Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [130]
Caelan ran for the nearest broadsword and scooped it up just as the dagger flew past him harmlessly and thunked into the wooden wall.
Caelan left it quivering there and swung the sword around just as the second dagger came at his head. In severance, Caelan danced in the coldness, watching the dagger slow in midair as his senses heightened. He swung the sword and deflected the dagger. It went spinning harmlessly aside and landed on the ground.
Now Amarouk was weaponless and hurt. Pressing his injured arm to his side, blood still streaming, the man backed up from Caelan’s advance, looking from side to side as he tried to locate the remaining sword.
Caelan charged him, but Amarouk dodged and scrambled on his hands and knees to grab the sword. Lifting it just in time, sand flying from the blade, he blocked Caelan’s swing. Steel rang against steel, sliding until their grips locked.
They strained against each other, well matched in strength; then Amarouk twisted and managed to sling Caelan around into the wall.
Caelan’s shoulder ached from the impact, but rather than try to regain his balance, he slid down into a crouch and slashed at Amarouk’s legs.
The man danced back, but not fast enough. The blade sliced through meat and tendon, and suddenly Amarouk was down. The thews in his neck corded up like ropes as he tried to heave himself back up. He made it, kneeling with blood streaming around him, and screamed obscenities at Caelan.
Their swords clashed with a jolt that traveled up Caelan’s wrists. Caelan’s own flesh wound had reopened, and the blood and sweat trickling down his arm made the hilt slippery. He broke first, stepping back on his rear foot, then swung again. Now he did at last find the rhythm of the weighty sword. But even on his knees Amarouk refused to give up. He met blow for blow, the sword blades ringing out mightily again and again.
“Kill!” the crowd roared, on its feet now, fists shaking, voices screaming. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
And as he fought the valiant Amarouk, a corner of Caelan’s mind went back long ago to something his father had once said when trying to teach him a lesson in healing.
Opening his kit, Beva withdrew a copper scalpel and held it up so the firelight could flash along the burnished blade. “This is a tool with which to heal. It can assist life. It can also take life. Sometimes I must cut away that which is diseased and damaged in order to save life. Sometimes I must take life in order to grant mercy.”
He ran his finger along the blunt edge of the blade. “Safety.”
Then he ran his finger along the sharp edge. Blood welled across his fingertip, and he flicked it at the wall, leaving tiny crimson splatters. “Danger. Everything in the universe has two sides, the aul and the zin, the brightness and the shadow, the good and the evil. That is how balance is maintained.”
Caelan sighed. He had no desire to listen to one of his father’s lectures.
“It is not necessary to walk among evil, boy, in order to fully understand good. By looking into good, you will find the evil. Do not go seeking more.”
Caelan frowned. As usual when talking to his father, he felt there were more riddles than answers. “So you’re saying that with every wrong committed, good is lost. Until one day the balance shifts and it cannot be regained at all.”
It was Beva’s turn to sigh. “No, boy. That is not what I’m saying.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In healing, sometimes we take the disease and turn it upon itself. It will kill itself when properly guided. There are many ways to the desired end. Many journeys, none of them more right than another, but all the same in result if needed.”
Within the vision, Caelan frowned. This no longer felt like a memory. They had never had this conversation. His father had not said these words, yet Beva’s face hung suspended in his mind. Beva’s voice rang in his thoughts.
“You’re saying I must kill this man,” Caelan said, faraway from the battle his body still fought with Amarouk. “You, Father? The peace lover?”
“Ultimate severance,” Beva whispered. “The taking