“Your Grace!” Guaire’s gasp was involuntary, the young man immediately settling as he realized what must have happened.
With nonchalant ease, as if he were in the regular habit of appearing out of thin air, Camber signed for Joram to refill their abandoned wine cups, blocking Guaire’s view of his son so that Joram would have time to recompose his expression. Camber’s manner was casual and disarming, confidently proclaiming the everyday as he nodded acknowledgment to Guaire’s astonished bow.
“Oh, there you are, Guaire. Sorry if we startled you. Joram and I were just reminiscing about the old days, and got a little carried away, I’m afraid. Frivolous, perhaps, but we seemed to have the time.”
Guaire bowed again, his expression shifting to one of amused understanding. “No apology necessary, Your Grace. I only came to tell you that we will be able to leave in the morning, after all. Apparently the seneschal anticipated Your Grace’s summons far better than we thought.”
“Excellent,” Camber said. “And the supper arrangements for this evening? I don’t know about Joram, but I’m starved.”
“In preparation, Your Grace. And hot baths are being drawn even now.”
“Thank you. We’ll be down directly.”
As Guaire bowed once more and disappeared down the spiral stair, Camber sat down beside Joram and took up the cup of wine waiting for him. Joram had already drained his own, and was pouring a second.
“That could have been tricky,” Joram said, when he was certain Guaire was well out of earshot. “Does he suspect anything?”
Camber shook his head. “He’s fairly used to my Deryni wanderings by now. There are several other Portals in the house. When will you next see Evaine and Rhys, by the way? I meant to ask earlier.”
“They’re at Caerrorie now, so I presume it will be sometime next month. I promised Cinhil I’d deliver you to Valoret first.”
“Fine. That will give me time to get a few things together for you to take to Evaine. I’m going to need some help with the translation on some of the scrolls I’ve found.”
Joram could not control a grin. “Are you sure you want to trust her with such things? Remember what she did with the Protocol of Orin, the night you integrated Alister’s memories.”
“Ah, yes.” Camber smiled in recollection—not of the incident itself, but of their three retellings of the event. “I really must ask her more about that some day. I’ve never heard of anyone taking another shape without a model to work from—and certainly not one of the opposite sex.” He shook his head.
“But, to answer your question, I see no problem. We’re going to be working with disconnected bits and pieces for a while, at least—until we figure out what we’ve got. I’m not sure any of us could do anything with them at this point. It’s rather like the difference between a sacramentary and a rubric book, one containing only the words, and the other giving just the movements. You need both to put together a proper ritual. And she’s going to have to wade through translations that will make the Pargan Howiccan sagas seem like children’s nursery rhymes—archaic language forms, some of which even I have never seen, and a devilishly difficult copy hand. If she can find the time to track down the more obscure references, that will be the biggest help.”
Joram nodded. “You’re probably right. She’ll love the challenge. For that matter, let me and Rhys know what we can do to help. At the very least, we can probably make fair copies for you, as the work progresses. In fact, if you pull the proper episcopal strings, you could probably get me assigned to your staff on a permanent basis. Allyn couldn’t refuse you, if you asked.”
“You’d want that?” Camber said, shaggy brows lifting in surprise.
“To work with you? Of course,” Joram replied lightly. “Serving as Cinhil’s personal messenger is all well and good, but it looks as if things are going to get even more interesting from now on, and I don’t want to miss out. There’s no reason I couldn’t be your liaison with the Michaelines, instead of the reverse—if you want me to, that is.”
Camber’s face beamed with a very un-Alisterlike grin. “Son, I would have asked you months ago, but I wasn’t sure you wanted to come. I can understand if you’d rather work for the Order than for me.”
Joram glanced down at his boots, a shy smile playing at his lips. “That might have been true, once. But we’ve come a long way in the past year, you and I. And if you’ll have me, I’d be proud to serve you in any capacity I can, whatever the guise and the face you wear—Father.”
