"Then what's bothering you? Surely you don't doubt your clever wife's ability after this long?"

Rhys chuckled mirthlessly. "Am I that transparent? No, I'm not worried about Evaine- or about myself or Joram."

"But you're worried about me."

"Not exactly that, either. It's the whole procedure, and the delicate coordination required of all four of us. Singularly, we've all done more difficult things before. G.o.d knows, some of the healings I've worked have been . . . awesome. But somehow, this is different. And you're not as strong as you should be. I wish we could have done this sooner."

"Well, there's no help for that," Camber murmured. "But come. I haven't looked at that scroll in months. Refresh my memory, in as much detail as you can. We'll both be far less anxious if we occupy our minds while we wait."

With a little sigh of resignation, Rhys reached his nearer hand across the s.p.a.ce between his chair and Camber's, laying his fingers on the other's bare wrist. Camber closed his eyes and took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He could hear Rhys's shallow breathing at his side.

As they had done so many times before, they forged the master link between them-a deep, peaceful stillness rippled only faintly by the disorder locked away in a corner of Camber's mind. The bond was maintained for some little while, as Rhys opened the channels of memory and let his information flow into the consciousness of his friend and mentor. When it was done, and the two had blinked back to the present, Rhys looked a little sheepish. Camber tried a rea.s.suring smile, but it did not quite succeed.

"That was fine," he said, patting Rhys's hand before rising to move restlessly to the fireplace. "It's always good to confirm that at least one's own memories aren't slipping."

"And his memories?"

Camber rested his hands on the mantel ridge and laid his forehead against the cool stone between them. "Is it that obvious?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"There's no need to be. Your head hurts again, doesn't it?"

"A little. No, a lot. How long before Evaine and Joram... ?"

"Soon. Is there anything I can do to ease-"

A slight knock sounded on the heavy outer door, and both men froze and glanced at each other. The knock was repeated. Instantly, Camber sat down and pulled a blanket over his lap, laying his head against the back of the chair and closing his eyes. Rhys, when he was certain that Camber was settled convincingly, crossed to the door.

"Who's there?"

"Father Joram," came the reply. "On official business."

Rhys shot the bolt and yanked the door open. Joram stood directly before the opening, his cowl pulled close about his golden head and shrouding his face in shadow. At his elbow and a pace behind stood what appeared to be another, younger monk, cowled head bowed and hands tucked piously inside the voluminous sleeves of a Michaeline habit. Had Rhys not known better, he would never have guessed that the monk was, in fact, his wife.

He looked at Joram, very much aware, since Camber had pointed it out, that Dualta was on guard at the end of the corridor. As much for his own mind's calming as to set the stage for Dualta's belief, he spoke a little louder than was necessary, and with a little more formality than he might otherwise have used.

"Father Joram, I wasn't expecting you. The vicar general is resting."

Joram did not even blink. "I hope we won't disturb him too much, Rhys. The father general asked to see this monk. It's a minor matter of discipline, which should not tax him unduly."

Rhys glanced inside, as though confirming that the vicar general was, indeed, expecting the visitors, then stood aside to let them pa.s.s. As he closed the door, he saw that Dualta had turned his back and resumed a normal guard stance. That detail, at least, seemed to be taken care of.

But there decorum ended. No sooner had Rhys slipped the bolt back in place than he was treated to the sight of his wife, cowl slipping back from tightly bound hair, dashing to embrace a white-faced man who nearly staggered with the exuberance of her greeting.

Husband and brother watched indulgently for several seconds and then, as if by mutual a.s.sent, turned back to the door to determine how it might best be warded for the coming work. Father and daughter held each other wordlessly for several heartbeats, until her arms had confirmed what her heart had never doubted.

"I knew you could not be dead!" she whispered fiercely, when at length they parted far enough to gaze into eyes made blurry by tears of joy. "I would have known! I surely would have known!"

"I would have spared you if I could," Camber murmured, holding her head close against his breast and touching her hair with his lips. "O my dearest child, how much I longed to spare you-but there seemed no other way. Rhys has told you something of what it was like."

"Aye, and that we can help you, Father," she said, drawing away to look at him from head to toe again, though she still did not release his hands. "We are ready to do what must be done-all of us."

"I thank you more than you can know," he replied. Releasing one of her hands, he sank back into the chair he had lately vacated, glancing to where the two young men had turned from their labors at the door.

"Gentlemen, are we warded?"

