Camber the Heretic (53 page)

“What are you talking about?”

Javan swallowed audibly. “Tavis, I do not want Bishop Hubert to be elected archbishop.”

“I certainly agree with that,” Tavis said amiably. “But, why do
you
not want him to be elected?”

“Because he—
lies
,” Javan whispered, half-turning his face toward the candlelight reflected in the windowpanes. “And it isn't just polite lies. You heard their discussion of the other archbishop candidates. I don't even know most of them, but somehow I
knew
that Hubert was telling lies about them, to promote his own candidacy. A man of God should never do that, Tavis!”

Tavis stared at the prince's profile for a long moment, then lowered his eyes uneasily, almost afraid to voice his suspicion.

“Javan, I have the impression that you're not really as disturbed about Hubert's lying as you are about the fact that you know.” Javan nodded. “And you're trying to find a way to tell me that you—don't know how you know.”

Javan nodded miserably. “I've been noticing it a little for several weeks. It's as if I can hear another voice, just like his real one, and it's contradicting what he says out loud. It's happened with a few others, too.”

“Truth-Reading,” Tavis murmured under his breath.

“What?”

Tavis sighed and laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. “It sounds like Truth-Reading, my prince. It's—another Deryni talent.”

“Oh, God!” Javan buried his face in his hands for a few seconds, then raised his head again. “Is it like shields?”

“A little—only a kind of reverse effect. And more advanced. Much more advanced.”

“But, it doesn't always work!” Javan protested weakly.

“No, but I'll bet it gets more reliable every time you become aware of it.”

Javan nodded reluctantly, and Tavis sighed and slapped his palm against the top of his thigh in renewed frustration.

“God, what I'd give to know what happened the night your father died!” he whispered. “There
has
to be a connection!” He sighed again, then laid his hand on one of Javan's.

“They did something to you, Javan. I'm more and more convinced of that, even though we haven't been able to get any deeper. It was something very strange, and secret and mystical, and—” He squeezed the boy's hand and released it. “And I haven't the faintest notion what it was. You keep growing psychically, and you shouldn't. It's almost as if you were Deryni.”

Javan gave a little shiver, then clasped his hands and brushed his thumbs together, studying them carefully before looking up at Tavis again in the candlelight.

“Do you remember how we talked about Rhys, after Davin was killed, and you said that you and he were two of a kind, and that maybe you could use some of his own tricks on him to get him to talk?”

“I remember.”

“Well, I was just wondering whether he might not come to Valoret in the next few months, since Bishop Alister will be there for the synod. He and Lady Evaine live at Sheele, you know. It isn't far. And Bishop Alister is getting on in years. He might need a Healer. And if Rhys were to be visiting in Valoret, maybe we could invite him to come and see us.”

Tavis raised an eyebrow. “Just to
see
us, my prince?”

“Not—exactly.” Javan stared into the candlelight. “It's only courtesy to offer a man refreshment when he comes visiting, especially if it's cold outside and the man has ridden a long way. If there were something in the refreshment—”

“If there were, he'd likely detect it,” Tavis said guardedly. “We've been sufficiently hostile to him in the past that I think he'd be somewhat suspicious even to be invited there.”

“Not if he were needed as a Healer,” Javan offered. “Suppose that you were to send word that I was ill, that you needed his help. Don't you think he'd come then?”

“Probably.”

“And if you were to give me some—wine, for instance, and then offered him some, quite casually?”

“Something you had already drunk?”

Javan nodded.

“It would affect you, too. You know that,” Tavis said tentatively.

“But, you could read him,” Javan whispered. “It would be worth it, if you could find out what he did to me that night. In any case, I can't go on like this; having shields, knowing people's lies—not without knowing where it comes from, and why!”

Tavis closed his eyes for a moment and thought, then looked at Javan again.

“The most difficult part will be getting the right dosage in him—enough to break his resistance, yet not enough to destroy him as a Healer. He doesn't deserve that. I can counteract most of the effects in you as soon as I've gotten the drugs into him, but you'll have to wait for the other effects to wear off, and you'll probably have a beastly headache afterward.”

