The Quest for Saint Camber (55 page)

“I think I know what you mean,” Dhugal replied. “All the old barriers went down. I can't tell you how I know, but I
know
that I never need to fear psychic contact again. My shields are totally under my control. It's as if what we did finished catalyzing what my father started that morning we found out what we were to one another. If I ever had any doubts about my birthright as Deryni, they're gone now.”

“Aye, we're quite a team,” Kelson agreed. “A true brotherhood, like Alaric and your father. I can't imagine ever feeling closer to anyone else, as long as I live.”

“Not even Rothana?” Dhugal asked, with a coy smile.

Kelson actually blushed in the light of his handfire and ducked his head as he clasped his hands between his upraised knees.

“I suppose it's silly to be embarrassed, after what we've shared. I was going to tell you, Dhugal—really, I was.”

“Well, you did.”

“Yes, but I hadn't meant it to be that way. I do love her, though in a totally different way from what I thought I was beginning to feel for Sidana. And even though Rothana and I haven't yet accomplished what you and I just did, that will come. I had a foretaste of it, that first time our minds touched. But, I don't need to tell you that, do I? You and I shared that, too.”

Dhugal closed his eyes briefly and put that memory behind him, not eager to say what must next be said, but knowing it was necessary, for both their sakes.

“Sometimes, there's such a thing as being too honest,” he said, leaning his head against the wall and looking beyond Kelson. “Believe me, I value what we've accomplished, but I think we need to have our privacy as well—an area that's set apart from
anyone
. My father does, for that part of him that's concerned with his priestly office. I would never want or expect to be privy to the confidences of the confessional, for example, and I wouldn't dream of prying into the bond between him and Morgan. I think the relationship between a man and his wife must be at least as sacred.”

“Well, I hardly think we need to be concerned about that yet. It isn't as if Rothana and I have been intimate.”

The awkwardness of Kelson's last words only underlined the uneasiness Dhugal himself was feeling, and he raised one eyebrow skeptically as he glanced at the king, glad for once that both he and Kelson were still virginal, at least in the physical sense.

“Oh? I suppose there was no intimacy in the taste she gave you of Janniver's rape?”

“I'll concede, that was intimate,” Kelson interjected, blushing to the roots of his hair. “That's different, though.”

“Ah.” Dhugal nodded. “Then, are we limiting this discussion to physical intimacy? What about the two of you in the garden, the night before we left?”

“All I did was kiss her, Dhugal.”

“Oh? That's not what
I
sensed, when that incident came through our rapport,” Dhugal replied, sending an echo of that shared memory back to Kelson, less intense than the original, but sparing no detail of physical sensation. “You would never have actually
done
it, Kel, being who and what you are, but your body was ready to take her, right then and there. And you know she would have let you. God knows I don't begrudge you that, but it's something that should be just between the two of you, just as the intimacy of that rapport about the rape should be private between you.”

Kelson closed his eyes and buried his face in one hand as his body shivered in remembrance and he knew Dhugal was right. Nor, even if it was fair to Rothana and himself, was it fair to subject Dhugal to such emotions, shared in the mind yet withheld in the flesh. As he thought about their rapport, he realized that it had, indeed, been deeper than anything he had experienced before, and it only now became evident that there were some things too precious, too intimate, to be bared to another who was not a part of them, no matter how well beloved that other.

It came to him then that this explained why he had never had any inkling of the problems between Morgan and Richenda. Morgan had sequestered that part of his life away, as a favor to Kelson as well as to Richenda—as, undoubtedly, there were things he did not share with Richenda. Despite the depth of his friendship with Morgan—indeed, his love, and for Duncan and Dhugal as well—some things remained and should remain apart.

“You're right,” the king said after a moment. “It's something I'm sure neither of us ever thought about before, but there
does
have to be a separateness, even in our closeness—in
anyone's
closeness. I'm sure there will be things I ought not to share with Rothana, too, not necessarily things that I
shouldn't
tell her, but that she'd rather not know. Ah, the innocence of youth, to think that total freedom is possible or even desirable.” He smiled resignedly as he looked up at Dhugal again. “Is that what you were trying to tell me?”