Joram' nodded, coming with Rhys to stand beside Camber's chair. "No one will be able to sense our magic from without, especially considering the concentration around you. We've shielded against escape of sound, as well. As an added safeguard, I will be on guard throughout."

"Good. Have you a plan, in case we're interrupted?"

"Dualta has the watch, as you know, and is aware that 'Brother John' and I are here."

Joram gestured toward his sister with a wry half-smile. "He's been led to believe that it's for disciplinary reasons, so I don't think he'll let anyone approach. However, if he should, Evaine and I will simply retire to your private oratory." He nodded toward a closed door leading off the main room. "We'll feign some act of penance. Rhys will stay with you and try to keep things from falling apart altogether, depending on what's happening at that point."

"That's a real danger, you know," Camber said. "Things falling apart, that is. If we are interrupted, I'm not certain I'll be able to hold up my end of things."

"Then G.o.d grant that we will not be put to that test," Evaine breathed.

With a nod, Camber leaned his head against the back of his chair and took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He allowed his pale Alister eyes to rest on each of them in turn: daughter, son, and son-in-law. Then he nodded again.

"Let's begin."

chapter eleven.

Grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal.

-Acts 4:29-30 As Rhys came to stand behind Camber's chair, Joram moved to the door and set his back against it. Evaine shed her Michaeline' mantle and laid it across a vacant chair before sitting on the bench beside her father's feet. One hand patted the embroidered slippers in affection as she reached into her habit with the other and withdrew a jewellike object the size of a hen's egg. Candlelight glinted amber on the smoothly polished surface as she burnished it against her sleeve. Deep in the heart of the crystal, tiny inclusions reflected fragmented fire against her Michaeline blue.

"I wish I had the one you gave me," she said, breathing on the crystal to warm it.

"Unfortunately, I gave it to Cinhil. This was Rhys's gift, though."

As she put it in his hands, she glanced behind him at her husband, her blue eyes mirroring his answering smile. Camber, with a contented smile of his own, held the crystal lightly between his fingers and propped his elbows on the arms of his chair. For a moment he gazed profoundly into its depths, seeking the release from tension which the shiral crystal usually facilitated. Then he shook his head lightly and let his gaze skip back to his daughter.

"I can't do it in this form," he said. "I mean, I could now, but I won't have the strength to maintain my shape illusion and still accomplish what we must. I'm taking back my own form."

As he spoke, a mist seemed to pa.s.s across his face and then to clear. For the first time since the clearing at Iomaire, he became Camber MacRorie once more. The familiar face was etched with fatigue and tension, but signs of these began to disappear almost immediately as he sighed and resumed his concentration on the shiral crystal.

Evaine bit her lip as she watched the beloved gray eyes grow gla.s.sy, paler, more otherworldly, though the phenomenon was comfortingly familiar. Camber's voice, when next he spoke, was a little hollow, flat, indicative of the profound relaxation he had already achieved.

"That's better," he murmured. "Rhys, I'm ready for you now."

Behind Camber, Rhys laid his hands gently on the other's shoulders and let himself sink into the special healing place from which he would keep watch over Camber's body. At his touch, Camber breathed deeply and exhaled again, the last lines of tension ironing out of his face. The gray eyes, half-lidded now, did not flicker as Evaine, with a steadying breath of her own, stood and spread her arms to either side in readiness, palms turned toward him at shoulder level in an att.i.tude of blessing.

"I am the key which opens many doors," she intoned softly.

Camber could see her through and behind the crystal in his hands, firelight from the candle sconce at his elbow dancing light and shadow on her hands and face. Rhys's touch was light and un.o.btrusive as the proper response flowed unbidden into his mind.

"I am the lock which yields to light alone."

"I am a candle burning in the dark," Evaine countered.

" I am a twig, for feeding flame from spark."

Called forth by the mnemonics of the litany they recited, he could feel new channels opening in his mind. He had rarely been so deep before, and knew he must go deeper still.

He sensed Evaine leaning forward to take the now-unnecessary crystal and slip it back inside her robe, but his hands remained at chest level, still cupped around an ovoid s.p.a.ce, until she pressed them gently into his lap. His universe was now encompa.s.sed by his waiting. He could not seem to think beyond his expectation.

"I am the light, condensing from the stars," Evaine whispered, "which brims the silver bowl of consciousness." She leaned both hands on the arms of his chair to stare deeply into his eyes.

" I am the vessel, opening my will," Camber murmured, now almost past speech. " I turn the key, and torch the twig ... and fill."

