes bleary from weeping, then shook his head when Rhys would have touched his temple to read his mental state with greater accuracy.

  “It’s all right. I’ll be all right.” He sniffed and swallowed, finally managing to raise a more composed face to Rhys.

  “So, what now? Will we at least be able to get his body back for burial beside Father?”

  Rhys sighed and shook his head, remembering Cathan’s grave in the little village churchyard only a few hundred yards from here.

  “I doubt it, Ansel. His own shape will have come back upon him when he died. Those who were there will have seen it. By now, the regents surely know. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll hold Davin just as much to blame as the others.”

  “But, he didn’t—”

  “You know that, and I know that,” Rhys agreed, “and the regents may even know that—but do you really think they’re going to pass up an opportunity like this to accuse a high-ranking Deryni of treason?”

  Ansel heaved a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping in dejection. “No. You’re right. For that matter, they’ll probably be after me, next, as the brother and heir of a traitor.”

  “I fear they will.” Rhys glanced at his feet, then looked up at Ansel again. “The Council is gathering to make plans. We’d like to include you. It will help to take your mind off what’s happened.”

  Drawing a deep breath, Ansel squared his shoulders and then raised his head.

  “I’ll come.”

  In the keeill, the others were gathering as the word spread. Evaine and Jora
m sat cross-legged to Camber’s right beside the white slab in the center of the dais. A single sphere of silvery handfire rested at the center of the slab, the only illumination in the vast chamber except for torches burning in the four bronze cressets.

  In the hour since Evaine’s and Joram’s arrival, the three of them had been sharing Camber’s experience of Davin’s death and remembering his short but valiant life, trying to find some meaning in those last minutes for which he had died. Davin’s final suspicion about the unpredictable Prince Javan had provided only bittersweet soothing to their sickness of heart. Evaine had wept, and Camber, too, but now the tears were past. Joram had not cried at all, but perhaps he would have been better off if he had, for every line of his body, huddled inside the heavy Michaeline greatcloak, spoke of grief and anger only barely contained. His face, lit mainly from below by the glow of Camber’s handfire, was a mask as cold as the white marble before them.

  After a while, Jebediah and Gregory joined them, with Gregory’s son Jesse, all three haggard and drawn-looking in the crimson light which Jebediah brought. The Michaeline took his place quietly at Joram’s right and extinguished his handfire, knowing the extra measure of grief which was Camber’s at losing a grandson as well as a young and promising colleague.

  But Gregory did not know, and did not fathom the depth of mourning of the three others already assembled there. Outrage was his overweening emotion.

  “Has Rhys gone for Ansel?” he asked.

  Evaine gave a brief nod.

  “And Jaffray?” Gregory pursued.

  “Still at Court,” Joram said, his words clipped with his own emotion.

  A little subdued by the sparseness of their responses, Gregory sat down in his accustomed place between Joram and Evaine, hands propped belligerently on his thighs. Jesse settled quietly and to his father’s right.

  “I’m sorry,” Gregory said gruffly. “I know how much Davin’s death must have shocked you. I didn’t mean to seem callous, but I’d like to know the circumstances. Alister, you were monitoring when it happened?”

  Camber nodded and held out his hand.

  “Go ahead and read it,” he whispered, opening the Alister part of his mind to the other man. “We lost another of our people to our own kind.”

  Gregory, who had started to take Camber’s hand, jerked back his own as though he had encountered red-hot iron.

  “Not our kind! Those were none of ours!” he said, with an emphatic shake of his head. “Deryni, yes, but—Jebediah told me some of what happened. They sound like the same breed of misfits that stopped you and Joram on the road last winter.”

  “No!” said Camber. “Those were bored, mischievous children, by comparison. These were assassins, set on killing the princes—vicious cutthroats, of the same ilk as those who maimed Tavis O’Neill!”

  “And I say you’re both wrong!” Evaine interjected angrily. “Those were sadistic children, and since no one was able to stop them, they have become assassins, murdering in their frustration, trying to destroy what they think keeps them from the lives they used to lead. What they fail to realize is that the House of Haldane and those who serve them are not the enemy.”

  Joram snorted and pulled his ankles in closer. “As I recall, the esteemed regents supposedly serve the Haldanes. If our bored young compatriots are so eager to seek redress, why don’t they go to the source of their grievances?”

  “Joram, Joram, there’s nothing to be gained by bitterness,” Camber sighed, extending his hand again for Gregory. “Go ahead and read it, Gregory. Then see if you are still inclined toward charity for the men who caused Davin’s death.”

  With an indulgent sigh, Gregory made the contact and closed his eyes, slipping into rapport with the Alister portion of Camber and reading all that Davin had sent save his shriving and the final exchange. When Gregory emerged from trance, his narrow face was drawn. The reality of what he had witnessed through Alister’s experience pulled stark and poignantly at all the father instincts of Ebor’s earl.

  For a moment, Gregory bowed his head, high forehead cradled in the long fingers. He was saved from the need to speak by the arrival of Rhys and Ansel, the latter stumbling a little as he and the Healer mounted the dais steps. As all of them rose to meet him, Camber saw the dead Davin’s echo in his younger brother, stripling-man almost still boy. The two stopped on the top level at Camber’s left.