“I don't mind that, if it will get us some answers. Can you really make it so he won't be able to detect anything?”

Tavis nodded. “I think so. What I have in mind is tasteless and odorless. It has a bit of color, but in a dark wine, that won't be noticeable.” He glanced at Javan. “I'll have to come up with something to simulate symptoms of illness in you—serious enough that he'll believe I couldn't handle it by myself, but not serious enough to put you in any real danger—but I have an idea for that, too. That part isn't going to be pleasant for you, either, by the way. You really will be sick, for a time.”

“I told you, that doesn't matter, so long as we find out the truth. Do we try it?” he whispered, clutching Tavis's good wrist and staring into his eyes.

“Aye, my prince. We try it.”

Several weeks passed while word of Jaffray's death went out and the summons was conveyed to all the bishops of Gwynedd to gather at Valoret and elect a successor. On the Feast of All Saints, beneath the floor of a cathedral named for that feast and in which he had presided as archbishop for a little more than twelve years, Jaffray was laid to rest beside his friend and predecessor, Anscom. Camber, as Alister, presided, and Jebediah and Rhys attended, though the latter two left immediately afterward. Evaine stayed at Sheele with the children, because of her advancing pregnancy. Queron had also come to Sheele to work with Rhys. Gregory and his family had gone to the Connait.

Alroy's Court returned to Valoret as planned, but somehow the regents contrived to have them arrive the day after Jaffray's funeral, much to Javan's disappointment. The regents, of course, professed profuse regret. Hubert immediately set to greeting the other bishops who had already arrived, conducting what could only be construed as campaigning.

Ailin MacGregor, who had become Jaffray's auxiliary bishop in Valoret only the year before, played host to his brother bishops, assigning accommodations to them and their immediate staffs in the archbishop's residence as best he could, though the overflow of retinues and household guards had to be quartered in the town below. Still, there were no complaints from the bishops, for many of them hoped the archbishop's residence would be his before year's end. Only Hubert, who had retained apartments in the castle as regent, resided in any real comfort—and Archbishop Oriss, for whom Hubert also found quarters in the castle, reciprocating the archbishop's hospitality in Rhemuth.

By the middle of the second week in November, but a few days before Cambermas, all the prelates were assembled: five titled bishops, two auxiliaries, and five itinerant bishops with no fixed sees. Only three of the twelve were Deryni—none of them a likely candidate for archbishop, under the circumstances. Niallan Trey, who had only reluctantly come out of his retreat in the holy sanctuary city of Dhassa, was relatively safe even from the regents, so long as he lived and so long as he stayed quietly in Dhassa and remained neutral.

The long-suffering Kai Descantor, so shabbily treated by the regents after Cinhil's death, left semi-retirement only at Camber's express urging. He had summered in Kheldour, where the regents' writ ran only sluggishly, and then only at the behest of Earls Hrorik and Sighere, Ewan's brothers, who paid little mind to the doings in Valoret and Rhemuth unless it suited them. Kheldour had been an independent earldom, almost a petty principality, for far too long for dead Sighere's sons to bow easily beneath the yoke of vassalage, even if their elder brother was a regent. In any case, since a titled see had not yet been created in Kheldour, Kai had been kept amply busy.

And of course, Alister Cullen's candidacy was least likely of all, if the regents had anything to say about it, he having already been crowded out of the regency once for his politics and his race. Camber had reached Valoret a few days before Jaffray's funeral, accompanied by Joram, a small guard escort, and Ansel. Now lightly bearded, as well as tonsured, hair still dulled to nondescript brown, “Brother Lorcan” looked nothing like the renegade Earl Ansel of Culdi, whom the regents still sought for outlawry. And where better to hide him than under the regents' very noses? Ansel would be far safer at Valoret, under the watchful eyes of Camber and Joram, than cloistered at Grecotha amid relative strangers, however benign, who would not know whether or when he needed protection. Besides, as Brother Lorcan, Ansel could stay secluded most of the time in his master's quarters, caring for his bishop's domestic needs.