His eyes remained open, and his mind was still vaguely aware of his surroundings, but now almost all within his field of vision was obscured by the blue of Evaine's closeness. He could hear the soft rhythm of his breathing, but all other sound around him seemed suspended. Even the raising of his daughter's hand toward his face was silent, no rustle of cloth confirming whether the hand actually moved or only appeared to do so.

You are on the brink now, Evaine's mind whispered in his. Let go. Let all the memories flow, and live them to the full. Each one must be acknowledged and accepted and become a part of you. Let go now. We will keep you safe.

He let himself take a deeper breath-though not so deep that it required any great effort-then let it out slowly, feeling himself slide deeper and deeper into a quiet he had never experienced before. As his daughter's hand touched his forehead, his eyelids closed of their own weight, trembling for only a heartbeat before they were still. Now the shallow sound of his breathing was his only contact with the outside world. He did not even sense the moment when Evaine's hand left his forehead, and he had long ago lost the sensation of Rhys's touch.

Let go ... let go ...

He let things slip, starting to obey, and he could feel the tendrils of alien memory brush his own. Part of him was afraid, but he knew he must not shrink away. Abandoning all defenses and resistance, he loosed the final ties and let it happen. Immediately, thoughts not his own began to wash across awareness.

Sunlight. The warmth and heady perfume of a summery field. His Alister eyes drank in the greens and golds and pinks of summer growth: long-stemmed gra.s.ses and fertile soil and colors of a hundred different blossoms. Wildflowers sprang white and pink and lilac by bare toes. The rich blue of his habit was hiked up past his knees as he stepped through a rivulet of chill stream on water-slicked stones. He was a much younger Alister than Camber MacRorie had ever known, and he had abandoned his studies for an hour to celebrate the joy of mere existence.

He sank down in verdant clover gra.s.s and laid his head among pastel blossoms which tickled his ears; plucked a stem and sucked its sweet juice as he watched clouds pile up against a sapphire sky. A gra.s.shopper bounded into his field of vision, and he put out one idle hand to let the creature crawl across his thumb. The delicate touch of the creature's legs and feelers, the subtle shadings of color, were so beautiful it almost hurt.

A skip, a beat, and he was no longer lying in the field.

He was slightly older now: a newly ordained priest, helping some of his older brethren to dress the altar in the Commanderie chapel at Cheltham. Dust motes shimmered in a shaft of gla.s.s-stained sunlight, and a little of the sunshine smell was in the bleached linens which he and another man shook out and laid across the smooth stone of the altar top.

He sniffed the pungent fragrance of cedar oil as he rubbed and polished the carved-oak Michael at the altar's right, remembering the feel of each burnished whorl beneath his fingertips. He inhaled the familiar scent, and when he exhaled, he was in darkness.

Terror! Somehow, he knew that he was on his sleeping pallet, alone in his cell-but he was also struggling with someone or something which was trying to suffocate him!

Nightmare hands pressed close around his throat, choking off his breath, and he knew that there were claws attached to those hands which could rip both life and soul from him. He thrashed on the narrow pallet, fighting desperately to escape, to wake up, to overcome the enemy, to save his life!

A dizzying explosion of blackness, and he was no longer in bed, fighting for his life, though still his breath came tight. He was a grown man, Vicar General of the Order of Saint Michael, and the writing in his hand spelled out the names of possible successors to his office. Four now-familiar names formed the list, penned in the precise hand of the Michaeline grand master.

Alister knelt at the hearth and held the parchment to the flames, aware that Jebediah was crouched approving at his side. As the parchment caught and blazed, he let it fall into the fire and stood, steadying himself on his friend's shoulder with an easy familiarity. He was comfortable, contented ...

And troubled. The novice monk kneeling humbly before him and the a.s.sembled Order was a bright young man: human, but apparently gifted with a natural empathic intuition which was uncommon even among Deryni, with the possible exception of Healers. From Alister's abbatial throne, beneath the ribbed vaulting of the chapter house at Cheltham, it would have been easy to let himself react according to his own occasional uneasiness at special abilities, to impose some harsh regiment of regularization which would forever stifle this young man's talents and make of him an ordinary monk, no different from a dozen of his fellows. The boy gazed up at him with blind, unqualified trust, and Alister knew that the boy would willingly give up the pursuit of his talent if his vicar general commanded it.

But for the Order to provide proper training and guidance for the development of that talent would be far more difficult, time-consuming, and would require his personal commitment to the task. Dared he make such a decision?

