Chapter Eight

For three days Caelan did not speak.

Revived by his father, whose healing gifts soothed the fever from his veins, took away the cuts and bruises from the wind spirit, and cooled the burn in his hand, Caelan lay in a strange lethargy, aware of his surroundings but apart from them.

The infirmary was quiet and plain. Kept very warm, it consisted of his father’s study, the examination room, and the tiny ward with its shuttered windows and row of cots.

Caelan lay with Farns on one side and the injured Neika tribesman on the other. Farns was alive, but unconscious. The Neika man and his brother—barbaric in long blond braids and fur—spoke to each other in hushed, fearful voices. Caelan ignored them, ignored everything. He was aware of the activity around him, but without interest or response.

Lea, her little face tight with worry, came to see him frequently. She would chatter and stroke his forehead. She would smooth his blankets and tuck the fur robe more closely around him. She would show him her dolls and bring him something to drink, which he did not take.

He saw her, but as though she stood far away. Her voice was very soft, almost too faint to hear. When she stroked his face with her gentle fingers, he felt nothing.

After a short time, the adults would gently shoo her away.

Beva came every hour, peering into Caelan’s eyes, changing the bandage and salve on his hand, pouring a measure of dark liquid down his throat.

Huddled in her shawl, Anya stood at Farns’s side, holding the old man’s hand. Her eyes, however, were for Caelan. “Master,” she said softly, “is there any hope for him?”

“Of course there is hope,” Beva said briskly. He pulled up Caelan’s sleeve and counted his pulse.

“But it’s said that when the wind spirits catch a person, if he’s not killed outright he goes mad. Is our sweet boy driven mad, good master?”

Weakness suddenly shook through Caelan’s legs and traveled upward through his whole body. He closed his eyes in wretchedness, then felt his father’s warm, dry palm upon his brow. The trembling fit was driven back, and Caelan sighed in relief.

“He is not mad,” Beva said.

“The gods be praised,” Anya said, dabbing at her eyes with her shawl. “Why, then, won’t he speak to us? Why does he look so far away?”

Beva replaced the blankets around Caelan. “He is deeply severed, Anya. It is a way to heal his mind and soul after what happened. When he is ready, he will rejoin us.”

She tried to smile, without much success. “And Farns?” she whispered, stroking the old man’s gray hair.

Beva paused, and for a moment his gaze did not look so sure. “Old Farns will rejoin us when he can.”

Anya nodded and wiped her eyes again. She left to return to her work, but Beva lingered to gaze down at Caelan.

Caelan saw worry show plainly in his father’s eyes, as though to refute everything he had just said.

Caelan let his gaze wander away. He did not speak.

Sunshine awakened him, bright and warm on his face. He stirred and opened his eyes, only to squint against a blinding beam of light. Shifting on his pillow, Caelan looked around.

The man with the broken leg was gone. Old Farns slept, his chest rising and falling beneath the blanket.

The inner shutters on the ward windows had been folded back. Sunshine was coming in around the edges of the outer shutters. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful.

Caelan flung off his covers and climbed out of bed. His legs felt strange and shaky, but he managed to stagger over to the window. Unbolting the shutters, he pushed them open and looked out across the courtyard.

The snow was dazzling in the sunshine. Great drifts of the white stuff filled the corners of the courtyard. Lea, bundled up in a scarlet wool cloak, scampered about. She was rolling up huge balls of snow almost as big as herself. Caelan smiled to himself at the sight of her.

Across the way, a neat path had been shoveled to the stables. He saw Raul breaking ice on the watering trough and lifting out the chunks. They shattered and skidded across the cobblestones.

“Oh!” said a voice behind Caelan. “You’re up.”

Caelan turned around and saw Gunder standing in the doorway like a startled hare. Always ill at ease, Gunder turned beet red and hastened forward.

“Your eyes look back to normal,” Gunder said. “Are you feeling better?”

“I’m starving,” Caelan answered. His throat felt dry and sore. His voice sounded like a rusty croak. “Is Anya still in the kitchen?”

As he spoke, he walked back toward his cot. One moment he felt fine; the next, his knees buckled.

Gunder caught him before he fell and made him sit on the bed. “Slowly,” he said. His long fingers gripped Caelan’s shoulder to steady him while he peered into Caelan’s eyes. “Hmm.”

