Camber of Culdi

  “He’s convinced that he has a true vocation—which he has,” Cullen said brusquely. “He also feels that, even if he were to make the sacrifices we’re demanding, the people wouldn’t accept him. After all, why should they?”

  “Ask those who have suffered at the hands of our current king, whether they be human or Deryni, and you need not ask any further. The Haldanes were never guilty of such acts. Besides, no one has seen Cinhil yet.” He broke into a grin. “For that matter, he hasn’t seen himself for a few weeks. With that beard, and with his tonsure grown out!” He permitted himself a grim chuckle. “Well, let’s just say that when the barber gets through with him this morning, he’s going to bear very little resemblance to the clean-shaven, ascetic Brother Benedict who came to us two weeks ago.”

  “Has he seen the painting yet?”

  “It will be waiting for him after he’s trimmed, right beside the mirror. And if that doesn’t jolt him into an awareness of who and what he is, I don’t know what will.”

  “I do.” The Michaeline general extracted a much-folded piece of parchment from his cassock. “Take a look at this.”

  “Which is?”

  “My list of candidates for future queen of Gwynedd.” Cullen smiled wanly as Camber uncreased the parchment. “I know he’s going to fight this, too, but we’ve got to get that man married. We need another heir after Cinhil, and we need one quickly.”

  “It still takes nine months, the last I heard,” Camber murmured. He was aware of Cullen folding his arms across his chest as he scanned the list.

  “If I could get him married today, it wouldn’t be soon enough to suit me,” Cullen muttered. “As it is, I’d like to make a choice by the end of the week, and marry them on Christmas Eve. That’s a week from today.”

  “I see,” Camber said. “I notice that your list includes my young ward, Megan de Cameron. Do you consider her a serious contender?”

  “If you have no objections. My main concern, other than her ability to bear children, of course, is that our future queen be of absolutely impeccable background. Other than Cinhil’s having left the priesthood, there must be no breath of scandal touching the marriage and eventual heir.”

  “Well, you’ll find none concerning Megan,” Camber said. “She’s young, but I suspect that’s what Cinhil needs. Besides that, she has a strong sense of duty, no other attachments, she’s healthy—and I think she just might like him.”

  “That’s coincidental,” Cullen rumbled. “My main concern is finding someone who—”

  “No, it’s not coincidental, Alister,” Camber interrupted. “Megan may be my ward, and technically I have the right to bestow her marriage on whom I choose, but I would never match her with someone she couldn’t care for. No more than I would force my own daughter to marry for dynastic reasons.”

  “For God’s sake, stop sounding like a father, Camber. I haven’t even picked her yet.”

  “I—”

  Abruptly, Camber closed his mouth and stared at Cullen, then shook his head and began to chuckle. After a few seconds, Cullen, too, began to smile.

  “Christmas Eve …” Camber finally said, as the tension dissolved away. “Do you plan to perform the ceremony yourself?”

  “Unless you have someone better in mind.”

  “Not intrinsically better, but better for Cinhil,” Camber replied. “May I make the arrangements?”

  “Please do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can you tell me whom you have in mind?”

  “No. But I assure you, if I can get him to agree, you’ll approve.”

  “Hmm. Very well.” Cullen glanced at his feet, then raised his eyes to meet Camber’s once more. “There’s—ah—one other thing. I wasn’t going to tell you yet, but I suppose you ought to know. Imre has started reprisals against the order.”

  Camber was instantly serious once more. “What happened?”

  “The Commanderie at Cheltham,” Cullen said dully. “Imre’s troops occupied it two days ago. They took everything they could carry off, torched the rest. Now I understand they’re pulling down the walls that are still standing and salting the fields. The rumor is that they will destroy a former Michaeline establishment every week until I surrender you and the order. Of course, that’s out of the question.”

  Camber could only nod mutely.

