The Quest for Saint Camber (2 page)

“God's teeth! It's hailing plover's eggs!” he yelped.

“Shouldn't we make a dash for it, sir?” came the plaintive entreaty of the squire, Jowan, shivering on a drenched bay palfrey crowded next to Conall's grey. “I don't think it's going to let up very soon—and we can't get much wetter. Besides, your lady will have a warm fire on the hearth to dry us out. And the horses will be glad for her snug little barn.”

Smiling a little, despite his increasing vexation with the weather, Conall nodded his agreement and set spurs to his mount, charging into the hailstorm with his squire right behind him.

His lady. Ah, yes. The lady to whom Jowan referred was not the principal reason Conall had decided to venture forth today, but she was pleasant enough, a side benefit. Nor was she a lady, in the genteel sense usually meant in court parlance. The pretty and pliant Vanissa was his leman, his doxy, his light o' love, or his mistress, depending on his mood, and he sometimes called her his “lady” in the throes of love-making; but even she knew she would never be his wife. That honor was reserved for a royal princess Conall had already picked out at court—though the object of his more honorable intentions had yet to be enlightened in that regard.

No, Vanissa would give him a child before summer's end, and Conall would see that mother and bairn were provided for, but visiting Vanissa was primarily a convenient cover for other activities that would raise far more questions than a royal mistress, were they to become known by the wrong people—and the wrong people, at least for now, included Cousin Kelson and all his closest confidants, especially those of the magically endowed race called the Deryni.

Conall often wished
he
were Deryni, despite the opprobrium and abuse heaped upon them by Church and State for most of the past two hundred years, for the Deryni possessed powers that gave them considerable advantages over ordinary humans, even if the Church officially condemned such powers as satanic and hell-spawned. By an odd quirk of history, Conall's own Haldane family had come to be possessed of the potential for powers not unlike those of the Deryni—but the gift was not for all Haldanes. Tradition insisted that only one Haldane at a time could actually wield the powers, and that was the man who wore the crown—in this generation, Conall's cousin, Kelson Haldane.

Conall had come to resent that restriction early on, having been born the eldest son of a Haldane king's second son. But his dissatisfaction came not so much of Kelson's having the crown and the Haldane power—for that was an accident of birth—but rather, that Kelson should have an exclusive claim on the latter, which seemed to Conall to have little to do with the kingship itself. That rationalization had led Conall to take certain steps during the past year to discover whether the wielding of the Haldane inheritance by more than one Haldane was a matter of
could
not or
should
not. And that was why, but a few days short of his eighteenth birthday and knighthood, Conall pressed on through such filthy weather—to meet his teacher. And if the outing also permitted him to indulge more physical appetites …

Anticipation of Vanissa's welcome lifted even Conall's flagging spirits as he continued through the storm, for he knew that the lass would provide her prince a far more warming fire than the one Jowan predicted burning on the hearth. The hail had slacked back to mere rain by the time the two pulled up before her secluded little cottage, but the puddles in the tiny yard were afloat with hailstones that crunched under Conall's boots as he lurched from the saddle and made a mad dash for the door, leaving Jowan to deal with the horses. The door flew back before he could even knock, an eager Vanissa bidding him welcome with a flustered curtsey, the curtain of her dark hair rippling like a rich mantle nearly to her knees.

“Ah, my good lord, I knew not whether still to expect you, with the storm an' all. Come take off those wet things an' warm yourself by the fire. You're shivering. You'll take your death of cold!”

He
was
shivering, but not only from the cold. Rain dripped from a small, silky mustache and from short-cropped black hair as he pushed back his hood and accepted a towel to dry himself, but her touch, as she reached to his throat to undo his cloak clasp, ignited a warming fire that sizzled through every limb and centered in his groin.

