Camber of Culdi (36 page)

His eyes closed and his breathing changed, and he was deep asleep. With a sigh, she reached out and touched his forehead, taking him ever deeper, securing control. Then she rose and glided to the door to admit Camber, and resumed her place beside the sleeping prince. She could feel her father's reassuring presence as she extended her senses and entered Cinhil's mind.

She roamed its recesses for perhaps a quarter-hour, Camber watching through her mind, never touching Cinhil's directly. Finally, she withdrew, shaking her head lightly to clear away the last vestiges of her own trance, for she had been very deep. Cinhil slept on, oblivious to what had happened, oblivious to their presence. Camber smiled and brushed his daughter's forehead lightly with his lips, then quietly withdrew. After a moment, Evaine brought Cinhil back to the easy, gentle trance he had achieved on his own the day before. As before, the stone glowed faintly. She drew a sobering breath to steady herself.

“Cinhil, hear my voice only,” she said, “and listen to what I say. Though you are in this state of otherness, you can still hear my voice and you can do what I tell you. Do you wish to see the crystal glow? You may answer.”

The royal lips parted and breathed a scarcely audible “Aye.”

“Then, when I touch your hand, I want you to open your eyes. You will remain in this state of otherness, you will still be in contact with the matrix of the crystal, but you will be able to see it and react. It is real, and you have achieved this task. Do you understand?”

He nodded his head slightly.

“Very well, then.” She touched his hand. “Open your eyes and tell me what you see.”

He obeyed, the long lashes rising slowly, his eyes like pools of quicksilver, tracking dreamily to the crystal. For a moment there was no reaction, but then the ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and she knew that he saw.

“It glows,” he murmured, his voice flat in the trance, but tinged with a little wonder. “And I have done this?”

“Yes.” She touched his hand again. “But now it's time to return, remembering what you've seen. Wake now, refreshed and relaxed. You've been successful.”

As his eyelids fluttered and he emerged from his trance, the light in the crystal died. But this time, though he sighed at the return to the real world, a smile was on his lips, and he closed the crystal in his hand instead of putting it down immediately. He stared into the fire for just a moment, savoring what he had seen, then looked at Evaine again and smiled, a genuine, relaxed smile such as she had not seen upon his face in all the time he had been in the haven.

“You remember, don't you?” she said.

He nodded. “It was beautiful. And
I
did it, didn't I?”

“You did it,” she smiled. “This still doesn't mean that you should try it without my presence yet, but you're learning. I think you can see, from the way you feel, that it wasn't nearly as difficult this time. Oh, Cinhil, if you will only let us help you, we can make you such a king as the world has never seen!”

He looked away at that, as she had known he would, his face returning to its old, taut lines. But though the shields were back, they were not nearly so high or so fast as before.

She left him to ponder what he had seen; and though he stared long at the crystal after she had gone, he did not try to enter it again that day. He had, after all, given his word.

They worked with the crystal almost daily after that, until he learned to slip in and out of his Derynilike concentration unaided. After a time, she allowed him to use it in his meditation; she did not tell him he no longer needed it. After that, he seemed not quite so bitter at his lost priesthood.

He still was not eager to be king. And he still avoided intimate contact with the forlorn Megan whenever he could, for he did not like to be reminded of this part of his dynastic duty. But his education progressed smoothly, and in ways which he himself did not dream. His work with the crystal, especially, was establishing paths of discipline which would be invaluable once Camber discovered how to unlock the potential that they now knew him to carry.

It was May before they were ready—the culmination of six long weeks of research and partial trial and agonized planning. They argued over how much he should be told; over whether he should be told ahead of time; over what form the unleashing of his powers should take—for there were options available, and they must choose the ones which would be least threatening to Cinhil and his rigid theological orientation.

They chose Rudemas for the day of conferring power: Rudemas, called Beltane by the old reckoning. Early that evening, before the prince's evening meal had been brought, Camber went with Evaine and Rhys to Cinhil's quarters.

