Shadow War - Deborah Chester [84]
His voice grew ragged, and he fell quiet. His memories were unwelcome, bringing back the horror of that attack. They had fed on him as well, and he still felt shaken and not quite whole. He wondered if he ever would. Worse, he kept thinking back to the night he had been attacked by the wind spirits at E’nonhold. Old Farns had tried to save him, and had died for the effort. The memory of the old man’s dear face, so drawn and still on the pillow, came back vividly. Prince Tirhin’s face had a similar look. Caelan could feel himself knotting even tighter inside. The prince was not likely to recover. And if he did not, Caelan’s warning would never be heard.
He needed Tirhin on his feet and sane, to betray guilt when questioned so that the council would believe Caelan’s accusations.
“If the demons have indeed taken his reason,” Agel said in his somber way, “then I cannot restore it.”
Caelan drew in a sharp breath but did not speak.
“If he is simply hiding deep within himself from shock, then he has a chance to eventual recovery,” Agel said. “But it will be slow and difficult.”
Caelan looked at him. “Can you determine which it is?”
“I will try.”
Agel leaned over Tirhin and placed his palms on the prince’s face. Uttering the severance mantra under his breath, Agel closed his eyes. After a moment his own expression grew still, then went slack. He began to sway rhythmically at first, then more jerkily, then convulsively as though he were trying to hurl himself back but could not break the contact.
His mouth opened, and he made wordless, gasping sounds.
Alarmed, Caelan reached out, then stopped himself at the last moment from touching his cousin. Even without actual physical contact, sevaisin was stirring in him. He could feel a force of evil reaching forth, something that sent chills racing through him. The evil was centered in Tirhin’s body, but now it was twisting and entwining through Agel as though the healer’s touch had brought it forth. As Caelan stood beside his cousin, he sensed this evil wanted him too.
Repulsion filled him, but Caelan had no time to delay if he was to destroy this thing.
Sweat was pouring off Agel. Still standing there with his eyes closed and his mouth screaming silently, he went on twisting from side to side, unable to break free.
Pressing his fingertips together, Caelan closed his own eyes and plunged deep into severance. At once its icy walls closed around him, buffering him from the black, writhing, indescribable thing that coiled and twisted around Tirhin and Agel. It turned its wedge-shaped head and opened its mouth to display dripping fangs. Hissing, it struck at Caelan, but severance shielded him. He forced himself to look on this evil, to look into it. He saw its threads of life and where they stretched back to the source that governed it.
Caelan severed the threads. The creature screamed with a shriek so piercing it brought Caelan pain. Both Tirhin and Agel screamed too.
In that one brief second of contact, Caelan felt a flood of black hatred and viciousness flow over him. He felt one touch from what lay beyond the creature, and it was clammy and rotted and utterly horrifying.
Then he was free, and the link was broken. The creature faded from black to gray, then to nothing at all. It was gone, as though it had never existed.
Breathing hard, Caelan released himself from severance and stood blinking and shivering in a room that was suddenly too cold for comfort. Even now he could still feel a lingering foulness that made him shudder. But whatever had been planted inside Tirhin was gone.
Leaning over, Caelan rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands and gulped in more air. He felt spent and winded, as though he’d run miles.
Then he pulled himself together and straightened. Almost afraid to know, he turned to the others. Tirhin looked gray-faced and dead. Agel lay slumped over him.
Anxiously Caelan pulled his cousin upright and gripped him by both arms to shake him.
Agel flopped in his grasp, semiconscious, knees buckling.
Caelan sank with him