Dhugal grinned and nodded, turning his gaze idly back to the door. “I think so.” He paused a moment, then went on. “When do you think they'll come for us?”

“I have no idea.”

“Will they still want to burn us, do you think?”

Kelson sighed. “I don't know that, either. We can't allow that, though, even if we have to kill every one of them to prevent it.”

“Aye, you're right.” Dhugal stretched his legs out in front of him and sighed again. “I wonder if learning who you are will make any difference.”

“Do you really think they've even heard of me?” Kelson returned.

“Don't be ridiculous. Everyone's heard of Kelson of Gwynedd.”

“Not if they've been cut off from the rest of civilization,” Kelson replied, “and that's certainly possible, judging by what the countryside looked like, where you and I went into the river. I have no idea where we are, but I can't imagine such a devotion to Saint Camber surviving, after all these years, in any place you or I have been.”

“Hmmm, that's probably true.”

“And remember the armor in the tombs? Some of that looked old enough to be from Camber's time. I don't know what we're dealing with, Dhugal, but it's different from anything we've ever encountered before.”

Just how different was about to be made abundantly clear, as the bar lifted on the other side of the door and both young men scrambled to their feet.

“Th' Quorial will see ye now,” said Bened-Cyann. “Ye'd best come quietly.”

Sunlight flooded the room beyond, also revealing the bowmen, poised as before, and men waiting with ropes to bind their hands.

And in a royally appointed tower room at Rhemuth Castle, Rothana of Nur Hallaj waited for another binding—a band of polished gold to bind her finger, rather than ropes. It was her wedding day, and at noon, she would marry Conall Haldane and become Crown Princess of Gwynedd.

It would be soon. She tipped her head backward as a tiring woman finished lacing the back of her pale damask gown, letting another put the final touches to her hair, unbound and shimmering nearly to her hips in a rich, blue-black ripple. Tears started to well in her eyes, threatening to smudge the careful lines her little Jacan maid had painted at the base of her lashes to emphasize the long almond shape of her eyes, but Rothana sternly bade the tears recede.

She had cried enough in the past three weeks. She had no tears left. She had nearly made herself ill in the beginning, though she had dared tell no one the cause of her misery. Father Ambros knew by now, of course, but he would tell no one. Even he had agreed that her decision, while not the one that would have eased her heart, gave noble tribute to a lost love as well as to royal duty.

She reminded herself again that what she was doing she did by her own choice, for the sake both of Kelson's memory and of the kingdom whose queen he had asked her to be. It helped, but only a little. The day before, witnessed by Mother Heloise, she had signed the documents necessary for Archbishop Cardiel to release her from her vows—the last such formality. Neither abbess nor archbishop had pressed her for her reasons, and she had volunteered none. It would only have served to reopen wounds she was trying very hard to close. Afterwards, with only Cardiel and Conall's mother and brothers present, she and Conall had exchanged betrothal vows, and he had given her a ruby ring.

“It's time, my lady,” said Sylvie, her maid, bringing her coronet and veil.

The fragile silk was as pale as sunlight and nearly transparent, shot with fine gold, its circular hem picked out in tiny seed-pearls. Queen Meraude had worn the veil to marry Nigel, nearly twenty years ago, and had given it to Rothana the night before, tears in her eyes, with the whispered hope that Rothana's marriage with Conall might bring even half the joy that Meraude had known in her marriage with Nigel. Rothana would have preferred a less revealing veil done in the Eastern manner, such as that to which she was accustomed, but she would not have dreamed of adding to Meraude's grief by declining the gift. The veil floated almost like spider silk as Sylvie let it settle over Rothana's head, just brushing her shoulders all around. The coronet Sylvie set on her brow to hold the veil in place was the same she had worn for Kelson's knighting; but Rothana tried not to think about that. She was about to become a princess of Gwynedd and would one day be its queen. She was wedding the land as well as its future king.

