Their meeting was warm, if brief. Finding Emrys before the Lady’s shrine as he had hoped, Jaffray gave his old colleague fair greeting and then took several minutes to renew their friendship in mindlink before turning to the reason for his visit. The information passed was sparse, but Jaffray did reveal that it was important council business which Rhys felt need to bring to Emrys and Queron. He left it to Emrys to infer that the meeting might involve Healer’s business as well as that of the council.
Emrys was given the responsibility for ensuring Queron’s participation in the meeting, for Jaffray feared that the visit of a Deryni Primate of Gwynedd to the principal shrine of a Deryni saint might raise unwelcome questions; Jaffray was already walking a precarious enough balance as the only Deryni member of the regency council, without giving the regents more cause for suspicion. Besides, Jaffray preferred not to reveal his Camberian Council connections to Queron yet.
Several weeks were therefore required to arrange the actual meeting at Saint Neot’s, since there was no Portal at Dolban and ordinary messengers must be sent back and forth with Emrys’s written words. Queron was not particularly cooperative in the beginning, either, requiring several exchanges before he could be induced to come only on the strength of what Emrys had leave to tell him. Though he eventually agreed and arrived on the appointed day, he was suspicious and a little nervous that Alister Cullen, who was not a Healer, would also be there. Nor could Emrys reassure him on that point, for even Emrys did not know why Rhys wished to bring a non-Healer to the meeting; and he could not tell Queron of Alister’s Camberian Council connection. The abbot could speculate, but he knew little for certain. Jaffray had not disclosed the reason for Alister’s inclusion, and Emrys had not asked.
The appointed day dawned brisk but clear in Grecotha, a brilliant mid-April morning marked by fresh-scoured skies and the heady perfume of a dozen different flowers in Camber’s episcopal gardens. After Mass and a light breakfast, he and Rhys climbed the one hundred twenty-seven steps of Queen Sinead’s Watch in silence. Rhys was as apprehensive as Camber had ever seen him at the prospect of presuming to instruct Emrys, his former master at Saint Neot’s, and the almost legendary Queron Kinevan.
Both men squinted against the brightness as they emerged in the sunlight of the open rampart walk, pausing to let their eyes adjust again when they had ducked under the timbered roof of the tower chamber. Rhys fidgeted uneasily in the doorway, framed green-mantled against the April sky, as Camber knelt to trace out the perimeter of one of the floor tiles in the northeast corner.
“I wish I knew how you keep track of that,” Rhys said, making nervous small talk as Camber stood and adjusted the white sash binding the waist of his bishop’s cassock. “Oh, I know the theory, but I can’t help being suspicious of a Portal that moves—and that I can’t feel.”
Chuckling a little to put Rhys at his ease, Camber stepped onto the square he had traced and held out a hand for Rhys to join him.
“Well, I can feel it—and that’s what matters this morning, isn’t it? I know what your problem is, though. You just don’t like the idea of having to relinquish control to use it.” He smiled as he laid his hands on the younger man’s shoulders and drew him onto the square in front of him. “You Healers are all alike. You always want to run things.”
“Now, that’s a perverse thing to say!” Rhys replied, with a hearty indignation which gave lie to the pulse racing wildly in his throat. “On the other hand,” he added with a deep breath, “it’s occasionally good to let someone else take over.” He turned to look at Camber squarely, took another deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“Listen, this is going to be very difficult, and not just for me,” he said softly. “You’re not a Healer, and they’re the best. Are you sure you want to risk—”
Camber shook his head. “No, I’m not sure at all. But I won’t send you into that one alone, Rhys. I’ll take the risk. It won’t be the first time.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Then, stop worrying. They’re not your teachers anymore. You know something that they don’t know how to do, no matter how good they are at anything else. Remember that.”
“I’ll try.”
