The shrine was a miniature chapel set on a post, open toward the clearing, with a steeply-peaked roof to protect the wooden statue within. Little drifts had built up on the base and around the statue’s feet, and Camber scooped them away with his gloved hands before bowing his head in a brief prayer for continuing guidance. The stillness was profound, broken only by the horses’ soft slurping, occasional snorts, and the jingle of bits and curb chains.
He did not hear the approach of other riders until they were nearly upon them, for he was deep in trance, and the new snow muffled hoofbeats. Even Jebediah gave the four riders only cursory attention as they came around a close curve and walked their mounts toward the pool, for Camber’s stallion chose that moment to raise its head and whinny menacingly at the other horses’ approach, lacing back its ears and wheeling around to kick, so that Jebediah had to maneuver quickly to avoid being shouldered into the icy water. Camber turned, roused from his meditations by the commotion—he had just touched his daughter’s mind in a first, fleeting brush of contact—but Jebediah’s attention was occupied with getting the horses back under control, and he obviously could not see the four men reaching for their swords.
Too late Camber recognized their identity and their intention. They must somehow have spotted him and Jebediah, then followed and watched for a chance when the odds were in their favor—and the four could hardly have two Deryni at a better disadvantage!
Even as Camber shouted out a warning, jarring Jebediah with mind as well as voice and starting to dash across the clearing with drawn sword, the four were converging on the grand master, one of them nearly connecting a killing blow to his head but wounding a horse instead, as the Michaeline ducked.
The horse fell screaming, nearly knocking Jebediah down, but he managed to cling to the reins of the second horse and use it as a shield, ducking behind it long enough to draw his sword and reappear unexpectedly on the other side and slash an attacker deeply across the lower leg. The blood of the dying horse and the wounded man showered the snow, the man cursing as he yanked his horse back a few steps—but only far enough for one of his companions to move in for another try. While Jebediah dealt with that, a third assailant delivered a numbing blow to his left shoulder, the broadsword slicing through leather and mail and partway into flesh.
Jebediah cried out, releasing the reins of the horse he was still holding, and at the same time a great hoof thudded into his chest with almost enough force to shatter ribs. His mail saved him, though he had to gasp to breathe. He recoiled against the fourth horse and rider, half-stunned, but he retained enough presence of mind to use his position to twist around and fling the rider’s leg up and over unexpectedly, dumping the man heavily onto the trampled snow before whirling once more to parry a sword thrust. Milling horses screamed and kicked, presenting almost as much danger as the attackers’ swords.
Camber reached them then, snapping the edge of his cloak in the face of a startled warhorse even as his sword sought the rider of a second. The first horse shied and reared, throwing its rider into another and adding to the confusion, while Camber and the second man exchanged a flurry of blows. He did not see Jebediah take his next wound, though he heard him gasp and curse as he tried to retaliate, for Camber was busy avoiding his own assailant’s blade. He only just succeeded in deflecting a potentially killing blow to a glancing one instead. The man’s sword cut a bloody track down his leg from midthigh almost to knee, but he hardly felt it in the heat of battle as he continued to fight. He had to get to Jebediah and defend him!
Two men were unhorsed now, one of them not moving, but Camber realized that if he and Jebediah were to have any chance at all, they must better the odds by getting their other two attackers on the ground. Jebediah was trying to fend off one mounted attacker and one on foot, and his own mounted assailant was staying just beyond Camber’s ability to harm him seriously, pivoting his horse to present trampling, steel-shod hooves whenever Camber would work his way too close. Seizing a desperate chance, Camber lunged under the horse’s nose and grabbed for the reins, wrenching so savagely at the bit that the animal slipped and went down, first to its knees and then to its side.
Its rider was more skilled than Camber had hoped, though—perhaps too skilled for Camber in his present numbed condition. The knight managed to throw himself clear as his horse went down, landing on his feet and vaulting over his fallen comrade to engage Camber almost immediately. Camber felt the awful sluggishness of muscles growing fatigued, responding less quickly than they once had. He cried out as his opponent bloodied his arm and then traced another deep gash along his hip, just below the line of his mail, in a brilliant followthrough.
