The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy

by Katherine Kurtz

  Practicality began to assert itself at that. If his comrades were dead, then he alone was entitled to the reward which the earl had promised for the apprehension of Cullen and Alcara—and there was no doubt in Rondel’s mind, at this point, that those were the identities of the two black-clad bodies lying together a little way across the clearing. Now, if he could only catch a horse or two.…

  The dusk was nearly full upon him by the time he succeeded in capturing one of the animals. Rondel stroked the neck of the horse he had caught for several minutes, gentling the animal with caresses and soothing words, then began leading it slowly toward the two black-clad bodies. His muscles ached from the cold and his fall, and his eyes did not want to focus, but he knew he dared not tarry over-long. He was several hours’ ride from the inn where he and his comrades had stayed the night before, and there was no closer shelter along this road. He must pack up the bodies and be gone before more snow or the wolves which frequented these hills made him, too, a casualty of the day’s work.

  He was bending down to lift the nearer of the two bodies up across the saddle when he became aware of torchlight glittering through the dead trees in the direction opposite from that which he had come. He could not hear the sound of their horses across the several switchbacks, but there were close to a dozen men, by the number of torches, and they would reach him within a few minutes.

  Torn between greed and fear, he crouched closer to look for some item of proof that he could take with him—the ring, perhaps, for he knew he dared not stay to see who the approaching riders were. The first body wore no ring, but clenched in the stiff fingers was the gold cross which he and his comrades had spotted back at the inn.

  He had to pry it from the fingers of the dead man, and then break the chain which had held it around the neck of the other, but in his haste, and in the failing light, he did not notice the facial change which had come upon the older man since he had seen him in the noonday sun. He spotted the ring—and it was, indeed, a bishop’s amethyst, engraved with crosses along the bezel—but he could not get it off, and he could hear the hoofbeats of the approaching riders now. They would soon be upon him.

  He dared not delay. The cross would have to do as proof. There was no doubt in his mind that the dead man was, indeed, the renegade Bishop Cullen—and if the cross were not accepted as proof, well, at least the gold itself was worth something. And so, stuffing the cross into his tunic, he scrambled onto his waiting horse and sped away, gone in the twilight gloom.

  Shortly, the others came, bearing light into the clearing, but sorrow out.

  EPILOGUE

  And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

  —Isaiah 58:12

  A dawn later, in the cold stillness just before first light, a numbed and sorrowing Evaine waited alone in the chapel of Saint Mary’s in the high hills of Kierney. She sat on the kneeler of a prie-dieu near the altar rail, her back to the altar and her head leaned against the supports to the armrest. She was muffled in one of the ubiquitous black wool cloaks which everyone at Saint Mary’s wore, a black monk’s robe under that, her arms clasping the cloak around her up-drawn knees for warmth. Bright, burnished strands of hair escaped from beneath her hood, catching the light of Presence Lamp and altar candles as she turned her head slightly to the right.

  The Portal, at least, would be completed as he had wanted it, she thought, letting her eyes roam over the carved wooden screen blocking off the northern transept. Behind that screen, Joram and Ansel and some of the monks had been tearing up the floor for days, so that now a circular space the breadth of a man’s armspan exposed the living rock. Joram had chalked an octagon within that space but a few hours before, in preparation for the working planned for dawn, and was even now preparing the others who would help provide the energy to establish the Portal: Ansel, Fiona, Camlin, Rhysel and, at his emphatic insistence, little Tieg. After some argument, Joram had agreed that Evaine might also assist, but she was to conserve her strength until it was time. The ride the night before had already taxed her slowly-returning vitality, following so closely on the birth of Jerusha.

  The ride … She sighed and turned her head slowly back toward the dark shape silhouetted at her left in the center aisle. Atop the more solid mass of the double bier, she could see the nearer of the two bodies without moving, the dim profile now restored to its familiar Alister-shape for the benefit of Ansel and the others. Jebediah lay on the other side, the two of them sharing a pall of black damask which covered them from neck to feet.

