Camber the Heretic (73 page)

All afternoon Evaine's labor continued, as Ansel and the guards kept watch outside, and Fiona kept Evaine talking about Healing Camlin and her love for Rhys and anything else she could contrive to keep her mind from the pain. Always before, Evaine had had Rhys to speed her labor and ease its discomfort; this time she must let nature take its course. By the time the baby was born, just at dusk, both mother and newborn daughter were exhausted. Ansel let them rest until it was fully dark and made everyone eat a substantial meal; but then he had to insist that they move on.

With Evaine in the litter with Tieg and the baby, Rhysel on her pony, and Camlin and the two other women mounted before Ansel and two of the guards, they set out from Trurill at last. All through the night and into the day they rode, twice avoiding patrols of the new Earl of Culdi's men and stopping only to feed and water the horses and rotate riders. Toward dusk, however, Ansel realized that they had picked up an escort, far back on the road.

He did not tell Evaine of it, but she knew. She reached back with her mind and sensed their cold, brutal presence, somehow knowing them to be of the same ilk as the men who had tortured and killed her son. She hated them, and was impotent in her hate, drained as she was by the Healing of Camlin and the birth of her child. Ansel pushed on, but the road worsened as the light faded, and now he began to worry in earnest, for their pursuers were gaining, slowly but inexorably, and the litter was slowing them greatly. As they slowed even more for the litter-bearing horses to negotiate a particularly treacherous down-hill section of the road, slick with mud and ice, Ansel drew rein alongside the litter and put out a hand to steady it. Evaine's face, as she drew aside the curtains and peered up at him, was pale and gaunt-looking.

“They're gaining on us, aren't they?” she asked.

“I hoped you hadn't noticed,” he said.

With a deep breath, she assessed her condition and decided that she just might be able to sit a horse now. It seemed their best chance to lose their pursuers, and this might be their only opportunity. With all of them on horseback, and pushing hard, there were several narrower tracks which they might take from here which would get them to the safety of the monastery by dawn or a little later. But they must lose their pursuers first, or risk leading them right to their only refuge.

“I'll ride, then,” she said, pulling the baby from her breast and drawing her cloak around herself as she swung her feet down from the litter. “If we leave the litter here, we can make better time, especially in the dark.”

Instantly Ansel was leaping down into the mud to support her as she tried to stand and staggered, instead.

“Don't be a fool! You're in no condition to ride,” he muttered. “Do you want to kill yourself?”

She gestured for Damon to come and help her as she began unbuckling one of the traces on the lead litter horse.

“Of course not. But I don't want us to be taken, either, and I don't want to lead our pursuers to our only refuge. We've seen what they do to Deryni in this part of the country. Damon, you and Thomas unhook the litter and rig the horses so they can be ridden. The baby and I will ride with Fiona.”

“Don't you think you at least ought to ride with me or one of the other men?” Ansel asked. “I don't know whether Fiona can catch you, if you start to fall.”

Fiona, let down from the horse where she had been sitting with Arik, came running over to support Evaine under one arm and take the baby from her.

“She won't fall,” Fiona said, “and I won't let her. The horses can carry two women more easily than a man and a woman. It's the only logical way.”

Ansel looked dubious, but he sensed that Evaine would not be budged, once her mind was made up—and they
could
make better time without the litter. After assessing the mounts they now had, he chose the largest and most smooth-paced of them for Evaine and Fiona, then had Arik switch his deeply padded travel saddle for the harness arrangement on the sumpter horse's back, knowing that Arik could ride bareback. The children were parcelled out among Arik, Damon and himself, and Mairi was put on the second sumpter horse, following alongside Thomas. Bartholomew brought up the rear with Rhysel's pony in tow.

They kept a slow pace at first; but when Evaine appeared to bear up reasonably well, they pressed on more quickly. Just at dark, a light snow began to fall, covering their tracks; and shortly after that, they passed through a succession of forks in the road which they hoped would further discourage pursuit.