He had been sitting in his chair by the fire, his slippered feet propped on a footstool, the
shiral
crystal in his hand, though he had not been using the stone. He had been thinking about it, but it was more a thing to occupy his hands than a focus for his mind just now. His stomach was telling him it was time for the evening meal, and he wondered why they had not brought it yet.

The knock at the door was not unexpected, then, though he was a little surprised to see the three of them instead of Father Nathan. With a slight nod, he bade them come inside, motioning them to the chairs before the fireplace.

“I thought you might be bringing my dinner,” he said casually as he took his own chair. “Father Nathan is usually quite prompt.”

They had waited until he was seated before sitting themselves. Evaine was in her accustomed place to his left, Rhys on the arm of her chair away from Cinhil, Camber to Evaine's left.

When they did not speak, Cinhil cocked his head quizzically and shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No, all is as it should be, Your Highness,” Camber replied. “It's time we had a serious talk, though. Of necessity, it will be brief.”

“Why brief? The evening is just begun, and I have no place to go.”

“But you do,” Camber said quietly. “That's what we came to talk to you about.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.” Cinhil sat a little straighter and placed his hands deliberately, formally, on the arms of his chair. He was not sure he liked the tone of this conversation.

He glanced at Evaine, hoping for some clue, some hint of what was to come. Instead, he saw her hand coming toward his forehead, knew suddenly that if he let her touch him he would be lost. He shrank away from her, trying to avoid the hand, but it was too late.

“Sleep,” was all she said.

He felt the swooping, slightly heady sensation he had felt before when he used the
shiral
crystal—it was still in his hand, he realized dully—but this time he seemed to have no control over it. He felt his eyes close and he sagged a little in his chair. He could not seem to help himself, could not fight it.

“Now, listen to me,” he heard her voice say—and her voice was the only thing in his universe. “You will not resist us physically. You can open your eyes, but you will obey me. Look at me, Cinhil.”

His eyes opened and he did look at her, but there was a sluggishness about his response which he could not seem to shake. He swallowed and glanced at the others; he saw Camber rising to walk around in front of him, to lean both hands on the arms of his chair and stare into his eyes. He could not disengage from that gaze.

“Open to me, Cinhil,” the Deryni Master said. And Cinhil knew what they intended for him.

He continued to fight them, mentally, all the way to the chapel, but it was futile. They walked him down the rockbound corridors, and he could not run or cry out or make one move to thwart them.

The chapel door was guarded by a stern Michaeline knight—Cullen, Cinhil recognized with a start—a naked greatsword resting with its quillons between his mailed fists. At their approach, he touched a strangely glowing doorlatch, then bowed his head in homage as they passed. The door closed behind them with a thud of finality which made him long to wrench his head around for one last look at his now-closed escape.

But he did not. For they had not told him he might. Instead, he went where he was bidden, stood compliant and unresisting in the exact center of the faceted chamber, his feet on the jewel-toned carpet where they had crowned him prince. By the light of the Presence lamp and two tall altar candles, he watched with fogged detachment as Joram came into view peripherally and mounted the three low steps to the altar.

The priest genuflected and stood awhile in meditation, hair and surplice and brocaded stole glowing in the sparse candlelight. Presently, a taper flared as Joram turned to regard him; and then the priest was giving the taper to his sister, turning back to the altar to spoon incense into a smoking thurible. Cinhil could not see Camber or Rhys, though he knew they must be somewhere behind him.

New beeswax candles in free-standing brass holders had been placed at the foot of the altar and a few paces to either side of Cinhil, and it was to the first of these that Evaine now went. Cinhil seemed to recall that they had passed a fourth one as they entered, in which case he was standing at the center of a circle defined by the four new candles. He could not turn to verify that recollection—but that was not the issue, anyway. What mattered was that the very concept of the circle numbed him to cold panic. He told himself that there was a rational reason for his alarm—tried to dredge that reason from his memory—but his mind was not functioning properly.

