Camber the Heretic (37 page)

He stared at the ceiling for several seconds, until Javan could stand the suspense no longer and jostled the hand he still held.

“Tavis, what if they
do
help him? Not just to—to help you adjust, but to—do more of whatever it was Rhys did to you that other time.”

After a short silence, Tavis turned his gaze back on Javan.

“Well, we're just going to have to be progressed to the point that I don't need any more Healers, then, aren't we?” he said. “Would you like to help me?”

“Can I really, even though I have shields?”

“
Especially
because you have shields, my prince,” Tavis breathed. “I warn you, it's going to make you very tired—but what I need to do is draw energy from you. I won't harm you. I would never do that.”

“I trust you, Tavis,” the boy whispered. “I don't care that you're Deryni. You're—different.”

“Oh, I do hope so, my prince,” he murmured. “I do hope so.”

Lifting his head, he glanced around the room, then lay back and released the boy's hand.

“Bring your chair closer, so you can be comfortable.”

The boy obeyed, moving his chair right up against the side of the bed. He brought another blanket and laid it in the chair, padding the edges, then pulled the other blanket around himself against the chill of the room.

“That's right,” Tavis murmured, guiding the boy to curl up with his head resting on the edge of the bed. “Scoot down just a little farther, so I can touch your head. Now give me your hand and make yourself comfortable. Make sure you won't be cramped.”

Squirming a little, Javan did as he was bidden, shifting a fold of blanket under his shoulders where chair met edge of bed, then gazing up trustingly at what he could see of Tavis's head. He took the Healer's hand and cradled it against his cheek, finding a comfortable position at last, curled up on his side.

“That's fine,” Tavis whispered, his voice now hardly a whisper. “Now open to me as if we were Healing again. I'm going to try to draw energy from you the same way you usually do from me. You may feel a faint sensation of pressure inside your head, as if something were being pulled slowly through your body and out through your head, but it's nothing to be afraid of, and I won't even start until you're nearly asleep. That's right. Let go and let me guide us both. Sleep now. You're safe.”

And as Tavis's voice died away, Javan felt the familiar lethargy of the Healer's touch steal across his limbs; he sensed himself slipping into that twilight state he had felt so many times before, and he dreamed. He felt the warm, satisfying shift of energy stirring within him, prickling at the base of his skull, not at all unpleasant.

And as he drifted, other sensations sifted along the edges of his consciousness—of standing in a darkly shadowed room, surrounded by people who should have been familiar but somehow were not. His father was there, and held a strangely glowing cup to his lips. And then, there was a kaleidoscopic display of lights and sounds and spinning sensations—not frightening, but merely strange.

Then he was sinking deeper into sleep.

He felt Tavis's hand, reassuring against his cheek, and held onto it as if it were an anchor. But then he was aware of nothing, nothing at all, and would remember nothing when he woke.

Rhys and Camber found them that way half an hour later, but by then neither man could read any pattern other than normal sleep. Curious, but not at all alarmed, Camber gathered up the sleeping prince and carried him into his own room next door, while Rhys saw to their patient.

But Tavis was resting peacefully, the deep sleep of Healing, and so Rhys did not disturb him further, but contented himself with settling into the chair Javan had just vacated. Camber looked in on him briefly, after he had put Javan to bed, but Rhys told him there was nothing more they could do for several hours, and to get some sleep, himself. Camber obliged, taking Joram and Evaine back to his quarters in the archbishop's palace, where temporary housing was found for Joram's sister in the section reserved for the nuns on the lower level. All of them slept the sleep of physical and emotional exhaustion until dawn.

Tavis woke at first light, his slight stirring rousing Rhys with a start. Rhys was heartened to see that his patient's color was much improved with a night's sleep—in fact, Tavis looked considerably better than Rhys felt—but as he laid cool fingertips gently along his patient's wrist, he felt rigid shields surge into place across the other's mind. At Rhys's murmured, “Good morning,” Tavis allowed his body to be read—but that was all. His attitude was almost hostile. Rhys wondered at the response, but he was careful not to react outwardly. The last thing Tavis needed was to have his grief and depression fed.

