Realm of Light (35 page)

Caelan frowned,
focusing on the mortar and pestle the second man held and the bottle of liquid
in the hands of the third.

They stared like
guilty men caught in some act.

“Learned men,”
Elandra said with a courteous inclination of her head. “I return with a
visitor—”

“Your pardon,
Majesty.” Caelan broke in with a sense of deepening unease. “Who are these
men?”

She looked
surprised. “The physicians—”

“Are they? What
are you concocting?” Caelan asked the men.

The three
exchanged glances, and he saw lies enter their faces.

“Only a potion to
help soothe Lord Albain’s discomfort,” one replied. “The pain grows worse.”

Caelan looked
around. He felt a strange charge in the air, something unseen and unwanted.

The hair on his
scalp prickled, and he would have set Choven warding keys on the doors and
windows as protection if he’d had any.

“What’s wrong?”
Elandra asked him, her eyes wide. “What do you see?”

Caelan glanced at
her two guards. “Do you serve her Majesty or have you been set to follow her
like watchdogs?”

They bristled at
his question, but Elandra answered for them. “They are my men.”

“If you would save
Lord Albain,” Caelan said to them, and his glance moved to encompass the men
guarding the door as well, “then get these physicians out of here and do not
let them return. That is not opium they are mixing.”

“I protest!” the
tallest physician said. Holding the bottle, he stepped forward. “Majesty, this
is an outrage. What manner of barbarian have you brought here? How dare he
accuse and slander us?”

The guards stepped
forward, but not fast enough. Caelan glimpsed a movement from one of the
physicians and drew Exoner. As swift as thought, he sprang across the room and
speared the ancient book on the end of his sword.

Flames burst
forth, engulfing the book. With a scream, the physician dropped it. The fire
blazed up, hot and hungry. Within seconds the book had been devoured, and all
that remained was a small pile of ashes. The air stank most foully despite the
open windows.

“Exoner is truth,”
Caelan said, glaring at the physicians, who watched him fearfully. “You are
lies. Get out!”

The guards hustled
them out, and Elandra ran to the door of her father’s chamber. Flinging it
open, she snapped her fingers.

“Jinja!
Come forth and serve your master,” she said imperiously.

She had to call a
second time before a sniffing, woebegone
jinja
appeared. Its green skin
was tinged an unhealthy gray. Its pointed ears drooped. It could barely drag
itself along. When it came to the doorway, its eyes held only misery.

“There is magic
here,” Elandra said sharply to it. “Bad magic. Did you know? Why are you not
protecting my father?”

The
jinja
did not appear to hear her at first; then it sniffed the air and blinked.
Lifting its head, it sniffed again. A glower darkened its small face, and it
straightened erect. Like a dog following a trail, it began to slowly zigzag
back and forth across the room.

One of the guards
returned, looking slightly breathless. Shame burned in his face. “Majesty, we
beg—”

“Let no one
enter,” she commanded in a voice like iron.
“No one.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

Elandra stood in
the doorway to her father’s chamber and beckoned to Caelan. “Come,” she said.

He could smell
sickness and death ahead of him in the room, which was thick with gloom. If she
expected a miracle, he could not give it to her, but at least Lord Albain could
now die in peace, in his own time, not helped along by his enemies.

Sighing, Caelan
squared his shoulders and reluctantly stepped inside.

It was a warrior’s
room. Besides the large bed, it contained a vast table weighted down by
scrolls, scraps of parchment, broken pens, ink cases, books, deed boxes,
strongboxes, lamps, a stirrup iron, dog collars, and a pair of daggers. The
opposite wall held a beautiful collection of swords mounted in crisscrossed
patterns. Starbursts of daggers adorned another wall. Albain’s banner was flung
over the tall back of a tapestried chair, and his boots lay forgotten in one
corner. If the man had a valet, the servant must be forbidden to touch
anything.

Still, Caelan
could not help but smile a little at the disorder. This was a man’s room. He
liked it.

But Elandra did
not want him to stand and gawk. She was already at her father’s bedside,
beckoning him to join her.