As he looked up, Camber caught and held his son’s gaze, searching the fog-gray eyes with an intensity which he had not allowed for some time. Then he merely reached across and laid a hand on Joram’s shoulder and smiled, letting the warmth of his love surge across the bond of blood and mind. No words were necessary.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle. Harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, and put on the brigandines.
—Jeremiah 46:3–4
Camber’s return to Valoret and the king took less than two days, and would have been accomplished in one, but for heavy rain—a hardly unexpected feature of Gwynedd weather so close to winter. The deluge turned the road to a river of mud and drowned the hilltop Samhain bonfires and brought the season’s first frost, all in the space of less than twenty-four hours. It made the journey far less comfortable than hoped, but Camber hardly cared. The anticipated challenge of the coming months was tonic to his eager mind. He was anxious to see what his star pupil had been up to during their months of separation. All indications were that Cinhil had not been idle.
The Bishop of Grecotha entered Valoret near midday on the Feast of All Saints. He was greeted at the cathedral steps by a far more substantial welcoming committee than he had expected, given the rain and his hasty response to Cinhil’s summons. Archbishop Anscom presided, of course, since it was his cathedral and his bishop; but he had been joined by Vicar General Allyn, a score of cheering Michaeline knights, and the visiting Archbishop Oriss, who had arrived the day before in answer to his own summons from the king.
But most important, and overshadowing all the rest, was the presence of a damp but exuberant King Cinhil, who had not been able to curb his eagerness sufficiently to wait for his new chancellor in the dry and warmth of the castle hall. Cinhil ran down the cathedral steps to meet his returned friend, bareheaded in the rain, talking incessantly from the moment Camber swung down from his mud-bespattered mount. Cinhil was fairly bursting with ideas he wanted to try out, projects on which he wanted his chancellor’s opinion. Camber could not remember when he had seen Cinhil in better spirits.
While they talked further over dinner that evening, it became more obvious how Cinhil had spent his summer and autumn. In the time between Camber’s arrival and the actual convening of Cinhil’s high court, Camber spent nearly every waking hour either talking with Cinhil or closeted with a clark to whom Cinhil had already dictated copious notes on what he wanted to accomplish. By the end of the fourth and final day, Camber finally began to feel that he had a grasp of the total picture Cinhil had envisioned. The plans were nothing if not ambitious.
On the morning of the Feast of Saint Illtyd, following a solemn Mass of the Holy Spirit to invoke Divine guidance, King Cinhil convened his high court and formally created Bishop Alister Cullen Chancellor of Gwynedd, himself reading the writ of appointment and investing him with the symbols of his office. Queen Megan laid the broad collar of golden H’s over the bishop’s purple-cassocked shoulders, never knowing that it was her former guardian who kissed her hand dutifully in thanks.
But it was Cinhil who gave into Camber’s consecrated hands the Great Seal of Gwynedd, newly redesigned with the golden Lion of Gwynedd replacing the lion’s claws and ermine of the House of Festil. With these, Camber received a personal seal for the Office of the Chancellor, the arms of the See of Grecotha being impaled with the Cullen family arms and
augmented with the badge of Haldane.
Camber bowed and thanked king and queen when the presentations were completed, then took his place at the king’s right hand, beside the high-backed throne, as was now his right.
Nor was Camber’s the only appointment to be made that day. Humans and Deryni alike received the royal mandate, as Cinhil settled down to the true business of governing his realm.
As recommended by Archbishop Anscom and a host of others, Lord Jebediah of Alcara was named Earl Marshal and was confirmed as field commander of the royal armies, second only to Cinhil himself, should he choose to exercise the royal veto—which was unlikely, since Cinhil knew very little yet of military strategy, though he was fast learning. Jebediah, by reason of his appointment, would sit on the king’s council with the life-rank of earl—an almost unprecedented honor for an ecclesiastical knight.