“Well, sleep did its usual wonders,” Rhys said, when he had finished his initial evaluation. “You're past the danger of shock. How do you feel?”

Slowly Tavis turned his head to gaze at Rhys, his pinched face unreadable. “How should I feel? I am a Healer who has lost a hand.”

His voice was neutral, flat, and Rhys was a little concerned at the apparent lack of emotion as he went around to the other side of the bed.

“You
should
feel a loss,” Rhys observed. “You still have your life, however, and you are still Deryni, and a Healer. There will doubtless be many things you still can do.”

“Will there? Perhaps you're right.”

Rhys had no answer for that. Silently he removed the blanket which shrouded Tavis's wounded limb and began untying the strips which bound it to the chairback. Tavis went white at the sight of the bandaged stump—obviously too small to contain even part of a hand—and turned his face away, trembling.

Moving quickly, Rhys unwrapped the wrist, intending only to change the dressing and, perhaps, work a bit more Healing, but he froze as the last layers of bandage came away. Hardly any blood stained the linen strips, and what there was, was dried. The stump, which still should have been raw and barely beginning to Heal from the inside, was smooth and healthy looking, faint scars visible where the skin had been joined to cover bone and tissue, but essentially Healed.

Containing his surprise, and working quickly to confirm what appeared to be, he bathed the stump gently with warm water which a servant brought, sluicing away the last of the dried blood and scabbing in amazement. The skin was fine and smooth, like the inside of the forearm. He could hardly believe that the injury had occurred only the day before, even with the miracle of Healer's aid. Thoughtfully, he wrapped a clean bandage lightly around it.

“Tavis, do you know anything about this?” he asked softly.

Tavis did not move his head.

“Anything about what?”

“About your arm,” Rhys returned, gripping the forearm a little more tightly as he tried to catch the younger man's attention. “It's Healed, Tavis. I would have expected it to take days or even weeks, even with a Healer's full attention, to get to this stage. You could be fitted for a hook today.”

Tavis turned his face even farther away.

“I will wear no hook,” he breathed.

“No?” Rhys shrugged. “Well, suit yourself. You don't have to make any decisions about that yet. I want to know what happened, though. Did another Healer come in here last night, perhaps? Or—” A quick mental image of Tavis and Javan came and went. “God help you, Tavis, you didn't try anything with Javan, did you?”

Slowly Tavis turned his face back to Rhys, though he pointedly avoided looking at the arm Rhys held.

“What do you mean, did I try anything with Javan? What could I have tried? Javan is human. Besides, you know I would never do anything to harm him.”

“I—don't know,” Rhys said thoughtfully. “But I—we—found him asleep beside your bed early this morning, and you had your hand cradled against his cheek. Did he—say anything to you?”

“I was unconscious,” Tavis whispered, staring at the ceiling now. “He must have thought to comfort me.”

“I see.” Rhys thought about that for a moment, somehow bothered by Tavis, but not in any way he could put his finger on, then slipped the Healer's arm into a loose restraining loop to keep it elevated.

“Well, he seems to have been good for you, whatever he did. How about something to eat?”

When Tavis did not reply, Rhys shrugged and headed for the door.

“Well, you have to eat. I'll be back in a little while. In the meantime, I suppose you could use a little time to yourself. That's going to take some getting used to.”

And how would you know?
Tavis retorted bitterly, but only in his mind, as the door closed behind the other Healer.

He lay there glaring at the door for several minutes before giving it up as too tiring. In frustration, he rolled his head from side to side on the pillow, then stopped as his eye caught what he had been trying to avoid ever since he woke. There at his left, his arm was propped against the back of the chair, only a very light bandage covering the place where once a hand had been. A single loop of cloth held his upraised forearm against the chair back.

Slowly he reached his right hand across his body and touched his forearm where the cloth loop crossed, made his eyes slip up to the bandage so close above. He swallowed to keep from choking, forcing himself to continue looking at it.

