Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [113]
“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.
It was Beva’s face, stern and