Camber the Heretic

by Katherine Kurtz

  “God, that’s bitter. Anyway, let’s try some more. It’s hard to overdose with talicil. That’s the boy,” he said, as Javan swallowed automatically, draining the small cup. “Good lad. Now let’s cover him up and see if we can break that fever. He’s going to have to sweat it out, I think.”

  For the next little while, they busied themselves covering Javan with extra blankets. Both Healers monitored their patient closely for nearly an hour, each pouring Healing energy into the thin body to help burn out whatever it was that was threatening it. Finally, a few tiny beads of perspiration appeared on Javan’s upper lip and brow, heralding a full sweat, and then he seemed to lapse into normal sleep. When Rhys and Tavis had changed the boy’s damp bedclothes and swathed him in a robe more suitable for the temperature of the room, Tavis dismissed the squire with a weary wave of his hand and an admonition to go get some sleep, then sank into a chair close beside the bed.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Rhys,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing his hand across his eyes. “I don’t mind admitting that I was frightened. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so sick before.”

  With a slight smile, Rhys flopped into another chair not far from Tavis’s and craned his neck muscles, sighing with relief.

  “You just haven’t gotten the feel of dealing with childhood ailments. My older boy used to get these odd little fevers all the time. He outgrew them, though. He’s just a little younger than Javan.”

  Tavis snorted skeptically. “Alroy has never gotten them, sickly as he is.” He stretched and yawned, then reached over to the decanter of wine and pulled out the stopper.

  “God, I feel like I’m the one who’s been fighting off a fever! Want some wine? Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be able to stand something this sweet, but I’m too exhausted to call for anything else.”

  “Sweet wine is fine,” Rhys said, nodding for Tavis to pour and thinking back to another time with Tavis. Then it had been the princes, the squires, and Tavis who had done the drinking—and Tavis not entirely of his own will.

  The wine had been a sweet Fianna wine, much like this one, he remembered, as he watched Tavis set his cup aside and rise to check on Javan. He had chosen it partially to appeal to the children’s taste, but also to mask the slight flavor and color of the drugs he had given them all that night. This was possibly an even better vintage, he decided, as he took a deep swallow and then another mouthful.

  He had just swallowed what was in his mouth and was starting to take another sip when he realized that Tavis had sat down again, but that he had not picked up his cup. In fact, the other Healer had never even tasted his. And now he was sitting back in his chair and gazing across at Rhys with a look of incredible satisfaction.

  Rhys lowered his cup and swallowed, suddenly dry-mouthed, testing for and finally detecting the slightly flat, metallic ghost taste on the back of his tongue that the strong, sweet wine had masked. Abruptly he knew why Tavis looked so smug.

  “Tavis, what have you given me?” he whispered, setting the cup precisely on the chair arm and trying frantically to quell the subtle buzz that was beginning to sound in the back of his head.

  Tavis raised an eyebrow, then rose and moved to the mantel, where he took down a small glass vial and brought it back to Javan. “It won’t do you any more harm than what you once gave me,” he said, raising the sleeping Javan’s head and pouring the contents of the vial between his lips.

  “What I gave you?” Rhys murmured, knowing that Tavis must be referring to the night of Cinhil’s death, but aghast that he should have discovered anything was done. “What do you mean?” he denied. “And what are you giving Javan?”

  “It’s a partial antidote to what you just drank,” Tavis replied. “Unfortunately for you, that was all there was—just enough to bring Javan around for what we—you inadvertently gave him.” He sat casually on the edge of Javan’s bed, within reach of Rhys. “I remember what happened that night the king died, Rhys. I didn’t remember before, but I remember it now; and this young man helped me.”

  He gestured toward Javan, whose eyelids were fluttering as he started to regain consciousness. “The only thing is, now he wants to know what happened to him that night. And I’m going to help him find out.”

  “You must be mad!” Rhys whispered, trying to hoist himself out of his chair only to upset the cup of wine and find that his legs would not support him.

