The Harrowing of Gwynedd

by Katherine Kurtz

  Half an hour later, a knock at Queron’s door roused him from his meditations. He had been sitting cross-legged on his pallet, with the readings for the next morning’s Mass spread around him, but he closed the volume in his hands and swung one foot to the floor as he called, “Come in.”

  “Good evening,” Evaine said, smiling as she opened the door and entered. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  Queron raised a disparaging hand and returned her smile. “A welcome disturbance, I assure you. I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts for some kind of coherent homily tomorrow, but I’m afraid all I’ve gathered so far is wool. I think I’ll sleep on it, and put the onus on the Holy Spirit to inspire me at the appropriate time. I’ve found that’s usually better than trying to force the issue. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’d like to confide something to you,” she said lightly, leaning against the doorjamb with her hands behind her. “You see, Revan’s baptizer cult isn’t the only reason I’ve been doing research for the last few months. It doesn’t have any direct bearing on that, or even on Javan’s problem with the regents, but it’s very important to me personally. I’m going to need a Healer’s help. Since Rhys isn’t available any more, you’re elected.”

  Concern furrowed Queron’s brow, and he slowly got to his feet. “You aren’t ill, are you?”

  “No, nothing like that,” she said, smiling. “Believe me, it’s nothing you would guess in a million years. And I can’t reveal anything else unless you agree beforehand to lower your shields and give me absolute control to keep them down afterwards, so Joram and I can feed you full details of what it all means.”

  One wiry eyebrow arched in surprise, but no trace of fear crossed Queron’s face. “So Joram’s involved in all of this too, eh? You make it sound very ominous.”

  “Queron, it will shake you to the very depths of your faith,” she replied honestly.

  “I see.” He drew a deep breath, obviously considering, then slowly nodded. “Very well. You’ve piqued my curiosity sufficiently that you know I can’t refuse—so what happens now? I assume you won’t make this revelation without Joram present, so I gather we have to go somewhere else. Where is it to be? Or, is he waiting outside?”

  Evaine gave him a tiny smile. “Oh, he’s waiting, but not outside. Come with me.”

  She conjured handfire before leading him down a stair he had not seen before, descending several levels deeper than Queron had known existed. Torchlight greeted them as they emerged from the stairwell, but Joram was nowhere to be seen.

  “In those last days before King Cinhil’s restoration, when we had several hundred Michaelines hiding out here, this used to be a stores level,” Evaine said, extinguishing her handfire as she took the torch from its wall-mounted cresset. “We aren’t so many now, and couldn’t reprovision such a large undertaking if we wanted to, but these lower levels do still have their uses.”

  Queron said nothing, only following with increasing curiosity and a little apprehension as she led him farther along the corridor. He had been expecting Joram, but the Michaeline priest still startled him by stepping suddenly from the shadows of a doorway near the end of the passage. Queron guessed that what they meant to show him was behind that door. Joram nodded greeting as he took the torch from his sister, but he did not speak. He looked very somber, as did Evaine. Unaccountably, Queron could feel his heart beginning to beat faster.

  “I’ll need that control now,” Evaine murmured, turning to face him in the torchlight, her blue eyes locking with his dark brown ones. “I promise you won’t be harmed, but we can’t proceed without your cooperation.”

  Pushing down a vague sense of foreboding, Queron smiled faintly and rested both his hands on the upturned palms she held out to him. “I did this for your dear husband once, when he first showed me his blocking talent,” he said. “He scared me silly. You’ve scared me, too, on occasion—both of you—but you’ve never betrayed my trust. So go ahead and do what you think you must. I won’t resist.”

  His shields subsided even as he spoke, like contained flame slowly dying in a covered jar. Carefully and deliberately, he made himself vulnerable, letting her will engulf him like a pool of purifying light, blood-warm, feeling her mind insinuate controls into every source of his strength, to depths he had not dreamed she would require.

