"I pray you to forgive me, Reverend Lords, Sire," he murmured earnestly, especially beseeching Cinhil as he straightened his mantle with shaking hands. "I had not intended- ".

Jaffray Waved his hand in negation. "No apologies are necessary, Lord Dualta. Your testimony has been quite enlightening, thus far. Dom Queron, do you intend to have Lord Dualta continue at this time?"

"I am not certain, Your Grace." Queron bowed and turned slightly toward Cinhil. "Sire, we come here to a very delicate matter, for the next portion of the testimony can be better told by another witness of whom Your Highness is doubtless aware. I can, of course, ask Lord Dualta to continue, if you wish, but..."

Cinhil had been following the entire examination to this point with tight-lipped concentration, his eyes at least half the time covered by one hand, as if to shade them from the light-though there was precious little in the hall other than from torch and fireplace.

Of course, Camber knew that Cinhil was not trying to hide from the light-and he was sure that Queron knew that, too. Jaffray, who also knew what Queron was doing, did not make a point of turning to stare at the king; but he did not have to, for all the other bishops and, indeed, everyone else in the hall were staring for him.

Camber's heart went out to the king. Queron had set this up quite mercilessly. There was no way that Cinhil could avoid testifying now. Queron would make the matter as graceful as possible, but he would not relent.

"Your Highness?" Queron asked softly, as if unsure whether Cinhil had heard his question.

Cinhil toyed with a signet ring on his thumb, still managing to appear nonchalant.

"I was not aware that the king had any jurisdiction in the archbishop's court," he countered, not looking up.

Archbishop Oriss looked at Queron, then at Jaffray, who still had said and done nothing, then at Cinhil.

"Sire? Is this witness known to Your Grace?"

Cinhil nodded slowly, not daring to lift his eyes and thus risk meeting those of any other who had been there. Camber wondered whether Queron and Jaffray had set this up deliberately, baiting Oriss to do their dirty work for them and so force Cinhil to testify- for Cinhil would not lie, no matter what it cost him.

With a sigh, Cinhil turned his face toward Oriss.

"He is well known to me, Archbishop."

"Then should we not hear from him?" Oriss persisted.

When Cinhil did not answer, Eustace, sitting beside Camber, cleared his throat and stood.

"Sire, forgive me, but I do not understand what is happening here. I am a simple man. I do not like intrigues and mysteries. If there is another material witness, then he should be made to come forth. Friendship with Your Grace should not grant him immunity from speaking the truth in so important a matter."

"You are certainly correct, Bishop," Cinhil began evenly, making one last, game try to avoid the issue while he still had the nerve. "It should not. But- confound it, man!" He looked up at Eustace with eyes blazing. "You must be aware of my mixed feelings about Camber. I was that other witness! I had not wished to be drawn into this dispute!"

There were many gasps of surprise, for up until that instant, most of the men in the hall had not guessed that Cinhil himself was the unnamed witness. Amazement rustled through the hall like an errant wind, gradually subsiding when Cinhil did not speak further. After a moment of awkward silence, Queron essayed the breach.

"Your Highness, I must apologize. I did not intend for you to be forced into this testimony against your will."

Camber nodded to himself and restrained a bitter smile, knowing that that was exactly what Queron had intended.

Queron returned his attention to Jaffray. "My apologies to Your Grace, as well. I should not have mentioned this. With your permission, I should like to ask Lord Dualta to-"

"No."

Cinhil's word was not loud, but it cut Queron off as effectively as though it had been shouted. To the sound of low-voiced murmurs of surprise, Cinhil stood, curtly signaling with his hand for them to remain seated when they would have risen in respect. Removing his crown with steady hands, he laid it gently on the cushion of his throne. Awed silence followed him down the three shallow steps of the dais as he turned to face Jaffray. Without his crown, in his somber robes of near-black green, he looked almost like the ascetic monk he had always wished to be.

"I am prepared to give my testimony in this matter, my Lord Archbishop. Since I do not speak from the throne, you may dispense with regal t.i.tles for the duration of this examination."

Jaffray half-stood and bowed, then resumed his seat, glancing at Queron.

"I think we need not place His Grace under oath," he said, half questioning, and then shaking his head as Queron minutely shook his. "Dom Queron, you may proceed with the witness."

Bowing deeply, Queron turned to face Cinhil. This was the witness he had been waiting for, who would confirm all that had been said, even in his understandable reluctance. In fact, that very reluctance would make his testimony all the more telling, for Cinhil had not been exaggerating when he had spoken of his mixed feelings regarding Camber. Cinhil was truly the unimpeachable witness whom Queron had promised, for all that he did not physically wear his crown. Camber could almost read Queron's triumph in his very stance.

