Camber of Culdi (32 page)

Camber got to his feet with a sigh and nodded, glancing at the wide-eyed Cinhil with an almost fatherly mien, despite the fact that there was only a dozen or so years' difference in their ages.

“Your bride has arrived, Your Highness. I'll send her in to meet you in a little while.”

“My—my bride?” Cinhil croaked, his face gray against his velvet robe.

“The Lady Megan de Cameron, my ward,” Camber said, studying Cinhil's reaction hopefully. “She's human like yourself—a lovely, well-bred girl. She'll make you a worthy queen and wife.”

“I—My lord, I
cannot!”

“Your Highness, you
will,”
Camber replied, his eyes flint-hard on Cinhil's face. “Evaine, will you join Rhys and me? Megan is far from home, and will appreciate another woman's reassurance.” He bowed stiffly. “By your leave, Your Highness,” he said, and turned and followed Cullen out the door.

When they had gone, a shaken Cinhil turned back to the circle of chairs by the fire, startled to find Joram still sitting there, unmoving, studying him with an infuriating detachment.

“You're still here,” Cinhil said—then immediately felt foolish because that fact, at least, was abundantly clear.

To cover his discomfiture, he wandered to the fireplace and poked the toe of his slipper dangerously close to a smoldering coal, then ran a trembling fingertip along the wing of an ivory statue of the Archangel Michael on the mantel.

“Father Joram, is there nothing I can say which will soften your heart?” he finally asked in a small voice.

“Yours is the heart which must be softened, Your Highness,” Joram replied. “Weighed in the greater balance, one man's personal wishes have little substance. You have the wherewithal to stop the slayings, the persecutions, to restore order and peace to the people your forefathers ruled and loved. I should think the choice an easy one. How can you, who claim to know the love of God, turn your heart from His people, your people, while Imre ravishes the land and brutalizes them?”

“They're not my people,” Cinhil whispered. “Not in that sense.”

“Ah, but they are,” Joram replied, pointing a finger at him emphatically. “
I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.”

“No!”

“I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Cinhil cast a desperate, frantic look at the door through which Camber and Rhys and Evaine had disappeared. “I beseech you, Father Joram, spare me this. I cannot do it. You know the vows I took. You, of all people—”

“Priest or prince, sheep or people, you can stop Imre, Your Highness.”

“I pray you, do not do this!”

“Think on it, Your Highness,” Joram said, rising and moving toward the door. “Where, if anywhere, is the break between your duty to God and your obligations to His people,
your
people? Is there even a difference?”

“I vowed vows,” Cinhil moaned.

Joram paused in the doorway to gaze compassionately at his fellow priest.

“Feed my sheep,” he whispered—then slipped out and closed the door behind him.

Cinhil spent the next hour on his knees, storming the heavens relentlessly for the answer he craved so desperately, and which he feared, more and more, would not come. At length, when his supplications had left him no more comforted than when he had begun, he lurched to his feet and stumbled to a small table near the fireplace. Hands shaking, he poured a cup of wine and gulped it down.

They would send her to him soon. Only, he had no idea what he was supposed to do or say. He supposed that he was to make sure he did not find her too ugly, or stupid, or whatever it was he was supposed to use as a gauge for measuring what his future—
wife!
—the word shook him—should or should not be.

But he didn't want to see her. It was unthinkable enough that he must face her in the chapel tonight, before God and all his Deryni captors. They would force him to go through with it. His and Camber's parting words had been almost a threat.

“My lord, I cannot!”

“Your Highness, you will!”

And, he realized sickly, he would. He would have to. It was clear by now that they were determined to have their way with him, that they would settle for nothing less than a crown on his head, a wife at his side, the Deryni Imre toppled from his throne.

He trembled anew at that thought, his mind going back immediately to the very real threat of their power. They were Deryni. God knew, they would probably
make
him obey, if he continued to resist them. Even the usually patient Camber had become almost menacing today.

