The Harrowing of Gwynedd (58 page)

Very well, then. She would have to rely on something besides visual evidence. Some clue in the rings themselves, perhaps. Maybe—something to do with polarities—a not unlikely possibility, given the balance inherent in nearly every example she had found of the sort of magic that Orin and Jodotha favored.

Polarities. Opposites. Positive and negative. Black and white. Left and right. Male and female
…

Nodding to herself, Evaine shifted the rings' positions, taking Orin's ring in her right hand and Jodotha's in her left, weighing more than physical substance, settling into a cool, dispassionate meditative state.

Polarities. Hold Orin's ring unmoving and feel its orientation. Project into its structure and sense the balance of the individual who had worn it
.

She closed her eyes to sense it better, eliminating mere physical sight, which knew nothing of the ultimate balances.

Now hold that first balance and concentrate on Jodotha's ring. Different. Balanced in its own way, but different. The same, but different
. Turning the second ring in her fingers, she knew they would only match one way.

Turn it like a coin
—
crowns or shields? One way was right, the other was not. If Orin's was the shield, should Jodotha's match, as shield, or complement, as crown? Where was the balance point? How did they balance? Crown … shield …

And suddenly, the two were balanced—an unshakable certitude. Inhaling deeply, she opened her eyes and let the breath out slowly, gazing at the two rings resting on her palms. Then, without further hesitation, she picked up the smaller, lighter circlet of Jodotha's ring and placed it on top of Orin's, prodding it gently with her forefinger to make it nest inside the larger band. Their union made no sound, but she felt the faint snick of the one seating in the other, and she slid them both onto the table and then onto the edge of the
Codex Orini
, where the silver would show up better against the creamy parchment. The marks on the edges of the rings were still visible, and as she slowly turned the outer ring against the inner, the marks became letters, spelling out four words in Latin.

Domine, fac me vitrum
. Lord, make me a glass …

Turning the rings over, she found the rest of the words on the other edges.…
ut tibi incendam
. That I may burn for Thee.

“Make me a glass, that I may burn for Thee,” she murmured, puzzling over the words. “A glass …”

She looked back at the interlocked rings, lying on the edge of the
Codex
, then looked more closely at how the space inside the circle suddenly seemed to have taken on a purplish hue.

“No, not a glass. A lens!” she exclaimed, pushing the rings over part of one of the lines of writing—and grinning as new writing appeared
between
the lines penned in mere ink. “A lens, by God!
A lens
!”

As she scrambled to unroll the scroll to its beginning, she slid the rings to the space between the first two lines. The writing that appeared was Orin's fine, distinctive hand—and remained, a glowing, fiery red, as she passed the ring between the lines.

“And it burns!” she whispered to herself, appreciating the wit. “Of course!”

She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry as the sense of the words emerged in translation, from that ancient, mystical language taught her by her father, so many years before—the language that now, perhaps, would enable her to release him from the magic that bound him so near and yet so far.

To the Reader who will have advanced thus far, my fraternal greetings across the unknown years, for we be brethren in this great Work. But only if thy need be great must thou proceed beyond this point, for the knowledge I leave in these words is of most solemn import, and of great danger, both to the operator and to the object of attention. For I would share with thee the secret of preserving life even beyond death
—
and perhaps, if thou art daring indeed, of bringing life back out of death …

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
EIGHT

I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children
.

—Isaiah 47:8

The full impact of the words did not register in the first reading or even in the second. Indeed, Evaine's most immediate concern became the necessity to preserve the words so arduously gained. She spent the next hour copying what she read through the lens of the joined rings, fearful lest the words fade before their sense could be fully grasped. Her fear was justified, for by dawn the words had faded utterly from between the lines of the
Codex Orini
. Nor could she call them back, no matter how she manipulated the rings.

But by then, she had her fair copy and could pore over it at her leisure—though the sense of the words troubled her, the more she studied their implications. Accordingly, she never showed the complete transcription to Joram and Queron. Instead, she wrote out an expurgated version for their guidance and then destroyed the original—which mattered little, since she had committed the entire thing to memory. And
that
she shuttered away from all but the most rigorous and insistent of retrieval methods that her brother and Queron might be tempted to try.

That did not keep them from asking questions, though, when she finally presented the draft and her outline of the procedure for the working she proposed.

“This is intriguing material, but what's the source?” Queron asked. “Much of it is fairly straightforward, but some, I've never even heard of, much less seen done.”

“You have what you'll need,” she said, not looking at him.

“What she means,” said Joram, “is that we have what
she
thinks we'll need. You've censored the Orin material, haven't you?” he said accusingly. “This isn't the entire document. What is it that you don't want us to know?”

“It doesn't matter,” she murmured, looking past them at nothing. “It's enough that one of us has to worry.”

Nor would she let them draw her out about it further.

They would not be ready to try the working for many weeks, in any case—for it was
working
and not mere spell which was required to undo what Camber had set, that cold day in January. The preparations went beyond the mere provision of a physical setting in which to perform the rite. The operators themselves must prepare, with a period of fasting and meditation.

And always thought must be given to the possibility of failure and the mortal peril to those who failed. In fact, she believed that Joram and Queron faced little real danger;
she
was the one most at risk. Nor did death itself hold any personal terror for Evaine, with husband and firstborn already gone before her. If she did die, what she would regret the most was not seeing her other children grow up.

But to bring her father back to carry on his work—how many other people's children might not live to grow up if she did not follow through with what she had begun and risk that death?

