The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy

by Katherine Kurtz

  They laughed raucously as they approached, their guffaws and shouted comments becoming more ribald as they noticed the somber little band proceeding toward them. In a flurry of movement, they nearly surrounded Camber and his party, their fine horses jostling the more ordinary mounts of the four guards and making Camber and Joram’s greys lay back their ears in protest.

  “Give way, my lords!” Joram shouted, flinging his mantle back from his sword arm and laying a gloved hand on the pommel of his weapon. “We would not dispute the road with you. Observe the King’s Peace!”

  “Why, ’tis a lone Michaeline knight!” one of the young toughs sang, to hoots of derisive laughter from a handful of his colleagues.

  “One Michaeline and an old man and a few paltry guards to stand against all of us?” shouted another. “Let’s dump them off their horses and let them walk like the last ones!”

  As one man, Joram and the four guards drew steel, though they did no more than hold their weapons at the ready. Camber still had not reached toward the sword at his knee—calmly sat his horse and surveyed the surrounding riders with grim expression, but without apparent alarm, forearms resting casually on the high pommel, the reins held easily in one gloved hand.

  His sobriety apparently touched some chord of response, for one of the riders jostled the elbow of another of his comrades and gestured urgently toward the black-cloaked figure sitting so calmly in their midst. The man so jostled took a hard look at Camber and then held up the riding crop in his hand. The sniggering and the catcalls died away immediately.

  “Hold, lads. The old man thinks to outstare Deryni. What say you, old man? Why should we not have our way with you?”

  For answer, Camber let his shields flare to visibility, though he did not permit himself to move, even then. Apprehensive murmurs rustled among the men as the silvery mantle of his Deryniness glowed unmistakably in the twilight. Several riders lowered their weapons sheepishly and tried to melt into the shadows at the edge of the road, though most held their ground with undiminished belligerence. A few flashed their own shields to light momentarily, but they did not persist when their leader disdained to follow suit. That one stared across at Camber with stony defiance.

  “I see,” he murmured.

  “Do you? I don’t think you do,” Camber replied, barely trusting himself to speak. “The fact that I am Deryni like yourselves alters nothing. The shame upon you all is that so many should set upon so few of any race, who have done them nary a harm. Has the King’s Grace endeavored to protect the land and guard its roads only to have his nobles flout his laws for their own sport?”

  “The King’s Law? Human law!” One of the men spat, a contemptuous, bitter gesture which was repeated by several of his colleagues as the man continued. “Our forbears ruled this land and helped to guard its borders. We were held in honor and esteem, as well we should have been. Now this human king gives over all our honors to his human toadies!”

  “And you play directly into their hands!” Camber retorted. “Don’t you see how you give our enemies precisely what they want?”

  The hand of the band’s leader tightened on his crop, and his dark eyes took on a cold, steely gleam.

  “How dare you speak to us that way? Just who are you?”

  “Why should that matter?” Camber countered, halting Joram’s indignant beginnings of protest with a sharp gesture. “You do our race as much harm as the very toadies you claim so to despise! What better excuse does a man like Murdoch of Carthane need than the irresponsible actions of the likes of you, giving the proof to his lies?”

  That accusation brought angry mutterings to more lips, and one brash soul spurred his horse hard into Camber’s to grab a handful of black cloak and attempt to pull its wearer from the saddle. A deft evasive movement on the part of Camber forestalled the intended result, almost transferring it to the perpetrator, but the move was also sufficient to throw the cloak back from that shoulder and expose the collar of golden H’s and jewelled pectoral cross lying on and across Camber’s chest. As their significance registered, several gasps of recognition rippled through the band.

  “Good God, it’s the chancellor!”

  Beside Camber, Joram allowed himself a tiny sigh of relief and lowered his sword, though he did not sheath it just yet. The four guards remained at the ready, sensing that their chances of survival had just shifted back in their favor, yet not precisely certain how that had been accomplished. Tension was sustained for several heartbeats, but then the leader of the band brought his crop up to his cap in salute and bobbed his head in slightly mocking deference.

