The Quest for Saint Camber (51 page)

“Do you think any of these are still good?” Kelson asked, as Dhugal began prising at the stopper in the nearest one.

“We'll soon see,” Dhugal replied. “I certainly hope so.”

The stopper popped out, and Dhugal peered inside. After a few seconds' scrutiny, he dipped into the jar, bringing up a handful of musty looking grain.

“Well, we're on the right track—though I don't think I'm quite hungry enough to try munching on moldy grain just yet. I was hoping for some wine. The temperature's probably pretty constant down here, so wine could have aged rather well, if it was properly sealed. We might end up working a little tipsy, but it's nourishing—and our water's gone.”

They did find a jar of wine, after a few more tries. It was sour but drinkable. After a few swallows, Dhugal went back to the blank door and knelt down to lay his hands flat against the wood where a latch ought to be. Kelson watched as his foster brother's eyes closed and his breathing slowed, wishing he were not so helpless. But even thinking seriously about trying to use his own powers made his head hurt.

“It's just a sliding bar across the other side,” Dhugal said, after a minute or two, not opening his eyes. “I think I can move it, but it's awfully heavy. I'm going to need your help.”

“I don't know how much help I can be,” Kelson said, coming to stand beside Dhugal, “but I'll do what I can.”

“Sit down against the door and try to open your mind for a link, so I can draw energy,” Dhugal murmured, slipping his right hand around the back of Kelson's neck as the king complied. “I'll try not to push you too hard.”

Kelson closed his eyes and did his best to relax, but there was little reservoir from which to draw, and the very drawing caused him a great deal of discomfort. Nonetheless, the sound of wood against wood came from the other side of the door after a seemingly endless time of that discomfort; and then the door moved behind him. He snapped out of his trance with a groan and a nearly blinding headache, barely able to make his eyes focus as he turned on hands and knees to look when Dhugal swung the door outward.

Beyond lay another chamber very like the one they were in, with another door in the opposite wall and another tree-trunk coffin set across the floor, the rotting funeral pall festooning it in shreds. Dhugal got slowly to his feet and circled haltingly to the next door, but it, too, was barred from the other side. He made a fist and started to slam it against the wood, then pulled the blow at the last moment and merely set his fist against the door, briefly bowing his forehead against it. He tried to smile as he turned at last to look at Kelson, but the hollow dullness of despair was in his eyes.

“Well, it's clear this place wasn't designed with us in mind,” he said softly. “Who would have thought anyone would be trying to get out, once these doors were closed?”

“Do you think this one's the same as the other?” Kelson asked, as he hauled himself groggily to his feet by the first door's latch.

“Probably,” Dhugal replied. “And there's simply no way to get a physical purchase from the locked side, except the way I just did it. Nor is there any way of knowing how many more of these burial chambers there might be. If these two are as old as they seem, and the caverns have continued in use, there could be dozens—even scores.”

Kelson closed his eyes briefly, swaying on his feet even with the support of the door, then swallowed hard and started toward Dhugal.

“We'd better get busy, then. I'd like to sleep in a bed in the next day or two.
I'm all right
,” he added, as Dhugal caught him under an arm and helped him sit against the second door. “Pull the energy you need to get the job done. I'll keep up with you if I have to crawl to do it.”

Dhugal went back to get their cloaks and the flask, filling the latter from the wine jar they had opened, then returned to kneel beside Kelson again and set his hands against the new door. The latch moved a little more easily this time, since he knew what he was doing, but it still took a lot out of Kelson—and Dhugal still could not do it on his own.

Another burial chamber lay beyond the second door, with another closed door opposite. The two of them half stumbled and half crawled to reach it and rested for nearly an hour before tackling its opening—to yet another doored burial chamber.