“You look beautiful, my lady,” Sylvie whispered, holding up a mirror. “The prince will be so proud!”

Rothana made herself smile and nod.

“Thank you, Sylvie.”

She glanced down at the ruby on her finger, the only jewel she owned save her coronet, and twisted at it nervously as she raised her eyes toward the room's single window. A shaft of sunlight illumined the prie-dieu where she had spent so many hours in the past few weeks, and she stood up slowly, folding the front of her veil back from her face.

“I'll be with you very shortly, ladies,” she said, moving toward it in a rustle of damask. “Please wait for me outside.”

She sank down on the kneeler and crossed herself, bowing her head over clasped hands until she was sure they were gone and she was alone. Only then did she pull the folded lump of a lace-edged handkerchief from her bosom and close it between her hands, fingertips pressed against her lips as she bowed her head again.

Dear, dear Kelson
, she mused, closing her eyes to picture his face as she had seen it last,
'tis time to say good-bye. You taught me that there is a duty beyond faith and brought me to love this kingdom you had loved so well. You taught me the honor I might do it and you, by agreeing to become its queen. I set aside my own desires, and gladly, for the chance to rule at your side
.

She opened her eyes and cocked her head with a sad wistful-ness as she unfolded the linen square, uncovering Sidana's ring, and laid a forefinger across its circle.

And now you are gone, as she who first wore this ring is gone; and I can never be your queen, just as she can never be your queen
.

But I can still be Gwynedd's queen, Kelson, as I told you I would be, and I can be a queen for our Deryni. I think you would want that for this land. Will you mind terribly if I am also Conall's queen, as well as Gwynedd's? He needs me, Kelson. And I think he is not made of the same stuff that you were made of, though I shall try to see that he does his best
.

And so, farewell, my lord and my love. I go now to wed a different Haldane than either of us had planned. And if I am to be true to him, as I know you would wish, then I must say goodbye to what might have been
.

She swallowed back the last tears, then rose, dry-eyed now, to move around the prie-dieu and into the window embrasure. One of the hinged panes of the mullioned window was ajar, and she pushed it farther out. The moat sparkled far below, sunlit and still, and she paused only to press the ring to her lips a final time before tossing it out in a long, curving arc, to disappear with hardly a splash.

When it was done, she closed the shields on her mind as she closed the window of the room, for she was not ready to share that intimacy with her husband-to-be—not yet. But her head was high as she turned to go to her bridegroom, for she was a princess of Nur Hallaj, bred to her duty. There would be no more tears.

She had light, gentle words for her maids as she joined them in the corridor, indulging them while they fussed with her veil and train and straightened errant strands of hair. She was calm and resigned as she let herself be led to the chapel royal, where the marriage would take place.

Mother Heloise was waiting at the church door—all of her “family” that could be summoned on such short notice. Later, there would be a more formal ceremony, but for now, this must suffice. Rothana knelt to kiss the abbess' hand a last time and receive her blessing before taking the old woman's arm to walk down the short aisle.

Queen Meraude, her brother Saer, and Conall's younger brothers, Rory and Payne, were waiting with the archbishop, all in Haldane crimson for the affair, and Conall himself looked eerily like Kelson, just before he turned to watch her approach. He wore a sumptuous tunic of quartered crimson and gold, powdered with tiny lions, Kelson's lion brooch clasped at his throat and the Haldane sword bright and potent at his waist. Rothana smiled as she put her hand in his.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
IVE

Do no secret thing before a stranger: for thou knowest not what he will bring forth
.

—Ecclesiasticus 8:18

“Since it was a Haldane king who rescinded Saint Camber's canonization, and Haldane kings have allowed the persecution of
his
people to continue, you should understand why your mere identity does little to incline us to leniency, Kelson Haldane. Your circumstances are lamentable, but a sacrilege still has been committed, whether or not you intended it.”