  As the cup shattered on the floor, he crumpled to his hands and knees and his vision began to swim. The top was so evident now, he was astonished that he had not seen it before. All Javan’s illness had been a sham, manufactured by Tavis to lure him here and take him unawares. Already, he could hardly think coherently, and his body refused to obey him. His healing centers, especially, were almost totally inaccessible.

  He could feel his shields slipping askew without Tavis even having to test them, and knew that almost all of his being would soon be open to Tavis’s most minute inspection. He could not even shunt the most incriminating parts into deeper levels, for the shunting mechanism was one of the first things to go, under the drugs which Tavis had given him.

  The night of Cinhil’s death was buried deeply, but not deep enough to keep Tavis from it when he knew what he was looking for. The identities of the members of the Camberian Council were perhaps shrouded, but the existence of the Council was not. And the information about his new Healing talent was not hidden at all. Of all his most intimate secrets, only that of Camber’s true identity was perhaps buried deeply enough that Tavis would not find it.

  As he panted with the effort of staying on his hands and knees and tried to keep watching Tavis, he saw the other Healer bending over Javan, who moaned and blinked, then struggled to a sitting position with Tavis’s help, pulling himself up by a handful of Tavis’s tunic. As the prince’s cold but clearing Haldane eyes met his, Rhys knew that he was doomed. He would find no mercy there. He felt his arms and legs collapsing under him and could not keep himself from lapsing into semi-consciousness.

  “Tavis, you did it!” Javan whispered, struggling to a more upright position and staring at Rhys sprawled on his side against the chair. “Is he—asleep, or what?”

  Tavis laid a fur-lined robe around the boy’s shoulders, then went to Rhys and began hauling him back into the low-backed chair.

  “He’s not exactly asleep—more like a sort of twilight state. He can hear us, but he can’t react much. His shields are all but gone.”

  Intrigued, Javan shrugged his arms into the sleeves of the robe and scooted to the end of the bed. Tavis eyed him dubiously as he swung his legs over the edge and stood down, but he seemed steady enough on his feet. Javan padded over to the chair, then reached out tentatively and touched Rhys’s still left hand where it lay flaccid on the arm of the chair.

  “He’s awfully cold, Tavis,” the boy whispered. “Is he all right? I don’t want him hurt.”

  “Without what I gave you first to induce fever, the drugs lower the body temperature a little,” Tavis said, pulling a blanket from the bed and draping it over and around Rhys’s slumped form. “And I’ll be as gentle as I can, but I may have to hurt him a little, if I’m to find out what you want to know. Here, why don’t you sit on the other chair, opposite him? Are you sure you’re all right? Of course the drugs don’t affect humans as seriously, but—”

  “I’ll be fine. Just a little wobbly.” Javan climbed into the chair and curled up, watching as Tavis peered under his subject’s eyelid and then nodded to himself. “Are you going to read him now?”

  “Yes, I think he’s just about ready.”

  Slowly Tavis moved around to the back of the chair, his hand supporting Rhys’s head on its slack neck. He slipped his hand onto Rhys’s forehead and tipped the head back against him, at the same time laying his stump along the left side of Rhys’s neck.

  The pulse was steady and slow from the drugs. He reached out with his fine Healer’s control, sending relaxation all through the taut body without resist
ance. Then, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly to center, he sent forth his mind in search of that one incident, the night the king had died. Once-unbreachable shields parted before him like merest wisps of fog as he let himself descend deeper, deeper … and took Rhys with him.

  He found the night first by his own presence, reliving the saga of that other wine as he had relived it half a dozen times in his own mind, with Javan’s help. The details tallied, and he learned the precise proportion of the drugs Rhys had administered—cursed himself as a fool for having omitted a subtle but critical ingredient.

  But all of that was from Rhys’s view, not Tavis’s own, or the even briefer memory of Javan. Here was new perspective. For when Rhys had left Tavis sleeping by the fire, and checked on the princes, he had gone to the closet and opened it wide—and there, behind a false panel in the back, had been Joram MacRorie!