  She was good at what she did—very good. His powers were intact, of course, but he could not have used them against her to save his very soul. He found himself praying that his trust had not been misplaced, for he knew she could destroy him with a glance—could even make him destroy himself, so absolute was her hold upon him.

  But she demanded nothing yet, only smiling faintly as she released his left hand and gently turned him to face away from the doorway where Joram still stood vigilant watch with the torch. He heard the door open then, and let himself be guided through it backwards, watching Joram close and bar it before setting his torch in a cresset to its left. More light streamed from behind him, deeper in the room, reflecting from the still, watchful whiteness of their faces.

  “There is a glamour on what you are about to see,” Evaine warned, releasing his hand so he could turn. “What you will think you see is not necessarily what is.”

  Queron did not even notice when Evaine brought Joram into her control link. Indeed, he forgot all about controls as he gaped at the blue-clad body laid out on the bier. Candles burned in tall, freestanding candlesticks at the bier’s four corners, shedding their uncompromising light on the face of a man Queron himself had helped to bury, but a few months before.

  “But, this is Alister Cullen,” he breathed, forgetting all about Evaine’s warning. “I don’t understand. Why have you brought him here?”

  “I told you, what you think you see is not necessarily what is,” Evaine repeated, setting her hand lightly on his left wrist. “Look again.”

  Before Queron’s very eyes, the face of the body before him began to waver and then to change. Queron gasped and leaned closer, catching himself on the edge of the bier with both hands, lightheaded with shock as the new face steadied. All he could think, as he melted to his knees, was that Joram had told the truth about hiding away his father’s body all those years ago. It had not been assumed into heaven, but it had remained incorruptible!

  “It’s Saint Camber!” Queron managed to whisper. “Praise be to God!”

  He started to cross himself, but Joram caught his right wrist.

  “I can’t say whether he’s a saint or not,” Joram said sharply, “but think again about what you first saw!”

  “But—”

  “Queron, my father didn’t die in 905,” Joram went on relentlessly. “Alister Cullen died. Father and I found his body after the battle, and I helped Father take on Alister’s shape, and put Father’s shape on him, because Cinhil needed Alister Cullen more than he needed Camber MacRorie. All the rest sprang from that substitution. All the rest.”

  “But, the visions,” Queron protested weakly. “The miracles—”

  “Were all based on misinterpretation of what we were actually doing—at least at first,” Evaine murmured. “Show him, Joram. You were the one most immediately caught up in everything that happened. We didn’t set out to make him a saint, Queron. We really didn’t.”

  Queron collapsed back onto his haunches as Joram loomed above him, whimpering a little as the Michaeline’s free hand dropped heavily to his brow. He could feel Evaine holding down his shields so Joram could enter his mind, and he could not evade the power that he himself had given her over him. Joram’s hand was cold on his forehead, pressing his head back against Evaine’s supportive shoulder, and the force of Joram’s overwhelming sendings made him reel, his eyes rolling upward and closing as the unwanted images began to flow.

  Joram helping his father make the shift of shapes that turned Camber into Alister, Alister into Camber … Assisting Camber to read the shreds of Alister’s memory still accessible in the dead man’s mind … Making his w
ay back to King Cinhil’s camp with the Alister-faced Camber, bearing the dead body of his “father.” Only he, Rhys, and Evaine had known the truth, in the beginning.

  “Camber” was not even properly buried before the first incident occurred that later contributed to the evidence for canonization, when a compassionate act meant to ease the grief of Camber’s almost suicidal former squire, young Guaire of Arliss, had been taken for a supernatural event. Camber had presented the visitation as a dream, but Guaire’s elation soon had changed it to something of a miracle.

  And close on its heels, though Camber himself had not been consciously aware of it at the time, had come a second incident that truly cemented Camber’s saintly status, when later added to the weight of other occurrences that, otherwise, might have been dismissed as pious fantasizing. During an interrupted working meant by Evaine, Rhys, and Joram to help Camber assimilate the memories he had taken from the dead Alister—memories that, if not made his own, would drive him mad—not one but two outsiders had glimpsed Camber’s true face. Not knowing what they truly saw, both believed the event to be an instance of saintly intervention. One of the witnesses had been one Lord Dualta Jarriot, a fervent young Michaeline Knight; the other, King Cinhil himself. Both had later testified to their experience during the proceedings to canonize Camber, the king much against his will.