“What is this?” Beva said sharply, entering the ward without warning. “Why is the window open? Cold air is pouring in.”

Gunder stepped back from Caelan hastily and tucked his hands into his sleeves. He stared at the floor. “I think he may be better, Master Beva,” he said diffidently. “He spoke.”

“Ah.” Beva shut the window with a bang. Dusting off his hands, he tilted up Caelan’s chin to look at him.

Caelan pulled back. “I’m tired of being poked. I want to eat.”

A rare smile lit Beva’s face for an instant; then he glanced over his shoulder. “Thank you, Gunder. Go and tell the Neika he must not walk so much on his leg yet.”

Gunder hastened out, mumbling something too low to hear.

Beva turned back to Caelan. “Your severance is ended. I am glad to see you so much better.”

Confusion filled Caelan. He rarely saw tenderness in his father. He didn’t know how to react.

“I’m hungry,” he said again.

Beva smiled and nodded. “Very well. Growing boys think only of their stomachs, but you haven’t eaten in three days. Let me cover you with the blanket, and Anya will come soon with a tray.”

Caelan frowned and took a wobbly step away from the bed. “Why can’t I go to the kitchen? I’m fine.”

He tried to walk, but gave out by the time he reached the end of his bed. Beva steadied him, and Caelan found himself glad of his father’s help. Beva made him sit on the bed.

“You must not tire yourself,” Beva said sternly. “You are not yet ready for activity. Take things slowly.”

While his father walked away to call for the house keeper, Caelan looked over at Old Farns. The man’s face was sunken and gray on the pillow. His breathing came in quick, shallow rasps.

“What happened to Old Farns? Is he ill too?”

Beva returned, his eyes watchful and curiously eager. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what? He looks bad. He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”

“Perhaps,” Beva said, still watching him closely. “Winter is a hard time for old men. He was caught outside in a snowstorm, trying to cut peat for our supplies. Foolish and stubborn, our Farns.”

Caelan rubbed back a yawn, then stared at the bandage on his hand. “What happened? Did I cut myself?”

“Frostbite,” Beva said. He reached out and smoothed Caelan’s hair. “Your hand will heal quickly.”

Caelan picked at the bandage, trying to see beneath it. “It hurts when I flex my hand.”

He flexed it again as he spoke. Something about the resultant pain stirred his thoughts. The snowstorm ... yes, he remembered being outside at night, trying to get back to the house. Farns had been with him ....

“Caelan!” his father said sharply.

He looked up with a blink.

“I think you should lie down and rest now.”

Beva pushed at Caelan’s shoulder, but restlessly Caelan shrugged him off.

“I’m not tired. I’m not sick, either. Am I?”

“You have been. You should rest. I will make a potion that will help you sleep.”

“No!” Caelan said. “I don’t want it. I’m fine.”

But he felt strange—hollow and somehow emptied inside, as though an important part of him was missing. What had he and Farns been doing cutting peat at night in a snowstorm? Had they been caught unexpectedly by the weather?

No ... he remembered darkness and the walls of the courtyard. They had been trying to hurry. They had been afraid.

Caelan caught his breath sharply and looked at Old Farns with fear. “Wind spirits,” he whispered.

“No!” Beva said forcefully. He shook his head with peculiar urgency. “No, Caelan. You are mistaken. There were no wind spirits.”

Caelan stared at his bandaged hand. The pain called to him.

“Listen to me,” Beva said harshly. His tone was like a net, surrounding Caelan and drawing him in. “You have frostbite in your hand. You forgot your gloves and stayed outside too long. We feared lung sickness for you, but you are better. That is all. There is nothing else to remember.”

Beva went on talking, but Caelan felt as though he were floating on the words. Strange, compelling words. The ward shrank around him, becoming distant and small. He could feel the cold rush of severance, cutting him off from everything except his father’s voice.

Caelan thrust out his hand and knocked it accidentally against the bedpost.

Agony flared from his palm, and with a jolt he remembered holding the warding key. Wind shrieked around him, sounding almost alive.

It was alive. And the key was burning his hand, burn ing the life from him . . .