  “So, it seems that honor extracts a high price from all of us, eh, my friend?” Cullen finally said, recovering some of his former bravado. “But no one ever promised us it would be easy.” He glanced toward the gallery and sighed. “Well, I’d best be waiting when His Highness finishes Mass. I’ll send him to you when the barber and I are done with him.”

  “Send him to Joram, if I’m not in my chamber,” Camber agreed. “Perhaps some of Joram’s enthusiasm will rub off.”

  Cullen shrugged at that, as though to indicate his doubt that anything enthusiastic could rub off on the despondent Cinhil, then lifted a hand in farewell and headed off down the corridor.

  Camber returned to the listening gallery, but Cinhil had finished his Mass and was disappearing with his monk escort through the door. With a sigh, Camber made his way down to the chapel door and slipped inside. Rhys was waiting for him, standing expectantly to one side of the altar.

  “How is he this morning?” Camber asked.

  Rhys shook his head gravely. “He didn’t sleep last night. His hands were shaking during Mass. I think he sensed that this might be the last time. His distress was so poignant that I could sense it in the air, like a gray pall surrounding the altar. Didn’t you feel it, too?”

  Camber looked at him carefully. “I was called away. When did this occur?”

  “During the Consecration,” Rhys said. He glanced toward the altar, then back at Camber, whose face had gone quite still. “What are you thinking, Camber?” the Healer whispered. “I can’t read you at all when you do that.”

  “I am thinking,” said Camber, slowly mounting the three low steps, “that our Cinhil Haldane may be even more remarkable than we thought.”

  He spread one hand above the altar and extended his senses, careful not to touch anything physically. After a moment, he turned his head slightly toward Rhys.

  “Rhys, will you help me, please?”

  The physician moved to Camber’s left to stand expectantly, one reddish eyebrow arched in question.

  “Now, lend me your strength and support while I probe this more thoroughly,” Camber continued. “There is something very strange here, which I’ve never encountered before. If Cinhil is the cause of it, we may have some very interesting times ahead of us.”

  With that, he closed his eyes and laid his hands flat on the altar cloth, flinching at the initial contact. Rhys stayed at his elbow, a hand resting lightly on the other’s sleeve as he poured his strength into the other’s mind and shared the impressions gathered. When Camber withdrew, his brow was beaded with perspiration, his eyes slightly glazed. A trifle unsteady on his feet, he allowed Rhys to help him turn and sit on the altar step, noting with detachment that the younger man’s hands were shaking, too.

  It was several minutes before he dared to speak, and then his voice was tinged with a little awe.

  “How much of that were you able to pick up?”

  “Nearly all, though not with the same intensity second-hand, of course. What do you think?”

  Camber shook his head. “I’m not sure I have it all sorted out yet. We’re going to have to discuss this with the others, of course. But if we could pick up impressions like that when Cinhil isn’t even in the same room, I don’t wonder that you and Joram weren’t able to breach his shields when you took him out of Saint Foillan’s. In fact, I’m surprised that you were able to make him faint, when we first found him.”

  “He wasn’t expecting it then,” Rhys countered. “He was agitated, but not directly about himself. His shields were down.”

  “But his shields also went down during Mass this morning—again, an instance of great menta
l stress which wasn’t directly threatening. He was agitated because he knows that we’re going to make him give up his priesthood, sooner or later, but—” Camber shook his head again. “No. That’s the wrong approach. It’s his ability to maintain these shields of his in stress which should concern us—the power he must be able to generate without even thinking about it. My God, do you realize that if we could teach him to concentrate and direct that power, he could do anything a Deryni can do? With power like that, he could be a king for both humans and Deryni!”

  “For Deryni? Oh, come now, he’d have to be Deryni for that,” Rhys replied. “The best we can probably hope for is simple tolerance from a human king, even if he is powerful.”

  “No, wait. Of course he’s not Deryni, Rhys. But he’s not entirely human, either. And I mean that in the finest sense of the term. We’ve always maintained that there is something extra in our people which sets them apart from humans—but maybe it’s not something extra, but only something changed. And if that’s the case, maybe we could make Cinhil Deryni.”