Alone now, with no false pride to make him brave and no pain to goad him into constructive action, the true extent of his loss was starting to come through as he had not permitted the night before. In his then state of shock, he had been able to tell himself that it was all a bad dream, that when he woke, the hand would be whole.

Except that this dream would go on. There would be no waking in the future as a whole man again. The hand was gone, and he was not. He was going to have to live a long time with that realization.

A moment more he procrastinated, biting back angry tears. Then his hand was fumbling at the cloth which supported his forearm, releasing the knot, easing his truncated arm down across his chest.

He rested there awhile, cradling his arm, his eyes closed, calming his mind against the horror which he must eventually face. Slowly he explored the sensations of his injury, hesitantly testing, probing. A muscle twitched in his arm, and he thought he felt a finger move—but he knew that could not be. Only phantom fingers would ever serve that hand again.

At that thought, his muscles twitched again and it was as if his phantom hand had made a fist. The feeling was so real that he opened his eyes, his gaze drawn irresistibly to the bandaged stump.

That brought him up short. He stared at the bandage in horrible fascination for several seconds, forcing himself to study every fold of the clean linen. Then he slid his hand up to the bandage and, in one quick motion, swept it away. A chill, awful nausea assailed him, but he forced himself to face what he now was, forced himself clinically to inspect every detail.

It did not take long. After a long moment of control, he abandoned all pretense of the cool, professionally-detached Healer and let himself weep, curling over onto his right side and cradling his phantom hand against his chest and sobbing for all that he had lost.

When Rhys returned with his breakfast a little later, he found Tavis asleep in that position and surmised what had happened; mercifully, he left the food within reach on the right side of the bed and went out again. He would let Tavis rest until Emrys and Queron arrived later on. For now, sleep was surely the best possible medicine for Tavis O'Neill.

Sleep did seem to work its expected wonders, for when Rhys next looked in on Tavis, just before midday, he found that the Healer had eaten most of what was on his tray and was talking casually with the servant who had come to take away the remains. When he came back again, a little later, with Camber and the two Gabrilite Healers, they found him sitting up in bed. Other than the fact that Tavis kept his left arm under the blanket when they entered, he appeared to be rested and hale. Even his color was good, which Rhys found extremely unusual, considering the amount of blood he estimated Tavis must have lost.

“You're right, he does look well,” Emrys said, as Rhys followed Camber and the two Healers into the room. “How are you, Tavis, my son? I was so sorry to hear of your unfortunate loss. This is Dom Queron Kinevan. I don't believe you've met.”

Tavis eyed the white-robed Emrys evenly, but with little warmth, and gave Queron a neutral nod.

“Good afternoon, Dom Emrys, Your Grace. Dom Queron, I've heard much about you. Rhys, I'm surprised that you would bother these eminent lords with my small plight.”

“Small plight?” Emrys said. “That isn't the way I heard it.” He and Queron moved in on either side of the bed. “May we see your injury? We're told that you have effected a somewhat miraculous cure.”

Tavis stiffened, his arm jerking slightly under the bedclothes, but he did not bring it out; merely laid his good hand protectively over the outline of his forearm beneath the blanket.

“I'm not certain it was a miraculous cure,” he said guardedly. “Two Healers worked on me last night, as you know; and I am still a Healer myself, regardless of my—loss. A Healer's body, properly trained, should be able to Heal itself much faster than a Healer can Heal another's body. Dom Emrys, you yourself taught me that at Saint Neot's. Do you now question me, because I have been a good pupil?”

Dom Emrys, frail and almost transparent in his white robes, pale albino eyes ghostlike in his ageless face, laid a hand gently on Tavis's right shoulder, ignoring the quick flinch, tightly controlled.

“Nay, son, you have always been a good pupil. But sometimes the pupil surpasses the master, and that is what we would like to know. Even if there is nothing further we may do for you, you may, perhaps, help us by letting us see how we have taught you so successfully.”

“We understand your defensiveness,” Queron interjected quickly, from the other side of the bed, “but your loss must be faced, eventually. Is it not better to begin facing it among those who will understand what it has cost you? And you
can
learn to compensate, you know.”