  “Sorry, Your Grace, we appear to have made a mistake.”

  “I’ll say you have!” Joram muttered under his breath, starting to sidestep his horse between Camber’s and the leader’s.

  But Camber’s tongue-lashing, plus the discovery of his identity, had apparently quelled any further desire of the young lords to bully the six they had met. At their leader’s signal, the band crowded past Camber and his escort with astonishing precision and galloped away on the road back toward Ebor, quickly disappearing in the growing twilight. Joram and Camber’s men made as though to follow, their outrage written plainly on their faces, but Camber held up a hand and murmured, “No!”

  His men returned obediently and fell in around him, but it was obvious that they were resentful at being held back. Joram allowed himself a final, murderous glare in the direction the marauders had disappeared before sheathing his sword with a vexed snick of steel seating in steel-bound leather.

  “Young ruffians!” the priest grumbled, under his breath.

  Guthrie, the guard sergeant, was less circumspect.

  “How dare they? Just who do they think they are?” he blurted. “Your Grace, you should have let us go after them!”

  “To serve what purpose?” Camber replied. “You are all fine soldiers, but you were also greatly outnumbered, in strange territory, and at dusk, when all three factors would have worked against you. Furthermore, they were all Deryni; and except for Joram, you are not.”

  “His Grace is right, Guthrie,” Joram reluctantly agreed, “though I, too, would love to have thrashed them all soundly.” He turned to Camber, Michaeline composure restored as was fitting in the chancellor-bishop’s secretary. “Under the circumstances, Your Grace, do you think it wise to divert to Dolban? The king should be told of this incident as soon as possible.”

  Joram’s words gave perfect excuse to omit the visit if they chose—an option which both Camber and Joram would have preferred, rather than subject themselves to the emotional strain of a visit to the principal Camberian shrine; and Queron Kinevan was the last man that either of them wanted to see, after their few encounters at the time of Camber’s canonization—but unfortunately, a similar argument dictated precisely the delay they otherwise might have avoided. Queron Kinevan, as Abbot of Saint Camber’s-at-Dolban, had primary responsibility for keeping of the King’s Peace on the roads surrounding the abbey lands, and it was he who should be informed of the band of young Deryni bullies first, even before the king.

  Camber reminded them of that, before leading them into a bone-jarring gallop on along the increasingly dim and icy road. They had not travelled a mile further toward the Dolban cutoff before they came upon the first signs of their marauders’ earlier exploits.

  They slackened pace as the muddy footing of the road changed from fetlock depth to nearly knee-deep, noting without comment how even the snow-banked verge beside had been churned to slush by the recent passage of many horses. As they continued cautiously into the next curve, they checked before a ragtag assemblage of perhaps a dozen liveried men on foot, though the men’s high boots and mud-fouled spurs gave mute indication that they had not begun their journey thus.

  The men drew their swords and stood their ground, darker shadows against the indistinct grey blur of the hoof-churned mud beyond. At the side of the road, in the shelter of a winter-bare tree, a youngish man in once-fine riding garb
was attempting to comfort a weeping young woman. The woman’s fair hair was uncovered and coming unbound, and she clutched two muddy handfuls of clothing and cloak to her breast as she wept in her comforter’s arms. An older man in tonsure and clerical attire, also muddy, looked on helplessly and wrung his hands.

  “Hold where you are!” one of the retainers shouted, brandishing his sword and pushing his way to the front of his men. “If you’ve come back to molest her ladyship again, you’ll have to kill us this time!”

  Immediately, Camber backed his horse a few steps and raised his empty right hand to show he was not armed, at the same time parting his cloak so his collar and cross could be seen.

  “We mean you no harm,” he called, trying to make out the men’s badges of service in the dim light. “I am Alister Cullen, Bishop of Grecotha. Were you set upon by the men who just rode off yonder?” He gestured back the way they had come.

