Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [23]
Still sweating, his knees weak as though they would let him drop at any moment, Caelan managed to regain his breath.
Watching him, Mygar widened his gaze. “Casna” he whispered again, then drew back. “I concur,” he said loudly for the assembly to hear.
Elder Sobna stood in front of Caelan once more. His lingers brushed Caelan’s right shoulder, and this time Caelan flinched. No more emotions came to him, however.
“And I concur,” the Elder intoned. “You are no longer eligible to be trained for the healing arts here or in any part of the empire.”
Caelan blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected such sweeping finality. Still, he didn’t believe they could enforce it. The masters here might be renowned, but they didn’t run the world.
“You are no longer to wear the blue colors of our training. You may never return through our gates. You will never practice the arts which you have learned here. Our ways and our privileges are henceforth forever denied to you.”
The Elder raised his hands. “Kneel for the disrobing.”
Two proctors reached out to push Caelan to his knees.
“No!” he cried, his voice ringing out across the courtyard. “I’ll never kneel to you, any of you! Here.” He yanked off the novice robe and flung it on the ground at the Elder’s feet. “I have disrobed myself. Now let me go from this place.”
Despite the rule of silence, murmurs ran through the assembly. The masters looked shocked, and even the Elder lost his severance to fresh anger.
Blinking hard, his mouth clamped tight, the Elder pointed at the main gates in silence. They swung open.
The gathered proctors moved aside and Caelan strode out, breathing hard, barely restraining his eagerness.
The bell began to toll again, its dark tone lifting over the countryside.
Head high, Caelan walked through the gates and paused to glance back. He would have liked to have said goodbye to Agel. But the gates slammed behind him with a mighty thud, and the Ouon Bell stopped ringing. For Rieschelhold, he had ceased to exist.
Lightness filled him. Caelan flung his arms to the sky with a shout of relief. Crowing with laughter, he danced in a small circle, kicking up snow. He felt as though he could fly.
“I’m free. I’m free!” he said over and over. Right then it didn’t matter that he had no money, no cloak, and no traveling boots. If he got himself into trouble again out here, no one would come to his rescue. But he didn’t care.
Scooping up a double handful of snow, he flung it into the air and let it rain down on him. “I’m free!”
“Caelan.”
Startled by that quiet word, Caelan lowered his arms and spun around.
A man cloaked in white fur stepped forward from the bushes. He led two white, shaggy mountain ponies by their reins. A pole with a healer’s globed lantern was attached to one saddle.
The man was tall and handsome, with a fringe of straight brown hair showing across his forehead beneath his fur hood. His face held no expression at all, but his gray eyes were dark with the bleakest disappointment Caelan had ever seen.
For a second, everything in this man’s heart lay exposed to the boy—a lifetime of hope, ambition, and plans for the future now in ruin. A dream of companionship, of working together for a mutual aim, now shattered.
Caelan dragged in an unsteady breath. All the lightness in him dimmed. The relief, the joy, the sense of unfurling like a warrior’s banner, faded. He was once again a boy in trouble for his mischief, small and sorry, waiting head down for the word of scolding.
“Oh, Father,” he said, his voice a mere whisper of sound in the falling snow.
Beva E’non drew in his pain, closing it behind the gates of his own will. In silence he turned away from Caelan and mounted his pony. The globe lantern bobbed and shook on its pole as he settled himself in the saddle.
Gazing down at Caelan, he held out the reins to the other pony without a word.