Shadow War (27 page)

“Of course it is.
Beva taught me—”

“Don’t even
mention your father’s name in connection with this! It’s unspeakable.”

“Shut up,” Caelan
snapped, trying to stem Agel’s hysteria. “You are still using a mantra to
sever,
like a novice.”

Agel was
tight-lipped. “Not everyone is as talented as you.”

“To
sever
is to take away. You see the source of disease, and you simply cut the link.
You see the threads of life, and you simply cut them. You see the source of a
demon or whatever in Gault’s name that thing was, and you—”

“What simplistic
nonsense is this?” Agel said angrily. “You—”

“Simplistic?”
Caelan retorted. “Is not all truth simplicity? That’s how you recognize it. Are
you angry because I saved your life, or are you angry because I can do what you
cannot?”

“You are evil. I
felt you join with it.”

“I didn’t—” Caelan
cut off the denial. He could not explain the difference.
“Sevaisin
exists everywhere. It calls constantly. Sometimes it is difficult not to use
it.”

“Exactly why it is
forbidden.”

“It is not
forbidden here. No one condemns the joining.”

“No one has ever
considered Imperia the center of purity or balance either,” Agel replied. “Hedonistic,
all-embracing, indulgent of every vice—”

“Why don’t you
calm down?” Caelan interrupted. “It was a trap, a bad one, but you survived it.
What about the prince?”

Agel glared at
him, then turned resentfully to examine Tirhin.

“He is alive,”
Agel said at last. “Weaker than before. The rest... I do not know. I am not fit
enough to work as I should.”

“You should sit
down,” Caelan said. “Let me bring you a cup of water.”

“A cup of poison,
more likely,” Agel snapped.

Caelan had been
about to offer him a steadying hand, but now he stepped back. He was hurt and
furious by Agel’s attitude. Agel was badly frightened, clinging to blind
prejudice and superstition rather than reason. Caelan tried to keep his own
temper, tried to be compassionate, but he was losing patience rapidly.

“If you were well,
I would hit you for your insult.”

Agel made a
gesture of repudiation. “Spoken like a true believer in peace and harmony.”

“Damn you, Agel!”

“You are
casna,”
Agel retorted. “You must be.”

“Don’t say that! I
am not a devil. I am not of the darkness.”

“Then what are
you?” Agel shouted back. His detachment and trained calm had deserted him. With
his hair matted with sweat and his eyes wide and fearful, he looked like a boy
in over his head instead of a master healer with a prestigious appointment to
the imperial court. “You cannot be my uncle’s son. You are no kinsman of mine.
Not with the things you do, with the knowledge you have. I’ve heard the
stories,” he went on before Caelan could interrupt. “I heard about warding
keys. Even Papa used to say that Uncle Beva was mad to take on a son like you.
He never should have struck that bargain with the Choven.”

“What do you mean?”
Caelan said, desperately trying to follow Agel’s angry spate of words. “What
are you saying? What bargain with the Choven?”

“Pretend all you
like. But I
know
, Caelan. You are not... the elders were right to drive
you from school. In their wisdom, they saw the makings of evil.”

“I just saved your
life, you fool,” Caelan said furiously.

“And what will you
demand for it?”

Rage and intense
hurt battled inside Caelan. He could not believe Agel was saying such things.
What had turned his cousin into this petty, fearful, small-minded man?

“I loved you like
a brother,” Caelan said softly. “I came to you for help and your sage council.
Instead, you have insulted and slandered me. Now, after I just saved your life,
it is not thanks you give me but harshness. Why, Agel? Is it only jealousy that
has made you so small?”

Agel’s face turned
white. He glared at Caelan, his jaw tight, his lips thin. “Always you are the injured
one, the innocent one,” he said in a harsh voice. “But why did the evil lurking
in the prince’s body not touch you? You carried him for hours, or so you claim.
Yet it did not strike at you.”

Caelan’s mouth
dropped open. “I did not seek to heal him. That must be what triggered the trap
and unleashed it.”

“Yes, and who
suggested that I examine him?”

“I didn’t want him
treated!” Caelan said in disbelief. “You insisted. You want my master to be
grateful to you.”