  She had placed the illusion of Alister back on her father in those first few seconds when she and Joram had knelt in that blood-stained clearing, before they let the others approach. She held it now with a small corner of her mind—nagging, constant tension—until they could take the bodies through the Portal for burial with other Michaelines in that hidden chapel of so long ago. Rhys could have done the job with far less effort; but Rhys was dead now, too, and all Evaine’s sorrow would not bring back him, or her father. Soon Camber would sleep at Rhys’s side; and then, except for Joram and the children, she would be alone. An epoch had ended.

  She and Joram—and perhaps a few others—would carry on the fight, because that was what Camber would have wanted; but it would not be the same. She felt as if her heart had been tugged out by the roots, and the empty place stuffed with straw. She would not die of it, but she feared it would be a long time before she again felt really alive.

  She sighed heavily again, then eased herself to her feet and moved closer to the head of the double bier, aware that she had little time left for private goodbyes. The features of Alister Cullen, almost as familiar to her after so many years as the face this visage hid, were in repose, the candlelight flickering softly through the wiry grey hair with a wash of gold and spilling eerie highlights into the hollows of the closed eyes. Bowing her head, she laid her hand atop the mound of his hands underneath the pall and let his visage shift to the more familiar one, simply standing and gazing upon him in sorrow, for she had no tears remaining. Several minutes passed before she became consciously aware of the bulge of the hands and of a sense of strangeness.

  She blinked at that, focusing her active attention on the shape beneath her hand. She glanced curiously at the smooth, low bulge of Jebediah’s hands folded peacefully on his breast beneath the pall, then carefully folded back the black damask to see why Camber’s were not the same. Strange … the arms were folded in approximately the same way, but the hands curved oddly on the still breast, as if cupped around something invisible and very precious. She touched one, but it resisted her tentative and then more determined attempt to ease it flatter, with something more than just the normal rigor of death or cold.

  Puzzled, for an almost undetectable trace of memory had surfaced for just an instant, she closed her eyes and dipped into remembrance. The sought-for trace re-emerged almost immediately: a deep communing with her father many years ago, and his account of Alister Cullen’s last battle … death in a glen at Iomaire, and a beautiful but deadly woman transfixed by a sacred sword, her hands curled in the same way, in the attitude of a spell which most Deryni thought only legend, with the most dubious chance of success; and Camber had said that he knew why the spell had failed!

  She gasped as she returned to present time and place with a snap, mind reeling dizzily at the implication. In a wild flight of hope, she let her trembling fingertips gently trace the curve of her father’s hand. Was it possible that Camber was not dead at all—that he was but bound in that most arcane of magicks, awaiting only the proper touch to bring him back?

  Soft footfalls jarred her speculation. Instinctively she shifted the shape on the face before her, looking up almost guiltily. But it was only Joram who approached, weary and resigned, to lay an arm around her shoulders in distracted attempt to comfort.

  She lean
ed her head against his chest for a moment, debating whether to tell him of her speculation. His shields loomed dull and lusterless, sealing him into his private grief, but after a few seconds she felt him relax a little, gradually admitting her to the light, superficial rapport which was their usual wont when in such close proximity. Seizing her resolution, she twisted around to glance at him sidewise.

  “Joram, look at his hands,” she whispered.

  He looked, obviously seeing only that the pall was folded back so that the hands could be seen.

  “Why? What’s wrong with his hands?”

  “Now remember Iomaire,” she murmured. “You were there. Iomaire and Ariella.…”

  She felt the rush of memory reverberate in his mind almost like a silent explosion. Staggering, he caught himself on the edge of the bier and stared at the body, balanced between horror at the audacity, the potential blasphemy of trying to deny death, and the wild hope that it just might be true. The image of Iomaire was strong in his thoughts.

