The Quest for Saint Camber (60 page)

“Aye, that's for certain,” he said quietly. “And the most troubling one, beyond their immediate safety, has to do with the
merasha
in Dhugal's flask. Who could have put it there, Duncan, and why? Dhugal has no enemies, does he?”

“None that I know of.”

“None that I know of, either, but—wait a minute. Try this one. Who is the single person whose fortunes took an upward turn when Kelson and Dhugal came up missing?”

Duncan drew in breath cautiously. “
Conall?
”

“Conall,” Morgan agreed, “who has become king now in all but name. He has the full range of Haldane powers, too, Duncan, and he isn't going to want to give them up.”

Duncan whistled low under his breath. “And we gave them to him.”

“Did we?” Morgan replied. “I wonder.” He paused a moment to glance into the fire, then looked back at Duncan.

“What if we
didn't
give them to him? What if he already had them? Suppose Tiercel was right—obviously he
was
right! More than one Haldane
can
hold the Haldane power at a time, since Kelson's still alive. Good God, maybe Tiercel—”

“Maybe Tiercel brought Conall to power,” Duncan interjected grimly, “and then Conall killed him for his trouble. Tiercel would have had access to
merasha
, too. Or—good Lord, you don't suppose the Council had something to do with this, do you?”

Morgan shook his head. “If they did, Arilan knew nothing of it. His grief was genuine when he thought Kelson was dead.”

Duncan snorted. “That mightn't have kept him from countenancing Kelson's death. He still could have been grieving, even while he accepted the necessity for it. If the Council put Tiercel up to working with Conall and found him a more biddable king candidate than Kelson—”

“More biddable.” The word triggered the ghost of an entirely different memory in Morgan, and he closed his eyes to try to capture it. The word had been Arilan's, but in reference to—

“Rothana,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Sweet
Jesu
, by now he's married her. And I'll bet she
did
love Kelson! No wonder I was feeling uneasy when Arilan told us Conall was marrying her. Good Lord, could Conall somehow have done all this for jealousy, for love?”

“Jealousy of Kelson and Dhugal and love of Rothana,” Duncan repeated, horror in his tone. “And Nigel. Alaric,
what about Nigel?
”

“If Conall already had the Haldane power and Nigel found out—about that, about Tiercel, about the
merasha
, you name it—” Morgan said, “Conall very well could have turned on him.”

“On his own father?”

Morgan bowed his head, tight-lipped. “Knowing what you do of Conall's character, do you really think that would have made much difference?” he asked quietly. “A crown was at stake, Duncan, and a queen.”

“Poor queen,” Duncan whispered.

“Aye, poor queen.”

In Rhemuth Castle, in the royal suite formerly belonging to Kelson, now Conall's, the woman Conall had chosen as his future queen sat huddled at the edge of the hearth in a fur-lined robe, black hair tumbled loose on her shoulders and arms hugged around her knees. The cathedral bells had tolled the passing of midnight a short time ago, rousing Rothana from a fitful doze and after futile attempts to go back to sleep, she had fled her marriage bed to take counsel of the fire, leaving Conall snoring underneath the sleeping furs. More furs were mounded before the fireplace, and she snuggled her toes deep into them for warmth.

Ah, me, and I am well and truly Conall's wife now
, she thought, as she gazed resignedly into the flames. The taking of her maidenhead had not been as painful as she had feared it might be, but it was unpleasant enough for one until quite recently vowed to virginity. Conall had tried to be gentle and had told her repeatedly how much he loved her—an avowal honestly reflected in the brief, awkward rapport he allowed her when he first embraced her as husband rather than betrothed—but he was both insistent and impatient as a lover. He had apologized afterward, which was an unexpected kindness, and spent quite a while kissing away her unbidden tears, his hands caressing, until her slight discomfort was transmuted to a sharp, intense crescendo of pleasure that left her weak and trembling, long after he had drifted off to sleep.

