Saint Camber (57 page)

But that did not explain the other things that had begun to happen: the increasingly miraculous occurrences ascribed to a saintly Camber's holy intervention. The results being obtained were obviously real—cures and turns of luck and other answers to men's prayers—but Camber knew that he was not responsible. Could it be that faith alone
could
work miracles, even if the agent being credited—in this case, “Saint Camber”—did not exist?

Or did “Saint Camber” exist after all, because he was present in the beliefs of men? Perhaps the cult of Camber had passed beyond even the Deryni sphere of understanding, into that realm of Deity which transcended mortal ken. Why should an omnipotent God
not
work through the name of Camber, if He so chose? Was not one name as good as another? There must be
some
plan to account for what had happened, or Camber could not have managed to succeed thus far.

But suppose he was wrong? Perhaps God was playing with him, building him up only to let him fall from even higher …

He shuddered at that, leaning his elbows on the armrest of the prie-dieu and burying his face in his hands and wondering, not for the first time, whether he had gone too far. He heard a rustling sound behind him, from the doorway of the chapel, and suddenly realized that he was not alone, though he had heard no one approach. Even as he started to turn to see who it was, for he could detect no specific psychic identity behind close-held shields, a voice spoke softly.

“Saint Camber, eh?”

Almost, and Camber reacted physically as well as mentally, before he realized that it was Cinhil who had spoken and that the words were not an accusation. He looked back to see Cinhil leaning against the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest, snow glittering on the shoulders of his dark cloak and powdering his hair. Camber started to get up, but Cinhil shook his head and waved him to stay where he was as he came to kneel beside him. The king blew on his bare hands to warm them as he glanced around the chapel, an ironic smile playing about his lips.

“You surprise me, Alister. I think I actually took you unawares. You didn't even hear me approach, did you?”

“You're learning to shield quite well,” Camber smiled, relaxing. “I'm sorry. I was—preoccupied.”

“So I gathered.”

Cinhil glanced up at the statue towering above them and raised a wistful eyebrow, then looked back at Camber. His manner had become more serious, the gray eyes darker in the few seconds since he had knelt. Camber wondered what had brought him here at this hour, and in the falling snow. He suspected he knew.

“Tell me, do you still doubt him, too?” Cinhil asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

Camber averted his eyes thoughtfully, suspicions confirmed, painfully aware that this was the one area in which he could not be open with the king.

“What does it really matter?” he answered. “His cult exists. No one can deny the positive effects his followers are exerting on Gwynedd. Perhaps that is the true criterion for sainthood, after all.”

Cinhil thought about that for a moment, then nodded slowly. “You may be right. And yet, there's something more to it than that. At times, I—God help me, Alister, I almost think I feel his presence, as if he—still wanted me to do something, only I don't know what it is.” He looked down in embarrassment. “That sounds totally irrational, doesn't it?”

“Not necessarily,” Camber replied, a little amused at the double truth which Cinhil had unwittingly spoken. “But what does your heart say to you? Never mind your reason.”

Cinhil gave a little sigh and shrugged. “I don't know. I've even tried to ask
him
. That night that he—saved you, I—came here to the cathedral and tried to pray beside his bier. I stormed the heavens; I demanded that he tell me what he was doing, what he wanted of me—but he never answered. He still hasn't.”

“If he did, how do you think you would know?” Camber asked softly. He almost held his breath, waiting, for Cinhil's answer would tell him much about how he must proceed in the times ahead.

With another sigh, Cinhil sat back on his heels and gazed up at the statue of the saint in question. He thought in silence for so long that Camber had about decided that he was not going to answer. Then Cinhil shook his head and glanced at Camber.

“I'm not sure I can answer that,” he finally said. “In the simplicity of what I used to believe, when I was only a simple, cloistered priest, spending my days in prayer, I suppose I would have expected—oh, I don't know—perhaps a vision or a dream, such as Guaire experienced. I've tried to let something like that happen—believe me, I have, Alister—but nothing has. Besides, after all that's happened in these past two years, I'm not sure that would suffice any more. I don't know what would.”

“Well, perhaps that
is
too simplistic an expectation.” Camber said after a moment. “I suspect that as we become more sophisticated in our view of the world, we tend to become more demanding too. We want more rational reassurances, when what we
need
is a reawakening of that childlike wonder that we all once had: that awesome ability to see the miracles in every waking moment, to believe what our senses tell us we see, to hear God's voice speaking in His people and their deeds.”

“And through His saints?” Cinhil asked cynically, glancing up at the statue once again.

“Perhaps. Perhaps that's even sufficient for most men. But as we grow and change, perhaps He changes His way of reaching into us, as well. Maybe for you, a Saint Camber isn't necessary. All of the bitterness aside, you have a job to do now, and you're learning to do it well, whether or not any saint continues to be a guiding factor in your life. Your conscience will tell you whether you're doing His will. Perhaps that's another language God speaks, after a time.”

“Is my conscience God, then?” Cinhil grinned. “Blasphemy, Bishop, blasphemy!”

“You know that's not what I mean,” Camber chuckled, getting to his feet. “But come. 'Tis too late and too cold to continue this philosophical discourse tonight. Over breakfast tomorrow, if you insist, but I, for one, am tired of talking about our friend Camber.”

As he gestured toward the statue, Cinhil also stood, and together they made their way to the doorway of the chapel, where Cinhil paused to look back a final time.