Throughout
Caelan’s boyhood, the sick and injured had come constantly to the house. If the
infirmary was full, Caelan was forbidden to make noise in the courtyard lest he
disturb the patients’ rest. His father had worked tirelessly, calmly soothing
fevers and talking away fears. How often had Caelan crept from his bedchamber
in the middle of the night, following the glow of lamplight and the faint
sounds to peer into his father’s workroom? There Beva would sit, hunched at his
table in the glow of the lamp, grinding herbs for his potions and making neat
notations in his books of study.

The smell of
sickness and herbs in the infirmary often crept into the rest of the house.
Caelan had always hated that smell. While he felt sorry for the sufferers who
came to his father for cures, he could not bring himself to be a willing
assistant. He fled the moment his father released him from his chores. Never
had he wanted to be a healer. Never had he felt comfortable around those in
misery.

Now, in Lord
Albain’s chamber, he longed to turn and run. This was not the time to meet
Elandra’s father. Albain’s reputation as a fierce old warlord was well
deserved, from all accounts. He should be left alone with dignity and peace. He
did not need quackery, or sorcery, or Caelan’s unskilled fumbling.

But Elandra’s eyes
were on Caelan—trusting him, believing in him—and he could not refuse her
anything.

Reluctantly he
walked up to the bed and stood behind her, looking down over her shoulder at
the battle-scarred old man. Al-bain lay there unconscious, moaning a little.

Caelan could hear
the rattle in his lungs, could see the bloody froth on Albain’s lips.

He frowned.

“What is it?”
Elandra asked, watching him anxiously.

“He needs more
pillows, to prop him higher. He can’t breathe, lying down like that.”

Hope flashed
through her face. She rushed away, opening a servant’s door and calling for the
valet.

In a few minutes
Caelan was carefully lifting the old man while Elandra and the valet piled
pillows on the bed.

“I thought so,”
the valet kept muttering. “I wanted to do that, but the physicians said he
should lie flat. I knew better. I am sorry, my lady. I—I mean, your Majesty.”

“Yes,” Elandra
said, holding her father’s hand and seeming to barely hear the man’s excuses.
“What else?” she asked Caelan, then glanced at the valet with a frown of
suspicion. “Has he eaten? Has he had any water?”

“No, Majesty. They
said—”

“Never mind what
they said,” she broke in sharply. “Bring broth, just a little. And cool drinking
water flavored with the juice of lemons.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

She glanced at
Caelan, who knew he could hesitate no longer. Carefully he unlaced Albain’s
sleeping shirt and gently probed along the man’s ribs. They were spongy, and
dark bruising discolored his sides. He groaned and coughed up blood, which
Elandra wiped away.

“At least five
broken ribs, maybe a cracked hipbone,” Caelan said at last. He frowned to
himself, trying to remember his old lessons. “One of the ribs has punctured his
lung. That is why he coughs blood. There is more damage, but I have not the
knowledge to tell you what it is.” He met her eyes and told her the truth. “He
bleeds inside.”

“Can anything be
done?”

“Yes, if we had a
proper healer. My father could have mended him easily. Agel could do it.”
Caelan heard the futility of his own words and shook his head. “But we have no
one of that—”

“We have you.”

He sighed.
“Elandra, I am not a healer.”

“Your father
taught you something. I know he did.”

Caelan held out
his hands. “I could not learn the healing arts. Yes, I learned
severance,
which I have explained to you, but I—”

“I know,” she said
eagerly. “That is why I am so certain you can do it. You must believe in
yourself. You must reach deep and find the knowledge that you have. There is a
way. There must be a way. I don’t know why I feel so sure, but I do. You can do
this, if you will but try.”

He turned away
from her, unwilling to face the pleading in her eyes. Elandra had never begged
before, but she was begging him now. The worst thing, however, was that she was
right.

He did not want to
admit it.

He did not want to
pay the price.

“Am I wrong?” she
asked, her voice suddenly sounding dull. “Am I mistaken?”

He sighed. “We
must all lose our parents at some time. It is part of life.”

