Camber the Heretic

by Katherine Kurtz

  Soon Javan was asleep, and Evaine and Joram dozing in chairs around the bed while Camber and Rhys kept dreamy watch. Several hours passed before Tavis finally stirred, moving his head to one side with a low moan. Camber was instantly alert.

  “Rhys?” he called softly.

  The Healer had been grinding a posset of herbs blended with another sleeping potion, but he returned immediately to Tavis’s side and laid his fingertips along the man’s good wrist.

  “He’s coming out of it. That’s a good sign. I was beginning to fear he might have lost too much blood.”

  Gently Camber touched the unconscious Healer’s forehead, almost recoiling at the churning awarenesses beginning to surface.

  “I fear that blood may be the least of what this man has lost,” he said softly. “Rhys, are you certain he’s ready to face what has happened? Maybe we should just force him back down for a while yet. Despite what you and Oriel have done, there’s Healing that only his body and mind can do, and that only with time.”

  Tavis moaned again, and Rhys laid his Healer’s hands lightly on either side of Tavis’s face, beginning to extend his awareness around the reviving mind. Evaine woke and moved back to her position at Tavis’s head.

  “He’s going to have to face what has happened, Alister,” Rhys said, his face reflecting his concentration. “And for a Healer, the sooner the better. Tavis, can you hear me? Tavis, it’s Rhys. Open your eyes, Tavis. You’re all right. You’re going to live. Open your eyes and let me know you understand.”

  Slowly Tavis obeyed, pain washing outward in increasing waves even through Rhys’s rigid control and the drugs in his system. His glance flicked to the Healer’s face first, to Joram, beyond, and Evaine, near the head of the bed, then to the bishop standing at his other side. Then he swallowed and tried to move his left arm. Gently Camber restrained him, taking a firm grip on the injured arm just below the elbow, through the folds of shrouding blanket. Rhys turned the pain-wracked face back toward him, away from the maimed arm.

  “Don’t look. Not yet,” he commanded.

  “How—” Tavis swallowed hard and had to start again. “How long have you been here, Rhys?”

  Rhys dropped his grip to Tavis’s shoulders and shook his head sadly. “Not long enough, I fear, my friend. I was out riding with Bishop Cullen. The royal physicians saw you first, and then a young Healer named Oriel. But it took them a while even to find him. By the time I got here—”

  He sighed and bowed his head. “Tavis, there was nothing any Healer could have done, that late. It wasn’t Oriel’s fault. It wasn’t even the physicians’ fault. They did the best they could. At least they saved your life.”

  “They saved my life,” Tavis repeated dully, turning his face to the left, to stare blankly at the shroud over his arm, “but not my hand. Why did they bother? What good is a Healer with only one hand?”

  “Why, the same as one with two hands,” Rhys began puzzedly.

  “No!” Tavis croaked. “The balance won’t work, don’t you see? I’m flawed, defec—”

  “Tavis!”

  “No! Listen to me! Even the scriptures—”

  “Tavis!”

  “The scriptures agree: ‘They will lay hands on the sick, who will recover.’ Hands, not hand! And the Adsum confirms it. Cum manibus consecratus—with consecrated hands, make whole the broken.…”

  “The Adsum also says, Tu es manus sanatio mea—thou art my healing hand upon this world,” Rhys interrupted, thinking fast. “And all your arguments and self-pity to the contrary, there’s nothing in scripture to suggest that two hands are necessary to heal. Jesus put forth His hand to heal the leper—”

  “No.…” Tavis wailed, near hysteria.

  “Tavis, stop it!” Rhys snapped. “Stop dwelling on what you don’t have, and think about what you do have. You’re still a Healer! It wasn’t your mind that was affected by what happened to you today—only your hand!”

  “Only my hand!”

  Tavis laughed, a clipped, broken sob, then seemed to crumple inward as the pain took him once more. Rhys clamped one hand to Tavis’s forehead and tried to curb the pain again, then shook his head and raised the other hand as well, shifting to Tavis’s temples for finer control.