Rothana suspected she knew why such ambivalence warred within her, as she prodded listlessly at the nearest log with an iron poker. If it were Kelson sleeping in the canopied bed behind her, she did not think she would feel this way. If it were Kelson in the bed, she would be there at his side even now, content merely to be close beside him. It was not that she disliked Conall or that he had treated her badly—for in faith, he had not—but he simply was the wrong Haldane.

Oh, she would still be Gwynedd's queen when the time came and take up her royal and Deryni duties with willingness and competence, for she had been bred to that, and it had been Kelson's wish; but how she wished that it would be at the side of a different Haldane. She was thinking about that other Haldane, dreaming of what might have been, when a hand on her shoulder brought her sharply out of her reverie.

“Why so startled, darling?” Conall whispered, bending down to do disturbing things to her ear with his tongue.

She shivered as she looked up at him, for he was naked in the firelight, his body smooth and kissed with the gold of the flames and more than ready to take his pleasure of her again.

“My lord, I though you were asleep,” she managed to reply, glancing back at the fire in an effort to still her trembling. “I did not wish to disturb you with my tossing and turning.”

With a low chuckle deep in his throat, Conall dropped to one knee beside her and slid his hand into her hair, tilting her head back so that he could kiss her passionately, his other hand slipping into the front of her robe.

“Then, let us toss and turn together, my love,” he murmured, as he drew back a little from the kiss and bore her to the furs before the fire. “This is our wedding night. The first time was for my pleasure. The second shall be for yours. Lie down with me, Rothana, and let me show you the ways of a king with his queen.”

Silhouetted against the firelight, with his black hair touseled around his face, she could almost believe he was that other king she mourned, and she let herself retreat into that fantasy as he took her again. Her body believed the lie, even if her heart did not, and took even greater pleasure in his ministrations this time, eventually lifting her to an ecstasy that carried her into sated oblivion.

The sexual tension of that bedchamber at Rhemuth found its echo in an underground chamber far north and east of there, too, where Kelson dreamed restlessly in the delirium of long exposure to the vapors of the pool. In the hours just past, his mind and soul had been spent of his passion for the vision of Saint Camber, but now his body, restored to health after so many weeks, fell prey to more primal instincts.

He dreamed of Rothana, the way she had looked in the moonlight that night in the gardens at Rhemuth. In dream-bound memory, embellished by present desire, as some dark-robed cleric blessed their union and then withdrew, he drank her kisses again, once more feeling the stirring she roused in his blood. Only this time, he did not let her pull back from his embrace as he loosed the ties at the front of her gown and buried his face between her breasts. And this time, she did not try to stop him.

He could feel the delicious tightening in his groin as he lay back on a bed of fragrant grass, warm and enticing on a night changed in his dream from early spring to summer. Half in awe, he watched her standing above him, her hair unbound in the moonlight, slowly unlacing the rest of her bodice until her outer gown fell in a pale, silver-azure heap around her feet. A thin shift with moonlight behind silhouetted her body, slender but enticing, little pointed breasts emerging pert and firm above the edge of the garment as she loosed the drawstring at the neck and let it slip from her shoulders, to fall in a softer, lighter mound on the gown.

He sighed as she stepped free of the gowns, for her beauty made him ache with wanting her. Her long hair lifted on the breeze as she knelt astride him, strands of it shrouding his chest and stomach, dark veiling against pale skin, and he could not seem to see clearly as she guided him into warm ecstasy. His pleasure exploded at the top of his head in a cascade of fire and flame that did not subside but grew to ever more excruciating levels of delight as she moved with him, moved with him and carried him even higher. He groaned as she brought him to release, the intensity plummeting him near to fainting.

Then she was leaning forward on his chest to kiss him, tenderly and thoroughly, her dark hair veiling his face, slender fingers pressing warm and gentle against his throat, so that his pleasure was wrapped around in soft, velvet darkness, and he was sinking into oblivious sleep.