A blink. A change of time and. place. He was a brand-new Michaeline knight, receiving his consecrated sword from a grand master now many years dead. Another shift, and he was tending minor wounds sustained by one of his men in the a.s.sault on the keep a year ago, a younger and less worldly-looking King Cinhil looking on in dreadful fascination.

The memories were coming faster now: shorter, but with a far greater intensity. There was a flash of a woodland clearing which was familiar to Camber as well as to him whose memories he read, but he pushed that aside. Later, for that last memory.

He was vaguely aware of his own body, as well as the one he was remembering, and that his lungs were filling very shallowly now, his heart rate slowed to a bare minimum. He vaguely consigned himself to Rhys's careful watch as the next image steadied for his attention.

He was a much younger Alister, sword in hand, hacking at a pell in the Commanderie training yard; a younger man still, almost a boy, jumping a heavy bay destrier over a succession of obstacles in an open field, five other riders following the same course behind him.

At night, and he knew this was no training exercise, he and another knight slipped through the shadows of an enemy periphery by moonlight. He knew the dry, metallic tension in his throat as he realized his quarry was also Deryni, though not yet aware of his presence -and the grim satisfaction of drawing dirk across the man's throat, the body crumpling without a warning sound...

Sitting beside a night-shielded campfire with Jebediah and two other knights, fishing hot pebbles out of a leather traveling cup, the scent of mulled wine sweet and pungent in his nostrils. The peaceful relaxation of the night, leaning against Jeb's booted knee to gaze dreamily into the fire as the flames gradually turned to ashes and the four of them talked on and on.

Suddenly, he was wrenched from his adopted memories and struggling to breathe, and he could feel Rhys's hands on his face, Rhys's mouth forcing air into his protesting lungs.

His ears were ringing, and his fingers tingling, and he was vaguely aware of what seemed like a slow, insistent drumming, pulling him back from wherever he had been. As he forced heavy eyelids apart, he realized that the pounding was coming from the door, that Joram was looking from him and Rhys to the door as though in slow motion. Evaine seemed frozen beside her husband, mouth caught in a surprised O, and Rhys was pulling away to stare urgently into Camber*s eyes as he felt his patient begin to breathe again on his own.

Camber's head reeled, pain lancing behind his eyes and at the back of his head as he coughed and time settled back into place. Dimly he could hear the pounding on the door again, and a familiar but dreaded voice calling his adopted name.

"Father Cullen, may I come in?"

It was Cinhil.

With great difficulty, Camber forced himself to focus on Rhys, not needing to tell the Healer of his alarm. Any other man but Cinhil might be denied admission without explanation, but Cinhil would persist until his own need for comfort was satisfied.

And here sat Camber, in the guise of a man supposedly dead, about to be revealed to the very man for whose sake he had already risked so much. It must not all end now!

Gathering all his reserves in a ma.s.sive effort of willpower, Camber gestured for Evaine and Joram to go to the oratory as they had originally planned, his hand aching like lead at even that slight movement. To Rhys he murmured, "I have been very fatigued, and you worry that I may be battling some residue of Ariella's influence. I'm going to take back my other shape and try to hold it."

As Rhys started to protest, Camber was already triggering the return to Alister's shape, forcing the other's memories into abeyance with all his might. He did not know how long he dared hold the two together, but he knew he had to try. When he let his eyes flicker open again, he could see Evaine through the open door of the oratory, lying prostrate before the tiny altar. Joram knelt beside her with his golden head bowed. Rhys was striding toward the door, his eyes hardly leaving the now-changed Camber as he laid his hands on the latch and loosed the wards. In all, the delay had not been more than half a minute.

Camber closed his eyes and hoped.

"Father Alister . . . ?" Cinhil asked, his voice trailing off as he saw Rhys filling the doorway.

Dualta was standing at the king's elbow, and gave Rhys an apologetic nod.

"Sorry to disturb you, m'lord. I explained to His Grace that the father general was engaged."

"You said it was only a disciplinary matter," Cinhil interjected, trying fruitlessly to peer past Rhys. "I need to talk to him, Rhys. Where is he?"

Rhys did not move his hand from the doorjamb at Cinhil's eye level, and the king had to continue trying to look past it.

"It's all right, Dualta," Rhys murmured. "Your Highness, Alister is not really up to seeing any more visitors this evening. I shouldn't even have let Joram in. He's extremely tired.

I'm trying to get him settled down for the night."