  A difference of balance? Perhaps. But nothing said that a new balance could not be learned—though this was not the time to give Tavis an object lesson. Now Rhys must use his own familiar balances to calm his patient’s hysteria and keep it from nudging him into shock again. As the pain eased off, and the injured Healer cautiously opened his eyes—still a bit disoriented-looking for Rhys’s tastes, but not raving at least—Rhys took a deep breath and sighed, casting his glance grimly over the others.

  “Tavis, we need to know who did this to you,” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know why, then?” Joram asked. “It doesn’t sound as if they were after the princes.”

  “They weren’t,” Tavis whispered, swallowing another sob. “They were after me.”

  “You?”

  “But, why?” Evaine gasped.

  “If thy hand offend thee, cut it off, one said. And, Deryni should not aid the enemy.”

  Joram frowned. “Now, what the hell is that supposed to mean?—Deryni should not cud the enemy. Tavis, they weren’t Deryni, were they?”

  As Tavis nodded, the flood of repeated memory triggered the real agony all over again, and it came surging through to conscious levels. Tavis screamed.

  Rhys moved in at once and set about damping the pain, but still it reverberated among the four of them so acutely that Evaine paled and looked as if she might faint. Joram hurried around the bed to steady her with arms and mind, but even his strong shields could not completely insulate her from Tavis. Backlash from his tortured memory surged around the room in waves as he vacillated in and out of consciousness, until finally Evaine turned and stumbled from the room, Joram going with her.

  Rhys glanced after her for a moment, probing beyond the door, then returned the greater part of his attention to his patient.

  “I should have had her leave before this,” he whispered distractedly, stroking Tavis’s forehead as he tried to soothe his pain. “This next daughter will be a Healer, like her father.”

  “A Healer!” Camber breathed. “But female Healers—”

  “Are extremely rare. I know. I can name four alive today. Evaine was affected because the child already senses extremes of pain in others and yearns to control it, though she has no strength to do so yet, of course.” A quick grin lit his face. “On the other hand, what would you expect of my child by the daughter of Camber of Culdi?”

  “But Tieg didn’t—”

  “Tieg is a boy. Apparently the male line carries the gift more easily than the female, though Evaine had a few twinges when she was expecting him, too. This child.…”

  He gazed toward the door again, his expression touched with awe, but then Tavis moaned, edging from unconsciousness into delirium, and Rhys turned his full attention back on his patient.

  “It’s all right, Tavis,” he murmured, letting his entire consciousness submerge in his questing task, now that his wife was safely out of range. “Let go and let it flow. I’ll help you channel off the pain. Let it detach. I’ll bear it for you, and so will Father Alister.”

  As Tavis calmed beneath his hands, Rhys let himself begin to sink even deeper, beckoning with another part of his mind for Camber to link into rapport and follow where he led, gradually suppressing physical discomfort and forcing the tortured mind downward into deep, Healing sleep. As Rhys emerged from Healing trance, he saw Camber leaning heavily on the side of the bed, rigid and white-faced with shared fatigue. Rhys, after a few deep breaths to steady himself, reached out to Camber with hand and mind.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I will be.” Camber took a deep breath and shook his head. “God, the bitterness! That our own people should do this to him!”

  “Aye. And if he doesn’
t master it, that bitterness can kill him—just as surely as if he’d bled to death in that alley.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  Rhys shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s not likely to listen to much of anything I have to say, after what I did to him the night Cinhil died. Oh, I blocked the specific memory, but I wasn’t able to block all the emotion that went with our little scene. There’s resentment there, even if he doesn’t remember precisely why. You’re no better choice—too much of an authority figure. Besides, you’re not a Healer.”

  “What, then?”

  “A second opinion, I think. Not Oriel. Oh, he’s a competent enough Healer, with a lot of potential, but he doesn’t have the experience, or the grand overview, the way we do—though it’s times like this that I almost wish we didn’t, either.”

  “Amen to that!”

