The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy

by Katherine Kurtz

  Upon realizing the cramped and somewhat ordinary conditions at Castle Rhemuth, Hubert wasted no time in approaching his archbishop for a favor, one bishop to another; and soon Hubert was lodged in relative luxury and comfort with his brother bishop, who was flattered and somewhat awed that one of the royal regents should deign to grace his house with his august presence.

  Earl Ewan became Duke Ewan that summer, his father, Duke Sighere, having been among the first of the old and already infirm to succumb to the plague; and shortly after the Court went to Rhemuth, he and Rhun returned to Valoret to supervise the army there, Ewan assuming his new duties as earl marshal in name, as well as in fact, and Rhun assisting him.

  While this move divided the regents geographically, and diminished their immediate influence as a group over the king and his brothers, it also put Ewan and Rhun into daily close contact with the officers and men of Gwynedd’s army—which reflected sound military reasoning, even if it did nothing to reassure the Camberian Council. By mid-August, the Council learned that Ewan had called up a large part of the Gwynedd levies and divided the by-now largely human army into two parts, the lesser one moving nearer Rhemuth under the direct command of Murdoch and Tammaron, with Hubert’s brother Manfred executing their orders, while the rest encamped and held military exercises on the plain just west of Valoret.

  No one knew why they had assembled, or against the threat of what enemy they conducted their maneuvers and practiced their battle skills, but some Deryni had their suspicions. Ewan was shaping to be a man without conscience, totally dedicated to carrying out the policies being determined by the regency of which he was a part; and Rhun the Ruthless could only serve as a further dehumanizing force.

  But most Deryni ignored the warning signs, and said that nothing could happen.

  Alroy and his brothers were little aware of what went on outside Rhemuth, other than to note that Ewan and Rhun were no longer so often about. Alroy’s physical health had never been better, there in the milder climate of the plains country, and even Javan had far less pain in his foot than was his usual wont. Several times a week, royal duties permitting, the three boys would ride out on the rolling plain of Candor Rhea to hunt or fish or simply race like the wind on fine, blooded horses, sometimes taking their hawks, but more often accompanied by the great, red-eared coursing hounds which Earl Murdoch had given them. All three boys grew inches in that summer of 917, to the despair of the royal tailor, who must keep them in decent-length tunics; and the twins, especially, began to take on the leaner lines of young manhood as they wore into their thirteenth summer. In many respects, it was the happiest time the boys had ever known.

  Yet, if the boys waxed strong in body that summer, mental stimulation was quite another matter. At the heart of all their waking activities were Murdoch and Tammaron and Hubert, who made a point of subtly stifling any royal interest in affairs of state. The king and his brothers were trotted out on feast days and for other ceremonial occasions, and the regents regularly brought Alroy piles of documents requiring the royal signature; but they discouraged him from participation in most of the actual decision-making unless he had been carefully coached in advance. True, Alroy was a king, but he was also a boy of twelve, they reminded him, and most matters of state were far too complicated for him to understand. There would be plenty of time to worry himself about such things when he was grown.

  Given sufficient repetition of such indoctrination, Alroy began to accept it. He had never been particularly strong-willed; and the spark of defiance which had surfaced briefly at his coronation was soon replaced by boredom. Subtle medication prescribed by an obedient royal physician and given him on a regular basis as a tonic further helped to erode resistance. By summer’s end, Alroy was essentially the placid, compliant prince who was all the regents’ dream. Rhys Michael, too, appeared to be a model child, biddable and diffident to his elders while still retaining that merry, carefree outlook which had always been his trademark. Only Javan, of the three, was beginning to see through the regents’ benign facade; and from the beginning, he was careful to conceal his true feelings.