Robert Oriss, the Archbishop of Rhemuth, presided over the convocation. He was joined, in seniority, by the Bishops of Nyford and Cashien, Ulliam ap Lugh and Dermot O'Beirne, both veterans of the synod which had elected Jaffray archbishop and made Camber a saint twelve years before, and both considered possible candidates for archbishop this time, though Dermot was still very young.

Three of the five itinerant bishops were also veterans of that synod: Davet Nevan, the jocular Eustace of Fairleigh, and, of course Kai Descantor. Turlough, though unable to make the last election synod, had been among the first to arrive for this one. Zephram of Lorda, former vicar general of the
Ordo Verbi Dei
, had not been a bishop at the time of the last synod, but he had been present at the inquiry leading to Camber's canonization, and it was he who had been elected to fill Jaffray's former post after Jaffray's election. Camber did not know where either Zephram or Turlough stood, but Eustace had told him that he thought Zephram might be leaning toward support of Hubert.

Hubert MacInnis, of course, had not been at that famous synod. In those days, he had been a poor and obscure parish priest attached to the household of the then-Baron Murdoch of Carthane; and his rise had come with Murdoch's own rise to favor. Murdoch's restoration to his family's ancient lands and earl's title had brought Hubert election as an itinerant bishop; and he had become Auxiliary Bishop of Rhemuth a scant year before Cinhil's death, when Robert Oriss had declined to be named as a potential regent, on the grounds of age, and recommended Hubert in his stead.

Now the Regent-Bishop Hubert MacInnis sat in Valoret cathedral's chapter house in the first of the six ecclesiastical thrones to the right of Archbishop Oriss. Niallan Trey sat to Hubert's right—a matter of seniority, rather than affinity, for there was no love lost between Hubert and the Deryni Niallan—and to Niallan's right were ranged Dermot O'Beirne and three of the itinerant bishops, Kai among them. Across the chamber, in a similar arc of five, sat Ailin next to the empty primatial chair, followed by Ulliam, Eustace, Camber, and Turlough, each with his secretary-attendant seated on a stool to his left.

The first day of the convocation was devoted to procedural business: the setting of operating rules, the reading of precedents, and the enlargement of the Council of Bishops by the creation of three new itinerant bishops. Two of the appointments Camber had anticipated, but the third was something of a surprise, and definitely had Hubert's hand in it.

Alfred of Woodbourne, long the confessor of Cinhil and his family, was an obvious choice, and one which Camber could hardly fault. The only real reservation Camber had was that Alfred might be too closely in the regents' scrutiny and debt to remain his own man, and might let himself be manipulated, out of a false notion of what was best for his young charges.

The other expected appointment was one Archer of Arrand, another of Oriss's and Zephram's
Ordo Verbi Dei
priests who had distinguished himself as a theologian—though of late, he had been speculating on the relative godliness of the Deryni as a race, and that made Camber nervous. Camber had heard him preach several times, and he was not certain he liked the conclusions Archer was drawing. If the man truly believed what he had been preaching for the past six months, then he could easily become a pawn for the regents' use. Hubert had been making overtures in Archer's direction, too.

But even Archer could be endured, were it not for the third and unexpected candidate. Paulin of Ramos had come very highly recommended—by the regents—and that alone would have been sufficient to make Camber take a second look at him. About five years before, Paulin had founded a small but steadily growing religious order called the Little Brothers of Saint Ercon, based beside the river near his native Ramos, a little south and west of Valoret. Saint Ercon had been a scholar and historian of some repute, brother, local legend had it, to the well-known Saint Willim, child martyr to Deryni ill use, whose cults had sparked the overthrow of Imre more than thirteen years before. The Erconites were not vocally anti-Deryni like their Willimite brethren, apparently devoting themselves to teaching; but they did not denounce the Willimites, either. Speculation persisted that there was more connection between the two groups than mere brotherhood of their two patrons, but nothing presented itself which could be grasped or examined. Camber only wished he had more to go on than a vague mistrust of someone the regents wanted.

But Camber's mental reservations did not stop the ratification of the three men, and the next day saw them consecrated bishops with the full panoply of the Church. When the bishops were finally seated to begin the real business of the synod, they were fifteen, not twelve, and still only three of them Deryni. A vote of ten would be necessary to elect a new primate.