The idea that he did not really have control over the coming event was comforting for a moment, for it relieved him of the responsibility for making the decision himself—at least for a time. But then he was forced to recognize another, darker part of himself which he had thought buried for many, many years, and somehow that frightened him even more.

Was he afraid of the wrath of Heaven if he broke his monastic vows and left the priesthood? Or was he afraid that it would be all too easy to break them, that he was actually beginning to look forward to this new life they had been waving so tantalizingly before him for these past weeks? The remark Camber had made about him beginning to sound like a prince had hit agonizingly close to home. He
had
sounded like a prince—or what he had always imagined a prince would sound like—and, at the same time, it had been the most natural thing in the world. It terrified him in a way he had never been frightened before in his life.

And to marry! He poured another cup of wine—fortunately, the cup was small—and drained it. To take a wife he had never seen, to—he forced himself to think in the scriptural term—to “know” her, to beget heirs—

He found his hands shaking, and he could not seem to make them stop. What was he doing? This was not the sort of thing a man should have to worry about—especially not a man of forty-three who had never known a woman. Why, marriage was supposed to be a young man's game. It was madness. They were insane!

He heard a fumbling at the doorlatch, and he turned away and froze. There was a pause, and then the sound of soft footsteps entering the room. He closed his eyes. He did not want to see her. He could not bring himself to turn.

“Your Highness …?”

The voice was timid, shy, and sounded very young. Cinhil's eyes flew open and his shoulders tensed, but he found himself rooted to the spot, unable to move. They had sent him a child, a mere girl! He could not marry a child!

“I—I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but they told me I should come to you. I'm Megan de Cameron. I'm to be your wife.”

Cinhil bowed his head, leaning heavily against the table in front of him. The irony of her position, coupled with his own, had suddenly struck him, and he had an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh.

“Is that what they told you, child? How old are you?”

“Fif—fifteen, Highness.” She paused. “I beg Your Highness's pardon, but—have I misunderstood my guardian's intent? Are we not to be married this night?”

Cinhil smiled, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips despite his best efforts. “Aye, little lass. Though 'tis dynastic considerations and none other which ordain this marriage. The lost King of Gwynedd must have a wife. You're to be the royal broodmare, don't you see?”

“No, Your Highness, I'm to be your Queen,” the young voice replied, strangely mature-sounding now, in the hollow silence his laughter had left.

Cinhil's face froze and he looked down at his hands, not seeing them at all. He wondered what had possessed him to say so cruel a thing, realizing he had hurt her.

“If you marry me, you will be the mother either of kings or of traitors, if we all live that long, child. Are you truly willing to risk the latter, with a man who cannot love you as a husband should, who can never give you ought but woe?”

“Who cannot
love
, Your Highness?” the voice asked softly.

“I am a priest, child. Did they not tell you?”

Another long silence followed, and then: “They told me that you are the last Haldane, Your Highness; that they would make you king.” The voice was low, almost husky with tears. “I said I would risk all, even unto my life, to bring back the Haldane line and end Imre's bloody rule; and so I shall.” A short sob escaped her. “But if, in your heart, there is no room for love, I had liefer die a maid than be the unloved bride of God himself!”

As Cinhil froze in shock at the blasphemy of her words, he heard her footsteps running toward the door, whirled just in time to see a mane of wheaten hair disappearing from sight, a delicate hand pulling the door behind her, a slender ankle flashing beneath voluminous turquoise skirts. Then the door was reverberating from the force with which she slammed it, and he was standing there all alone, a hand unwittingly outstretched in the direction she had gone, his heart wrenched by her words.

He started to follow her, to apologize, to try to explain that he was not a king at all, that he was but a simple monk, that he had never wanted to be king or even prince—but then the old pathways took over and it was too late. Like an old man, he sank slowly to a bench beside the table, letting his hand fall loosely to his side.

