Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [27]
“I just want to see how other people live. I’m tired of listening to stories, old tales that may be false. How can I judge the truth from the lies if I don’t see for myself?”
Beva bowed his head. “No change,” he said quietly, as though to himself. “All these months away, and there is no change in you at all.”
Caelan could feel his stubbornness growing, along with the anger. “That’s right, Father,” he said. “The masters failed to beat or starve my dreams from me. And now I’m going to live as I please. I tried to tell you I didn’t want to be a healer, and you wouldn’t listen to me.”
“There is no other path for you,” Beva said with equal stubbornness. “I tested you and saw the gift in you.”
“No, you saw what you wanted me to be,” Caelan said resentfully. “You’ve never cared what I wanted. It’s always been your plan, your wishes, your idea of how my life would be. Never mine.”
“You were born to be a healer,” Beva said. “As I was born to it. My blood is in you. My skill, waiting to be trained and guided.”
“Well, that’s over,” Caelan said with a shrug. “No more training.”
“How proudly you say it. You come home disrobed with the Ouon Bell rung over you. That means you are dead, boy, dead to all healers. You can never be one of us. You are outcast from the profession. Is this how you honor me? Is this how a son thanks his father? How am I to stand among my colleagues now? How do I point to my son with a father’s pride?”
Caelan frowned. After a lifetime of watching his father spurn emotions, these admissions were doubly bewildering. Caelan’s heart twisted. “You have no pride,” he said coldly. “You say that pride is a false emotion and to be avoided.”
Beva’s face burned with color. His gloved hands were clenched hard on the reins. “A father’s pride,” he said softly, “lies in knowing he has sired a strong, upright son, a boy of talent and keen mind, a boy in whom he can see himself achieve even more, become even more complete within the pattern, walk even farther along the inner road. That is a father’s pride.”
“All you can see is yourself!” Caelan cried. “All you think of is yourself. Haven’t you done enough, accomplished enough? You’re the best healer in all of Trau. Can’t that be enough for you? Why do you have to live through me, control me?”
“You—”
“Why can’t I be myself? Live my own life? Walk my own road? Why must everything be done your way?”
“Because my way is best.”
“For you, but not for me! Now it’s over. Face it, Father. I’m never going to be a healer like you.”
“Once you are purified, all will change,” Beva said.
Caelan stared at him, the blood draining from his face in shock. “I refused that,” he whispered.
“I have already made the preparations at home,” Beva said as though he had not heard. “It would have been better had the masters performed it, but I will do what is necessary. When you have recovered, I will personally begin your training once again.”
“No,” Caelan said.
“Of course you will never be able to achieve the rank of master this way. After all, the Ouon Bell has been rung over you. But when I am finished, you will be a competent and able assistant, and you will have forgotten these foolish dreams of becoming a soldier.”
“I said no,” Caelan repeated.
Beva did not even glance at him or indicate he heard.
Caelan drew rein sharply, and after a few steps Beva stopped and glanced back.
“I’m not going home,” Caelan said. “Not to that. I’d rather be carried off by Thyzarenes than face that.”
“Your fear shows the love of darkness within you,” Beva said. “Why else should you fear the enlightenment?”
“You want to sever me,” Caelan said, looking at him with horror. “You would do this to your own son.”
“I will do what is necessary,” Beva said, “to save you.”
“You would destroy me!”
“Only the shadows within you.”
“The shadows are in you!” Caelan burst out. “You don’t want me to find the truth. You want me to trot at your heels in blind obedience to a philosophy that’s as stupid as it is unjust—”
The back of Beva’s hand smacked against his jaw.
Caught completely off guard, Caelan went tumbling