  Javan’s first concern after the post-coronation turmoil, of course, had been Tavis’s recovery. Though Tavis seemed to have effected a miraculous physical recovery, he had sunk into a profound depression once his life was no longer in danger, withdrawing for much of the time into his own private prison of grief and agonized loss. Many were the days when he hardly left his bed, staring at the walls and ceiling of his tiny sleeping cubicle while an increasingly concerned Javan sat and talked or read to him for hours, eliciting only minimal response. Only gradually did Tavis emerge, Javan’s monologues at last evolving to long discussions and walks along the castle ramparts.

  Tavis would not speak of Healing, however; and it was only when necessity compelled, in the form of an injury to Javan, that the maimed Healer could be induced to try to Heal again. Javan had twisted his crooked foot painfully while wrestling with one of Murdoch’s sons in the castleyard, and could obtain no relief from the cold compresses which the royal physicians prescribed for the swelling. Tearfully Javan begged his friend at least to try to ease the pain. And when love for his young charge had finally overcome his self-loathing for his own fate, Tavis had agreed, laying hand and stump on Javan’s foot—to Heal.

  The Healing was a milestone in Tavis’s recovery, for he soon found that the contact thus established was just as sensitive as it had been through the missing hand. The balance of energies was different, as he had maintained to Rhys all along, and any physical manipulations must be done with his right hand—but he could compensate for those. The discovery placed his future in an entirely different light, and restored him to his previous partnership with Javan.

  That accomplished, the only other adjustment he had to make was to the reactions of others. He had tried to hide his maimed arm in the early days, wearing it in a sling held close to his body. After resuming Healing, he abandoned the sling entirely, and contented himself with merely having an empty cuff to his sleeve, though he was still a little self-conscious about it.

  But his occasional patients other than Javan were often initially squeamish at the sight and touch of his handless appendage, and Bishop Hubert complained rather peevishly that the empty sleeve was unaesthetic. In an effort not to annoy Hubert unduly, Tavis did experiment briefly with wearing the hook he had sworn he would never use, but he found that it interfered with his function as a Healer. After that, he quietly returned to his empty sleeve, adopting a series of postures which would minimize the notice of others. Javan gave him a great deal of support in those early days, insisting that the Healer resume his regular duties as soon as possible, and encouraging him to share his talents with such others of the royal household as had need of a Healer’s services. His dogged devotion to Tavis also helped to keep him out of the regents’ sight.

  By the time Tavis had recovered, of course, the royal household included Davin. Davin-Eidiard had been assigned directly to the command of Sir Piedur, who now headed the younger princes’ personal bodyguard. After an initial apprenticeship and testing under the older man’s tutelage, he was permitted to assume regular duties which kept him near the royal children a great deal of the time. He immediately proved excellent both with horses and with weapons, and a good teacher, as well, so he soon became a favorite companion of all three boys, but especially of Rhys Michael.

  Unfortunately, this proximity to the princes also kept him near Tavis—which, while it was a major part of the reason he had been sent, also presented the greatest danger of discovery. To guard against this, and as part of Eidiard’s personality, Rhys had given Eidiard a nervous distrust of other Healers, hoping that this might keep him from coming under Tavis’s close scrutiny for as long as possible. Unfortunately, the need for that scrutiny did come; fortunately, it came only a few weeks into Davin’s royal service, while he was still deeply blocked of all Deryniness and Tavis was still new enough in his restoration to Healer’s functi
on that he was not likely to notice any discrepancy.

  Davin had been ground-driving one of Javan’s new R’Kassan stud colts in the breaking pen, dogging the animal a little too closely, and the beast had shied and skittered backwards, kicking him hard in the knee. The pain was excruciating. Javan and Tavis had been watching, and both of them had gone to Davin immediately for Tavis to assess the damage.

  But when the prince’s Healer probed the great, already purpling bruise, he read nothing in his patient either Deryni or suspicious—only the surface apprehension which so many humans displayed when constrained to deal with a Deryni in these current times. Pronouncing the bone intact, Tavis sent cleansing warmth into the injury and cleared it in the space of only a few minutes, apparently thinking nothing further of it. Jaffray, when he learned of the incident while reading Davin later that evening, could only breathe a sigh of relief. At least the first hurdle had been crossed.

