Shadow War Part 21

"You have authority over it?"

Caelan heard accusation in his voice. He could see fear in Agel's eyes, along with a dawning look of horror.

"You can make it come, and go, at your bidding?" the healer asked, his voice rising. "What are are you?" you?"

"You misunderstand!" Caelan said sharply. "I do not govern it. Murdeth and Fury, why must you always leap to the wrong conclusions? Anyone else would be relieved that I was able to destroy it."

"Only evil can destroy evil," Agel said, his eyes still wide with shock. "Only evil knows the secrets within itself."

"All I did was sever sever it from its source," Caelan said impatiently. it from its source," Caelan said impatiently.

Agel flinched away from him, b.u.mping into Tirhin's bed as he did so. "Severance cannot be used that way. It is not possible." cannot be used that way. It is not possible."

"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, sever, like a novice." like a novice."

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

"To sever 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-" 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 "Sevaisin exists everywhere. It calls constantly. Sometimes it is difficult not to use it." 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 att.i.tude. Agel was badly frightened, clinging to blind prejudice and superst.i.tion rather than reason. Caelan tried to keep his own temper, tried to be compa.s.sionate, 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."

"d.a.m.n you, Agel!"

"You are casna," casna," Agel retorted. "You must be." 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 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 s.h.i.+elded 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-" Devil! You are aptly named. You-"

"Are you blaming me for the attack of shyrieas 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 severance to guide me." 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 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 s.h.i.+fted his head and moaned.

At once Agel turned to him, but instead of touching the prince with a rea.s.suring 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 sever without using a mantra. Why don't you heal him? Just reach in and without using a mantra. Why don't you heal him? Just reach in and sever sever him from his illness." 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 compa.s.sion.

"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, pus.h.i.+ng 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.