Which brought her back to the question of Camber himself. If they did
not
succeed in reviving him—whether he remained in his present state or merely passed into true death—the survival of his cult as saint must be ensured. Queron, who had founded a religious order on the promulgation of that cult, did not need convincing. Miracles had occurred, whether or not Camber's body had been assumed into heaven before his canonization, and many, many people, both human and Deryni, looked to the quandam saint as a source of hope and inspiration.

Joram was less certain, though he finally admitted that the survival of the cult of Saint Camber underground could only reinforce what Revan was doing out in the countryside to save Deryni.

“It's all based on a lie, though!” he protested, late one night in July, when Evaine and Queron had almost worn him down. “Saint Camber, Revan's baptisms—they're all lies.”

“So, I should point out, is the persecution of Deryni!” Queron answered, “You don't exterminate an entire people, just because a few of them have misused their powers over the years, Joram. If that were true, and justice were to be done, then the human population should be exterminated, too!”

“There are some who should!” Joram said stubbornly.

“Aye, and there are Deryni who deserved exactly what
they
got. But judgment must be made on an individual basis—which the regents seem increasingly unwilling to do. Because of that, we have to do something to even the odds. Giving people the hope and inspiration of Saint Camber, or blocking the powers of some of our people so they can get away—these are ways of doing that, without taking more innocent life. If ever we were to begin taking indiscriminate reprisals, we'd be no better than our persecutors.”

“Who believe that we're devils or in league with devils,” Joram murmured, bowing his head over clasped hands. “Sometimes, Queron, it's all I can do to celebrate Mass—wondering if perhaps Hubert and his minions are right. Maybe we
do
contaminate everything we touch. Maybe a Deryni
isn't
fit to be a priest. Maybe I'm deluding myself to think I'm worthy even to
try
to make a difference.”

“None of us are worthy, Joram,” Evaine said quietly. “But worthy or not,
someone
has to rise to the situation and say, ‘Enough'—and then carry through with action that might, conceivably, make a difference. At least we're
trying
—which is more than a lot of our people out there, who have given up hope. What harm can it do, at least to
pretend
that Father is a saint? There have been saints before, and will be again, whose sanctity rests on far slimmer evidence. You've probably prayed to a few of them yourself.”

Eventually, though Joram steadfastly refused to state that he thought his father actually
was
a saint, he agreed to carry on as if Camber
were
, and gave his promise to support the cult of Saint Camber, if they did not succeed in reversing Camber's spell. In a testament written and rewritten many times in the days that followed, Joram carefully reiterated the story he had first conceived for the convocation that ultimately proclaimed Camber's sainthood: that he, Joram MacRorie, and not heavenly agencies, had removed his father's body from its resting place in the vaults at Caerrorie and hidden it away—which did not detract in the least from the miracles and visitations ascribed to the saint at his canonization. Indeed, Joram confessed, over the years he had come to believe that his father might truly have been a saint. In affirmation of that growing belief, Joram planned to retrieve his father's remains from their present resting place and entrust their keeping and veneration to appropriate pious persons who would faithfully guard and promulgate the high principles for which Camber MacRorie had lived and died.

It was a telling and powerful statement, and would all but guarantee the resurgence of the Saint Camber cult, once released beyond the circle of the three of them who knew the literal facts of the situation. Even when it was written, Joram remained uncertain about the advisability of releasing it, and drew comfort from the realization that it would
not
be released without further consideration, unless none of them survived the attempt to bring Camber back—a possibility Joram counted highly unlikely. In case the unlikely occurred, however, Joram sealed his testament with a stasis spell keyed to Niallan, whom they all had agreed should try to hold the Council together if none of them returned, placing it with similarly sealed testaments prepared by Evaine and Queron.

For Evaine, those days of planning and preparation were a time of double strain, for in case
she
did not survive, she must make personal provisions of a different kind than those required by the two priests. She spent as much time with her children as she could spare, knowing that she must make every minute count, just in case she did not return from that dark journey, near unto death itself, where she must seek her father.

Mornings she spent with Rhysel—not eight until November, but already a scholar and wise beyond her years, as Revan had pointed out, what seemed like years before—a Revan then not yet what they had made of him. Daily they read and discussed the poetry and other writings that Camber had shared with Evaine at the same age. Sometimes Evaine included Bishop Dermot, whose background in the classics approached her own. Perhaps Dermot would take on Rhysel's further education, if Evaine did not return.

Then there was Tieg, who would need more specialized teachers before too long—Tieg, the precocious four-year-old with such awesome gifts of Healing and the ability to strip his people of their power. As Evaine played at “bears” with her surviving son, she wondered what would happen to him if she could not be there to see that his education was carried out as it should be. There were no more
scholae
for the training of Healers.

And finally, there was little Jerusha, the baby whom Evaine might never even really know. Like her father and her brother, Jerusha would be a Healer of breathtaking potential—and perhaps she, too, carried the blocking talent already evidenced by her brother. But at eight months, she was still a laughing, happy baby, sitting up strongly and starting to stand, wide-eyed and amazed at the world she was discovering—and already, she thought that Fiona MacLean, and not Evaine, was her mother.

“She adores you,” Evaine whispered, as she watched the infant settle into sleep in her little cot, a tiny hand clasped around two of Fiona's fingers. “If she never saw me again, she would never even miss me.”

“Nonsense!
You're
her mother.” Fiona looked at her strangely. “Evaine, what's wrong? You look like someone who
doesn't
expect to be seen again.”

“I'm sorry. I suppose I'm just tired.”

“No, it's more than that,” Fiona said. “Something's been troubling you for weeks. I kept meaning to ask you, but—you're not ill, are you?”