  “Cullen?” their lord exclaimed, thrusting his lady roughly into the protection of the cleric before heading toward them, hand on sword hilt. “Hell and damnation, it’s another Deryni! Haven’t you hooligans done enough? Just wait until I tell my brother what has happened!”

  As the men shuffled aside to let their lord stalk through their midst, Camber glanced back at Joram, caught the slight shake of his head.

  “I’m sorry, my lord, I don’t believe I know you. You are—?”

  “Manfred, Baron of Marlor. My brother is Bishop Hubert MacInnis—and when he finds out what has happened here, there’ll be hell to pay, believe me!”

  “I quite agree, my lord,” Camber replied, cutting off Manfred’s tirade smoothly, though he hardly raised his voice. “I am no more pleased by what has happened than you are, and was on my way even now to report the incident to the abbot at Dolban. We, too, were set upon by—”

  “D’you think I care a whit for your problems?” Manfred interrupted. “As for your precious abbot—I hardly expect justice from the Deryni leader of a cult which venerates a Deryni saint!”

  “The abbot, besides his religious and Healing vows, is the king’s sworn man in temporal matters,” Camber replied a trifle haughtily, despite his intention to forbear and not further offend the brother of Hubert MacInnis. “I am certain that Abbot Queron will render you and yours the same justice which is due any loyal subject of the Crown of Gwynedd. That your attackers should have been Deryni only makes me doubly anxious to see them brought to justice. My lady Baroness?” He turned his attention deliberately from the baron and guided his horse forward slowly, its feet making sucking noises as it picked its way through the mud.

  “My lady, I am most sorry for what has happened. I would not remind you of what must have been a terrible ordeal, but may I inquire more specifically what was done against you?”

  The lady, who had frozen at Camber’s direct address, only resumed her nearly hysterical weeping. The cleric held her close and stroked her disheveled hair as if she were a distraught child, finally raising his eyes uneasily to Camber’s.

  “They—were not gentle with her, Your Grace,” the man said haltingly, “but neither did they—use her. They—tore her garments and—threw her to the ground. But then they let her go,” he added, almost puzzled. “It was a taunting sort of play, as if they meant no real harm, but only sport—”

  “Sport!” The very thought set off Baron Manfred again, as he slogged his way back toward the pair and Camber. “Nay, priest, do not side with them and call it sport! They have offered grave insult to me and to my wife. For that, they shall pay!”

  “And so they shall, my lord,” Camber soothed, “and I shall inform the appropriate authorities immediately. I take it that your horses were run off?”

  “Do you see any horses besides your own, you fool?” Manfred raged, his hand clenching white-knuckled on the hilt of his sword. “We are stranded here afoot, and it’s getting dark, and likely to storm, and you prattle on of—”

  “I shall have horses sent from the abbey as soon as possible, and an escort to see you safely to your destination,” Camber said smoothly, gesturing for his men to come closer. “In the meantime, I shall leave you two of my men and four of the horses. Guthrie, you and Caleb stay with his lordship until the abbot’s men arrive, then join us. Torin and Llew, leave your horses for now and ride double with Joram and me. It’s only a short way to Dolban.”

  The moon was just rising above the frosty trees when they came within sight of the abbey gates. Torchlight illuminated several cowled figures walking guard duty above the gatehouse, and the brands flickered and spat in the light mist which had begun to descend.

  Externally, the complex had changed little in the years since Queron Kinevan and the zealous Guaire of Arliss had bought the then rundown fortified manor and begun its restoration—though, according to reports, the inside no longer bore any resemblance to the modest manor house originally built there.

  Neither Camber nor Joram had ever set foot inside the walls, nor had ever wished to, but it was obvious from Llew’s hoot of recognition behind Joram, and a monk’s answering wave from the gatehouse, that he, at least, had been here numerous times and was well known. Even though it was nearly full dark, the gates were opened promptly at the sight of the two double-mounted horses. By the time they had drawn rein in the courtyard and dismounted, it was clear that Camber and Joram had been recognized, too. Grey-clad men and women were gathering on the steps of the chapel which fronted the yard, even as several of their brethren took the horses away toward the stables.