With a smile, Camber laid his arm around the Healer’s shoulder once more and took a deep, relaxing breath, let it out, gathering the energies close about the two of them as he felt Rhys slipping into familiar rapport to be carried through. Visualizing their destination, he made the proper mental shift and warped the energies just—so.
Instantly they were standing almost in darkness before a small but incredibly detailed vesting altar of ivory, the shadows relieved only by the flicker of a lone vigil light on the wall above. As they turned, Emrys and then Queron stepped from the shadows.
“Ah, Dom Emrys, Dom Queron,” Camber murmured, taking his cue from Emrys’s calm expression and inclining his head slightly in greeting.
“Welcome to Saint Neot’s, Your Grace,” Emrys said softly, cool hand taking Camber’s to kiss the bishop’s amethyst. “And, Lord Rhys, I am pleased to see you again, after so many years. I hear that you have done well in the world.”
The old Healer appeared fragile and almost ghostlike in the dim light, skinny Gabrilite braid all but invisible against the bright white of his robes. The eyes, too, were almost colorless, glinting like shards of sunset frost in the thin, ascetic face. Only the Healer’s badge on the left side of his chest interrupted the stark play of white on white.
Queron, as the last time Camber had seen him, wore the grey habit of the Servants of Saint Camber, though he had donned a Healer’s mantle for the occasion, of a more subdued green than the one Rhys wore. As Rhys exchanged nervous bows with the two men, Camber suddenly realized that Queron looked almost as tense as Rhys; this was going to be far from easy for any of them. He was glad for the calming refuge of Emrys’s mental presence as the old man smiled gently and beckoned them toward the sacristy door.
“Come, my lords. I’ve provided a warded and secure room for our discussion,” he said, unlatching the door and pushing it back with an almost transparent hand. “And since I believe Bishop Cullen has not been to Saint Neot’s before, I thought we might guide him through a short tour of the abbey before settling down to work. Is something wrong, Rhys?” he finished, turning to cock his head at the obviously dismayed Rhys.
“Well, it’s just that we have important business to dis—”
“And you think that you are in a suitable frame of mind to do so?” Emrys returned, brushing one of Rhys’s hands with a gentle feathertouch. “You’re tied in knots, son. Where is the discipline I taught you? Granted, it has been many years, but you cannot have forgotten everything you learned. By your reputation alone, I know better than that.”
Suitably chastened, and more than a little embarrassed to have been corrected in front of Queron, Rhys managed to murmur an appropriate apology. Camber, sympathetic but not too sympathetic, merely allowed himself a small, gruff Alister smile as he turned his attention on the abbot. He had noted, during Rhys’s outburst, that Queron had used the time to make a concerted effort to reduce his own uneasiness. Queron, too, was feeling the pressure of the unknown. Perhaps he was not as formidable an opponent as they had feared.
“Thank you for saying that, Dom Emrys,” Camber said with a dry chuckle. “I’ve been trying to get him to relax since he came to me last night—though with little more success than you seem to have had with Dom Queron.”
He ignored the sharp look which the other Healer gave him and went blithely on, as if he had noticed nothing.
“As you are aware, I have little knowledge of Healer’s training, though I have heard much about it from Rhys. I should be quite interested in seeing a little of it while I am here. In fact, should your brethren think that the true reason for my visit, so much the better.”
“My thought, precisely,” Emrys agreed, with a glance at Queron and a slight inclination of his head. “If Your Grace will accompany me, then, I will
be pleased to show you some of the more important aspects of our community here. Queron, Rhys.” His tone was that of master to wayward students. “I shall expect both of you to be in better control by the time we are ready for serious discussion.”
With no more comment than that, he was guiding Camber out of the sacristy with one pale hand at the bishop’s elbow, already pointing out the detailing of a particularly fine mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel on the wall just outside.
Rhys and Queron, after an exchange of wary glances, retreated into their respective modes of calming and followed mutely behind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Show new signs, and make other strange wonders.