G.o.d, if he but knew what he was really doing!

"I shall try to make this as brief as possible, Father -if I may call you by that t.i.tle without causing undue pain. All here know that you were once a priest."

Cinhil winced at that, as Queron had intended, reminding all that this was at least one reason Cinhil had for not wishing any honor for Camber. Queron glanced at the floor, considering his next barb.

"Very well, Father. You affirm, then, that you were, indeed, present in Bishop Cullen's chamber on that night before the Blessed Camber's funeral?"

"Yes," came Cinhil's whispered reply.

"And that you witnessed something quite out of the ordinary concerning Bishop Cullen on that night?"

"Yes," Cinhil said again.

"Excellent," Queron said, scanning his audience and gauging their response. "Now, Father, please tell these Reverend Lords what you saw that night, in as much detail as you can remember. We wish specifically to hear of anything relating to Camber."

Cinhil closed his eyes and swallowed, then looked at the floor and began to relate what he believed he had seen.

His initial testimony did not take long. Glossing over what Dualta had already related, for Dualta's recollection differed very little from his own as far as sequence of events, Cinhil dwelt instead on his own reaction to the alleged miracle: his white-faced disbelief at first, and then his growing awe and almost fear as he realized that he was not mad, and that the others had seen the same thing.

"I did not want to believe it," Cinhil whispered, "even though Dualta had stated what I suppose we were all thinking. I told myself that we must have been mistaken, that miracles do not happen any more. Even Lord Rhys would not commit himself; and Healers are probably the closest thing we know to miracle-workers on an everyday basis. He said that Bishop Cullen seemed to be out of danger, but he declined to speculate on how that had come about. When I asked whether it could have been through Camber's intervention, he said he was not qualified to judge.

"It was then that I realized that there was another witness I hadn't noticed before." The audience sat forward, for from here, Cinhil's testimony was new.

"There was a young Michaeline monk kneeling in the doorway of the oratory. Rhys told me that his name was Brother John, and that Bishop Cullen had asked to see him on a minor matter of discipline. They'd forgotten about him in all the confusion."

Here, Queron cleared his throat. "For the record, Father, though Lord Dualta confirms the presence of this Brother John, neither he nor any other member of the Michaeline Order whom we have questioned, has been able to locate this Brother John since the night in question. There appears to be no record that he ever existed. We know that you also tried to find nun. Were you more successful?"

Cinhil shook his head, to a few rumblings of disapproval from among the bishops.

"Thank you, Father. Please continue. We'll come back to this point a little later."

Cinhil bowed nervously and seemed to steel himself to speak again. Not a sound came from his rapt audience.

"This-Brother John was kneeling just inside the oratory. I asked him whether he'd seen what had just happened. He replied that he was only an ignorant monk, and not learned in such matters, but I insisted that he answer. I remember that when he looked up, he had the most incredible eyes I'd ever seen-a sort of smoky black."

"Go on, please," Queron urged.

"Yes, sir. He-admitted that he had seen something. And when I pressed him for details, he said, 'It was him. He drew his shadow across the vicar general.' "

"And by 'him,' what did you take him to mean?" Queron asked softly.

"I-asked him," Cinhil breathed. "I asked him and he said-he said, 'It seemed to be the Lord Camber, Sire.'" Cinhil took a deep breath and closed his eyes, almost speaking to himself. "I shall remember his words until the day I die. He said, 'It seemed to be the Lord Camber. Yet, he is dead. I have seen him! I-I have heard of goodly men returning before, to aid the worthy . . .'"

A great sigh swept through the hall as Cinhil's voice trailed off. Even Queron did not press him further.

After a moment, Cinhil slowly opened his eyes, though he still did not appear to see. He raised his hands to stare at them, willing the clenched fists to relax, then let them fall slack at his sides as he sighed and looked up at Queron. Queron had drawn out of him what he had not wished to say, even though it was the truth. Now Cinhil wanted only to escape, to be quit of this public testimony for a man he had at once resented and feared.

Queron let out his own breath and gave Cinhil an acknowledging nod.

"Thank you, Father. Would you please tell the court what, if anything, happened after that?"

"Little more," Cinhil murmured. "I had to get away and think. I still did not want to believe what I had seen and heard. I-told them not to discuss the matter, and then I left."

"And went... ?"

"To-to the cathedral for a little while, to- pray beside his body." He hung his head again. "After that, I returned to my apartments," he whispered.

"And nothing noteworthy occurred in the cathedral?" Queron persisted, though gently, for beyond this point, even he did not know what to expect.