God, the man was fast!
He managed to stay on his feet, despite tripping over one fallen knight, but he did not know how long he could last. He could not prevent the numbing blow to his sword-arm, though he did succeed in switching his sword to his other hand and warding off a follow-up attack. He even scored a minor wound, to the man’s clear surprise. He supposed the knight had not expected him to be able to handle a weapon with his off hand.
His strength was ebbing, though, and he knew Jebediah’s must be, too. He saw the grand master sink to a sitting position, clutching at his thigh with one hand while he continued to fight off the other dismounted knight with the other, but Jebediah looked bad, his face taut and desperate against the blood-stained black of his leathers and cloak. He did not seem to notice the lone remaining mounted knight working his horse around to take him from behind. Loose horses plunged and squealed, crazed by the smell of blood and the clash of steel, and Camber’s opponent kept pressing him even harder, every time he tried to break closer to Jebediah’s defense.
Desperation entered his own fighting now. Kicking his assailant’s feet out from under him in a move he knew Alister had never learned in any chivalrous Michaeline school, he whirled toward the last mounted knight and called on one of his most poignant Alister-memories, hurling his sword left-handed with all his remaining strength and a prayer.
In that instant, the clearing seemed to erupt with light, a soundless and unexpected shock almost jolting him to his knees.
By sheer reflex, he launched himself across the intervening space and threw himself on the remaining knight who had been harrying Jebediah, cutting the man’s throat with his own sword before the knight knew what had happened. As he released the collapsing form and drew back, ready still to fight, if he must—though he could not see, for the after-image of the flash—he realized that it had suddenly gotten very quiet. He could hear the horses crashing through the skeletal, winter-seared brush which surrounded the clearing, still snorting and whickering to one another in fright, but nothing moved nearby. After a few more seconds, his eyes began adjusting to the normal light level again.
He was spattered with blood, much of it his own. He was still too dazed to tell how badly he was hurt. Beyond his own dying victim, Jebediah was slowly curling into a ball, an oddly luminous sword sinking to the snow in his bloody fist. Behind, the man who had been the target of Camber’s desperate spell lay in a charred and definitely dead heap atop his equally dead horse, the man’s chest transfixed by Camber’s sword. The hilt was blackened and twisted like another he had seen only once, in a clearing at Iomaire.
He drew breath sharply, wondering whether his spell could have caught Jebediah in its backlash, but another part of him argued that this could not be, for Jebediah was still alive. Then he realized that his own former attacker was also dead, though there seemed to be no serious wound upon him. The eyes were open and staring, the face frozen in an expression of surprise and terror. As Camber reached out a shaking and bloody hand to sense the cause, he felt a residue of darkling magic—suddenly knew its source. Stunned at that, he shook his head to clear it and scrambled toward the feebly moving Jebediah.
“What the hell did you do?” he murmured, catching the grand master’s silvered head before it could sink back on the snow.
Blood was sp
urting from a thigh wound in bright, pulsating gouts, smoking in the cold winter air, and Camber clamped his hands over the wound in despair.
“Oh, God, Jebediah! Jeb, can you hear me?”
When Jebediah only moaned softly, Camber whipped the swordbelt from his waist with one hand and looped it twice around the thigh above the wound, his breath coming in ragged gasps from the exertion as he tried to tighten it down and stop the bleeding. The black of the supple leather brightened to scarlet almost immediately, but it did not seem to slow the flow appreciably.
“Jeb, answer me!” Camber pleaded, gathering the fainting man in his arms and pressing his hand to another gaping wound in the back, sick at heart. At Jebediah’s side lay the fallen sword in a blade-shaped depression filled with melted snow. Somehow, Camber knew that if he touched it, the blade would still be warm.
“Good God, man, what did you do?” he whispered.
Jebediah breathed in sharply through his teeth and rallied enough to look up at Camber with a tight little smile.
