Camber the Heretic (76 page)

He was spattered with blood, much of it his own. He was still too dazed to tell how badly he was hurt. Beyond his own dying victim, Jebediah was slowly curling into a ball, an oddly luminous sword sinking to the snow in his bloody fist. Behind, the man who had been the target of Camber's desperate spell lay in a charred and definitely dead heap atop his equally dead horse, the man's chest transfixed by Camber's sword. The hilt was blackened and twisted like another he had seen only once, in a clearing at Iomaire.

He drew breath sharply, wondering whether his spell could have caught Jebediah in its backlash, but another part of him argued that this could not be, for Jebediah was still alive. Then he realized that his own former attacker was also dead, though there seemed to be no serious wound upon him. The eyes were open and staring, the face frozen in an expression of surprise and terror. As Camber reached out a shaking and bloody hand to sense the cause, he felt a residue of darkling magic—suddenly
knew
its source. Stunned at that, he shook his head to clear it and scrambled toward the feebly moving Jebediah.

“What the hell did you do?” he murmured, catching the grand master's silvered head before it could sink back on the snow.

Blood was spurting from a thigh wound in bright, pulsating gouts, smoking in the cold winter air, and Camber clamped his hands over the wound in despair.

“Oh, God, Jebediah! Jeb, can you hear me?”

When Jebediah only moaned softly, Camber whipped the swordbelt from his waist with one hand and looped it twice around the thigh above the wound, his breath coming in ragged gasps from the exertion as he tried to tighten it down and stop the bleeding. The black of the supple leather brightened to scarlet almost immediately, but it did not seem to slow the flow appreciably.

“Jeb, answer me!” Camber pleaded, gathering the fainting man in his arms and pressing his hand to another gaping wound in the back, sick at heart. At Jebediah's side lay the fallen sword in a blade-shaped depression filled with melted snow. Somehow, Camber knew that if he touched it, the blade would still be warm.

“Good God, man, what did you do?” he whispered.

Jebediah breathed in sharply through his teeth and rallied enough to look up at Camber with a tight little smile.

“Don't tell me I've managed to come up with a magical application you don't know about,” he murmured. “I'm afraid it was a little grey around the edges, but your friend might have gotten you, otherwise.”

“A little grey?
What did you do?
”

“Just a little energy diversion. Never you mind. The important thing is that you're still alive. One of us had to—oh, sweet
Jesu
, it hurts to die!” he gasped, as a wave of pain took him.

“No! Don't say that!” Camber ordered, clasping the wounded man even closer. “You're not going to die! I won't let you!”

Jebediah closed his eyes and moistened his lips, controlling a cough before he could manage a faint, sardonic smile.

“You're not often wrong, my friend, but this time.…”

He sighed and sagged even more heavily against Camber's chest, though he was still conscious. Camber started to lay his hand on Jebediah's forehead—paused to wipe off the blood against his side—wiped it again on his cloak when he saw that it had only become the more reddened with his own blood. Then he stroked the pain-taut forehead and reached out with his mind for that familiar, tender rapport which had been uniquely theirs.

He could feel his own strength ebbing, as the surge of battle energy drained away, but somehow that did not seem nearly as important as the fact that Jebediah was slipping away in his arms. He was aware of Evaine's and Joram's touch, brushing insistently at the edges of his mind as he opened the link to Jebediah, but he shut them out for now. No time for that. Jebediah was dying, and there was only Camber to comfort him in his pain.

“Alister,” Jebediah managed to whisper, after a few seconds. “Alister—no,
Camber
—hear my confession … please.…”

“Oh, God, Jeb, don't make me do that—”

“And die unshriven?” The grand master gave a little shudder, either of pain or dread, then looked up at Camber trustingly, crawling his hand up to grasp the little gold cross, bloodied now, which had again escaped from Camber's tunic in the battle. He brought it weakly to his lips and kissed it, then steeled himself to gaze up at Camber steadily.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Since my last confession, I have slain a man with magic, and with hatred in my heart—and I most heartily beg forgiveness.”