When he next became conscious, he was aware, without opening his eyes, that the night had passed. He had pulled more of the furs around him while he slept, and he opened gummy eyelids to see the torches burned almost to stubs in their cressets, the vapors of the pool once more being drawn upward and out through a now-open vent. The hot blood rose in his cheeks as he remembered his dream of Rothana—a dream which, he discovered, had been real enough in his body's response—and he rose stiffly to hands and knees to go to the pool and wash.

But the movement brought the rest of the night's experience back to crystal clarity at once, and he froze as his eyes sought the Saint Camber statue. It was only a statue now, and at first he thought he had dreamed that, too; but then he realized that his wards were still in place, a doorway still yawning open in his circle.

He had not dreamed that part, then. Saint Camber had, indeed, come to him—or at least Kelson had believed it sufficiently to risk much by deliberately opening a gate for the ghostly presence to come through. He could recall every detail of that series of events: the double images separating, as one stepped out of the other and moved toward him, only to be brought up short against the circle; the entity's silent entreaty for admission; his own acquiscence, totally unafraid; and then the spine-tingling, awe-ful dread as the entity suddenly was
in
the circle and reaching out to touch him.

But he could not remember what had happened after that. Something of knowledge had been imparted, he felt sure, but he could not quite grasp it in conscious memory. It had been important, too—something more than a mere approval and acceptance of him, though that certainly had been given.

More thoughtful now, Kelson stood and dispelled his circle, curiously clear-headed for all that had occurred, then went to the pool to drink and wash. He immersed his head to clear it, and water streaming down his back raised gooseflesh as he paused, still kneeling, to glance up at the statue once more, trying again to see eyes or even some expression in the shadow where the face should be.

“I hope that you'll forgive me if I don't yet fully understand,” he said aloud, as if the statue had ears to hear him as well as eyes to see him kneeling there. “I think you told me things last night, and I'm afraid I can't remember. Is that also part of the plan? Will it somehow come to me when I need it, remaining hidden until then?”

When no answer came, Kelson sighed and set his fists on his hips, feeling a little exasperated.

“Very well, then. I can only go on instinct, if you won't give me any more tangible sign. I believe in you, Saint Camber of Culdi, and I think you make a worthy example and source of strength for our people. God knows, they need something to help them survive in this mad, hate-filled world. So I'm going to restore your cult, as I promised.”

He rose at that, standing with his hands relaxed along his sides.

“That's not all I'm going to do, either. Shrines and other places of devotion are important, but I'm also going to rebuild the wasted places of our people and found schools to teach them what we've lost in the last two hundred years—as we find it, of course. A lot of it will have to be rediscovered, but we can do that, especially with your help. The lost Healing gifts are particularly important—and we now have three people who seem to have them. Thank you for Dhugal's discovery, by the way, if you had anything to do with that.”

He sighed and glanced around, suddenly feeling a little silly to be talking to a statue. He did not regret any of the night's experience, but it was time to reap its further fruits. With utter dignity then, even in his nakedness, he bent his knee a final time to the statue of the Deryni saint, bowing his head in homage.

Then he was turning to make his way carefully back along the narrow passageway, fingertips trailing the wall on one side while his other hand guarded against projections from the ceiling, for the passageway was much darker, heading away from the light. The door at the end swung back effortlessly at his touch, and his appearance, as he emerged from the doorway, triggered an awed outpouring of chanted psalms.

The next hour passed in something of a blur for Kelson. They would not let Dhugal come to him at first, though the sheer joy on the young border lord's face was easy enough to read. They wrapped him in a cloak of royal blue this time and put a drink of goat's milk and honey in his hands—ancient custom, they told him, symbolic of revival as he emerged into the light of the new dawn. When he had drunk it to the dregs as required, they enthroned him before the altar in a chair that looked suspiciously like a cross between a bishop's and a king's chair.

It was also Palm Sunday, he learned, as Brother Michael proceeded to celebrate a subtly different Mass of Thanksgiving from that to which Kelson was accustomed. And Kelson's acclamation as king, in the course of the Mass, drew startling parallels to another sacred king who had entered a holy city on a like day, more than a millennium past, to the same ritual cries of, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord.”