Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [163]
She bent over and kissed the top of its head. “You have served me well,” she whispered.
“Danger,” the jinja insisted. “Need jinja.”
She sighed. “The laws of Imperia forbid you to go with me.”
Growling, the jinja darted away and jumped back on the windowsill with its back to her.
She stared at it a moment, but she could not relent. In silence, she fastened her veil in place, grateful that it would conceal the defiance in her face, and went forth with murder in her heart.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caelan heard the whispered argument before he heard the bells ringing over the city.
Dragging open his eyes, he saw Orlo standing across the gloomy cellar next to a wall of wooden kegs, gesturing and arguing in a fierce undertone with someone Caelan could not see.
He struggled to lift his head. “Orlo?”
The trainer broke off and came hurrying to his side. “We woke you. I’m sorry.”
Caelan frowned up at him in the feeble flicker of candlelight, seeing the anger still stamped on Orlo’s features. He glanced back across the cellar, but could not see the individual who stood motionless in the shadows.
“Who?”
“Hush,” Orlo said, wiping his brow with a wet cloth. “Save your strength.”
Caelan could feel a strange energy in the room, a force tightly leashed yet powerful. It emanated from the person he could not see, and he was afraid. For a confused moment he was a boy again, bruised and battered after his attempt to run away from school and join the army.
“Elder Sobna?” he said defiantly. “I won’t be punished!”
“Don’t talk,” Orlo said gruffly. “You can’t afford to start coughing again.”
The energy rippled around the room. It was something he had never encountered before, very ancient, yet no menace lay in it. His initial sense of alarm faded, and he sighed.
Orlo tried to give him water, but Caelan turned his head fretfully from the cup. He beckoned to the person in the shadows.
Orlo gripped his hand and forced it down to his side. “No. You don’t know anything about it. Go back to sleep.”
But a figure emerged, robed and hooded in black. “His invitation allows me to enter,” a woman’s voice said.
Orlo scowled, putting himself protectively between Caelan and the approaching stranger. “You aren’t wanted here.”
Ignoring him, the woman went to the other side of Caelan’s pallet. Her face was smooth and unlined like a girl’s, yet her dark eyes looked old and weary. When she knelt beside him with her hands resting calmly in her lap, he saw how age-gnarled they were.
He stared at her in astonishment. “Penestrican,” he said, his voice a weak rasp.
She inclined her head gravely. “I have come to offer you a lesson.”
Orlo snorted. “What nonsense is this, woman?”
She glared at him. “Until you learn respect, you will be silent!”
Orlo opened his mouth, but no words came out. His eyes widened in alarm, and he raised his hands to his throat.
Alarmed, Caelan tried to sit up and only managed to prop himself up on one elbow. The room spun around him, and he could not breathe. He fell back, dizzy and sweating. “Don’t ... hurt.”
“I haven’t hurt him,” the Penestrican said grimly, still holding Orlo silent in her spell.
The trainer glared at her and reached for his knife.
“No,” Caelan gasped out, trying to intervene.
“Command him to be still,” the Penestrican said sternly. “Otherwise, I shall be forced to hurt him.”
“Orlo, stop,” Caelan said, and broke into a painful fit of coughing.
He felt himself bleeding, the bandage under his back sodden and warm. He seemed to be floating, buoyed up on the pain that was like fire in his chest and back. Then the woman’s hand pressed against his forehead, and his mind cleared anew.
Much of the pain faded to a bearable level.
“Give him water now,” she said.
Scowling ferociously at her, Orlo lifted Caelan as gently as he could and held the cup to his lips.
The water was tepid and tasted awful, but it soothed Caelan’s throat. He swallowed more of it thirstily and felt refreshed by the time Orlo eased him down.
“Release him,” Caelan