  “But, that’s impossible—”

  “I know it’s impossible to make him an actual Deryni. But perhaps we could make him a functional Deryni. Perhaps we could give him Deryni powers and abilities. You have to admit, if we could do it, it would make it that much easier for him to oust Imre.”

  Rhys thought about that for a moment, pursing his lips in concentration. “I don’t think it would work, even so. We’ve been basing our entire strategy on human support when we actually make our move—on the fact that Cinhil, the last living representative of the line usurped by the Festillic dynasty, is human, as opposed to Imre, who is the symbol of all the Deryni atrocities.”

  “But don’t you see, there’s danger of a backlash,” Camber said. “If we incite the humans to rise against the Deryni Imre, we may start a reverse persecution the likes of which we’ve never dreamed. There have been only a few Deryni responsible for the evil that’s happened in the last eighty years. We have to be certain that our revolt is against the man Imre, and his followers—not against the Deryni race.”

  Rhys whistled low under his breath. “I see what you mean. If Cinhil were more than a human king, if he were also Deryni, or nearly so, he could be a ruler for both peoples. He might accomplish the overthrow of Imre and the re-establishment of the Haldane rule with a minimum of bloodshed.”

  Camber nodded. “Cinhil, a human king with Deryni-like powers, would unite us, instead of letting us continue to tear ourselves apart with interracial bickering, and oppression by whichever race is currently in power.”

  “And we thought we were talking about a simple coup,” Rhys finally said, when he had digested what Camber was suggesting. “I guess things are never as simple as they seem.”

  “Never,” Camber agreed. “And wait until I tell you what Imre’s done now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  But he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

  —Leviticus 21:14

  But Imre’s latest move, at least so far as Camber and Rhys knew, was not to have nearly the impact of his next and far less obviously menacing one. For Imre’s men, four days after the destruction of the Michaeline Commanderie began, chanced to capture one Humphrey of Gallareaux, a Deryni priest of the Michaeline persuasion.

  Taken captive at Saint Neot’s, while claiming sanctuary with the Gabrilite Order there, Humphrey had been spirited away to Valoret under close guard, permitted no sleep and but little food on the grueling, three-day ride to the capital. Imre was informed of the prisoner’s capture within half an hour of his arrival. It was but minutes before he had taken leave of his sister and friends and was striding into a lower room where the Deryni captive waited.

  Coel and Santare were already there, Coel paring his nails with a jewelled dagger Imre had given him, while Santare conversed softly with the guard captain who had brought the prisoner in. The prisoner himself was nodding in a heavy wooden armchair, prodded to wakefulness from time to time by one of the two guards stationed to either side of him. He glanced up dully as Imre entered the room, seeming about to faint when the guards jerked him roughly to his feet.

  Imre waved the others to their ease, then signalled the guards to release the prisoner’s arms. The man swayed unsteadily under the king’s sharp gaze.

  Humphrey of Gallareaux was an unimposing man, of the indeterminate years which are so often attributed to those in religious life. By appearance alone, he would have alerted no one to the fact that he was anything but the simple country cleric his habit proclaimed him to be. (It was not the Michaeline habit, Imre noted disdainfully. The man had obviously been trying to pass as an itinerant friar.)

  But the real clue to his otherness was in the way the eyes, even dulled with fatigue, gazed across at Imre with a calm serenity which came only with Deryni discipline. Imre reached mentally to Truth-Read the man, and was not surprised to find that he could not. With a grim smile, he gestured for the man to be seated, then nodded curt thanks as one of the guards brought a second chair for him to sit facing the prisoner.

  “Dispensing with formalities, you are Humphrey of Gallareaux, a Deryni of the Michaeline Order, despite your habit,” Imre said, his eyes locking with Humphrey’s in a no-nonsense stare. “I believe you know who I am.”

  “The King’s Grace is well informed.” The priest’s voice was carefully neutral.

  “Thank you. Do you know why you have been brought here?”