But Cinhil only shook his head, raising his eyes to Queron's with such determination that even Queron's aplomb was a little shaken. The Healer-priest bowed profoundly, one hand sweeping in a gesture of "as you wish," patently acknowledging Cinhil's shift back from witness to monarch. He seemed to regain most of his poise as he returned his attention to the archbishop. He had, after all, accomplished his purpose.

"Your Grace, I think we need not cross-examine this witness further. May he be excused?"

"Of course," Jaffray said. "Sire, if you wish, we can adjourn for the rest of the day. I realize that this has been very difficult for you."

For answer, Cinhil turned his Haldane gaze hard on the archbishop, then pivoted slowly to scan the hall. His audience shrank under his scrutiny-all except Camber-not daring to speak or even to move as he finally ascended the three dais steps to pick up his crown and take his seat. Though he was a little pale as he replaced the crown on his head, his face now betrayed no hint of what he had just been through. That, in itself, was enough to give him a vaguely foreboding air. It did not help that he avoided looking at Jaffray as he laid his hands formally on the arms of the throne.

But Camber, reading resignation as well as resentment for what had just transpired, did not share the apprehension of his colleagues. In a flash of vivid insight, he knew that even Cinhil, in his anger and frustration, had finally realized that one did not always have a choice of games which must be played. Not himself; not the bishops; not even Queron.

And so, there would be no reprisals. Now Cinhil was simply going to rea.s.sert the proper balance between king and Church, to ensure a viable working relationship for the future.

Cinhil had lost this particular battle, but he would not always lose. He had won a minor victory only the night before, when he had gamed an understanding ally in his struggle to be what he wanted to be, as well as what he was forced to be. Cinhil had learned much in the past year.

"We thank you for your concern, Archbishop, but no recess is necessary on our account,"

Cinhil said, every inch the gracious monarch. "We would not have it said that the King of Gwynedd in any way impeded the functioning of this august court, regardless of any personal biases which he himself might hold. As a dutiful son of the Church, the king sits here at Your Grace's invitation, and by your leave. Pray, continue, and accept our apologies if we seemed less than cooperative earlier."

To that, Jaffray had no choice but to make placating noises and a.s.sure the king that the court sympathized with his personal involvement, and certainly understood his seeming reluctance to testify, either for or against the matter under consideration. Cinhil accepted his rea.s.surances graciously, and everyone seemed to relax.

After a few false starts, Dualta was recalled to complete his testimony and to verify Cinhil's story of the mysterious Brother John; and then Rhys and Joram were also recalled, though they could add nothing to what had already been said. Rhys had never seen Brother John before that night in Cullen's chambers, and Joram claimed that the monk had come to him that evening with a story that Bishop Cullen had summoned him.

Bishop Cullen, of course, could neither confirm nor deny Joram's statement, having lost any precise memory of whether he had summoned a Brother John or not.

That about wound up the morning's testimony, other than to speculate on the significance of the elusive Brother John. The scant evidence regarding his existence, other than the testimony concerning his one-time appearance, furthered the air of mystery surrounding him, and even raised in one listener's mind the possibility that said John had actually been an angel, sent to bear witness to G.o.d's most recent miracle. That theory, voiced by the human Bishop of Nyford, who was by now an avid Camberian supporter, could not have been disproven except by those who dared not reveal the truth. And so, since the monk could not be produced, and it could not readily be proven that he had ever existed-perhaps he had been an angel. The possibility certainly did not detract from the growing Camberian hagiography.

Similar speculation continued after a late lunch break, with numerous lesser witnesses coming forward to attest to changes wrought in their lives by the supposed intercession of the Blessed Camber: miraculous cures at his tomb, pet.i.tions answered, protection derived from calling upon the Defensor Hominum- the Defender of Humankind. Of course, none of the claims was necessarily provable by the rigorous criteria set in the morning's testimony-but by then it did not really matter. The Council of Bishops was convinced.

By the end of the afternoon, it was clear that only formalities remained to be performed before Camber's sainthood would be officially recognized.

Camber himself could only sigh and accept the inevitable, casting his required vote with a silent prayer that the G.o.d Who had sustained him through so much already, and had allowed this to happen, would also accept this final bit of hypocrisy on his part.

The vote was unanimous, the response to its announcement almost universally joyous.

On the fourteenth of the month, two weeks away, Camber Kyriell MacRorie would be formally canonized, to be known henceforth as Saint Camber of Culdi, Defensor Hominum-and other t.i.tles to be determined in the intervening days before the official celebration.

Camber said little as the company dispersed, drawing solace from the companionship of Joram and Jebediah, who could legitimately be with him at such a moment, and casting one long, sorrowful look at Evaine and Rhys in the gallery, before he pa.s.sed out of the hall.

He took no supper that night, and spent the evening in seclusion after hearing Vespers with his son and Jebediah. His new status was going to take some getting used to.

chapter twenty five.