With Jebediah would sit Archbishops Anscom and Oriss and four of the new peers created at the ceremony which had made young Davin MacRorie Earl of Culdi. The four, two earls and two barons, were humans but for Baron Torcuill—to balance the three Deryni among the clerics, Camber suspected, though he did not disapprove. Later, Cinhil planned to create four additional council seats, but the eight would do for now, until responsibilities could be parceled out according to the talents and abilities of the men already chosen. Camber wondered whether the king would be able to maintain the balance of humans and Deryni thus far established. Remembering what Joram had told him about the human lordlings flocking to court in hopes of regaining lost lands and titles, he suspected not.
Following the conclusion of the formal court, Cinhil and his council retired to a private room to dine informally, just the nine of them, with no other attendants. There he made it clear that the appointments he had just made would not be empty honors; royal councillors would be expected to work, or they would be replaced. Before the servants had cleared away the last of the meal, Cinhil had begun to assign tasks to each man, with progress reports to be presented before the council reconvened on the Feast of Saint Andrew, nearly a month away. The opening of Christmas Court should set the wheels in motion for sweeping changes in the Kingdom of Gwynedd.
The ramifications for Camber were far-reaching, for he must mastermind the overall coordination for Cinhil’s plans—and those ultimately touched almost all areas, from diplomacy to military preparedness to legal reform to social betterment.
One thing the king would have immediately, and that was a cementing of alliances, or at least treaties, with Gwynedd’s neighbors. While there had been no further threats of invasion during the months immediately following Ariella’s defeat, this did not mean that there had been no military activity. Meara, to the west, though nominally a vassal state since the death of the last male heir, nearly thirty years before, had always been a periodic threat to Gwynedd’s integrity, as were the dual kingdoms of Howicce and Llannedd, which occasionally ceased their internal bickering long enough to make troublesome incursions into the southern parts of Gwynedd. Mooryn, a powerful ally before the ouster of Imre, had been totally silent since Imre’s fall, making no hostile moves, but sending no envoys, either. Cinhil had no doubt that all of these would be watching carefully for signs of weakness in Gwynedd’s new master.
Of an even more immediate concern was the status of the petty princedom of Kheldour, to the north, formerly the holding of Imre’s kinsman, Termod of Rhorau. Word of an anti-Deryni coup in Kheldour had reached Cinhil only a few weeks before, a wobbly cadet branch of the House of Festil having fallen to the forces of Cinhil’s former ally, Sighere.
Now Sighere occupied Kheldour as well as East-march, a human lord who was honest enough to recognize that he probably did not have the military or administrative ability to hold alone what he had won. The lake region of Rhendall, nominally part of the Kheldish principality, was rumored still to be a hotbed of Deryni resistance, harboring two Festillic heirs and what remained of the Rhorau strength of arms. Cinhil was aware of Sighere’s plight, and saw formal alliance with Eastmarch as a sure way to crush that Festillic remnant before it could reunite with its Torenthi counterparts and pose an even bigger threat. Baron Torcuill and Lord Udaut, the constable, would ride to the earl immediately to suggest a parley.
Nor was Sighere Cinhil’s only concern. News of Torenth’s King Nimur had been exceedingly sparse following the ransom of his hundred captured knights. The Deryni king had redeemed them at the demanded price without even attempting to haggle Cinhil down—which might mean that he needed men more just now than he needed gold. Since Torenth faced no threat from any other of its neighbors, Nimur’s Deryni abilities having been used long ago to cement unbreakable ties with the lands to south and east, might his apparent concern for his knights actually mean that he was contemplating a move of his own against Gwynedd at some time in the future? After all, a Festillic infant lived somewhere in Torenth, kin to nobles ranking high in Nimur’s court, those kinsmen quite willing to press the child’s claim to Gwynedd’s crown when the time was right.
And Nimur? Why, what king would refuse to support his subjects’ annexation of new lands to enrich his crown? No one was fool enough to think that those who helped a Festillic king back to his throne would not be handsomely rewarded.
Accordingly, military reorganization must be high on Cinhil’s list of priorities. He must have reliable troops to call up on very short notice, especially in the vicinity of the Gwynedd-Torenth borderlands adjoining Eastmarch.