Evaine felt herself begin to hemorrhage, a little after that, and held onto consciousness by only the barest of threads, her strength taxed more and more with each mile they completed. But she would not, dared not, tell Ansel and risk having him slow their pace and face possible capture. Better to die on the road than chance what those others had suffered at Trurill.

They did, indeed, lose their pursuers during that long night of flight through the new snow, as the date turned to the second of the new year and the cold increased. They rode through the darkness with but two brief stops for rest and meager rations, as much for the horses' sake as for their riders. Evaine continued to insist that she was doing well enough.

She would not get down from her horse the second time, though, for she had seen the blood staining the dark suede of the saddle seat the first time she got down—though Fiona and Ansel had not—and she knew that she must not let the others know. Instead, she sat nodding in the saddle and gave the baby suck from there, her voluminous cloak muffled closely around her and snowflakes resting unmelting in the rich golden hair which spilled from her hood and around the baby's face.

They rode on then, and Evaine slipped back into that twilight state which she had found to be the only way she could keep from passing out entirely from her growing weakness. She was hardly aware of the passage of the hours or the miles after that, but they reached Saint Mary's in the Hills just after dawn.

She managed to bring herself back to awareness briefly as they drew rein in the abbey yard, all her being rejoicing to see Joram running to meet them across the virgin snow. She stayed in the saddle just long enough to give the baby safely into the arms of a waiting monk, felt Joram's hands on her waist to lift her down, but then the world began to spin.

The next thing she knew, she was lying someplace warm and dry, snuggled under the reassuring weight of several soft blankets. She could feel the warmth of a friendly fire on the right side of her face. The aroma of something eminently edible wafted past her nostrils. She had been bathed and dressed in a clean garment while she lay unconscious—she suspected Fiona's hand in that—and as she flexed an ankle experimentally under the blankets, still not opening her eyes, she was reminded abruptly of the abuse to which she had been forced to subject her body in the past few days. A quick assessment reassured her that she had stopped bleeding, however, and that her general condition was far better than she had feared.

Returning alertness had brought the brush of other minds in the immediate vicinity, both strange and familiar, so she opened her eyes. She found herself lying on a narrow bed before a cheery hearth. The room's ceiling and walls were plastered and whitewashed, the exposed beams oiled to a dark, mellow finish. A black-robed monk sat on a stool to her right, stirring a cup of something which was the source of the enticing aroma. Another monk stood behind—she knew he was the abbot. On her other side, Joram knelt with his pale head bowed, in the black of the stranger-monks instead of his familiar Michaeline blue, and with a priest's stole around his neck. Behind him, she could see Fiona departing with a basin and armful of rough, grey towels.

Joram looked up then, aware by Sight that she was conscious. Before she could say anything, he was sliding an arm behind her neck and shoulders and raising her head so the monk could begin spooning broth into her mouth. When she would have protested, both men merely shook their heads stubbornly and the monk pressed the spoon to her lips. She gave in at that, obediently swallowing each spoonful of the warm, fragrant stuff which the monk presented. When she had finished the last drop, the monk rose and departed without a word, the abbot accompanying him. As Joram eased her back onto her pillows, she turned her head to gaze at him fondly.

“One might think someone were dying,” she said with a faint smile. “That stole is not at all reassuring.”

“I'll take it off, if you promise not to need it,” he replied, taking her hand and kissing it gently.

She closed her eyes briefly and nodded, then smiled again. “I've never been able to tell for certain when you're joking, you do it so seldom,” she said. “Will you take it off, though?”

“With your promise,” he said doggedly.

“Given.”

“That's more like it.” He pulled off the offending stole with his free hand and touched it to his lips, then draped it over the blankets covering her, as if to include her in its protection. Then he took her hand in both of his and held it close against his chin.

“Sweet
Jesu
, Evaine, I was frightened for you! You were so pale when you rode in. Fiona said the birth was not particularly difficult, but you lost so much blood! You should never have ridden so soon or so far.”

“It was necessary,” she said.