No!” he shouted, jerking from his father’s hold. Terror seized him, breaking a cold sweat across his skin.  His heart thudded, and he found himself on his feet, his clenched fists held up as though to ward off an attack. “No! Get it away! Get it away!”

“Caelan!” His father caught him and shook him hard “You’re safe. Stay within severance and be safe. Hear my words, Caelan. Stay within severance.”

Caelan closed his eyes, feeling the terror fade by degrees. His father was taking away the fear, taking away the memories one by one.

From a long distance, he heard Master Umal’s dry, boring voice delivering a lecture within the hall of Rieschelhold: “Relinquish memories one by one. When they are gone, then knowledge will go, piece by piece, until there is nothing left. Only an emptied vessel, purified and wailing to be filled.”

Caelan blinked and struggled to focus. He felt as though he were spinning on a string, suspended within his father’s voice. And he was shrinking with every word Beva uttered, losing all that he knew. Losing all that he remembered.

“No,” he said in a whimper, trying to draw back. “I don’t—”

“Trust me,” Beva said. He held Caelan’s face between both hands. His eyes pinned Caelan’s, digging deep. “Follow me into the severance, and I will make you worthy—”

“No!”

Caelan jerked back, breaking his father’s hold. Gasping and shuddering, he dodged when Beva reached for him again and lurched across the ward on unsteady legs, staggering from bed to bed in an effort to reach the door.

Beva came after him. “Stop! You are not strong enough to—”

Caelan turned to him. “No!” he cried. “You are taking my strength. Get away from me.”

Beva stopped, his face white. They glared at each other.

Caelan pulled his sore hand into a fist and began smacking it into his left palm, striking again and again, using the pain to break the awful webs of coldness his father had spun around him.

“I held the warding key,” he whispered, struggling to regain his memory. “The wind spirit had me. Another spirit had Farns. I took the key from my pocket, and it came alive.”

He could feel a flash of heat inside him. His hand began to ache in earnest, throbbing. “I used it to drive the spirits away,” Caelan said.

Long shudders ran through him, and suddenly his mind felt sharp and clear. The hollowness inside him vanished, and he was whole again.

Gasping and blinking, drenched with sweat, he slowly lifted his gaze to his father’s. Horrified certainty spread through him. “You tried to purify me,” he whispered. “When I was hurt and couldn’t defend myself, you tried to sever me and make me into a—a—” He choked, unable to say it.

Beva stepped back and drew himself up, very erect and austere in his white robes. His eyes might as well have been chips of stone. “I was wrong to try this alone,” he said with plain disappointment. “You are stronger than I suspected.”

Caelan’s disappointment was crushing. Beva hadn’t even bothered to deny it. “Why do you hate me so much?” he asked.

“Hate you?” Beva said with a blink. “I do not hate.”

“You want to destroy me.”

“If you are not turned from the path you walk, you will become something reprehensible. I am trying to save you, boy. Let me.”

Caelan’s eyes widened. He thought of how he had handled the warding key, and remembered he had somehow brought it back to life. Despite its awesome power, he had used it, directed it.

He started to shake again. “People die when they hold warding keys. What am I?”

Beva looked at him coldly, offering no comfort or sympathy. “It is said that in the west there are men who walk both worlds, using severance or sevaisin as they will without regard for the patterns of harmony they destroy. It is also said they are not truly men, that demon blood must run in their veins for them to have such unholy powers. They are welcomed in the west, put to use in the evil worked by the emperor and his court of blasphemers. Many join the order of Vindicants and perfect their mastery of the shadow arts.”

Caelan listened to this with growing dismay. He did not want to believe what his father was saying. “But I’m not like that.”

“Perhaps you are. Or will become so.” Beva’s harsh tone was like a slap.

Caelan frowned, wanting to deny it, wanting his father to deny it. “But I am your son. I have your blood. I’m no demon! Just because I won’t obey you—”

“Rebellion is one gateway to the dark path,” Beva quoted without mercy. He gestured at Farns’s unconscious form. “You have endangered my watchman, a servant of long devotion. He will probably die of the madness because of you. What were you leading him to, Caelan?”