Camber could no longer see, for the tears in his eyes and the lightheadedness he was himself feeling, but he did not need to see to exchange the ritual phrases with Jebediah and give him absolution, to trace the sign of their faith on the dying man's forehead. He closed his eyes and let their rapport intensify, reaching out to ease his old friend.

Again he felt the ethereal, detached sensation as the silver cord began to unravel and the ties of earth-binding were loosed. Even though they were not in a magic circle this time, as he turned his Sight outward he could See the vague, insubstantial image of a younger Jebediah superimposing itself over the failing body in his arms, a Jebediah restored to vigorous, vibrant youth.

Jebediah was not looking at him, though—not anymore. Instead, his face was turned toward the little shrine across the clearing, which blazed in Camber's Sight like a friendly beacon of cool, silver light. From it a familiar form in Michaeline blue seemed to grow out of a pinpoint of light, drifting slowly toward them, booted feet never quite touching the new snow. A wide smile was on his face—the same face which had looked back at Camber in his mirror for many years now, though younger—and he held out his arms in welcome to the man who was now rising out of the spent shell which once had housed Jebediah.

Forgetting to breathe, Camber watched as a new and young Jebediah rose from the ground at his knees and went to join the specter, the two men embracing like long-parted brothers in a joy which brimmed and overflowed even as far as Camber. They drew apart to turn and gaze at him then, first Jebediah and then the other stretching out their arms as though inviting him to join them. The lure was appealing, but even as Camber wavered on the verge of accepting, pain jarred the vision and shook his concentration. When he tried to look for them again, he could not See them.

He knew Jeb was dead in his arms then, and a mortal portion of him mourned the loss, though another part rejoiced to have been witness to that awesome and mystical reunion. Time seemed to stretch out infinitely, giving him all the span he needed to contemplate his own destiny. Though he sensed vaguely that he, too, was dying, as his blood pooled and congealed around him on the trampled snow, somehow that did not seem an issue of high priority. Something else was, but he could not quite identify it yet, so he retreated further into stillness.

He felt Jebediah slip out of his arms and let himself gradually slump to rest his head on the dead man's shoulder, as the sun passed its zenith and began to decline. He willed his own shape to return, feeling a little strange to be wearing his Camber face again, after so many years, yet somehow sensing that it was meet to do so, especially after having seen Jebediah's ghostly escort.

The return to his own form was a proper choice, he knew, and yet it seemed to open him once more to Evaine's and Joram's touch. He sensed them hovering frantically at the edge of his awareness, but he had no great desire to set the link and let them read in depth. Strangely removed from all their anxious questioning, their fears for his safety, he gave them a calm, dispassionate account of what had happened and certain indication as to how they might find the place where he now lay. Then, gently but firmly, and in an oddly-transmuted sense of love for them both which surpassed his previous appreciation of the beauty of their souls, he eased them from his mind.

Something remained for him to do—something important, something he had not yet discovered. His body, with a twinge, reminded him that it was failing, but he pushed that awareness into the background of his consciousness. He would be given time to do what must be done, he felt sure.

He drifted then, as physical shock and the cold began to take command of his body. The sun sank gradually lower, and a light snow began to powder the clearing.

He wavered between consciousness and dreaming, and his mind went back again to the man whose body lay so close against his own, chilling flesh against still-warm—and to the one who had come to greet the freed soul. That brought his contemplation once again to Alister, the real Alister, whom he had known so many years ago. Alister, too, had died a warrior's death, bleeding out his life with the wounds of battle in a clearing shared only with the dead, but in a cause well-served. Alister … Alister.…

His reasoning was sluggish now, he sensed, but he could not seem to help himself. As he drifted in an oddly disconnected lethargy, he found himself remembering Ariella next—beautiful, cruel, clever, incestuous Ariella—her fingers curved in death in the attitude of a spell which most men thought impossible. She had failed, but Camber knew why. He had almost tried the spell on Rhys, confident that he could make it work—but that would not have been proper, he knew now. No man had the right to make that choice for any other soul.