“Master?” Agel
snorted. “You do not know the meaning of the word. Rebellion is your name. Yes!
Rebellion and disorder.”

There was no
getting through Agel’s fear. It shielded him from reason and logic. It closed
out all truth. He had no intention of listening to anything Caelan said.

Yet still Caelan
tried. “If I had known a demon lingered inside the prince, I would have warned
you.”

“Not if you wanted
to entrap me and turn me to your darkness.”

“I—” Caelan threw
up his hands. “What is the use?”

Agel stared at
him, eyes glittering with condemnation. “This all begins to make sense.”

“Finally!”

“There has been no
treason. You lured the prince out into danger. You did this to him.”

Caelan blinked in
disbelief. “What are you saying? Why should I?”

“Casual
Devil! You are aptly named. You—”

“Are you blaming
me for the attack of
shyrieas
?” Caelan shook his head. “Why not claim
next that I commanded them?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

Agel nodded, but
his expression did not change. “No, you do not command them. No, you do not run
with them. Yet you emerged from their attack unscathed.”

“Hardly—”

“You were not hurt
by the wind spirits either.”

“Yes, I was.”

“You survived,”
Agel said, his voice cutting and hard.

“Would you rather
I died?” Caelan retorted bitterly. “Am I to be condemned for living?”

“There is
something about you that is unlike other men,” Agel said. “Something inside you
that makes you different.”

Caelan wanted to
laugh. “And therefore I am evil?”

“The elders of
Rieschelhold thought you were.”

“They were secret
followers of the Vindicant sect,” Caelan said. “Or something worse.”

Agel took a quick
step toward him. “Don’t you dare slander them!”

Now Caelan did
laugh, throwing back his head to crow with derision. “How long have you been in
Imperia, cousin?”

Agel blinked at
the sudden change of subject. “Two months.”

“Oh, only two
months? Then you’ve scarcely had time to learn your way around the city.”

“What has this to
do with—”

“And when did you
graduate from the school? A year past? Two?”

“Five months past.”

“Five months,”
Caelan said with false heartiness. “Imagine. You have been in training all this
time—”

“I spent extra
time there,” Agel broke in defensively. “Since I was denied my apprenticeship
with Uncle Beva—”

“And now you are
newly arrived in Imperia, a wise man, a trained man, a man used to the ways of
the world.”

Agel was growing
wary now. He watched Caelan and said nothing.

“Therefore, with
all your tremendous travel and experience, the wide range of your encounters,
the expansion of your innate wisdom, you are able to make judgments about all
manner of things, whether you know aught of them or not.”

Agel drew himself
erect and tucked his hands inside his sleeves. “I have
severance
to
guide me.”

“And harmony?”
Caelan asked.

Agel nodded. “Yes,
the ways of harmony.”

“And balance?”

“Yes.”

“No!” Caelan
shouted. “You lie! You denounce
sevaisin
, and without it there is no
balance. You live in a onesided world, cousin. You see through one eye. You
understand so very little, and as long as you live in fear, denouncing
everything that is strange to you, you will understand less and less.”

The prince shifted
his head and moaned.

At once Agel
turned to him, but instead of touching the prince with a reassuring hand, Agel
eyed him a moment, then backed away.

Caelan hurried to
the other side of the prince’s bed. “He is coming around. He is better. Help
him!”

Agel backed even
farther and shook his head.

Annoyance swelled
inside Caelan. “You fool. He won’t hurt you. The evil is gone from him.”

“You are the wise
one,” Agel said in a tight, spiteful voice. “You are the one who can
sever
without using a mantra. Why don’t you heal him? Just reach in and
sever
him
from his illness.”

“Please,” Caelan
said.

The prince moaned
again, and Caelan gripped the man’s hand tightly to offer comfort. It was an
action done without thinking, and Caelan realized that even if he had lost
respect for Tirhin he had not yet lost his compassion.

“Agel, help him.”

“You have the
gifts. You have the goodness. I am only a second-rate healer from a school of
evil blasphemers.” Agel shrugged. “What can I do?”