  Camber fidgeted a little as he drew his cloak more closely around him, wondering whether he had made a mistake in coming here. He had not realized his own household was so rife with the cult of Camber, and he knew himself to be on unfamiliar ground. He dismissed his men to go on to the shrine, then stiffened as a small, wiry man in grey robes eased his way through the waiting brothers and sisters and approached them. His face was guarded, a little anxious to one who knew how to read it, but his manner was brisk and efficient. It was plain that he still was not intimidated by either the Bishop of Grecotha or the son of Saint Camber.

  “Bishop Cullen, Father MacRorie, we are honored by your visit.” He bent one knee to kiss the episcopal ring on Camber’s hand, then nodded formally to Joram. “Brother Micah said you rode in mounted double. Is anything wrong? Is it the king?”

  The familiar Gabrilite braid was longer by a handspan than it had been eleven years before, and streaked with grey, where once it had been a rich, reddish brown; but aside from that, Queron Kinevan did not seem to have aged appreciably. The bright eyes still looked out with as much intensity as they had that week in Valoret when Queron and his Order had first brought their petition before the Synod of Bishops.

  “Nay, the king was fine when last we saw him late this morning, Dom Queron,” he replied, trying to keep his tone as neutral and matter-of-fact as Queron’s. “There was some trouble on the road, however, both to ourselves and to another party which we encountered later. We left two of my men plus the extra horses with them until you can send assistance. You are responsible for patrol of the royal road in this area, are you not?”

  “By day, yes, Your Grace. But no one has charge of the roads by night, especially in winter. What trouble did you encounter?”

  With a hitch at his sword belt, Joram gestured back toward the closed gate.

  “A band of young Deryni nobles—younger sons, by the feel of the situation, sir. Perhaps ten or fifteen of them, all looking for trouble. They took us for human at first, and thought to harass us, until they recognized His Grace.”

  Queron clucked his tongue and slowly shook his head. “A sorry business. I do apologize, Father. And to you, especially, Your Grace. What of the other party you mentioned?”

  “Baron Manfred, the brother of Bishop MacInnis, his wife and chaplain, and about ten or twelve retainers,” Camber replied. “All angry but unharmed, and horseless now. I told them you’d bring fresh mounts and escort them to their destination.” He sighed.
“I hardly think I need warn you how MacInnis is going to react, when he learns of this.”

  “Indeed, not. Excuse me a moment, please.”

  At Camber’s nod, Queron turned away from them and conferred briefly with a number of his monks, several of whom disappeared immediately in the direction of the stables. After some further discussion with more of them, Queron returned to Camber and bowed again. The second group of monks went to meet the first, who had returned with horses and weapons from the stables.

  “The baron and his party will be rescued immediately, and some of our brothers will drive off the marauders, if they are still in the vicinity, Your Grace. I am told that this kind of incident is becoming far too frequent on the roads around the capital. I regret that our kind are being driven to such acts.”

  “I regret it, too, Dom Queron.”

  “As you say.” Queron sighed. “But, no matter. It will be taken care of, you may rest assured. In the meantime, you will stay long enough to see our shrine, will you not?” He glanced back and forth searchingly between Camber and Joram. “Father MacRorie, I especially understand your reluctance to come here before now, but ours is a shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as of your sainted father, you know. Besides, the rest of your escort will not return for some little while. Surely you will not leave without paying your respects.”

  Though Camber had, for a moment, considered doing that very thing, he heard Joram’s minute sigh of resignation and knew that he, too, realized they dared not. This time they must play out the charade or else risk offending Queron and the many Camberian brothers and sisters waiting expectantly in the background. As Bishop of Grecotha, Camber could not refuse to visit any shrine unless there were very pressing reasons. Alister Cullen would never have considered such neglect of duty.