“Don’t tell me I’ve managed to come up with a magical application you don’t know about,” he murmured. “I’m afraid it was a little grey around the edges, but your friend might have gotten you, otherwise.”
“A little grey? What did you do?”
“Just a little energy diversion. Never you mind. The important thing is that you’re still alive. One of us had to—oh, sweet Jesu, it hurts to die!” he gasped, as a wave of pain took him.
“No! Don’t say that!” Camber ordered, clasping the wounded man even closer. “You’re not going to die! I won’t let you!”
Jebediah closed his eyes and moistened his lips, controlling a cough before he could manage a faint, sardonic smile.
“You’re not often wrong, my friend, but this time.…”
He sighed and sagged even more heavily against Camber’s chest, though he was still conscious. Camber started to lay his hand on Jebediah’s forehead—paused to wipe off the blood against his side—wiped it again on his cloak when he saw that it had only become the more reddened with his own blood. Then he stroked the pain-taut forehead and reached out with his mind for that familiar, tender rapport which had been uniquely theirs.
He could feel his own strength ebbing, as the surge of battle energy drained away, but somehow that did not seem nearly as important as the fact that Jebediah was slipping away in his arms. He was aware of Evaine’s and Joram’s touch, brushing insistently at the edges of his mind as he opened the link to Jebediah, but he shut them out for now. No time for that. Jebediah was dying, and there was only Camber to comfort him in his pain.
“Alister,” Jebediah managed to whisper, after a few seconds. “Alister—no, Camber—hear my confession … please.…”
“Oh, God, Jeb, don’t make me do that—”
“And die unshriven?” The grand master gave a little shudder, either of pain or dread, then looked up at Camber trustingly, crawling his hand up to grasp the little gold cross, bloodied now, which had again escaped from Camber’s tunic in the battle. He brought it weakly to his lips and kissed it, then steeled himself to gaze up at Camber steadily.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Since my last confession, I have slain a man with magic, and with hatred in my heart—and I most heartily beg forgiveness.”
Camber could no longer see, for the tears in his eyes and the lightheadedness he was himself feeling, but he did not need to see to exchange the ritual phrases with Jebediah and give him absolution, to trace the sign of their faith on the dying man’s forehead. He closed his eyes and let their rapport intensify, reaching out to ease his old friend.
Again he felt the ethereal, detached sensation as the silver cord began to unravel and the ties of earth-binding were loosed. Even though they were not in a magic circle this time, as he turned his Sight outward he could See the vague, insubstantial image of a younger Jebediah superimposing itself over the failing body in his arms, a Jebediah restored to vigorous, vibrant youth.
Jebediah was not looking at him, though—not anymore. Instead, his face was turned toward the little shrine across the clearing, which blazed in Camber’s Sight like a friendly beacon of cool, silver light. From it a familiar form in Michaeline blue seemed to grow out of a pinpoint of light, drifting slowly toward them, booted feet never quite touching the new snow. A wide smile was on his face—the same face which had looked back at Camber in his mirror for many years now, though younger—and he held out his arms in welcome to the man who was now rising out of the spent shell which once had housed Jebediah.
Forgetting to breathe, Camber watched as a new and young Jebediah rose from the ground at his knees and went to join the specter, the two men embracing like long-parted brothers in a joy which brimmed and overflowed even as far as Camber. They drew apart to turn and gaze at him then, first Jebediah and then the other stretching out their arms as though inviting him to join them. The lure was appealing, but even as Camber wavered on the verge of accepting, pain jarred the vision and shook his concentration. When he tried to look for them again, he could not See them.
He knew Jeb was dead in his arms then, and a mortal portion of him mourned the loss, though another part rejoiced to have been witness to that awesome and mystical reunion. Time seemed to stretch out infinitely, giving him all the span he needed to contemplate his own destiny. Though he sensed vaguely that he, too, was dying, as his blood pooled and congealed around him on the trampled snow, somehow that did not seem an issue of high priority. Something else was, but he could not quite identify it yet, so he retreated further into stillness.