“You know,” the king said, as they walked on toward the northern door, where a guard waited with his horse, “I think I've realized something tonight, after all.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I think I've learned that I can let him be. Mind you, I haven't forgotten or forgiven what he did to me. That will take a while, if it ever happens. But I think I
can
cope with what he's become. The saint back there in that chapel is not the man I feared and respected.”

Camber smiled as he held the door for Cinhil to pass through into the snow.

“Then, you've learned a great deal, Sire,” he said softly, tempering his next words for the waiting guard. “Shall I come to you early, then, to celebrate Mass? Afterwards, we can continue our discussion over breakfast—or whenever you would like.”

Cinhil nodded casually enough, but Camber knew that he, too, was seeing in his mind's eye that beloved trunk full of vestments, that he was appreciating Cullen for his recognition of that bond and secret which the two of them shared. Falling snow sputtered in the torch the guard held as Cinhil swung up on his horse, the fire making his eyes glitter in the darkness.

“That would be fine,” he said, raising a hand in salute. “God bless you, Bishop Cullen.”

“And God bless you, Sire,” said Camber of Culdi, as the king moved away in his glowing sphere of torchlight.

(
Camber's story will be concluded in the third volume of the legends of Camber
, Camber the Heretic.)

Turn the page to continue reading from the Legends of Camber of Culdi

C
HAPTER
O
NE

For of the Most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour of the king
.

—Ecclesiasticus 38:2

Rhys Thuryn, perhaps the most highly respected Healer in all the Eleven Kingdoms, paced back and forth in the Earl of Ebor's sleeping chamber and tried to decide what to do next. On the bed beside him, the earl tossed and writhed in unrelieved agony, perspiration drenching his high forehead and dampening the reddish-blond hair and beard, even though the room was chill on this last day of January, in the year 917.

Cinhil himself had sent Rhys to Ebor. When word of the earl's accident reached the king, he had nearly worked himself into a coughing fit in his anxiety, barely able to gasp out the words when Rhys appeared in answer to his summons. Nothing would appease him but that Rhys go to Ebor at once. No other Healer would do. What if the earl were dying?

Despite Cinhil's agitation—and perhaps a little because of it, though another part of him was chilled at the news—Rhys had demurred at first. Even though the king was somewhat improved now that Camber had returned from Grecotha, Rhys still did not like the idea of being several hours away when Cinhil might need him. The king was not going to get well this time. At best, Rhys might be able to ease his discomfort in these last days or weeks. The sickness in Cinhil's lungs was beyond the ability of Rhys or any other Healer to cure. Neither he nor Cinhil harbored any illusions about the eventual outcome of his illness.

But neither did the king harbor any hesitation about the urgency of assistance for his injured earl. Gregory of Ebor, though a full Deryni adept of remarkable ability, had nonetheless won Cinhil's great respect and friendship in this past decade on the throne; he had been appointed Warden of the Western Marches only two years before. Rhys
would
go—and go, he did.

But now that Rhys was here with Gregory, he had to admit that he was uncertain how to proceed. He knew Gregory very well, as Gregory knew him. For the past five years, Gregory had been a member of the powerful and very secret alliance of Deryni known as the Camberian Council, so-called at the insistence of Archbishop Jaffray, also a member, who had felt the name appropriate as a reminder of the ideals the group strove to uphold. Rhys and Evaine were members, as were Joram and Jebediah and Camber himself—though Jaffray and Gregory, of course, did not know that last.

Over the eight years of their existence, the Camberian Council had done much to police the ranks of less responsible Deryni and to keep the peace between the races, Deryni and human; and Evaine's continued research, now supposedly in conjunction with Bishop Alister instead of her father, had unearthed a wealth of hitherto lost knowledge of their ancient Deryni forbears. Grecotha, where Camber now made his home, had been and continued to be a mine of magical information. And Gregory, Earl of Ebor, had been a part of much of it.

Now Gregory lay in a delirium from which he seemed unable or unwilling to escape, neither royal patronage nor Camberian affiliation able to help him quell the unbridled energies which ran amok in his body and sometimes in the room. Even his eldest son and heir, a studious young man not unskilled himself in the channeling of Deryni might, had not been able to break the cycle. The floor before the fireplace was still littered with shards of smashed crockery and glass which none of the servants were bold enough to clean up—mute testimony to the potential danger of a High Deryni lord apparently gone mad.

Pensive, Rhys paused before one of the earl's expensive colored windows which had thus far escaped destruction and laid both palms flat against the sun-warmed glass, wondering idly how the earl had missed them. He and Evaine, his wife and working companion of nearly thirteen years, had tried on arrival to ease Gregory's pain and ascertain the extent of his injuries. The two of them were strong enough psychically that the earl could not breach their shields and do them serious threat in his incoherent condition.

But their patient had thrashed about so violently when touched that they dared not maintain the contact for a proper reading, lest he blindly begin flinging objects once more in his delirium. Nor was his thrashing doing his physical injuries any good.

The injuries to his body were easy enough to assess. A dislocated shoulder he surely had, by the angle of the arm inside the loose blue tunic; and most likely a fractured collarbone, as well, though Rhys could not be certain of that until his patient permitted a more thorough examination.

That left some other explanation to account for Gregory's irrational behavior—perhaps a severe head injury, though neither his son nor his steward could remember him hitting his head at the time of the accident. Still, a Deryni of Gregory's proven ability simply did not lose control for no good reason.

Rhys's amber eyes narrowed as he let them focus through the red and blue glass. With a resigned sigh, he ran one hand through unruly red hair and moved back toward the fireplace and his wife. Evaine sat huddled in her fur-lined travelling cloak, quietly watching her husband and the man they had come to heal.