  Before all of that, however, had come the single act of conscience that legitimated much of what Camber did in his dual role as Alister Cullen—and also led to his eventual presence at his own canonization. The catalyst was Camber’s discovery that Alister Cullen, the Vicar General of the Michaelines, priest as well as knight, had already agreed to accept consecration as a bishop before he rode off to his last battle.

  To refuse the office at such a time would have required explanation Camber dared not give. Nor did he feel he dared profane the priesthood that Alister had possessed or the episcopal office he now was expected to assume, by accepting the outward ceremonials without the substance of proper ordination. Had two elder brothers hot died while Camber was in his youth, leaving him their father’s only male heir, Camber might have become a priest in fact; but he had set aside an honest vocation in the interests of filial duty. Now Joram suggested a way that his father might resolve his present ethical dilemma by taking up his old vocation.

  So Camber had approached his old friend Anscom of Trevas, the Deryni Archbishop of Valoret, the night before he was to receive episcopal consecration, confiding what he had done and why, and asking ordination at Anscom’s hands so that he might fulfill his new role as conscientiously as possible, given the circumstances. Anscom had agreed, and for many years remained the only one besides the immediate family to know that Alister Cullen was really Camber MacRorie.

  So the impersonation might have progressed indefinitely, without further complication, had not young Guaire of Arliss confided his most intimate experience of Camber to a zealous Gabrilite Healer-priest named Queron Kinevan. Queron already had begun investigating a local cult of the “Blessed Camber,” arising around Camber’s tomb at Caerrorie. Even then, Joram had found the attentions of that cult both disturbing and unwanted, and already had sought a safer resting place for the body of his “father.” Secretly moving it from the family vaults had seemed a prudent thing to do, lest someone break into the tomb and discover who it really was—or rather, who it was not.

  The action had backfired little more than a year later, when Queron brought his evidence before the Synod of Bishops and demanded Camber’s canonization, citing the empty tomb at Caerrorie as evidence that “Saint Camber” had been bodily assumed into heaven, in addition to working miracles on behalf of his devotees. Joram’s presence at the synod, as secretary to Bishop “Alister,” and his inability to explain away the empty tomb with other than the now lame-sounding excuse that he had moved the body—whose location he was magically bound not to reveal—only added fuel to Queron’s argument, for neither Joram nor Camber dared defuse the allegations of sainthood with the truth without also giving away the impersonation.

  Neither Camber nor Joram had ever told an outright lie under oath, but neither had they been able to deter Queron. Formal canonization ceremonies had been carried out less than a month later, and soon the Servants of Saint Camber, under Queron’s direction, were spreading the cult of their patron saint throughout Gwynedd. Camber himself had lived on as Alister Cullen until a few weeks ago, fooling everyone including Queron, until assassins’ blades had taken him and Jebediah of Alcara in a snowy clearing near Saint Mary’s in the Hills.

  Queron reeled under the onslaught of Joram’s forced briefing, trying to shake his head in negation as all the implications of the truth of Saint Camber resettled in his consciousness, readjusting “facts.” He knew he was weeping for his lost faith, and could not help himself. And Camber’s children were not yet finished with him.

  Now the relentless drive of harsh, uncompromising, and unwanted knowledge shifted from Joram to Evaine, as Camber’s daughter revealed her unshakable belief that Camber even now was not dead, but lay suspended in the binding of a spell not reckoned possible by most Deryni, if they had ever even heard of it. Evaine’s research in the matter had been frighteningly thorough, as Queron would have expected of Camber’s daughter, and she gave him the weight of that information to add to all he had already taken in—along with a plea for his help. She and Joram intended to try to reverse the spell that held Camber suspended in some twilight realm between life and death, and to have Queron attempt to Heal him before true death claimed him at last. The very notion made Queron’s mind reel even more dizzily than it had hitherto, and this most rational and disciplined of Deryni would have crossed himself in ritualistic plea for deliverance, had control of physical function remained in his volition.