  Unfortunately for Tavis, not all of his healing encounters were so benign.

  As had been decided at Tammaron’s recommendation, and to fuel the theory that the Deryni who had attacked Tavis had really been after the princes, despite what Tavis claimed, the regency council set up regular patrols to scour the countryside and begin rounding up the marauding bands of both races. Humans were dealt with through the regular assize courts, tried where they were arrested and receiving ordinary punishments befitting vandalism, occasional assault, and general disorderly behavior—usually no more than a figurative slap on the hand for those of noble blood. The Deryni, however, Hubert caused to be brought to Rhemuth for trial, since it had been Deryni who had attacked Prince Javan’s Healer. There, as Jaffray had warned that he would, Hubert offered Tavis the opportunity to search among the prisoners for his attackers.

  Especially in the beginning, Tavis needed little encouragement, for his desire for vengeance was strong when his injury was most recent. He had no desire to betray Deryni in general but he was desirous of finding out which, if any, of the prisoners had had a part in his mutilation. To get past balky shields, he was willing to resort to reason, threats, the many subtleties of his Healer’s craft, and even Deryni-specific drugs and force, if need be.

  But once he had read them deeply enough to determine that they had not been involved in his attack, he had no interest in them. He would not delve deeper just to please Hubert, who was looking for any excuse to execute or at least incarcerate Deryni. As the weeks went by, Tavis’s lust for vengeance diminished and Hubert’s frustration grew.

  Tavis actually did find one of the men just before the man clamped down immensely powerful shields. His name was Dafydd Leslie, a nephew of the same Jowerth Leslie, who had been a council lord under Imre and Cinhil until his death a few years before. He was also a friend of a number of high-ranking Deryni, among them Davin and Ansel MacRorie.

  But Dafydd was not the one who had cut off Tavis’s hand, or even one of those who had held him for the butcher. Nor could Tavis pull forth any more information, for Dafydd panicked at having his shields assaulted so doggedly, went into convulsions, and died rather than betray his friends.

  Hubert tried in vain to persuade Tavis to attempt a death-reading—a procedure he had heard of, and which he was sure a Healer of Tavis’s talent ought to be able to perform. But Tavis had no stomach for it, even had he known the procedure. What Hubert asked was from the arcane side of Deryni knowledge, and Tavis had always dealt primarily with the Healing arts. Besides that, Dafydd had known what he was doing, and had deliberately blurred out all portions of his consciousness before he died. Even a Deryni skilled in the working which Hubert mentioned could not have gained usable results.

  This only spoke to Hubert of plots, and plots within plots, for he found it difficult to conceive that a Deryni nobleman, especially a petty noble like Dafydd Leslie, would take his own life in defense of another man’s crime. Dafydd himself had done nothing except witness other men’s offenses. For that, he might have gone free, had he been willing to name his companions. That he had not been willing only confirmed Hubert’s belief that Dafydd must have been involved in some kind of conspiracy.

  Tavis could say little, once Hubert had made up his mind, other than to point out that nothing could be proved, now that Dafydd was dead; but his enthusiasm for Hubert’s prisoners waned even further, after that. In addition, the encounter with Dafydd had triggered Tavis’s own nightmares of the incident. In trying to suppress them, he kept returning to that terrible day and night, and Javan’s incredible role in helping him cope with what had happened. And that raised the further mystery of Javan’s shields, and what might have happened the night Cinhil died. As though by tacit agreement, the two of them had not discussed the matter further, Javan perhaps sensing that Tavis needed the time to heal, emotionally as well as physically, and Tavis choosing not to think about it.

  After Dafydd’s death, Tavis mulled the situation for several days, wondering how best to broach the subject with his young lord, but it was Javan himself who finally took the first step.