Granted, there was little that could be done during the fierce winter months to train soldiers, since the peasant levies had returned to their farms for the harvest and could not be called again until after the spring planting. But there were many indoor activities which could be pursued in castle yards and halls, so that if Cinhil’s fighting men were not better trained by spring, at least they would be better armed.
Accordingly, armorers were set to forge new blades and spearheads and helmets. Apprentices began the tedious task of knitting mail and sewing metal rings and plates to leather hauberks. And everyone with armor of his own must see to its repair during the winter, so that all would be properly outfitted when the spring thaws came.
Fletchers feathered thousands of fine, polished arrows of seasoned wood which would not warp or split when the weather changed. Close-grained lengths of yew and hickory were cut and hung to season in the warmth of smoky rooms, to be planed and shaped and bent into longbows, the staple weapons of the Gwynedd yeomanry.
Tanners, with ample material available following the autumn slaughter of beasts against the winter, prepared caps and cuirasses and shields and other body armor of leather, boiled hard and tough, wove cords and bowstrings of gut; crafted other harness of various sorts for men and beasts of war.
And on another side, Lord Jebediah and the other two earls of the council, Fintan and Tamarron, began to develop a long-range plan for the raising and training of well-mounted and well-armed horsemen, for Jebediah saw cavalry as the reckoning force of the future. While Jebediah and the earls worked out details of recruitment and training programs, Baron Hildred and several lesser lords began making the rounds of all the best-known stud farms in Gwynedd, inspecting stallions and their progeny and acquiring brood mares to begin a new breeding program in the spring—for Jebediah would have his elite troops mounted on taller and faster horses than had hitherto been available. A number of R’Kassan stallions had been captured in the war, for Ariella’s Torenthi allies had been importing the swift desert horses for generations. Jebediah and Hildred saw the blood of these sires as a powerful factor in improving the Gwyneddan native breed over the next decade.
Progress continued more slowly on Camber’s personal projects, but it did continue. Within a few weeks, he had managed to arrange a schedule which allowed ample time with Cinhil and the court, yet still left an hour or so each evening for his own inner workings.
After very little string-pulling at all, Joram was appointed as the chancellor’s confidential secretary, wit
h the blessings of Crevan Allyn and the king’s pleased approval, and was installed in quarters immediately adjoining Camber’s in one wing of the archbishop’s palace. So far as Camber and Joram were concerned, it was an ideal arrangement.
Evaine and Rhys, too, were actively brought back into the picture now—though it was through their own offices and those of the queen, rather than Camber’s, that satisfactory arrangements were eventually made. Megan had been trying for months to persuade Evaine to accept a post as lady-in-waiting; and though there were several other Healers at court, many of them far older and with much more impressive credentials, the queen preferred Rhys above all others.
At length, when Evaine finally acquiesced, the court was treated to nearly a week of high spirits on the part of the usually mouselike little queen. Even Cinhil noticed the difference, and thanked Evaine for coming to Megan’s aid. Soon, Evaine and Rhys had been assigned semi-permanent quarters in the royal keep, where both of them could be near Megan’s solar and the royal nursery. Evaine, when she was not required to attend the queen, began work on translating the vital documents which Camber had brought from Grecotha.
Contrary to what Joram had feared, Evaine did not appeal Camber’s prohibition against lone experimentation with the material she was translating. It was evident from the first that the information was too powerful to be trifled with. Camber said little, but he thought about it a great deal; and often he and Joram and Rhys and Evaine would sit and talk until the wee hours of the morning, pushing aside goblets and the remains of spare meals to manipulate unactivated ward cubes into different patterns on the table as they tried to make sense of what Evaine told them.
And so the Feast of Christmas came and went, and Twelfth Night, too; and Camber and his family thought less and less about their old lives, caught up as they were in the wonder of their own explorations and the intricacies of beginning to forge a new social order.
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