Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [58]
Lea sent Caelan a radiant glance of pride, her blue eyes shining. The other Choven watched from their doorways. Silence floated over the camp.
Caelan felt a pull of sevaisin, like the strong current of a river. Instinctively he braced himself to resist it and glared at Moah. “For your kindness to my sister, I give you my thanks,” he said in a stiff, formal tone that barely masked his anger.
Lea gasped and turned toward him, but he ignored her as he went on glaring at Moah. “But beyond that, I am not your creature,” he said. He drew the beautiful sword so swiftly the metal whistled against its scabbard. Sunlight flashed off the blade, and the other Choven lifted their voices in a deep, eerie cry of acclamation that made Caelan’s hair prickle up the back of his skull.
Swiftly he blocked his feeling of kinship with it, distrusting how alive and intelligent it seemed. He wanted nothing to do with something so strongly spell-forged, and he bent down and laid the sword on a brightly patterned rug lying on the ground in front of the nearest tent.
The Choven woman standing in its doorway opened her mouth in silent astonishment and fled inside.
Others spoke out loudly in a language that sent chills crawling through Caelan. He knew enough of the ancient words to recognize their tongue as one from darkest antiquity. The air was growing charged, as though spells were being summoned. Caelan could feel it around him, and his heartbeat quickened in alarm.
He did not know what could happen if a Choven became angry. But just then his own temper was boiling enough to keep him reckless.
Defiantly, he slipped the carrybag off his shoulder and dropped it on the rug beside the sword.
“Caelan, no!” Lea said in distress.
He refused to look at her and instead faced Moah once again, glaring down into the man’s shimmering, unreadable eyes. “I cannot be bought,” he said through his teeth, his anger like heat in his bones. “No matter how magnificent the price you offer, I am free, and I will stay that way. You told my sister we are Choven, but we are not. We are human, and we take pride in that.”
His speech finished, he gave Moah a curt bow and wheeled around to stride away. “Come, Lea,” he commanded. “We are leaving.”
Chapter Eleven
Lea trotted beside him, glaring in protest. “No, Caelan! You don’t understand anything. Why must you be so rude?”
He lengthened his stride, refusing to listen. His ears were roaring, and he had to grit his teeth to hold back a rebuke. It was his fault, not hers, that he had come this far. He should never have held the sword, should never have admired it, should never have buckled it to his belt. Pausing in mid-stride, he yanked the scabbard free and flung it away.
Lea gasped. “You are stupid! You—”
He turned on her, rage swelling inside his chest. “I will not become a—”
Pain struck his chest as though he’d been speared. With a hoarse cry, he doubled over and fell to his knees. This attack was worse than any of the previous ones. He felt as though his chest was being pried open. Desperately, he struggled to master the agony. If he could just sever the pain, then he could regain his feet and get far from here.
But severance failed him. He had lost his techniques, his knowledge, in the sea of pain.
He cried out again, flailing with one powerful arm against an enemy that could not be touched. This battle raged inside him. Gasping for the breath that did not seem to come, he slewed around on his knees, falling off balance only to catch himself with one hand, and looked at the pouch containing his emerald. The leather was splitting along one seam. Through it he could see the stone glowing.
Again, his anger intensified. “Get away from me!” he shouted, fearing the emerald’s mysterious power. “Get out of me!”
His heart was bursting. The pain grew worse, until he knew nothing but it. He had been told in the arena barracks that men did not pass out from pain alone. They might lose consciousness