And yet, the matter of the spell would not be put aside. Time after time, his thinking made the same brief circuit—Jebediah, Alister, Ariella, the spell—and he could not seem to break the cycle.

Did one who mastered it indeed elude death? Or did one but gain access to that other sphere which now he twice had glimpsed? Somehow, simple yielding up to death, at least for now, did not contain the answer, though Camber had never feared to die—had always thought he would be ready, in his time. And close upon these musings came another question: had he been given these glimpses of that other sphere for a reason …?

With sudden, blindingly obvious insight, he knew that reason—knew why Ariella's working of the spell had failed, knew a greater part of the Master plan in which he was a keystone. He sensed, also, the reasons one might be granted such grace—not to die, for now, but instead to enter that other, twilight realm of spirit where one might serve both God and man in different ways—or were they different? And
he
had been given the knowledge whereby he might accept that challenge, might gird himself with the whole armor of God and labor on, in the service of the Light.

It was so simple. It was so beautiful. All he had to do was reach out with his mind, just—so.…

Toward dusk, one who had lain as dead stirred beneath his blanket of powdered snow and sneezed, clutching his head miserably and moaning as he struggled to sit up. His name was Rondel, knight in the service of Manfred, Earl of Culdi, and the last thing he remembered was his own fury as the Michaeline grand master grabbed his foot, twisted it, and sent him flying over his horse's shoulder. He did not remember hitting the ground.

Memory of the battle cleared his head tremendously, and he scrambled to a crouch and looked around wildly for signs of continuing danger, dagger in his fist. Nothing moved except the gentle snowfall, filtering down from a greying, darkening sky. Vague in the shadows at the edge of the clearing, several of the horses nibbled half-heartedly at the bare winter branches and sucked at the ice-choked pool. He counted five snow-shrouded forms around him in the growing dimness, and knew with a chill unconnected with the snow that he alone had survived.

Practicality began to assert itself at that. If his comrades were dead, then he alone was entitled to the reward which the earl had promised for the apprehension of Cullen and Alcara—and there was no doubt in Rondel's mind, at this point, that those were the identities of the two black-clad bodies lying together a little way across the clearing. Now, if he could only catch a horse or two.…

The dusk was nearly full upon him by the time he succeeded in capturing one of the animals. Rondel stroked the neck of the horse he had caught for several minutes, gentling the animal with caresses and soothing words, then began leading it slowly toward the two black-clad bodies. His muscles ached from the cold and his fall, and his eyes did not want to focus, but he knew he dared not tarry over-long. He was several hours' ride from the inn where he and his comrades had stayed the night before, and there was no closer shelter along this road. He must pack up the bodies and be gone before more snow or the wolves which frequented these hills made him, too, a casualty of the day's work.

He was bending down to lift the nearer of the two bodies up across the saddle when he became aware of torchlight glittering through the dead trees in the direction opposite from that which he had come. He could not hear the sound of their horses across the several switchbacks, but there were close to a dozen men, by the number of torches, and they would reach him within a few minutes.

Torn between greed and fear, he crouched closer to look for some item of proof that he could take with him—the ring, perhaps, for he knew he dared not stay to see who the approaching riders were. The first body wore no ring, but clenched in the stiff fingers was the gold cross which he and his comrades had spotted back at the inn.

He had to pry it from the fingers of the dead man, and then break the chain which had held it around the neck of the other, but in his haste, and in the failing light, he did not notice the facial change which had come upon the older man since he had seen him in the noonday sun. He spotted the ring—and it was, indeed, a bishop's amethyst, engraved with crosses along the bezel—but he could not get it off, and he could hear the hoofbeats of the approaching riders now. They would soon be upon him.

He dared not delay. The cross would have to do as proof. There was no doubt in his mind that the dead man was, indeed, the renegade Bishop Cullen—and if the cross were not accepted as proof, well, at least the gold itself was worth something. And so, stuffing the cross into his tunic, he scrambled onto his waiting horse and sped away, gone in the twilight gloom.