“Is this his
time?” she asked fiercely. “Is it? Or has the darkness reached out to strike
him down? When I lived here, the palace was not riddled with shadows and
forbidden magic the way it is now. I can feel it crawling everywhere, seeking
prey, ready to strike anyone who is unwary. The
jinjas
are supposed to
sense it, keep it away, but they are clearly failing against what has come
here. Everything is breaking down, Caelan. The closer we go to Imperia, the
more I think we will find much evil turned loose on our world. The darkness is
overtaking us, one by one.”

“All right,”
Caelan said, breathing deep against his own fear. She did not know what she
asked of him. She did not know what this would cost.

“We need him,”
Elandra said passionately. “Not because he’s my father. But because he is a
fighter, like you. To his very blood and bone, he is a warrior. His joy is
combat. His skills and his goodness come in battle. And he is true to the core.
We need men like that to help us. Otherwise, we are lost. And the empire is
lost. Everything and everyone we know will be taken.”

“I know,” Caelan
said. For a moment Elandra’s voice seemed to blur and become Lea’s. He
remembered saying that Lea was his conscience. Now it seemed Elandra was too.
He was ashamed of his own fear, of his own instinct to save himself at the
expense of others.

He gazed down at
Albain’s pain-wracked face, and felt a wave of compassion.

Reaching out, he
took the man’s slack hand from Elandra. It was callused like his, from long
hours of wielding a sword. It was big-knuckled and freckled on the back, hairy
and weather-chapped. He felt a touch of involuntary
sevaisin
that
brought him the man’s agony and the squeeze of a lung that would not fill, the
heaviness of blood that was drowning him bit by bit.

Caelan gasped and
flinched.

Elandra touched
his shoulder. “Caelan—”

“Step back,” he
said grimly, pushing
sevaisin
away long enough to catch his breath. “You
must leave us.”

“But you might
need my help.”

He glared at her,
fearing that if she protested too much he would lose his nerve and run from
here.

She seemed to read
his thoughts. Her own face drained of color. “Am I asking too much?” she
whispered.

He dared not
answer her. “Just go.”

Consternation
filled her face, but she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I love you,” she
said and walked away.

“Let no one
enter,” Caelan called after her. “No matter what you hear, let no one in until
I come out.”

She cast him one
last look over her shoulder, looking afraid, and nodded before she shut the
door.

Caelan drew in a
deep breath, trying to find his courage while the man beside him sank closer to
death with every struggling breath.

There was a way to
heal Albain. There was a way to summon the skills that Caelan himself did not
possess. But it meant opening himself to that which he most dreaded. It meant
becoming that which his father had always wanted him to be.

Had he been alone,
Caelan would have put off the moment of decision, but Albain groaned and
coughed. There was death in the sound. Caelan could feel his life force seeping
away as he held the man’s hand.

Bowing his head,
Caelan sought
sevaisin,
and flowed into Albain’s agony until it was his
own. In turn, he shared his strength with the old man; then he
severed
the pain, sending it far away.

It seemed, in his
vision, that he stood in a grove of short oak trees, the stunted kind that
survived without enough water, unable to grow tall, unwilling to die off. Such
groves were common in Im-peria, but Caelan did not believe he was near the
city.

Instead, it seemed
to be a different kind of place altogether. The wind blew softly, a cold dry
wind, and around Caelan there was only silence. He held Albain in his arms, and
the old man’s body was heavy, slack, and unbalanced—the most awkward kind of
burden to carry.

For now, he had
done all he could. Albain could not die while he was here, but neither could he
go forth and live. They could stay here for eternity, trapped together.

Caelan gazed
around him, but there was only emptiness among the trees as they rattled and
lost leaves in the wind.

“Beva E’non!” he
called, feeling himself choke as he spoke the name. “Beva E’non, I call you! I
alone have the right to summon you. Come forth!”

For a long moment
nothing happened. Caelan had always been too impatient, and now he tried to
make himself still and calm. He must wait, no matter how little he wanted to.

Then a face
appeared among the trees, distant from Caelan, lacking any form to go with it.
The face was blurred. It wavered, faded away, then returned and became more
distinct.