Evaine lit the candle on the floor at the foot of the altar before him, then moved slowly toward the one to his right, shielding the flame with her hand as she walked. The otherness of the Deryni was like a sixth presence in the chamber, an icy finger prodding at the base of his brain. He had the impression that the cold he felt was not altogether the fault of the rock walls and floor.

Joram set what appeared to be a covered chalice on the floor at the base of the first candlestick, then gave Camber something wrapped in white silk. The object was small and delicate, from the way the Deryni lord was handling it, and Cinhil found his attention drawn to it almost irresistibly. It was as though time hung suspended, as though he watched through someone else's eyes.

Evaine lit the candle to his right and began to move around behind him.

“Would you please kneel?”

The voice at his side was Rhys's, and without hesitation Cinhil obeyed, unable to resist. He could see now that what Camber held was a large, cabochon ruby the size of a man's little fingertip, set in the claws of a red-gold mounting and terminating in a slender gold wire.

“The gem is called the Eye of Rom,” Rhys's calm voice informed him, as the Healer's hands did something cold and wet to his right earlobe. “Legends say that it fell from the stars on the night of Our Saviour's birth, and was brought by the Magi as a gift to the Child. Whether or not that is true, it has been in the MacRorie family for twelve generations. We have endowed it with—ah—certain characteristics which will be useful to you a little later tonight.”

Rhys handed a bright sliver of metal to Camber in exchange for the gem, brought the crimson fire toward the royal head. Again, Cinhil felt the Healer's gentle touch and realized that Rhys must have pierced his ear. He wondered foggily how he would look in an earring.

“There. That's done,” Rhys said. He leaned back to inspect his work, then touched the prince lightly on the shoulder. “You can stand up now.”

Cinhil could and did, and lost himself for the next few seconds in trying to fathom the significance of what had just happened. The faint, musical jingle of metal rattling against the thurible brought him back, and he saw that Evaine had finished her circuit of the chamber and extinguished her taper, and was now being censed by her brother.

She made a slight bow when he had finished, whether toward Joram or the altar or the first candlestick, Cinhil could not be sure, then remained with her back to Cinhil, her head slightly bowed. Joram, thurible swinging before him in a cloud of sweet incense, began retracing the circle which Evaine had just trod. Cinhil recognized the Latin Joram chanted: it was the Twenty-Third Psalm. He also, if he squinted his eyes just so, was getting the distinct impression that the circle glowed.

He must have drifted a bit, for the next thing he knew, Joram was censing those within the circle. Camber stood to Cinhil's left, Rhys to his right; and Evaine waited at the edge of the circle with the cup in her hands, uncovered. He heard the faint clink as Joram laid the thurible on the floor behind them, felt Joram's passage as he returned to Evaine and took the cup from her with a bow. He tensed as brother and sister moved to stand before him, fearing he knew not what.

The cup, he noticed, was half filled with wine. Odd, but he could not remember having seen this particular cup before, though he had thought he was familiar with all of the altar furnishings in use in the haven's chapel.

“I suspect that you've noticed this is not the chalice we customarily use in this chapel,” Joram said, apparently reading his curiosity. “There are reasons for that, which will become apparent to you in a little while. The wine is sacramental wine, but it has not yet been consecrated. I tell you this to reassure you that there is no desecration involved in what we do or ask you to do tonight. If that were our intent, we would not be here, in this place. You may ask questions now, if you wish.”

The words freed Cinhil's tongue, and he swallowed apprehensively, a dozen questions boiling in his mind. After consideration, he settled on a cautious approach, suspecting that he already knew the sorts of answers he was going to get.

“What were you doing earlier?”

“Warding. It is something you will learn, in time. It is a protection from outside influences, from forces which might otherwise interfere in what we do tonight. All within the confines of the wards are now sealed from harm.”