How is he numbered among the children of G.o.d, and his lot is among the saints!

-Wisdom of Solomon 5:5 The season changed, and it was true autumn, and Saint Camber of Culdi was proclaimed in all the parishes and cathedrals of Gwynedd. The season changed again, and the Feast of Christmas came and went, and then it was the new year, though the Three Kings had not yet come bearing gifts.

And in the early hours of a day midway between the coming of the Sun of Justice and the feast known as Epiphany, the Bishop of Grecotha knelt in the chapel now dedicated to the new-made saint and pondered what he had become-this man whom the world knew as Alister Cullen, but who knew himself to be the very Camber of the legends.

Or, not the Camber of the legends, precisely, for that man was now a man who had never really lived, lauded with tales of miraculous doings never wrought by him in life, and now expounded when the man himself could not refute their claims. Or, he could have, but he would not. So far as the world was concerned, Camber Kyriell MacRorie was dead and must remain so.

Resignedly, Camber gazed at the shrine his adherents had built to the man they had made of him, trying to understand at a level of the heart what his mind and reason had been forced to accept months before. All Gwynedd was talking about Saint Camber now.

This was the first time he had found the new shrine empty in the nearly two months since the formal canonization, and this was only because it was snowing bitterly outside, and in the deepest dark of the night. What was it that drew them?

He searched the face of the image they had made of him, the life-sized figure of a Camber who had never been, carved in a pale gray marble the way Guaire had seen him, cowl fallen back from gilded hair, the painted face upraised to gaze at hands which held a royal diadem, a replica of the crown of crosses and leaves which Camber had set on Cinhil's head that night which seemed so long ago.

Sanctus Camberus, Defensor Hominum, Regis Creator, the legend read on the altar front. Saint Camber, Defender of Humankind, Kingmaker. To either side of the altar, in hand-deep pans of sand set on wrought bronze stands, scores of candles blazed in tawny golden splendor, illuminating the chapel without any taint of colored gla.s.s. The entire chamber had been refaced with white stone, carved alabaster screens replacing the old wooden ones, even the floor being re-tiled in a white-and-gray cross pattern which some said was destined to become the badge of the Servants of Saint Camber, who had commissioned the entire work. It was rumored that the Camber shrine at the Servants'

abbey in Dolban was even more sumptuous, though Camber had not yet summoned the courage to go and see it.

His own trepidations aside, he wondered what it all meant in terms of the world's reality and not his own. As a cohesive force in the society of Gwynedd, he knew that the cult of Saint Camber was already showing incredible gains, drawing together humans and Deryni in ways which Camber himself could never have foreseen in the days when he had tried to prevent what had happened. Who could have dreamed that Saint Camber, as well as being the Defender of Humankind, would now be hailed as the patron of Deryni magic, a proponent of responsible use of that power-which was all the human population had ever asked of the Deryni anyway: that they not be exploited by their more gifted brethren.

Certainly, no one resented the ministrations of the Healers, for example.

But that did not explain the other things that had begun to happen: the increasingly miraculous occurrences ascribed to a saintly Camber's holy intervention. The results being obtained were obviously real-cures and turns of luck and other answers to men's prayers -but Camber knew that he was not responsible. Could it be that faith alone could work miracles, even if the agent being credited-in this case, "Saint Camber"-did not exist?

Or did "Saint Camber" exist after all, because he was present in the beliefs of men?

Perhaps the cult of Camber had pa.s.sed beyond even the Deryni sphere of understanding, into that realm of Deity which transcended mortal ken. Why should an omnipotent G.o.d not work through the name of Camber, if He so chose? Was not one name as good as another? There must be some plan to account for what had happened, or Camber could not have managed to succeed thus far.

But suppose he was wrong? Perhaps G.o.d was playing with him, building him up only to let him fall from even higher...

He shuddered at that, leaning his elbows on the armrest of the prie-dieu and burying his face in his hands and wondering, not for the first time, whether he had gone too far. He heard a rustling sound behind him, from the doorway of the chapel, and suddenly realized that he was not alone, though he had heard no one approach. Even as he started to turn to see who it was, for he could detect no specific psychic ident.i.ty behind close-held shields, a voice spoke softly.

"Saint Camber, eh?"

Almost, and Camber reacted physically as well as mentally, before he realized that it was Cinhil who had spoken and that the words were not an accusation. He looked back to see Cinhil leaning against the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest, snow glittering on the shoulders of his dark cloak and powdering his hair. Camber started to get up, but Cinhil shook his head and waved him to stay where he was as he came to kneel beside him. The king blew on his bare hands to warm them as he glanced around the chapel, an ironic smile playing about his lips.