  But the audacity of their intention was tempered finally by a softer flow of yet another strand in their indoctrination—the speculation, jointly shared by sister and brother, that something about their father lay beyond the reason even of those who knew the truth about him, and had always known it. A wistful wondering whether something about Camber might not be supernatural after all. The spiritual presence of Camber had been felt more than once in the weeks since his working of the forbidden spell—and by Queron as well as Joram and Evaine, under circumstances that had nothing to do with the cult of Saint Camber now being so rigorously suppressed in the outside world.

  What if Camber was a saint? Even Joram was forced to consider the possibility. What really constituted sainthood? And how was one to know anything for certain?

  Evaine backed off then, as Joram had already done. For a moment, she used the skills she had learned by working with Rhys to assess Queron’s physical condition—to regularize rapid breathing and heartbeat, soothe bruised psychic pathways, and make shy apologies for what she had felt compelled to do to him.

  “It was never our deliberate intention to deceive you, Queron,” she murmured, shifting to audible speech as one hand gently stroked his head, now resting in her lap. “Nor was it our intention to hurt anyone, though harm inevitably has been done, in the process of protecting first Cinhil and now his sons. Everything my father did—everything we did—was for that purpose. We sought no personal gain.

  “Now we need a Healer to help us try to bring him back to continue what he started. But it has to be of your own free will.”

  He had no free will yet, though. Her controls were still in place, preventing any extreme reaction—which was probably a good idea, because the anger, grief, and pain warring inside him amid all the new information to be assimilated would take a while to resolve. Groggily he opened his eyes to look up at her, aware of Joram crouching beside her right shoulder, tight-lipped and anxious. Even the slight effort of trying to focus on them made him so nauseated he feared he might throw up, so badly did his head ache, right behind his eyes, but she sensed his distress immediately and helped him damp the physical symptoms, also urging him to run through the standard assessment exercis
e that trained Deryni always used after an involved working.

  He found himself resenting her ministrations, even as the respite from pain enabled him to confirm that his faculties were his again, save for his shields. Simultaneously, the thought occurred to him that he still had the ability to lash out psychically—for all the good it would do, since they simply would know what he was going to do and counter it accordingly. And the sane, rational part of him admitted that they had not intended to deceive him, even as another part relished imagining what it would be like to give back hurt for hurt.

  “I wouldn’t do that, though,” he said aloud, a little surprised to find his throat scratchy and hoarse. “You’re going to have to give me time to sort this all out, but a lot makes sense that didn’t before. What you’ve done, you’ve done for all the right reasons. It simply didn’t work out the way you planned.”

  Evaine sighed. “We like to think so. Sometimes, it seems that we were simply swept along on a tide of destiny, unable to alter forces we’d unwittingly set in motion without realizing all the possible consequences. One thing led to another.”

  “And now you’ve been led to confide it all to me.” He smiled shakily. “Shall I keep this all under the seal of the confessional?”

  Joram looked uneasy. “That wasn’t part of the original bargain. In all that I’ve done, I never compromised my priesthood. So far as I know, neither did my father. I certainly wouldn’t ask you to do so.”

  “I don’t recall offering to compromise,” Queron murmured, lifting shaking hands to rub across his face. “This headache I’ve got—is it akin to what Camber felt, before he’d assimilated all of Alister’s memories?”

  “Probably akin, yes, but not the same,” Evaine said, smiling tentatively. “A simple good night’s sleep will sort you out. If you wish, I’ll set a compulsion to that effect, then let you go back to your quarters under your own power. I doubt you’d sleep well here on the floor, especially with him up there.” She gestured toward the bier with a wry jut of her chin. “And I don’t think Joram and I particularly relish the idea of carrying you back up all those stairs.”