In heart-pounding silence, he watched her spread the dripping cloak over a stool near the hearth while he peeled off clammy gloves and sank down impatiently on another stool, inhaling the musty-sweet fragrance of the herb-strewn rushes underfoot and the sharper scent of mulling wine. He nodded his thanks as she handed him a cup of the steaming stuff and bent to pull off his muddy boots, his eyes gliding appreciatively along the sweet curve of her breasts as she struggled with the wet, slippery leather. Her exertions had them both panting by the time she finished.

“Shall my lord be warm enough with this?” she asked, bringing an armful of coarse wool blanket to lay around his shoulders.

Conall knew he really should not allow himself to be distracted until
after
he concluded business, but he had always found it difficult to moderate his pleasures. Vanissa was so eager to please him, so ripe for the taking, her body only just beginning to thicken from the child she carried.…

Almost overturning his wine in his haste to put it aside, he enfolded her with him in the blanket and bore her to the rushes before the cheery fire, losing himself in growing urgency and pleasure—until suddenly someone was grabbing a handful of his tunic and yanking him off of her and onto his back, slamming his shoulders to the rushes, a gloved hand pinning his sword arm while a wet knee jammed into his chest and the flat of a dagger pressed hard against his throat.

“Good God, boy, it doesn't even need a
Deryni
to take you by surprise when you're
that
stupid!” said a familiar voice, not Jowan's. “I could have been
anybody!
”

As the speaker's identity registered, Conall's reflex alarm and anger quickly shifted to indignation and then to grudging acknowledgement, though his hands still closed around the other's wrists to protect himself and move the blade aside, even as his mind tested at the other's decidedly Deryni shields.

“Here, now! Enough of that!” the newcomer said, abandoning his threat and pulling back. “You'll frighten the girl.”

Conall subsided immediately, releasing his assailant and sitting up with a grunt of agreement. The stunned girl only cowered on the rushes and stared up at both of them in fear, skirts and bodice akimbo, cringing as the cloaked and hooded stranger sheathed his blade.

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Vanissa, no one's going to hurt you,” Conall said, looking put upon as he reached across to touch her forehead with his fingertips. “Relax. Go to bed and forget what's just happened. I'll come to you later. And Tiercel, stop dripping on me!”

The offender drew back with a muttered oath, but he gave a hand up to the girl, who headed without comment toward the door to the next room, face devoid of emotion, mechanically smoothing her skirts as she went. When the door had closed behind her, Tiercel took off the offending cloak and laid it out next to Conall's. He was only a few years older than the prince.

“So. I was only half joking about just anybody walking right in, you know,” said Tiercel de Claron, for more than a year now, Conall's secret tutor in matters magical and Deryni—though without the knowledge or consent of the Camberian Council, who staunchly upheld the exclusive right of only one Haldane at a time to hold the Haldane legacy of magical power. Few outside the Council itself even knew of its existence—though Conall did, and the risk Tiercel took to teach him. “It mightn't have been so bad if Jowan had come in—”

“He's come in before and remembers nothing,” Conall interjected, a surly note in his voice.

“That's undoubtedly true,” Tiercel agreed. “At least
that
kind of control is better than I ever dared to hope you'd achieve. I wish I could say the same about your
self
-control. Couldn't you have waited?”

“I was going to, but I was cold,” Conall said, as he lay back to do up his breeches before rolling to his knees and then getting to his feet. “I'm not anymore, though,” he added, giving the Deryni lord a sly grin. “She's far better than a fire, Tiercel. Go ahead. Have her, if you want. I'll wait. She'll never know, if you tell her to forget.”

Tiercel snorted disdainfully as he snatched up Conall's discarded towel to scrub at his own sopping hair. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother with you.”

“What's the matter, Tiercel? Too fastidious to take a woman who's carrying another man's child?”

“What makes you so bloody certain it's
yours?
” Tiercel muttered, tossing the towel aside and unlooping the strap of a leather satchel from across his chest.

“How's that?”

“You heard me.”