And then he put his head down upon the table and wept long, bitter tears for his lost youth, his lost faith, for himself, for the girl—whose name he could not even recall—and for all of them who would be lost. They would find him there, unmoved, when they came a few hours later to prepare him for his wedding.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

The Lord said to my lord, “You are my son. This day I have begotten you!”

—Psalms 2:7

It was on the Vigil of Christmas, the night of the Saviour's birth, that Archbishop Anscom of Trevas left his Evensong devotions in the Lady Chapel of All Saints' Cathedral in Valoret and made his way back to his apartments, there to watch and pray until it should be time to celebrate the first Mass of Christmas. As was his custom on Christmas Eve, he was preparing to meditate alone upon the successes and failures of the fleeing year. He was not expecting the gray-hooded shadow which stepped from a recess in the corridor just before he reached the refuge of his chambers.

“Will you hear my confession, Father?” asked a strangely familiar voice.

Anscom held his candle a little higher and tried to pierce the gloom and darkness surrounding the man's face. Then he realized that it was more than mere shadow which shrouded the speaker's visage. The man in the cowled gray robe was a Deryni, his head veiled in an arcane haze which obscured his features and also muffled his voice. And yet there was no hint of menace in the voice or the presence, no threat of danger. The mysterious visitor was benign, though still unrecognizable.

More curious and anticipatory than alarmed, Anscom bowed his head in acquiescence and held the door open for the man to enter, then closed it behind them. No words were spoken as Anscom crossed to his oratory and lit another candle, took a purple stole from the
prie-dieu
there, touched it to his lips, and draped it around his neck. But when he turned to face the man again, the visitor reached to his hood and pushed it back to reveal a head of gilded silver hair, a countenance long familiar and loved.

“Camber!” the archbishop breathed, then embraced the other man warmly.

“Praise God, I wondered where you'd been,” Anscom whispered, as the two parted and he held his friend at arm's length to look at him. “When I learned that ‘Brother Kyriell'—But, what are you doing here? Surely you know that the king has out a warrant for your arrest.”

“Would you betray me?” Camber said with a smile which clearly indicated the preposterousness of the question.

Anscom fingered the end of his stole with a wry smile. “Even if I wanted to, you bound me by this. I am under the seal of the confessional. Whatever you tell me, I am bound to keep silence.”

“I require more than your silence, Anscom,” Camber said. “I require your help.”

“You know you have but to ask,” Anscom replied. “Tell me what you need, and if I can help you, I will.”

“I am wanted for treason,” Camber said tentatively.

“Are you a traitor?”

“By Imre's reckoning, I am. The facts speak a little differently. If you will agree to come with me now, I would rather show you what I'm talking about.”

“Come with you? Where?”

Camber glanced at the floor. “I may not tell you that. I
can
tell you that we will reach it through your own Transfer Portal, that you will be perfectly safe, that I will not hold you to your promise to help if you decide otherwise once you know the facts.” He looked up at his friend. “But you are going to have to trust me with the location. I may not reveal that, even to you, even under the seal of the confessional.”

“Are the others there, too?”

“Evaine, Joram, Rhys, a few others—yes.”

“Rhys? But he—”

“I would prefer not to discuss it here, if you don't mind. Will you come with me?”

Anscom hesitated for just an instant, torn by his curiosity to question Camber further, then inclined his head. “As you wish. How long will we be gone?”

“Several hours, at least. Can you make arrangements for someone else to cover your duties?”

The archbishop raised an eyebrow at that. “On Christmas Eve? You know that I'm expected to be the celebrant at Midnight Mass.”

“We would be greatly honored if you would perform that office for us, Anscom,” Camber said quietly. “When you see, you'll understand why.”

Anscom studied his friend's face for a long moment, reading the importance there of the request, then gestured for him to step into the oratory and draw the curtain. When Camber had done so, the archbishop moved to the wall and pulled a velvet cord. A few minutes later, a black-cassocked priest knocked and entered. He found the archbishop sitting on his bed, looking quite unwell.