He felt Jebediah slip out of his arms and let himself gradually slump to rest his head on the dead man’s shoulder, as the sun passed its zenith and began to decline. He willed his own shape to return, feeling a little strange to be wearing his Camber face again, after so many years, yet somehow sensing that it was meet to do so, especially after having seen Jebediah’s ghostly escort.
The return to his own form was a proper choice, he knew, and yet it seemed to open him once more to Evaine’s and Joram’s touch. He sensed them hovering frantically at the edge of his awareness, but he had no great desire to set the link and let them read in depth. Strangely removed from all their anxious questioning, their fears for his safety, he gave them a calm, dispassionate account of what had happened and certain indication as to how they might find the place where he now lay. Then, gently but firmly, and in an oddly-transmuted sense of love for them both which surpassed his previous appreciation of the beauty of their souls, he eased them from his mind.
Something remained for him to do—something important, something he had not yet discovered. His body, with a twinge, reminded him that it was failing, but he pushed that awareness into the background of his consciousness. He would be given time to do what must be done, he felt sure.
He drifted then, as physical shock and the cold began to take command of his body. The sun sank gradually lower, and a light snow began to powder the clearing.
He wavered between consciousness and dreaming, and his mind went back again to the man whose body lay so close against his own, chilling flesh against still-warm—and to the one who had come to greet the freed soul. That brought his contemplation once again to Alister, the real Alister, whom he had known so many years ago. Alister, too, had died a warrior’s death, bleeding out his life with the wounds of battle in a clearing shared only with the dead, but in a cause well-served. Alister … Alister.…
His reasoning was sluggish now, he sensed, but he could not seem to help himself. As he drifted in an oddly disconnected lethargy, he found himself remembering Ariella next—beautiful, cruel, clever, incestuous Ariella—her fingers curved in death in the attitude of a spell which most men thought impossible. She had failed, but Camber knew why. He had almost tried the spell on Rhys, confident that he could make it work—but that would not have been proper, he knew now. No man had the right to make that choice for any other soul.
And yet, the matter o
f the spell would not be put aside. Time after time, his thinking made the same brief circuit—Jebediah, Alister, Ariella, the spell—and he could not seem to break the cycle.
Did one who mastered it indeed elude death? Or did one but gain access to that other sphere which now he twice had glimpsed? Somehow, simple yielding up to death, at least for now, did not contain the answer, though Camber had never feared to die—had always thought he would be ready, in his time. And close upon these musings came another question: had he been given these glimpses of that other sphere for a reason …?
With sudden, blindingly obvious insight, he knew that reason—knew why Ariella’s working of the spell had failed, knew a greater part of the Master plan in which he was a keystone. He sensed, also, the reasons one might be granted such grace—not to die, for now, but instead to enter that other, twilight realm of spirit where one might serve both God and man in different ways—or were they different? And he had been given the knowledge whereby he might accept that challenge, might gird himself with the whole armor of God and labor on, in the service of the Light.
It was so simple. It was so beautiful. All he had to do was reach out with his mind, just—so.…
Toward dusk, one who had lain as dead stirred beneath his blanket of powdered snow and sneezed, clutching his head miserably and moaning as he struggled to sit up. His name was Rondel, knight in the service of Manfred, Earl of Culdi, and the last thing he remembered was his own fury as the Michaeline grand master grabbed his foot, twisted it, and sent him flying over his horse’s shoulder. He did not remember hitting the ground.
Memory of the battle cleared his head tremendously, and he scrambled to a crouch and looked around wildly for signs of continuing danger, dagger in his fist. Nothing moved except the gentle snowfall, filtering down from a greying, darkening sky. Vague in the shadows at the edge of the clearing, several of the horses nibbled half-heartedly at the bare winter branches and sucked at the ice-choked pool. He counted five snow-shrouded forms around him in the growing dimness, and knew with a chill unconnected with the snow that he alone had survived.
The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy Page 144