“This is
unnecessary,” Caelan said, his frustration rising. “You were the one who
insisted on coming here to attend the man. Why don’t you help him now?”

“I have done all I
can.”

“No, you haven’t!”

“And I say I have.”
As he spoke, Agel looked past Caelan at the doorway. An unreadable expression
flickered in his face; then he smiled very slightly at Caelan. “What his
highness needs now is rest... and perhaps some water. There is a ewer in the
other room. Fetch it, please.”

Puzzled by his
sudden switch of mood, Caelan turned and walked into the antechamber. There was
a ewer on a stand, but it was empty. Even as Caelan picked it up, Agel slammed
and bolted the door behind him.

Whirling, Caelan
realized he had been neatly trapped. He hurled the ewer at the door, where it
clanged loudly.

He tried both
doors, pushing against them with all his strength, but they remained firmly
bolted. Swearing to himself, Caelan paced rapidly back and forth.

The window was too
small for him to climb through. He went back to the door that led to Tirhin’s
chamber and pounded on it with his fist.

“Agel!” he
shouted. “Agel!”

But his cousin did
not respond.

Enraged, knowing
his arrest was imminent, Caelan went on a rampage in the tiny room, smashing
and destroying. When at last he heard a commotion of voices outside and the
tramping of boots, he straightened and faced the door. Breathing hard, he held
a broken chair leg in his hand for a club. Slaves could not offer a defense
when accused of crimes, however falsely. He would be considered guilty as
charged. So he had nothing to lose by fighting. By Gault, he would not go
tamely to his doom.

The outer door
opened with a bang.

Caelan expected a
pair of common foot soldiers under the command of an arrest sergeant. Instead,
five armored men in the helmets and red cloaks of the Imperial Guard rushed
inside with drawn swords and war clubs. Yelling, Caelan swung his club, only to
see it splintered by a sword. Caelan dived at the guardsman’s knees, bringing
him down. Throwing himself bodily against the struggling guardsman, who was
hindered by his own armor, Caelan caught his wrist and wrenched his sword away.

A club thudded
into his shoulder, knocking him sideways. Caelan struggled up, but before he
could completely turn around, another blow drove him down. Surrounding him, the
guardsmen bludgeoned him to his knees.

Stunned and
knowing he was in trouble, Caelan slashed with his sword and cut a man in the
leg. That guardsman stumbled back, yelling in pain as blood splashed across the
floor. Caelan grinned to himself and tried again to regain his feet.

They closed in on
him. A numbing blow crashed into his forearm, and he dropped his sword from
nerveless fingers. He scrambled to pick it up with his right hand, but a
guardsman kicked it out of reach. Caelan lunged after it, but he was kicked
back.

Black stars danced
across his vision. Shaking his head to clear it, he struggled up only to be
slapped by a heavy net that settled over his head and shoulders.

“No!” he shouted
furiously, but the net was already over him.

A swift jerk
pulled him over onto his side. They had him then, trussing him expertly with
thick ropes before he could scramble free.

Struggling still,
consumed with rage and intense fear, Caelan cursed them in Trau. Sweat and
blood were running into his left eye, half blinding him. He heaved himself up,
despite his bound arms, and rolled to his knees.

The guardsman
working the net jerked again, expertly, and sent Caelan crashing onto his side
again. The world grew dark and blurred, and by the time he managed to blink
things back into focus the officer had come up and planted his boot on Caelan’s
neck.

“Have done, man.
You’re caught,” he said.

Caelan lay there
with his sweat and blood smearing across the polished floor. Shame flooded him,
and he would have wept in humiliation had his pride not burned all his tears
away.

Around him the
guardsmen put up their weapons and wiped their perspiring faces with looks of
relief.

“Murdeth, what a
fighter,” one said.

The man whose leg
was still bleeding freely looked up from his efforts to staunch the wound. “What
do you expect? He’s a gladiator.”

“Still, five
against one—”

“Silence,” the
officer said sharply. “You, see to the wagon. You, get that wound bound up
quickly.”

Saluting, the men
assigned moved to obey. The rest stood alert, as though aware that Caelan would
fight again at the first opportunity.