  After a moment, he jerked the pall back into place over the hands and crumpled to his knees. He was trembling as he leaned his forehead against the edge of the bier between his hands, eyes tightly closed. Evaine put her arms around his shoulders from behind and leaned close against his back to comfort him, caressing and cushioning his mind from the shock still echoing at all levels.

  “It is possible, you know,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t be certain, but it’s possible. He never spoke of it much, but I know he did some investigating in the old Grecotha records. They’re scattered in various hiding places, but they can be reassembled.”

  He breathed in and out through his nose, an audible effort at control, then raised his head to stare up at the grey silhouette.

  “Can you bring him back?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t even know for certain that he did work the spell, much less whether he succeeded. He was wounded badly, though. If he is under the spell, and we tried to bring him back, we would need to have a Healer at hand immediately. That might take some doing. In any case, we first have to determine whether the spell did work, then worry about how to reverse it, if it did.” She sighed. “If it didn’t work, then he is only dead, and there’s nothing more that we can do.”

  Still uncertain, Joram shook his head forlornly, the final pretense of control dissolving as tears which he had not allowed before began to flow. As he sank back on his heels and wept, face buried in his hands, he let his sister hold him, clung to her and let her soothing presence fill him, merge with all levels in profound rapport, warring with heart, mind, and conscience in a tangle of emotion which only gradually began to sort into order. Evaine, in full communion with her brother as they had not been in a long time, held him close and let her own thoughts return to the man whose body lay on the bier above their heads.

  She did not know for certain what had happened to her father, but she intended to find out. And if there were a way to bring him back, to Heal his wounds and make him live again, to release him from that twilight state which was not death, yet not life as they had known, then she and Joram would find it, if it took them the rest of their lives.

  They would not be able to do it alone, she knew. But those whose aid they must seek need not know all. Besides herself and Joram, there was now no one else alive who knew the truth of Camber-Alister, and so it must remain. The myth of Saint Camber must be maintained. Once the Portal was finished, they would take their father’s body to a secret hiding place, even as Joram had originally told the bishops he had done at the time of Camber’s canonization, and at least that lie would be made truth. Alister Cullen could rest at last in his own right, with his beloved Jebediah at his side, and with the infant Prince Aidan—and Rhys. All of them would lie, at least for a time, in that secret and now warded Michaeline chapel where so much had started so many years ago.

  And what had started would be continued. With Camber’s body finally available, even though they hoped eventually to revive him, they had the focus for a new, small inner circle of Deryni adepts and human allies, quite apart from the foundered Camberian Council, which could assume the function filled until recently by Queron Kinevan’s Servants of Saint Camber. Even Joram, with all his scruples and moral struggles, could support this cause; for in these awful past days of the regents’ increasing madness, the extension of the long-feared reprisals and persecutions of their people, even he had come to acknowledge the importance of Camber’s sainthood. Despite the literal truth or falsehood of their father’s sanctity, Camber’s example had been a source of strength and inspiration for countless people, human and Deryni, and one which neither of them would dream of destroying. While she and her brother searched for a way to bring Camber back in fact, the secret order which they would create could be the guardians of that example, carrying on the tradition that Saint Camber was not gone, despite the bishops’ recent declaration to the contrary, and that his benevolent attention remained on Gwynedd, even beyond the death of his body.

  Let the people keep their memory of Saint Camber to sustain them. There was much through which they must be sustained, in the months and years ahead, and only slim chance that Javan or Tavis or Revan or any of the rest of them could make a major difference. And if, in the meantime, she and Joram could restore a more active Camber to them—then that, too, would be all to the good.

  She sighed and hugged her brother a little closer, a smile touching her lips as she sensed his gradual stilling, his return to the reasoned, ordered centeredness which was his usual wont, his acceptance of the future she offered. She let her mind blend with his in the comfort of their mutual resolution. For just an instant, it seemed that another presence brushed them fleetingly, like a familiar hand caressing her cheek, touching the top of his head, with a firmness which was as much a blessing as a sign of love, and far too real to be mere imagination.

