Reign of Shadows (9 page)

Agel’s
vision blurred, and he struggled to hold back tears. It was not manly to weep,
nor was it in accordance with
severance.
Besides, Agel knew the proctors were watching him.
They would always watch him now, seeking any evidence of the taint that Caelan
had shown, nay, flung in their faces. The masters would drive Agel harder, for
he was now the sole heir to Beva E’non’s great legacy.

Secret
pride touched Agel, and unconsciously he straightened his own slim shoulders.
As upset as he was over Caelan’s failure, Agel could not help but see this as
his chance to shine. The masters’ attention would now center on him. And Agel
wanted that challenge. He wanted to excel, to show everyone how good he could
be.

Caelan
was past Agel now, his gaze straight ahead, looking neither left nor right
across the faces that stared at him. Agel swallowed hard. He did not think he
would ever see Caelan again. Certainly it could never again be as it was, or
with welcome and a glad heart.

Their
fates, always entwined, were now separating into two different roads of life.
Agel saw his as a path to accomplishment and success. His talent would support
his ambitions. One day his fame would surpass that of Uncle Beva’s.

As
for Caelan, his path had already grown stony and broken, heading for a life of
disappointment and hard times.

Their
childhood was finished.

Crossing
the courtyard with his escort, Caelan could feel the eyes of the assembly
burning into his back. He felt their curiosity and shock flooding over him in a
collective mass of emotion that nearly made him stagger. Somehow, he managed to
hold it off. This was no time for
sevaisin
to grip him.

The
wind was bitterly cold, flicking sharp little snowflakes into his face. His
breath steamed about his face, and he fought not to shiver. He intended to show
no weakness. If the masters expected remorse or doubt from him, they would not
get it.

All
he felt now was impatience to get this over with. It would have been easier on
everyone if the proctors had just handed him his cloak bag and put him through
the gate. No fuss, no assembly, no scaring the first-termers.

But,
no, they had to make a huge ordeal of this, make it bigger than it was. They’d
even had to seize one final chance to frighten him by making him think they
were going to purify him against his will.

But
soon their games would be over, as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t wait.

Reaching
the dais, Caelan halted. The proctors parted from around him. Looking straight
up into the stony eyes of Elder Sobna, Caelan felt defiance fill him like heat.
He smiled.

Twin
spots of color blazed in the Elder’s pale cheeks. The Elder’s gaze burned into
his; then the mask of
severance
returned like the slam of a door.

Caelan
looked away, indifferent as the Elder lifted his arms and began to speak.

Much
of it was in the old tongue, no longer used by edict of the emperor. Caelan
understood none of it, and even when the Elder switched back to Lingua, Caelan
barely listened.

With
his money taken by the soldiers, he had no chance of heading out on his own. He
would have to go home. There would be plenty of time on the journey to think of
an explanation for his father.

His
whole life suddenly spread before him, radiant with limitless possibilities.

“Caelan
E’non,” the Elder said loudly, startling him, “what is your answer?”

A
hush lay over the assembly as though everyone had held their breath to hear.
Even the bell stopped tolling. Caelan had no clue as to what the Elder had
asked him.

It
was worse than being caught daydreaming in class.

Embarrassment
flooded him. He almost started to stammer something; then he caught himself
short. This wasn’t class. He was no longer obliged to do anything these men
wanted.

Defiant
again, he looked up at the Elder and said clearly, “I have no answer to make.”

A
gasp ran behind him, and even some of the masters looked disconcerted, but the
Elder’s expression did not change. With a nod he stepped aside and gestured at
the masters.

One
by one, they approached Caelan and touched him briefly on his left shoulder.

“I
concur,” each one said.

Master
Mygar came last. Old and stooped, he limped forward, his white robes stained
and smelly. His palsied lips made him appear to be mumbling to himself, but his
rheumy eyes glittered as malevolently as ever when they met Caelan’s.

He
did not brush Caelan’s shoulder with his fingertips as had the others, but
instead gripped him hard.

“Casna
,” he whispered.

It
was the word in the old tongue for “devil.”

“You
will break the world,” the old man whispered, his eyes rolling back in his
head. “You are destruction incarnate.”

Blackness
poured into Caelan through the old master’s touch, burning him, defiling him.
Such hatred, such decay ... an evil rottenness like a stench in the soul.

Caelan
jerked free of the old man’s grasp. Shocked, he stood shuddering and blinking.
A clammy sweat broke out across him, and for a moment he thought he would be
sick.

He
stared at Master Mygar. As the black worm of Mygar’s emotions continued to
twist through Caelan’s veins, he saw the old man’s flesh melt away. A bleached
white skull stared back at him, and darkness—a living, horrible darkness—
writhed and pulsed within the plates of bone, flickering at the edges of the
eye sockets.

Appalled
by what his inadvertent
sevaisin
had brought him, Caelan sought desperately inside
himself for the patterns of good and harmony. He tried to weave them around the
worm of blackness until it stopped twisting inside him and lay still, cocooned
in what he had spun around it. Then it faded and was gone, like ashes in his
soul.

Still
sweating, his knees weak as though they would let him drop at any moment,
Caelan managed to regain his breath.

Watching
him, Mygar widened his gaze.
“Casna”
he whispered again, then drew back. “I concur,” he
said loudly for the assembly to hear.