  “This is—not the Michaelmas I would have wished,” Ansel said haltingly. “I—” He had to stop and swallow hard to keep from crying again, finally regaining enough semblance of control to lift his eyes to Camber with some degree of steadiness.

  “Bishop Alister—” His eyes wavered for just an instant before he went on. “I—Uncle Rhys tells me that you were—that you—”

  “Read my memory, son,” Camber murmured, holding out both his hands and moving within reach of his grandson. “Go ahead,” he urged, when Ansel glanced uncertainly at the others. “The others know, and so should you. He was your brother.”

  As Ansel made the contact, Camber gently let slip his Alister shields, at the same time drawing in Ansel’s tentative probe and solidifying the necessary rapport. He did not spare the boy the full feeling of the memory, for he knew that neither Ansel nor Davin would have wanted that. Instead, he spread the entire encounter there for the other to read, saving only the confession and the Camber interaction.

  Tears were rolling down Ansel’s beardless cheeks when he came up from his trance. Camber gently gathered him in the circle of his arms as Rhys had done, seeing this time that all the grief came out, so that when Ansel finally drew away, there were no tears left—only the rich memory of the man who had been his brother and who had given his life for a cause in which they all believed.

  They settled down around the marble slab to wait for Jaffray then, and shortly he joined them, disbelieving anger and despair laced through every step as he sank to his knees among them. He placed a black leather case on the slab beside Camber’s handfire. The top of the case was stamped with tiny gold crosses.

  “I came as soon as I could,” he said, in a voice edged with bleak fatigue and grief. “When they got him back to Rhemuth, they—weren’t finished with him.” He sighed heavily. “Alister, I have to talk this out, or I’m going to lose whatever hold I’ve managed to keep on my anger and fear. Would you please take care of this while I talk? We’ll need a place to work.”

  As he pushed the black case closer, Camber shook himself free of the immobility which had held them all, then reached a blind hand for the Ward Cubes he carried in his cincture. He drew out the familiar black velvet bag and untied the scarlet cords, upending it in his other hand as he had done at least a hundred times before.

  Deliberately distracted from what Jaffray was saying, he recalled another time and place, before the keeill’s finding—indeed, before they knew for certain that any of the more complex cube possibilities were safe to work. Now there were several such which he counted as most routine, though they still had never worked the cube configuration which mimicked the altar at Grecotha.

  He tucked the empty pouch into his cincture for safekeeping, then began methodically picking the four white cubes from the pile in his left hand and setting them into position on the slab, their sleek chill against his fingers somehow soothing in the tangle of emotions eddying around Jaffray and the others as he slowly drew himself apart.

  “What happened, Jaffray?” Jebediah was saying.

  Jaffray breathed in deeply, as if trying to pull in strength and resolution from the very air. “There were four prisoners taken alive initially, all of them Deryni. You would recognize most of the names, if I told you. One of them died in the hall, when Lord Oriel set off a death-response which he knew was there.”

  “Oriel?” Rhys gasped. “He’s helping the regents?”

  Jaffray nodded. “Joram, you and Alister and Jebediah have been warning us for years that Deryni would turn against Deryni, and now it’s happening. I didn’t want to bel
ieve the rumors I’d been hearing, the little hints around Court, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The regents have been soliciting collaborators. In Oriel’s case, they have his wife and infant daughter to hostage. I have no reason to hope that this is an isolated case.”

  “Sweet Jesu,” Joram whispered under his breath. “And Oriel just set it off, knowing it was there? He deliberately killed the man?”

  “Not exactly. Tavis had found it initially and warned the regents what would happen. He did a superficial reading and gave the regents the names of those involved—they were all dead or captured anyway, except for one who got away—and then they brought in Oriel to check on Tavis. In all fairness to Oriel, he did it reluctantly.”

  As Jaffray continued recounting the incident in detail, Camber took a deep breath and made his conscious mind block out what the archbishop was saying, laying a finger on the white cube in the upper left of the square before him and projecting its nomen.

  Prime!

  He had not spoken the word aloud, but immediately the cube lit from within, glowing with a cool white light.

  Seconde!

  The upper right cube gleamed like its companion.

  Tierce!

  So followed the cube below the first.

  Quarte!

  The last cube’s activation made of the four of them a single, softly glowing square of cool white light, whiter than the slab on which they lay. A moment Camber paused to shift his perspective to the other side of Balance, from white to black, then touched the black cube next to Prime. Jaffray’s voice was a meaningless buzz as Camber formed the first black’s name:

  Quinte!

  The touched cube sparkled to life, a dark, blue-black glitter of darkest opal fire, as he moved on to the next.

  Sixte!

  The fire seemed to leap instantaneously from the first black cube to Camber’s finger to the one so-named, and to follow as he touched the remaining black cubes in rapid succession.

  Septime! Octave!

  As the fires stabilized in the heart of the last cube, Camber drew a deep breath and let his conscious resume its attention to Jaffray’s words, wincing a little as what he had blocked now came through in full force, filling in the gap of his brief psychic absence.