  It was gone, even as they became aware of it, both of them drawing apart to look at one another in wonder. Together they rose to stand with arms intertwined around each other’s waists and gaze at the strange-familiar face of the body on the bier.

  He was with them, they knew now—perhaps not only in the sense that all the dead remain with those they love, at least in memory, but in some more tangible way. Imagination or reality, memory or perception—it hardly mattered now. Together, Camber and his children had begun a task more than a decade ago. Together, they had seen it through the years and through the sacrifices, and together they would see it through the future, as long as they were able. Evaine and Joram were not the last; they were but early links in the great chain of Order which stretched backward and ahead in time to give support to all who would seize it, tossing on the seas of Chaos. Those of the next generation—Ansel, Rhysel, Tieg, and, yes, even young Camlin—those were the future, the next carriers of Camber’s ideals. And those young ones—and others, and not even all of them Deryni—Healers and dreamers and keepers of the heritage of men like Camber—those would be the hope of all tomorrows.

  As the others came into the chapel, and she and Joram turned to greet them, she could have sworn she saw her father smile.

  In Appendices I and II, initials within brackets indicate that the person or place appeared in the volume indicated. Initials in parentheses indicate that the person or place was mentioned only in passing. References to the volumes are as follows:

  CC = CAMBER OF CULDI (Book I)

  SC = SAINT CAMBER (Book II)

  CH = CAMBER THE HERETIC (Book III)

  APPENDIX I

  Legends of Saint Camber

  INDEX OF CHARACTERS

  ADRIAN MacLean, Lord—Master of Kierney; grandson of Camber’s sister Aislinn and foster father to Camber’s grandson Aidan Thuryn [CH].

  AIDAN, Prince—only child of King Ifor Haldane to survive the Festillic coup of 822; royal name of Daniel Draper, grandfather of King Cinhil [CC, (CH)].

  AIDAN Alroy Camber Haldane, Prince—infant son of Cinhil and Megan; killed by poisoned salt at
his baptism, age one month [CC].

  AIDAN Thuryn—eldest son of Rhys and Evaine, age 10; fostered to Lord Adrian MacLean at Trurill [CH].

  AILIN MacGregor, Bishop—Auxiliary Bishop of Valoret [SC, CH].

  AIRSID, The—an ancient Deryni fellowship, origin pre-500 AD (CH).

  AISLINN MacRorie MacLean, Countess—Camber’s younger sister; Dowager Countess of Kierney; mother of the present earl and grandmother of Adrian MacLean, the heir [CH].

  ALFRED of Woodbourne, Father—Cinhil’s human confessor; later, Auxiliary Bishop of Rhemuth [SC, CH].

  ALISTER Cullen, Bishop—Deryni; formerly Vicar General of the Order of Saint Michael; Bishop of Grecotha and Chancellor of Gwynedd under King Cinhil; briefly, Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of All Gwynedd; an original member of the Camberian Council [CC, SC, CH].

  ALLYN, Crevan—human Vicar General of the Order of Saint Michael after Alister Cullen [SC, CH].

  ALROY Bearand Brion Haldane, Prince—eldest living son of King Cinhil and twin to Javan, age 11; later, King of Gwynedd [SC, CH].

  AMYOT of Morland, Lord—Deryni assassin killed in ambush of Princes Javan and Rhys Michael [CH].

  ANDREW—farrier at Grecotha [SC].

  ANDREW, son of James—the second “Benedict” at Saint Piran’s Priory [CC].

  ANSCOM of Trevas, Archbishop—Deryni Primate of All Gwynedd and Archbishop of Valoret [CC, SC, (CH)].

  ANSEL Irial MacRorie, Lord—younger son of Cathan and grandson of Camber, age 17 [CC, SC, CH].