  One with Rhys in memory, then, and seeing through his recollection, he watched Joram pick up Javan, while Rhys swept Alroy into his arms and followed the priest into a narrow, rough-finished passageway lit only by greenish handfire which floated just before them. They emerged in Cinhil’s private chapel, where Rhys laid the sleeping Alroy supine on a thick Kheldish carpet in the center of the room, next to a small table. He knew that Joram had put Javan down at the edge of the room and disappeared into the secret passageway again, but he did not see that happen because Rhys was kneeling with his eyes closed and his hands on Alroy’s forehead, reaching deep for control points which were not at all familiar to Tavis. When he opened his eyes, Evaine was handing him a moistened swab whose scent was pungent and familiar, and Rhys was wiping the boy’s right earlobe, piercing it with the needle which Evaine gave him, inserting a familiar looking ruby earring handed to him by—Cinhil!

  Now Rhys was kneeling by Javan’s side and repeating the operation, inserting an earring of twisted gold wire which Javan still wore. Strange, how Tavis had never noticed just when Javan had begun to wear it.…

  Then Joram was laying the sleeping Rhys Michael at their feet, and the process must be repeated yet a third time. When that was done, Rhys laid his hand on Alroy’s forehead once more and then relinquished all control to Joram.

  Bishop Alister was also in the center of the room, quite near now as he exchanged a few words with the king; but Rhys had slipped into a meditative, neutral state, and was not paying attention to what they were saying. After a moment, Alroy opened his eyes, dreamy and slightly glazed, and Rhys and Joram helped him sit up and then stand.

  Then Rhys was striding quickly to where Evaine waited with a candle in her hand to kiss him and let him pass to where the other two boys slept. As Rhys settled between them, taking up monitoring functions, Tavis was aware that his view of what went on in the center of the room was now obscured by a faint haze, and that Joram was walking a circle of magic around those within!

  Stunned, Tavis almost withdrew, for of all the things he had imagined, he had never even considered magic; it had never occurred to him that another Healer might have decidedly different views than himself on the propriety of ritual magic.

  And yet, as he followed what happened next, he realized that this was not only ritual magic, but high Deryni magic—that these four Deryni, plus Cinhil and his sons, had gathered that night for that very purpose, though the boys had been made to forget very thoroughly what had happened. No wonder he and Javan had not been able to retrieve the memory!

  Three times, once for each of the boys, some strange working was done within the warded circle, followed by a quiet time when Cinhil would lay his hands on each boy’s head as though in blessing and do—something. After that, each boy would collapse unconscious, to be brought out of the magical circle to Rhys and be replaced by the next one.

  Javan was the second to undergo whatever happened there, but Tavis could read no more detail of his rite than he could of those for Alroy and Rhys Michael. With each working, Cinhil got weaker; and after each, Rhys must push strength into his failing body, even though both men knew that this was but hastening the end. After the third time Cinhil collapsed, even Rhys could do no more. The king was dying, and wanted only Alister and Joram to attend him.

  When all had left the circle save the two priests and the dying Cinhil, the bishop and Joram gave Cinhil the Last Rites. Alister and Cinhil seemed to talk for a little while, until Alister finally told Joram to open a gateway in the circle with his sword—and then the circle disappeared and he knew that Cinhil was dead.

  But that last part was strange and hazy, and Tavis had the feeling that there was something very special that he had missed. He withdrew from Rhys’s mind with a shake of his head, oddly disturbed and yet awed by what he had read. All that magic—and yet.…

  As he blinked and came back to reality, he was aware of Javan staring at him, and remembered that the boy had seen none of what he had seen. Nor could he even begin to tell him, he realized, though at least he knew now where to look in the boy’s memory and how he might guide a fuller remembering on Javan’s part.

  “What was it, Tavis?” the prince whispered.

  Tavis had to swallow before he could breathe the single word.

  “Magic.”