“Nothing,” Caelan said, appalled by this newest accusation. “I was only trying to collect my bow from the—”

“Weapons are the handiwork of destruction,” Beva said. “I have had all of them broken—”

“Yes, I saw,” Caelan broke in angrily. “This hold now lies unprotected and vulnerable to anyone who chooses to attack it. How could you be so irresponsible? Thyzarenes don’t believe in the pattern of harmony. If they come here, are we to drive them off with our bare hands?”

“The gods protect us because we live on the path of good,” Beva said.

“The gods protect those who stand prepared to defend themselves,” Caelan said in disgust.

Beva scowled. “I will not have disrespect in my house.”

“Fine. I plan to leave your house.”

Beva’s head snapped up. He looked at Caelan with alarm.

“That’s right. I’m going,” Caelan told him.

“But you are my son,” Beva said. “Your place is here, with me.”

Grief, anger, and disillusionment twisted inside Caelan. “When I go to sleep tonight, will you try to purify me again? Make me a mindless, obedient slave? You’ve already called me a demon. As if the insult to my mother wasn’t enough, I know you care nothing about me at all. Why should you want me?”

“You are my son.”

“Your pride be damned!” Caelan shouted at him. “I don’t want to be your son! I don’t want anything to do with you!”

Color flamed in Beva’s face. “You are not of age. You must obey me. You must take the apprenticeship I assign you. The law supports me in this. If you leave, I can summon you home. And I will do it.”

“Disown me! Forget about me! It’s Agel who wants to be a healer and work with you. Just leave me alone, because I will never give in. Never! And you won’t trick me again.”

Caelan swung away, but before he’d gone two steps his father called after him.

“You cannot go.”

“Watch me,” Caelan muttered, seething.

“You cannot go! My son, if you do not stop this rage that fills you ... if you do not learn to submit to the inward path, you will become what I most fear.”

Caelan stopped and looked back. “What?” he asked with deliberate insolence. “A free man?”

“No, a donare. An abhorrence. Son, it lies within you. It grows into a twisted evil. You must be stopped. You must be saved. If you cannot crush it within yourself, then let me sever it from you—”

“No!” Caelan said, his fear returning. He backed away from his father, fearing the fanaticism burning in Beva’s face more than anything. “Stay away from me! I don’t believe you. I don’t—trust you.”

With that break in his voice, he rushed from the ward. By the time he reached the passage connecting the infirmary to the house, he was staggering on weak, unsteady legs. Tears streamed down his face.

There was no love in Beva. There would never be.

A sob choked Caelan’s throat, but he held it down. His father had called him a monster, one of the demon-blood, all because he wouldn’t submit blindly to Beva’s wishes.

Unfair, but so was all of life. He refused to feel sorry for himself. That way led to weakness, and he might even find himself crawling back like a shivering dog, willing to take whatever abuse Beva wanted to give in exchange for acceptance.

There was no question of ever pleasing his father. He never had. He never could.

And now ... and now ... he choked again, and wiped the tears from his face. He thought his father was half afraid of him.

Fear, not love.

Control, not compassion.

Hatred, not acceptance.

Why?

The question branded him, burning deep, never to be erased from his soul.

Had he been a changeling of some kind or even an orphan of mysterious origin adopted by his parents, he might understand what was happening to him. But there had been no fateful discovery of an infant son by Beva during his travels. There had been no unexpected arrival of an infant son at the hold gates, left by the spirits. There had been no secret trade of an infant son with the Choven who migrated through the Cascades during the summer months.

Caelan had been born in the bed where his father still slept, as Lea had been. He was an E’non, able to count his ancestors back for twelve generations. There was no strange or foreign blood in his veins, nothing to support his father’s cruel accusations. No soothsayer in the towns of Meunch and Ornselag had ever decried his destiny on a street corner.

Yet he had held a warding key three times, and he still lived.

What did it mean?

What did Lea’s unusual gifts mean?

Beva had more than the usual talent for healing. What talents had his bride possessed? What had the two of them created in their children?

Or was it all a growing madness in Beva’s mind? Were his own talents and beliefs driving him too far? People thought him so wise and good. Why couldn’t he show that wisdom and goodness to his own son? Why did he have to be so harsh and unyielding? What did he want?

Something Caelan could not give.

Safe in his room, Caelan slammed the door and slid down it to the floor.

There, in the quiet shadows, he sobbed.