“As a matter of fact, I did. And I'm not at all certain I like your—”

“Just now, I don't much care
what
you like or don't like!” Tiercel said. He tossed the satchel on a well-scrubbed trestle table near the fireplace and hooked one of the stools closer with a booted toe, disturbing the rushes. “Sit down and act like a prince instead of a stablehand!”

Conall sat.

“Now. The point is, you were screwing around when you should have been paying attention to the business at hand,” Tiercel said sternly. “
Anyone
could have walked through that door instead of me.
I
could have betrayed you. A prince must
never
neglect his defenses. And you had defenses available to you that ordinary men only dream of—but you didn't bother to use them.”

“But—who was going to be out on a day like this? Besides, Jowan would have stopped them.”

“Oh? He didn't stop
me
.” Tiercel stalked to the outer door and wrenched it open, curtly beckoning a sleepy looking Jowan to enter. “Go lie down by the fire, Jowan,” he said. “Take off your wet things and have a nap.”

Conall's grey eyes narrowed as he watched the squire obey, but, by the time Jowan was snoring peacefully in the rushes, he had managed to push his anger down to a smoldering resentment.

“Very well, you've made your point,” he finally said sulkily. “It won't happen again. I apologize. Am I forgiven?”

His bright smile was both compelling and infectious, and he knew it. Tiercel only sighed and nodded as he sat at the table opposite the prince.

“So long as you've learned from this little unpleasantness. Are you ready to work?”

“Of course. What are we going to do?”

“Something I've been meaning to do for several months now,” Tiercel replied, feeling around inside his satchel. “I'm going to start you on proper warding. Wards are a type of magical protection or defense. Eventually, you'll learn to use them in conjunction with working other spells. It won't always be necessary to use a physical matrix to set the wards, but these will help, in the beginning.”

As he extracted a well-worn brown leather pouch and opened it, spilling a handful of thumbnail-sized black and white cubes into his cupped palm, Conall leaned closer.

“They look like dice.”

“Aye. And so they might have been, a long time ago—or could have been disguised as dice, once it became dangerous to be Deryni. I've seen spotted ones, and they work just as well. Notice there are four each of the black and white. That has an esoteric significance, but we won't bother with that for now. Most Deryni children begin their formal training with cubes similar to these. Hold out your right hand.”

Hesitantly Conall obeyed, flinching involuntarily as Tiercel tipped them from his own right hand into Conall's. The cubes felt cold and sleek, the white ones yellowed like old ivory but with little of ivory's warmth, the black ones more a charcoal grey than true ebon or obsidian.

“Now, close your eyes and tell me the first thing you sense about them,” Tiercel said.

“They're colder than they look,” Conall ventured, cautiously closing his hand to finger the cubes' corners and edges.

“Good. What else?”

Conall hefted the handful of cubes, considering, then opened his eyes and shifted the four black cubes to his left hand. He stared at them a moment, black cubes in his left hand, white in his right, then cocked his head at Tiercel.

“There's something different besides their color.”

“Yes?”

“I—don't know what it is.”

“Try changing them to opposite hands and tell me how that feels.”

Dutifully Conall complied; but after a few seconds of concentration, he shook his head and switched them back.

“No, they definitely feel better this way.”

“
Better?
”

“Well, more—
balanced
,” Conall conceded. “Does that make any sense?”

Raising an appreciative eyebrow, Tiercel nodded. “It does, indeed. In fact, this may be easier than I dreamed. You've detected the polarities. Put the four white cubes on the table, forming a square, all of them touching. Then set the four black ones at the corners.”

Conall obeyed, then looked up at Tiercel with a “what-next?” expression.

“Now, lower your shields and open your mind to me, to follow what I do,” Tiercel said. “Setting wards doesn't require a great deal of power, but well-focused concentration is essential. That's what's hardest for children—and it's the reason I had you practice centering all winter. Pay attention now.”

Setting his right forefinger on the first white cube, Tiercel breathed in deeply and spoke the cube's
nomen:
“
Prime
.” Light flared in the cube as the energy was set and bound, then spread to the other three as Tiercel proceeded to name them as well: