The Quest for Saint Camber (27 page)

“I don't know. It isn't really our place to bury him. He must have family—or perhaps the Council itself will wish to handle the arrangements. But our only link with the Council is through Arilan. So if you're sure he's theirs, I suppose you'd better have an official relapse, so you can go to Valoret and tell Arilan. I don't suppose there's a Portal there, to make things easier?”

“I've heard vague rumor about one, but I don't know where it is. And even if I did, it wouldn't do me much good if I've never been there.” Duncan sighed. “I'll plan to leave at dawn. You probably should draft a letter to Kelson as well, which I can forward from Valoret. He'll probably have gone on to Caerrorie by the time I get there, but he ought to know.”

Nigel's sigh echoed Duncan's.

“Very well. There's some additional correspondence that I can send as well. I would have sent a courier in a few days, in any case. In the meantime, I suppose the body ought to be coffined. It isn't going to get any prettier, lying here in the damp. How are we going to get him out of here?”

“We can rig a sling with his cloak and carry him down to the yard,” Duncan replied, suiting action to words as Nigel bent gingerly to assist. “We'll put him on the basilica porch while I get some monks to take charge of him. Then no one else need know about this passageway.”

“No one except whomever de Claron may have told,” Nigel muttered. “Can you trust these monks of yours?”

“For what they have to do, yes. I'll put my chaplain over them while I'm gone—Father Shandon. He's discreet and loyal—and I can make sure he doesn't remember anything he oughtn't. I don't like to do that, but sometimes there's no choice. Shall I send for him?”

“Not until we've gotten our friend safely to the bottom,” Nigel said. He grunted as they picked up the cloak-sling between them. “I'll wait with him on the basilica porch until you've done that and gotten the monks. Between us, we ought to be able to dissemble well enough to divert any untoward curiosity. We'll say we found him in one of the cellars.”

By dawn, Tiercel was decently coffined and lying in state in Duncan's study, with Father Shandon set on watch there to pray by the body and ensure against intrusion. And Duncan was galloping through steady rain, already near to wearing out the first of several dozen horses that he would ride in relays to reach Valoret as quickly as possible.

Dawn brought a break in the rain in Valoret, however, and Kelson's cold was much improved as well—so much that by early afternoon, after a brief inspection of the chapel where Saint Camber once had been venerated and where his body had lain before being transported to the ancestral home in Caerrorie for burial, the king had decided to press on toward Dolban, much to the dismay of some of his entourage, for many of them had looked forward to dining again in the archbishop's refectory. Sparse though the Lenten fare was by the standards of the court at Rhemuth, it still was far more than they were likely to be served in the more austere surrounds of Dolban—or at Saint Mark's Abbey, en route to Dolban, where they must surely spend the night in pilgrim's lodgings, because of leaving so late from Valoret, and sup on pilgrim's fare.

But Kelson was adamant that they must be on their way. Having delivered his speech to the bishops, he felt it best to let them conduct their business in peace, without the specter of the king's presence hanging over them and possibly making them balky, where they might otherwise move ahead. Besides that, the weather was clearing to the north and east. If they could make it to Dolban before another storm hit, they could rest there for a few days while he and Dhugal queried the monks about the former patron of their house. For Dolban, though currently the home of an order dedicated to teaching, once had housed the first Camberian religious community, the Servants of Saint Camber. And though the shrine to the former Deryni saint had been destroyed at about the time of the Council of Ramos, Kelson hoped to find some further hints there that would help him understand Camber better.

Consequently, Kelson was long gone from Valoret by the time Duncan arrived there, three days later. With Nigel's concurrence, Duncan had decided to travel anonymously as an ordinary royal courier, using the badge of his office to procure the fresh horses he needed at relay stations along the way. Two of Nigel's Haldane archers rode with him as escort, but even they were unaware who he really was.

Thus it was that Duncan drew rein before All Saints' Cathedral of a Wednesday morning, just after Terce, exhausted and mud-stained, to leave his spent mount in the charge of his escort while he dashed up the steps, praying that the bishops were not already in conclave for the morning. Fortunately, Mass was still in progress, and his royal courier's badge admitted him without question to work his way quietly down a side aisle, there to wait until Mass should end and he could approach Arilan. A bishop named de Torigny was the celebrant.

He longed to go forward for Communion, for it had been several days, but it was clear that this Mass was for the bishops and their attendant clergy only, and he dared not risk being recognized, anonymous though he was in black riding leathers and dark, hooded cloak. He kept all trace of his Deryniness tightly shielded, lest Arilan somehow detect his presence while transported in that peculiar psychic ecstacy and extension of senses that he was sure Arilan, like himself and every other religious Deryni he had met, often experienced at the peak of the Mass. But when Mass had ended, he was waiting with his courier's badge by the south processional door to accost Arilan before he could file past with the other bishops.

“In the King's service, Excellency,” he murmured, thrusting the badge in Arilan's face but letting his shields slip to identify himself, though he kept his face averted from the others. “I have urgent dispatches. May I deliver them in private?”

Duncan! What—

Arilan's surprise and consternation reverberated in Duncan's mind, but the other bishop did not betray even a hint of his reaction outwardly as he shut down again and nodded, leading Duncan wordlessly into the shadow of the night stairs so the other clerics could pass into the sunlit cloister yard beyond.

“So, what ‘dispatches,' courier?” he said coolly, as he turned to face Duncan again. “Am I to take it that a certain bishop has suffered a relapse?”

“He has, so far as anyone in Rhemuth knows,” Duncan said softly. “And I
do
have dispatches to be forwarded to the king. But what I had to tell you in person is that Tiercel de Claron is dead.”

He winced at the intensity of Arilan's recoil.

“That's impossible. Who told you that?”

“I saw the body, Denis,” Duncan whispered. “At least I'm fairly certain it's Tiercel, but you're the only one I know who could verify that. I hope you're not angry that I left Rhemuth without permission, but there was no one else to send, under the circumstances.”

“No, you did right to come,” Arilan breathed. “
Jesu-Maria
, so
that's
why he didn't show at the last Council meeting. How did it happen?”

“An accident, we think.”

“Who is
we?
”

“Nigel and I,” Duncan replied. “I had to tell someone. I found the body in the hidden passageway that connects Dhugal's apartments with the basilica yard. It looks as if he fell down the stairs and broke his neck. He'd been there for a while.”

“How long, do you know?”

Duncan shook his head. “It's hard to say. A week? Two weeks? More?”

“Not as long as that. I saw him the morning after Kelson's knighting. That was Ash Wednesday—what, two weeks ago? And you found the body when?”

“Sunday.”

“But what was Tiercel doing in that passageway?” Arilan went on. “I didn't think he knew about it.”

“Did he know about the Portal in my study?” Duncan asked, looking the other bishop in the eyes.

Arilan went close-shuttered, as if he were considering whether or not to answer, and Duncan wished he dared try to Truth-Read whatever response the bishop made. But he knew Arilan would resist him, and there were still other clerics milling outside the processional door, some of them growing curious about the prolonged exchange between the Bishop of Dhassa and a royal courier. Duncan dared not put them both at risk, just to satisfy his own pique.

“Yes, he knew,” Arilan said carefully. “I informed the Council of its location last spring, after you showed me where it was. I felt they ought to know, in case it was ever necessary for one of our number to reach one of you in an emergency. It would have been far more convenient than the ones in the cathedral sacristy or the library.”

Duncan sighed. He supposed Arilan was telling the truth, but it made little difference just now. Somehow, Tiercel had learned of the passageway and met his death there. Odds were that he had come through the study Portal and entered the secret passage from the basilica yard, bound for some unknown destination in the castle, but equally possible—and a concern that had been bothering Duncan through most of the ride from Rhemuth—was that Tiercel had entered through Dhugal's apartments, after somehow getting past the wards on the library Portal. Duncan was sure his son could have had nothing to do with Tiercel's death, but that possibility would occur to someone else, eventually.