And while Kelson and Dhugal continued to make their slow, disheartened way through chamber after chamber—though at least the burials began to look more recent, when they had gone through nearly a dozen—Morgan and Duncan were equally disheartened, if not as hungry. They had left the two MacArdry retainers behind at the campsite by the waterfall, to continue keeping the watch there, and proceeded with only Ciard and Jass as they dowsed the course of the underground river. As the four of them sat by their campfire, sharing a rabbit that Jass had caught and roasted, Morgan wondered yet again whether they were wasting their time, prolonging the agony of finally having to admit that Kelson and Dhugal were dead.

“D'ye really think there's any hope?” Ciard murmured, setting his bewhiskered chin on one upraised knee as he tossed the leavings of his portion of rabbit into the fire.

Morgan looked up sharply, almost wondering whether the old gillie had picked up his thought. One day, he really must try to find out more about the second sight that Ciard blamed for many of his otherwise unexplainable perceptions.

“Why, are you ready to give up, Ciard?” he replied softly, as Duncan looked up at him in surprise.

Ciard shook his head and sighed, clasping his arms around his knees for the comfort that Morgan's words—or any other's—could not give.

“Nah, I'm wit' ye until th' end, sair. It's just that I dinnae know that we're goin' t' like th' end, when we find it. The thought o' layin' th' puir lad in th' ground, at his tender years—sure an' ye cannae think they're still alive, after this long.”

“I can't give up until there's absolutely no hope!” Morgan said.

The fire flared up briefly as he tossed the dregs of his cup into it, and he lurched to his feet to stagger away to the edge of the circle of firelight. After a few seconds, Duncan came to join him.

“Are you all right?”

“No, I'm
not
all right; and I won't
be
all right until we know,” Morgan snapped, though he instantly regretted his sharp tone. “I'm sorry, Duncan,” he went on. “I guess it's finally beginning to get to me—knowing that we've done everything we can and it hasn't helped, that we're going to have to admit, eventually, that they
are
dead.”

“Well, we haven't reached that point yet!” Duncan said fiercely. “And we aren't
going
to reach that point, so long as we have faith that we're going to find them.”

“Faith.” Morgan quirked a bitter smile in Duncan's direction. “That's easy enough for you to say. My faith's a little shaky right now, though, Duncan. How could God do this to us? How could He let this happen?”

“Maybe He's testing us.”

“Well, if He is, then I'm failing.”

“No you aren't,” Duncan said, “because I'm not going to let you. Come on, let's put out another Call to Kelson and Dhugal. If they're alive, they could really need us.”

Back at the campfire, directed by the two Deryni, Ciard and Jass settled into their passive link with ease, for the four of them had performed this ritual morning and night, every day since leaving the waterfall campsite. When it was done, with no more success than any of the times before, the two humans were allowed to slip gently and naturally into normal sleep. Morgan and Duncan, still lightly in rapport, lay awake for nearly an hour afterwards, refreshing themselves with memories of the two they sought.

The two, meanwhile, continued to work their way through tomb after tomb. Each burial was more recent than the one before, but each had yet another closed door barring their way out. They tried not to disturb anything more than was necessary, for they truly meant no disrespect to the dead they must disturb in their attempt to survive.

They did arm themselves at the first opportunity, however, lest their eventual emergence should produce hostility before explanations could be given—for their very presence in the tombs likely would be viewed as sacrilege and a desecration of sacred ground. They also continued to forage for edibles in each new tomb—for Kelson's strength, in particular, was being drained without renewal by the constant demands Dhugal must make on him for help in opening the doors. The sour wine gave them some sustenance, but it also kept them both gently buzzed until Dhugal discovered how to use his powers to counteract the effect, at least in himself. For Kelson, it seemed a greater kindness to let him constantly stay a little drunk, to dull the fuzzy edge of headache that had been his constant companion since regaining consciousness. Dhugal would have given a great deal to find grain that was not insect-infested or moldy, or a crust of bread not reduced to the consistency of the mortar they had chipped from the first wall.

But only the wine remained generally palatable. Dhugal's one cautious attempt to chew on a handful of grain resulted in horrible stomach and bowel cramping, and then a frightening bout with hallucinations that rendered him unable to continue for what could have been as much as a day. During the worst throes of the reaction, it even disrupted his powers to the point that he could not maintain handfire, so that a desperate Kelson was driven to breaking up some of the wooden coffers for torches—for he must have light to tend Dhugal.