Elder
Sobna stood in front of Caelan once more. His lingers brushed Caelan’s right
shoulder, and this time Caelan flinched. No more emotions came to him, however.

“And
I concur,” the Elder intoned. “You are no longer eligible to be trained for the
healing arts here or in any part of the empire.”

Caelan
blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected such sweeping finality. Still, he didn’t
believe they could enforce it. The masters here might be renowned, but they
didn’t run the world.

“You
are no longer to wear the blue colors of our training. You may never return
through our gates. You will never practice the arts which you have learned
here. Our ways and our privileges are henceforth forever denied to you.”

The
Elder raised his hands. “Kneel for the disrobing.”

Two
proctors reached out to push Caelan to his knees.

“No!”
he cried, his voice ringing out across the courtyard. “I’ll never kneel to you,
any of you! Here.” He yanked off the novice robe and flung it on the ground at
the Elder’s feet. “I have disrobed myself. Now let me go from this place.”

Despite
the rule of silence, murmurs ran through the assembly. The masters looked
shocked, and even the Elder lost his
severance
to fresh anger.

Blinking
hard, his mouth clamped tight, the Elder pointed at the main gates in silence.
They swung open.

The
gathered proctors moved aside and Caelan strode out, breathing hard, barely
restraining his eagerness.

The
bell began to toll again, its dark tone lifting over the countryside.

Head
high, Caelan walked through the gates and paused to glance back. He would have
liked to have said goodbye to Agel. But the gates slammed behind him with a
mighty thud, and the Ouon Bell stopped ringing. For Rieschelhold, he had ceased
to exist.

Lightness
filled him. Caelan flung his arms to the sky with a shout of relief. Crowing
with laughter, he danced in a small circle, kicking up snow. He felt as though
he could fly.

“I’m
free. I’m free!” he said over and over. Right then it didn’t matter that he had
no money, no cloak, and no  traveling boots. If he got himself into trouble
again out here, no one would come to his rescue. But he didn’t care.

Scooping
up a double handful of snow, he flung it into the air and let it rain down on
him. “I’m free!”

“Caelan.”

Startled
by that quiet word, Caelan lowered his arms and spun around.

A
man cloaked in white fur stepped forward from the bushes. He led two white,
shaggy mountain ponies by their reins. A pole with a healer’s globed lantern
was attached to one saddle.

The
man was tall and handsome, with a fringe of straight brown hair showing across
his forehead beneath his fur hood. His face held no expression at all, but his
gray eyes were dark with the bleakest disappointment Caelan had ever seen.

For
a second, everything in this man’s heart lay exposed to the boy—a lifetime of
hope, ambition, and plans for the future now in ruin. A dream of companionship,
of working together for a mutual aim, now shattered.

Caelan
dragged in an unsteady breath. All the lightness in him dimmed. The relief, the
joy, the sense of unfurling like a warrior’s banner, faded. He was once again a
boy in trouble for his mischief, small and sorry, waiting head down for the
word of scolding.

“Oh,
Father,” he said, his voice a mere whisper of sound in the falling snow.

Beva
E’non drew in his pain, closing it behind the gates of his own will. In silence
he turned away from Caelan and mounted his pony. The globe lantern bobbed and
shook on its pole as he settled himself in the saddle.

Gazing
down at Caelan, he held out the reins to the other pony without a word.

Equally
silent, Caelan took them. A wool tunic and cloak lay across the saddle. Caelan
shook snow off the  garments and put them on, grateful for their warmth. He
hesitated a moment, hating to be collected like this, haling to still be a
child in a man’s body. But at last he climbed into the cold, stiff saddle. It
was his own, the stirrups shorter now than they’d been on his last visit home.
He looked at his father’s erect back. The white fur made Beva almost vanish
into the snowy landscape.

The
man had always sought to blend into his surroundings, to never stand out, to
never insist that he be seen or heard. This inner stillness, this silence of
manner, appearance, and word, only added to his great mystique.

Hut
lot Caelan, it made his father impossible to approach.

Worse,
he had not expected Beva to know yet, much less come for him. Beva must have
overheard everything in the ceremony. Everyone in Trau would soon know of
Caelan’s public disgrace, and it would mark the first failure of this famous
man.

How
to explain anything to the unyielding back riding in front of him?

Caelan
sighed. He glanced over his shoulder at the immense walls of Rieschelhold, and
still felt no remorse. His way lay elsewhere, even if he did not yet know what
his life was to be. Perhaps now, at last, Beva would accept that.

Frowning,
Caelan kicked his pony and followed his father home.

The
snow fell
harder through the afternoon, the flakes large and wet. Caelan pulled up the
hood of his cloak and searched the saddle pockets until he found a pair of
gloves. His feet were freezing in their thin leather shoes, but he made no
complaint. Concentrating on the patterns of warmth and well-being, he tried to
make his toes warm. It didn’t work very well.

Beva
swung his mount onto the imperial road, and Caelan followed. In silence they
galloped along the empty ribbon of stone, hoofbeats echoing against the wall of
forest on either side beyond the ditch. Clipping past the place where he’d been
ambushed, Caelan found himself holding his breath. But no lurkers were in
evidence today. Even the corpse had been dragged away, probably by wolves. The
soldiers of course were long gone, with no trace of their passing except a
series of fresh clearings off the road, with blackened fire sites and raw
stumps sticking up jaggedly.