  “I think—Queron,” Rhys said, after a thoughtful pause. “Or maybe Dom Emrys would be even better. Tavis must have studied with Emrys at some time. Most Healers do. Maybe Emrys can get through. If we get a message off tonight, they should be here by tomorrow noon. I don’t think we should wait any longer than that, though. He could go critical on us at any time, and I don’t mean physically.”

  “I agree,” Camber said. He started to turn toward the door, then paused.

  “Is it all right to leave him alone for now, do you think?”

  Rhys touched a hand to Tavis’s forehead and probed lightly, then nodded and turned toward the sleeping Javan.

  “I think he should sleep until morning. Javan, too.” He held his hand a little way from Javan’s forehead, then shrugged. “I’ll be damned if I can figure out those shields of his, though. Cinhil must have understood a great deal more than we gave him credit for.”

  He peered closely at Javan, then tucked the blanket more securely around him.

  “Poor little fellow. He’s really had a hard day. We’ll let him sleep where he is, for now. Come on. I want to get those messages off to Emrys and Queron.”

  But when they had gone out of the room, and the door had closed, a young raven head was raised cautiously from its rest against the high-backed chair.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I will not be ashamed to defend a friend; neither will I hide myself from him.

  —Ecclesiasticus 22:25

  Blinking sleepily in the candlelight, Javan peered around the room, confirming that he was now alone with Tavis. Other than that, he did not move for several minutes. He wanted to make certain they would not come back.

  He wondered what they had been talking about, while they had thought him asleep. He had been asleep for a little while, but he had awakened while they worked with Tavis. He remembered hearing Evaine and Joram leave the room, and then something about a child, Evaine’s child, who was going to be a Healer.

  He sat up at that and tried to remember more, recalling a long period of silence and then a strange conversation between the two men, Healer and bishop.

  Our people, Bishop Alister had said. Our people did this to him! And then they had worried about whether Tavis would be able to master the bitterness.

  Our people.… Did they mean Deryni? Javan wondered. Had Deryni done this to Tavis?

  O monstrous thought! If Deryni had done this to his friend, maybe the lords regent were right. The Deryni were evil! And those who had done this to Tavis must be punished!

  He sat there brooding for several minutes, imagining in his mind all the possible tortures suitable for Deryni who attacked people in alleys and cut off their hands, then glanced back at his friend.

  Rhys had said something about Tavis not listening to him, because Rhys had done something to Tavis the night his father died. What was it now? Rhys had blocked the specific memory, but he had not been able to block all the emotion. And Rhys had mentioned a scene, and the fact that Tavis resented him. What had happened that night?

  Brow furrowing in concentration, Javan sat up straighter and tried to think back to that night. So much had happened since then that things were a little hazy, but he remembered that Rhys had come to see them after supper and had given them all a physick against colds!—even the squires.

  By all the saints, could that have been more than a physick? He remembered that he had gotten very sleepy very quickly, and his brothers, too. And yet, Rhys had said that his father had ordered it. Why would his father have wanted them to sleep so well?

  Or, had his father even known? Maybe Rhys had lied!

  He shuddered at that thought and tried to find a motive, but he could not. He had not been harmed, had he? If Rhys had intended to poison them, it had not worked.

  He scratched his head and rubbed his eyes and tried to go over it again. He was getting confused. Somehow, Rhys was apparently involved in some strange goings-on, but he didn’t seem to have hurt anyone. Yet Tavis didn’t trust him anymore, and Rhys knew it, and Rhys had alluded to something he had done to Tavis, the night his father had died. And Javan’s memory of that night wasn’t very clear, either.

  Then there was that final comment, just before Rhys and Bishop Alister had left the room—what was it, about shields? And he had said something about Javan’s father understanding more than they thought.

  What were shields? And what had his father known that Rhys and Alister hadn’t expected?

  He shook his head at that, then glanced at Tavis and slid off the chair to his feet. The Healer seemed to be resting peacefully enough, pale but relaxed, but Javan wondered whether it was safe to let him sleep on, with Rhys saying those kinds of things. Maybe Tavis should be told. If Rhys was trying to hurt Tavis, was it right to let him continue doing whatever it was he was doing, especially with Tavis injured and helpless?