  “I know only that Your Grace’s soldiers broke sanctuary at Saint Neot’s to take me from retreat,” Humphrey replied. “And that I have not been permitted to rest in the three days since my arrest. May I ask why?”

  “You may not. Tell me, is it usual for a Michaeline to go into retreat in a Gabrilite establishment?”

  “Not usual, no. However, the novice master at Saint Neot’s was my spiritual director before I chose my own order. I had sought out his guidance.”

  “I see.” Imre studied the priest’s face for a long moment. “And I suppose you will next tell me that you did not know that your order has been outlawed, that the rest of your brethren have gone into hiding, that I have ordered the destruction of Michaeline establishments and the surrender of your vicar general?”

  “I have been in retreat, Your Grace,” Humphrey replied softly. “I can only say that I am shocked to hear Your Grace’s words.”

  Imre flicked his glance down Humphrey’s spare body, then back to the face, irritation beginning to touch the corners of his mouth.

  “Are you aware that you will likely be executed as a traitor?”

  Humphrey’s face blanched and his hands tightened on the chair arms, but other than that he did not move. “I claim benefit of clergy,” he whispered.

  “Coel?” The king swung to face the older man, who had been watching and listening in silence.

  Coel sauntered to Imre’s side with an easy grace, folding his arms across his chest. “Archbishop Anscom claimed benefit of clergy for the Michaelines when he first learned that they had been put to the horn. Unfortunately for him, and for any Michaelines who chance to fall into our nets, Archbishop Anscom does not know that Father Humphrey is our guest. Nor is he likely to find out.”

  “How regrettable.” Imre smiled. “For Father Humphrey, that is. Of course, if he were to give us certain information which we seek, his release might be arranged …”

  His eyes, slipping over Humphrey’s face, hardened as he saw defiance written there. In a single, abrupt movement, he was standing at Humphrey’s knee, leaning both hands on the chair arms to stare into the grim brown eyes.

  “Don’t be a fool, Humphrey,” he whispered. “I may lack the finesse of your Michaeline training, but I come from a long line of ruthless Deryni, who were not afraid to take what they wanted by brute force. I can break you if I must.”

  “Then, do what you must, Sire,” Humphrey said in a low voice. “And I must resist you with all my might. I give you my word as holy bond that I am innoce
nt of treason, but beyond that I may not go. My mind is mine own and God’s, holding the secrets of many men, imparted to me in perfect trust. Not even my Lord King may command that of me, though it cost me my life.”

  “The seal of the confessional,” Imre said with a sigh, straightening wearily to shake his head and lean back against the arm of his own chair. “How convenient. And how useless. Santare, ask the Healer to attend us. I want to be certain of his physical condition before I start tampering with his mind.”

  Mind-tampering of a sort was the concern elsewhere, as well, only there it must be coercion rather than brute force; for the mind to be influenced was that of Prince Cinhill Haldane, who must be persuaded to take up his inheritance and become his people’s champion.

  Some outward progress had been made. The lean, elegant man who stood so defiantly before the fireplace this Christmas Eve bore little resemblance to the frightened monk whom Joram and Rhys had whisked from Saint Foillan’s but a scant three weeks before. Clad in a winter robe of claret velvet, his high, Haldane cheekbones accentuated by the trim of the neat beard and mustache, the physical resemblance to his great-grandsire was uncanny. Even Cinhill, looking at his ancestor’s portrait when he must, could not control a shiver of kinship whenever his eyes met the identical gray ones of his predecessor. He avoided this whenever possible, but the life-sized copy of the original portrait now hung above the fireplace, where he could scarcely miss it. Time and again he found his eyes drawn to it when he thought he should be meditating.

  But if Cinhil looked a prince, he did not yet act it. Camber, with the aid of Rhys and Joram and even Evaine, had worked with Cinhil daily, trying to coax a yielding in the royal will, hinting at the power which might be bestowed, if he would only cooperate. The prince was polite but firm.