“Well, at least you're going to be all right now. The shock might have killed you, though. And where is Queron?”

“I sent him to Revan, before we left Sheele.”

“To Revan? In your condition, with the baby's birth so near?”

She gave a little shrug, wincing at the pull of sore muscles. “At the time, I didn't know it was that near. Is the baby all right?”

He nodded. “Everyone's sleeping. Ansel told me what happened, while Fiona and Brother Dominic cleaned you up.”

“Brother Dominic?”

“The one who was feeding you soup. He's the infirmarian. They haven't any Healer, of course.”

“No, I suppose not.” She took a deep breath and let it out with a little sigh. “What about Alister?” she asked softly, using that name from habit, even though there was no one else in the room.

“Safe at Dhassa, for the nonce,” Joram breathed. “I'll be in contact with him tonight and let him know you're safe. Your instincts about avoiding capture were sound, by the way—in more than a general way. The regents outlawed the whole family the day after Christmas. I suspect that's why Trurill was hit—that and the overzealousness of the MacInnis clan. Anyway, Alister and Jebediah are waiting at Dhassa for news of the new synod at Ramos, before they come to join us. The new archbishop and his minions have already laicized all Deryni priests, suspended the bishops who wouldn't cooperate, and forbidden any future ordinations of Deryni to the priesthood.”

She glanced at the stole lying across her blankets, then looked back at her brother. “I infer that you don't accept the laicization.”

“What do
you
think?” he returned, the set to his jaw and the hard fire smouldering in the grey eyes telling her all she needed to know about that.

She smiled. “Understood. You mentioned a new archbishop—Hubert?”

“Who else? Niallan and Dermot got away with us to Dhassa, but Hubert must suspect that's where we went, because Rhun has put the city under siege. Kai and Davet Nevan were killed in the cathedral on Christmas Day, the same as—”

He bowed his head as his voice broke off, for he had not meant to speak of that, especially to her, but she pressed his hand in reassurance and brought her other hand across to pat his arm.

“I know, Joram. It's all right to talk about it.”

“Evaine, I'm so sorry,” he whispered. “God knows, we tried to save him, but with no Healer.… It was such an awful, senseless, tragic—”

“Hush, I know,” she murmured. “It wasn't your fault. Do you think I didn't know that? Do you think I didn't feel it, when he died?”

She blinked back the beginnings of tears and stared up at the ceiling until she could go on.

“We won't be able to stay here indefinitely,” she said more briskly. “We don't want to endanger the good monks who have so kindly sheltered us. Have you any plans beyond all of us meeting here?”

Joram nodded, also regaining his equilibrium. “Ansel and I are to begin setting up a Portal here as soon as we can. We'll go to our old Michaeline sanctuary, where we took Cinhil. The Order has abandoned it now, but supplies were laid in months ago. With the Portal there set as a Trap, we should be safe enough, at least for a while.”

“I can think of far worse places for exile. It will seem almost like home. You said you were going to set up another Portal here, though—you and Ansel can't do it alone.…”

“If you're thinking to offer to help, don't,” he said gently. “We'd thought to have Queron, but we'll manage with some of the others instead. Fiona's fairly adept, as I recall, and we can use Camlin, too, if he's up to it.”

She turned her face away slightly to stare at the ceiling again, biting her lip.

“Did they tell you about Aunt Aislinn and Adrian and—Aidan?” she whispered tremulously.

Joram nodded. “And how you healed Camlin. It was a miracle, Evaine!”

“No, it was Tieg,” she amended, turning her eyes back to his. “He's a Healer, like his father. He—” She swallowed noisily, barely fighting back the tears. “Oh, Joram, his father would have been so proud of him!”

She could not hold back the tears after that, and sobbed in Joram's arms for a long time while he stroked her hair and murmured childhood endearments, gradually establishing the rapport to share all that had happened to both of them since their last meeting. When she finally regained control and opened her eyes, Joram was still there at her side—and the monk Dominic, with another cup of soup.