—Ecclesiasticus 36:6
To the left Emrys led them from the sacristy, following a narrow ambulatory aisle jesh-wise around the apse to avoid crossing the sanctuary—for whisper-soft chanting within told of devotions being conducted in the choir. They paused briefly at the eastern end of the apse, directly behind the high altar, and there Emrys bade Camber peer through a watch hole pierced in the carving of the reredos.
His first, overwhelming impression was of white. White marble and alabaster paved and faced the entire expanse of choir, nave, and what he could see of the transept arms extending north and south. Even the wood of the choir stalls and the benches in the nave beyond was bleached to an almost colorless finish. No rood screen separated choir from nave in this monastic church, so his view was unobstructed all the way to the great western doors and the graceful rose window above, done in rich azures and golds. There, just to the right of a doorway which must lead to Saint Neot’s famous belltower, a play of blue-filtered sunlight told of the Lady Chapel where the Order kept their perpetual vigil before the Sacrament. Even now, he could discern a white-cowled figure moving slowly down the center aisle from that chapel.
The figure approached between the rows of backless benches with their brightly tapestried kneeling cushions tucked precisely beneath, quietly joining the dozen or so brethren already bowed in prayer in the choir. Each of the men wore the single braid of Gabrilite priesthood falling along the hood cast back on his shoulders, and each also bore the badge of an ecclesiastical Healer on the left shoulder of his habit, like Emrys: a green, open-palmed hand pierced by a white star of eight equal points—the reverse of the white hand pierced with green which Rhys wore on his Healer’s mantle.
As though the arrival of the last man had been a signal, the entire company stood and began to sing, alternating the verses back and forth between the two halves of the choir.
“Adsum, Domine.…”
Here am I, Lord.…
Thou hast granted me the grace to Heal men’s bodies.
Here am I, Lord.…
Thou hast blessed me with the Sight to See men’s souls.
Here am I, Lord.…
Thou hast given me the might to bend the will of others.
O Lord, grant strength and wisdom to wield all these gifts.
Only as Thy will wouldst have me serve.…
The hymn was the ancient and haunting Adsum Domine, heart-stone of the ethical precepts which had governed the conduct of lay and ecclesiastical Healers for nearly as long as there had been Healers among the Deryni. Only once before had Camber heard it sung, though he had read the words a dozen times or more, and knew them all by heart. Rhys’s rich baritone had managed to convey only a little of what could be in the singing.
Now the voices of the Healer-priests wove spine-tingling harmonics which touched at deeper chords within his being, seeking but never quite finding in Camber those differences which made some men Healers and some not.
The singers had reached the Versicle, the pivot-point of all the Healer’s conscience and mystical experience, and for just a moment, Camber let himself slip back to Rhys’s singing—saw in his mind’s eye a sacred circle in a tower room at Sheele, on the night Evaine had given birth to her second son. Even before his coming into the world, they had known that the child Tieg would be a Healer like his father.
That night, an awed Camber had watched with Evaine and Joram and Jebediah as Rhys held the newborn Tieg in his arms and sang the song the monks now sang, dedicating his son to the service of his Healing patrimony and to the Ancient Powers whom they had all called to witness by their joint invocation.
The voice in Camber’s memory blended with those of Emrys’s monks as the Dominus lucis floated in the stillness.
“Dominus lucis me dixit, Ecce.…”
The Lord of Light said unto me, Behold:
Thou art My chosen child, My gift to man.
Before the daystar, long before thou wast in mother-womb,
thy soul was sealed to Me for all time out of mind.
Thou art My Healing hand upon this world,
Mine instrument of life and Healing might.
To thee I give the breath of Healing power,
the awesome, darkling secrets of the wood and vale and earth.
I give thee all these gifts that thou mayst know My love:
Use all in service of the ease of man and beast.
Be cleansing fire to purify corruption,
a pool of sleep to bring surcease from pain.