“I'll want to see the body immediately, of course,” Arilan suddenly said, breaking into Duncan's flight of speculation. “And then I'll need to summon the Council. As you may have surmised, there's a Portal here in Valoret. We'll use it. Are you alone?”

“I have two men waiting in the yard,” Duncan murmured, “but they only know me as a courier named John. Shall I dismiss them?”

“No, I'll see to that. Wait in there.” With a nod of his head, Arilan indicated a chapel opening off the south transept. “You shouldn't be disturbed. And if you can think of any good prayers appropriate to the situation, this is the time to say them. I have to manufacture a good excuse to explain my absence for the next few hours.”

Duncan obeyed without demur, kneeling unobtrusively at the altar rail in a far corner of the little chapel and keeping his face well in the shadow of his hood, but his mind was racing too busily for him to pray. A fatigue-banishing spell was in order, too—for the third time in as many days, though he could not keep this up indefinitely. But the jump back to the Portal in his study was a long one. He had gone farther before, but never as physically exhausted as he was now. He wondered where the Portal was at this end.

And poor Father Shandon, Duncan thought, when he had run through the spell twice to reinforce it, and recentered his remaining energy as best he could. Without doubt, the loyal priest would be dutifully reciting prayers for the dead man in his care; but Duncan's precipitous arrival with Arilan would necessitate yet another tampering with the poor fellow's memory.

Duncan dozed a little in the more than half hour it took Arilan to return, though he came to attention immediately when the elder bishop beckoned from the chapel doorway. Arilan had exchanged his episcopal purple for the caped black cloak Duncan had last seen him wear in Rhemuth, and he wore a plain black cassock underneath. They were twin black shadows as they silently moved back through the south transept and right, toward the sacristy. The door was standing open, the room empty, and Arilan closed the door softly behind them, after glancing back the way they had come. No one appeared to have noticed their entry.

“This is a little risky, using this Portal in the daytime,” Arilan said, “but we daren't wait until tonight. I want a look at that body, before all trace of residual memory is gone—if it isn't already.”

“It is,” Duncan said, “unless you're that much better at reading than I am. I did my best to leave a stasis on the body to retard further decay, but I don't know how well it will have held, without tending. The coffin's warded, too, for whatever good that may have done.”

Arilan grimaced. “I suppose that means you've moved the body.”

“Well, we could hardly leave him down there in the damp, for the rats.”

“No, no, I'm not criticizing. You did everything else properly. Of course I'll want to read
you
, after I've had a look at him, to pick up everything I can about the actual death site and the situation of the body, but that can wait a while. Who's apt to be waiting at the other end, now?”

“Only Father Shandon,” Duncan replied, as Arilan indicated a circular design set into the floor tiles.

He did not relish the thought of having to open his mind to Arilan's probe, but he could hardly refuse. At least he did not have to do it now. Palming across his eyes to reinforce the spell he had already worked, he drew a deep breath to collect himself, trying not to let it turn into a yawn.

“Give me a moment before you come through,” Duncan added, “and I'll put him to sleep.”

“It looks like
you
could use the sleep. Are you sure you're up to this? I can take us both through, you know.”

“And Shandon will see you,” Duncan replied. “Besides, it's possible he isn't alone. Don't worry, I'll sleep after you've gone to deal with your precious Council. See you in Rhemuth.”

He flashed Arilan a game smile as he stepped onto the circle, but he did not wait for any further objection. Closing his eyes, he reached his mind into the tangle of power he could already feel throbbing under his feet. The Portal was a potent one and required far less effort than he had anticipated to lock into its pattern. As he reached for the link in the study Portal, he wondered briefly whether active use reinforced Portals.

Then he drew the link closed with his mind and felt the pit of his stomach give a little wrench, and he was in close darkness, in the familiar confines of the Portal in his study.