  He moved closer to the bed and stared at Tavis’s face, finally reaching out cautiously to touch the Healer’s hand. When Tavis did not move, Javan pulled his chair closer, then settled down in it and took Tavis’s hand again. For a long time he stared at the sleeping man, holding the hand and trying, the way he had seen Tavis do so often for him, to will strength into his friend. After a while, he started to doze, and finally came back with a start to realize that Tavis was looking at him.

  “Tavis?” he whispered.

  The hand squeezed his weakly, and the swollen lips parted in a dazed smile.

  “My prince,” Tavis breathed. “How did you get here?”

  “They think I’m asleep,” Javan replied confidentially, scooting forward in his chair and leaning closer to the Healer’s head. “They said you’d sleep ’til morning, too. Why didn’t you?”

  For a moment, Tavis’s eyes unfocused as he apparently searched for an answer to that question, but then he glanced at their two joined hands, back at the boy’s face.

  “Didn’t you call me, my prince? I—remember, I was far, far away—” His glance flicked away from Javan’s momentarily. “—And I thought you were lost, but then I thought I heard you call my name, and I knew I must come back.”

  Awed, Javan returned the Healer’s gaze, hardly daring to believe what he seemed to be suggesting.

  “You—heard me call?”

  “Aye.”

  “But I—I only called you with my mind,” he whispered. “I tried to give you strength, the way you do for me. It was a childish dream—I thought.…”

  “A—childish dream,” Tavis repeated haltingly.

  Without thinking, he started to reach out to Javan with his left hand, only to be reminded by the tug of binding cloths that the arm was caught in place—and why. In numb fascination, his eyes were drawn to the blanket shrouding his arm and the chairback which supported it. Almost without will of his own, he started to pull his hand free of Javan’s to draw the blanket away.

  “No,” Javan whispered, holding his hand even tighter. “Don’t look. I have to ask you something. It’s important.”

  “More important than what has happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Javan’s gaze flicked down to their joined hands, then b
ack to the Healer’s pain-taut face. “Tavis, what did Lord Rhys do to you the night my father died?”

  Dazedly, Tavis stared at the boy. Slowly his lips parted, his hand tightening convulsively on Javan’s.

  “What—makes you think Rhys did anything to me, Javan?”

  “He said he did,” Javan whispered. “He thought I was asleep, but I was only pretending. He said he—‘blocked the specific memory,’ but he wasn’t able to block something else—the emotion, I think it was. He says that you resent him because of it, but you don’t remember why.”

  Tavis’s brow furrowed as he tried to fathom that. “He blocked my memory? I don’t understand. I remember that he came to your quarters that night and that he gave all three of you a physick—your brother had been sick all week.”

  “That’s right,” Javan agreed. “And my brothers and I fell asleep almost immediately. The next thing I knew, Lord Jebediah was waking us up, and the regents were there to tell us that Father was dead. You were still asleep, and you didn’t want to wake up.”

  “Aye, I do remember that. I don’t recall much of that night, quite frankly, but I’d never given it much thought.” He looked carefully at Javan. “You think that Rhys was responsible?”

  Javan shrugged. “He said he did something. He thought I was asleep. He thought only Bishop Alister was listening. Why would he say that to Bishop Alister, if it weren’t true?”

  “I don’t know,” Tavis said, shaking his head in pained frustration. “I can’t imagine what he’s talking about—God, I’m too drugged to think clearly!”

  “What’s the matter? Can’t you keep your shields in place?”

  Startled, Tavis stared at Javan again, surprise momentarily driving much of the pain from his expression. “What do you know about shields?”

  “Well, I—Rhys said that I have them, and he can’t figure out why.” The boy swallowed, taken aback by his friend’s reaction. “He said—he said that my father must have understood a good deal more than they gave him credit for—whoever they are. What did he mean? What did my father understand, and what are these shields that Rhys says I have?”