Keep close within thy heart all secrets given,
as safe as said in shriving, and as sacred.
Nor shall thy Sight be used for revelation,
unless the other’s mind be freely offered.
With consecrated hands, make whole the broken.
With consecrated soul, reach out and give My peace.…
Camber felt Rhys’s presence close at his shoulder as the singers shifted into the final Antiphon, and knew that his son-in-law had also remembered that other time and was feeling Camber’s wonder at the mysteries hinted in the song. A wave of longing swept through him then, a tightening of chest and throat which nearly brought tears to his eyes. But before he could be completely caught up, Emrys was touching his arm in understanding and beginning to move him gently but firmly on along the ambulatory aisle.
Suddenly he knew, with an indescribable certainty, that the abbot had read and understood that bereft sense of not belonging which had welled up all unbidden in Camber at the magic of the hymn—and it was not through any Deryni Sight, for Emrys would not have dreamed of intruding, and Camber was closely shielded to all but Rhys.
Gratefully, Camber fell in behind the abbot and fixed his attention on the swaying white braid, stilling his sense of loss and taking in the calm which now radiated both from Emrys and, surprisingly, from Rhys and Queron, who followed. Peace became an almost tangible presence surrounding all of them.
The hymn’s final verse floated with eerie majesty on the incense-leavened air as they went out through a side door.
Here am I, Lord.…
All my talents at Thy feet I lay.
Here am I, Lord.…
Thou art the One Creator of all things.
Thou art the Omnipartite One Who ruleth Light and Shade,
Giver of Life and Gift of Life Thyself.
Here am I, Lord.…
All my being bound unto Thy will.
Here am I, Lord.…
Sealed unto Thy service, girt with strength to save or slay.
Guide and guard Thy servant, Lord, from all temptation,
That honor may be spotless and my Gift unstained.…
They exited into a narrow slype which led between the transept and a round building which Camber surmised must be the chapter house. Joram had once likened Saint Neot’s chapter house to the ruined temple they had discovered under Grecotha, so Camber casually expressed an interest in the building to Emrys, as the four of them emerged in the eastern cloister walk. The abbot obliged his visitors by leading them into the center of the cloister garth, presenting an overview of the general groundplan before they went inside.
Aside from the church itself, which the Gabrilites referred to as their chapel, though it was larger than any chapel Camber had ever seen, the chapter house clearly dominated
the rest of the monastic complex. Its graceful dome of sky-blue faience gleamed clean and pristine in the morning sun, matching those of the chapel itself—for, indeed, Saint Neot’s was famous for its multiple domes. The overall effect was of an extension of the southern transept to include the chapter house. On the chapel, Camber could count six—no, seven—domes, and knew that there were at least four more that he could not see—and the chapter house made twelve, a sacred number.
Other details also became apparent from this close proximity, among them the imprint of a golden Gabrilite cross on each faience tile of the domes, equal arms touching a solar ring at the four quarters, the arms flaring slightly at the ends. That motif and others which seemed somewhat familiar were repeated in the carving of the heavy bronze doors framing the entry portico of the chapter house—subtle, but there for those who knew what to look for. The overall impression rather confirmed his suspicion that the origins of the Gabrilites, like the Deryni themselves, stretched back much farther in history than most folk assumed. While it was not much discussed, especially among the more orthodox clergy, those who studied such things were well aware that many faiths besides Christianity had contributed to the body of knowledge which was the legacy of Deryni magic.
But he would ask Rhys more about the symbols, once they were alone. He had sensed Rhys’s eager interest, but also his warning, as the Healer became aware of the sweep of Camber’s scrutiny. No, this was not a safe subject for Alister to explore.
And so he stood wide-eyed and only Alister-interested while Emrys pointed out the more mundane features of the monastic complex, nodding knowledgeably as he was shown the location of the reception rooms and refectory and kitchen ranges along the southern side of the cloister.
The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy Page 107