  It had rained that afternoon, curtailing their plans for a quiet ride to the hills across the river, so they had repaired to Javan’s chamber, where the Healer had thought to show the prince a copy he had secured of the current royal budget—an item which they had discussed several times with great interest, and which Tavis knew his young master was keen to see.

  Javan glanced dutifully over the first few columns of tight, crabbed script, then pushed the scroll aside and glanced up at Tavis. In the common room outside, they could hear Javan’s brothers arguing over a game of cups and triangles, Father Alfred’s voice raised in reprimand. A rushlight burned on the table between them, intended to dispel the gloom of the rainy afternoon, but it only highlighted the boy’s angular cheekbones and made of his eyes two enormous pools of polished serpentine.

  “Tavis, we need to talk,” he said in a low voice.

  “Are we not doing that?” Tavis replied, raising one dark red eyebrow.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Javan whispered. “What happened the night my father died? I only refrained from asking before because I thought you needed time to heal. Well, now you’re healed. And I want to know what you did to me that night of your injury, too. And I want to know about my shields.”

  Tavis sighed, a low, weary exhalation, and rubbed his hand across his eyes. “You ask much, my prince.”

  “Did you not ask much of me, when you lay near to death in Valoret?”

  “Yes.”

  Another sigh. Then Tavis rose and motioned the boy to come with him, leading him to a seat in the window embrasure. There they settled, Tavis next to the rain-streaked grey mullion panes and Javan to his left. Tavis flexed his fingers and massaged his stump with the palm of his right hand.

  “First, I suppose, there’s the matter of what happened to you that night of my injury,” he said quietly. “I took far greater liberties than I normally would have with a human, but you seemed willing, and there was that which I could tap into, though I didn’t stop to think about the reason at the time. You mentioned shields that night, and you were right. You had them, and you do have them, and you seem to be able to raise and lower them at will. I’ve never heard of someone not Deryni who could do that before.”

  Javan frowned. “These shields—do you think they are somehow connected with the night my father died?” he asked, after a thoughtful pause.

  “I don’t know. You could have had shields for a long time, and I just wasn’t aware. I remember that you were a little slow to open up to me when I first came to Court—but even then, you’d dealt with other Healers before. Once you came to trust me, there was never any resistance beyond what one might expect of a boy who occasionally wants to do what he thinks is best, rather than what his elders think he should.”

  A quick grin crossed Javan’s face. “Was I a trial to you, Tavis?”

  “Only occasionally, my prince. And that night of my injury, you were anything but a trial.”
His eyes and his voice dropped. “If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know what I would have done. Certainly, I would not have healed so quickly—in mind or in body.”

  “What—did I do?” Javan asked.

  “You gave your very soul into my keeping, if only for an hour,” Tavis said softly. “I asked you to let me draw on your very life-force, praying that I would be able to prevent myself from drawing out too much, and you gave yourself completely into my hands—or, rather, my hand. I might have killed you that night, Javan. You must have sensed that. But you never hesitated. You gave me the energy of Healing and of life.”

  Javan’s eyes had grown round as Tavis spoke, and now he reached across and took the Healer’s hand.

  “Have you not done the same for me, countless times?” the boy asked quietly. “I was awed and honored to be able to do it for you. And yet—”

  “And yet?”

  “And yet, I did not think humans could do such things for Deryni, Tavis. How is it that I can?”

  “I don’t know,” Tavis whispered. “I really don’t know. And yet, I think this thing is not something which has always been. As close a time ago as just before your father’s death, I would swear there was only the ordinary rapport of patient and Healer between us.”

  “Then, what happened to change things?” Javan asked. “What happened the night my father died? Rhys himself claimed to have done something to you. And we know that he gave me and my brothers a so-called physick that night. Perhaps he did something else to me, as well as to you. Do you think we can find out?”

  “I don’t know,” Tavis replied thoughtfully. “God knows, I’ve searched my memories as best I can alone, but perhaps—” He glanced at Javan tentatively and gave his hand a squeeze.