  “Magic?” Javan gasped. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Tavis, drawing a deep, careful breath, “that the ones we suspected—Rhys, Evaine, Joram, and Bishop Alister—worked a ritual of magic with your father on the night he died.” He took another deep breath. “You, Alroy, and Rhys Michael were all involved. That’s why you were drugged—to make you receptive, and so you wouldn’t remember until it was—time.”

  Javan swallowed noisily and stared at Tavis with an even more apprehensive expression.

  “Time for what?”

  With an explosive sigh, Tavis shrugged. “That, I couldn’t begin to tell you. Even his memory is hazy on the whys of what I read. He was outside the magic circle, keeping watch over you and your brothers, while the others did—whatever it was they did.” He glanced down at the still, calm face of Rhys, whose consciousness was now sunk fast in drug-induced sleep, then shook his head again. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get too much more detail on that from him.”

  “Why not? Can’t you probe deeper?”

  “Not without great risk to both of us. Reading memories is one thing; probing for concepts, for explanations, ideas, is something else again. You did say you didn’t want him permanently harmed.”

  “I don’t. But how will we ever find out what happened to me, if he can’t or won’t tell us?” Javan asked plaintively.

  Tavis rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his stump. “Maybe it isn’t Rhys’s memory of this particular incident that’s important anymore,” he said. “Don’t you see? I’ve read what he remembers, but you’re the one it happened to. He was outside the circle, and preoccupied with other things. He didn’t really see the details, so of course, he’s not able to give them to us.”

  “But, Tavis, I can’t remember—”

  “Not now, you can’t,” Tavis replied. “But I may know how to help you reach your own memory now. Who knows better than yourself what really happened to you.”

  Javan stared at the Healer in awe, then scrambled out of his chair to grasp Tavis’s arm.

  “When, Tavis? When can we do it? Now?”

  “No, later. In a few days, when you’ve had a chance for the drugs to get out of your system.”

  “But the drugs help you with Rhys,” Javan murmured, sinking back on the edge of his seat and beginning to pout. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s going to take some conscious effort and control on your part,” Tavis said. “There are things that I can use to help you—and I will, when the time is right—but they’re different from what I gave Rhys. Be still for a moment now. I want to check a few more things before his shields start coming back.”

  And this time, as he submerged himself in Rhys’s mind, he sought out memories of Davin MacRorie, who had been Rhys’s nephe
w by marriage—found that Rhys had known of Davin’s imposture and had even helped in setting it up, though Tavis could not penetrate to other identities involved, no matter how hard he pressed for answers.

  But the setting up—by God, it was Rhys who had made Davin seem not to have been Deryni! Rhys had discovered a way to block Deryni abilities in anyone!

  He gasped at the revelation, reading hints of tries to teach the skill to others, the repeated failures, and then—the key itself!

  Gingerly he reached out and probed the key, weighed the strength needed, found the cognate in his own mind and knew, without having to try it out, that he could do what Rhys could do!

  But more important than that was the reason Rhys had sought to teach the skill in the first place. He read of Revan, who waited with the detested Willimites in the hills above Valoret for a Healer to come to him—a Healer who would be able to fulfill the plan which Rhys and—others—had laid out just after Cinhil’s death: to help hide away at least some of the Deryni race from the ravening extinction of the regents who even tonight had begun their destruction of the Deryni religious orders. Tavis himself had given Rhys that information, and saw that it was to be acted upon by Bishop Alister and Joram and Jebediah, though whether in time or not, neither Rhys nor Tavis knew.

  There was more, so much more …

  Finally Tavis withdrew completely from Rhys’s mind, leaving him to unviolated sleep. He opened his eyes to find Javan standing barefooted at his side, slender hands resting on his forearm as the wide grey eyes gazed at him in alarm.

  Slowly, too stunned to speak, Tavis let his hand slip down the side of Rhys’s head to his shoulder, let his stump fall away with Javan’s hands still gripping it. When Javan would have questioned him, he could not answer, only reassuring the prince that all was well and bidding him go to bed now, that he would explain in the morning.

  He sat in the other chair, watching Rhys for many hours after Javan slept.