The episode taught them a valuable lesson, not only about the dangers of contaminated food, but about the amount of energy Dhugal had been using to maintain the handfire on a constant basis, other than while they slept. Consequently, they continued to use torches in preference to handfire, though they tried not to destroy anything other than the boxes. Indeed, the first time one of them had needed to relieve himself, they had pondered for some time to choose the least offensive place—for they truly did not wish to profane sacred ground. And Dhugal still grimaced every time he had to empty out another coffer and break it up for more torches. Some of the boxes were beautifully made.

Thus, it was by torchlight that they swung back the door to enter the most recent tomb of their discovery—and it was very recent, indeed. Evergreen boughs scattered on the floor around the bier were barely gone brown; and the tomb's occupant obviously had not been dead more than a week or two.

Nor had he been much older than themselves at the time of his death—certainly no more than twenty-five or thirty. He lay, not in a log coffin like all but the most recent of his predecessors, but directly on a pall draping the bier of piled stones, all but his face muffled in a cloak and under-robe of fine, dark grey wool, rather than in armor. The familiar, wide-meshed net of scarlet shrouded him from head to toe, but this one seemed to be woven of rough-spun wool rather than silk; and the drilled stones at the junctures were only stone, not
shiral
. Even Kelson, his normal perceptions blurred by wine and with his powers still reduced to only a fraction of their former levels, could tell that no power was stored in the net.

Of more immediate interest, however, were the funerary tributes left on a small table near the head of the bier; flat rounds of bread, very stale but not yet even gone moldy, with sealed flasks that proved to contain ale which, far from being merely adequate, tasted almost like ambrosia to the two famished youths. Their arrangement reminded Kelson of the bread and wine presented at the Offertory during Mass, and he pointed this out after he and Dhugal had wolfed down their first few, hurried bites—for with the discovery of palatable food, the first to pass their lips in many, many days, the urgency to see what lay beyond the ubiquitous next door had temporarily disappeared.

“Well, whatever the reason they left it,” Dhugal said, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve after taking a long pull at one of the flasks, “I'm glad they did. They may just have saved our lives in the bargain.”

“
I'll
say,” Kelson mumbled around a mouthful of bread, as Dhugal leaned closer over the still, waxen face of the corpse. “What do you think killed this chap? He's awfully young. And more important, how long do you think he's been here?”

Dhugal shook his head. “I dunno. A week? Two, at the outside. Look at those evergreen boughs,” he added, poking at some of the debris beside the bier with his toe. “They're hardly brown at all, so they can't have been here long.”

“No, I suppose not.”

When they had eaten and drunk their fill, replenishing their flask with ale and wrapping up the last two bread roundels in a corner of Dhugal's cloak hitched under his belt, they approached the door. Kelson was still a little unsteady on his feet, but he was feeling stronger than he had since regaining consciousness and he held the torch as Dhugal laid his hands on the door opposite where the bar must be, his free hand resting lightly on the back of Dhugal's neck to facilitate the link through which the other must draw.

He tolerated the drain far better than he had in the past, too, and was still standing when the door gave under Dhugal's hands and swung gently outwards. This time, the room beyond was empty, though the door in the opposite wall was just as tightly closed as any of the others. Kelson crouched down against it as Dhugal again laid his hands on the door, for though another drain of energy so quickly, without time for even partial recovery, would be hard on both of them, they knew this might spell an end to it all. Beyond this last door could lie freedom.

Kelson breathed a deep sigh of relief when it was done, breathing in again, deeply, of fresh, cool air tinged with the scent of pine and wood-smoke, as the door swung slowly outward and he drew himself shakily to his feet by an edge of Dhugal's cloak. More corridor lay beyond, with live torches stuck into the walls on either side—certain sign that they had regained civilization—and the air was no longer the still, moist atmosphere of the tomb cavern, though they could not yet see the outside.