Reign of Shadows

by Deborah Chester

  Finally, reluctantly, he kicked his mount forward.

  Fuming, he glared at his father, who refused to face reality. Beva wasn’t going to bend principle one tiny bit, not even to be practical. How could his father wander the forest unarmed and unprepared with these raiders bringing real danger to the area? How could Beva depend on inner harmony, on severance against barbarians who probably had never heard of such enlightened philosophies?

  Maybe Beva wasn’t as wise as he’d always thought. Maybe Beva didn’t know everything. Maybe Beva was capable of making mistakes just like everyone else. It sure looked like his father was making some now.

  When his pony caught up, Caelan glanced at his father’s stern profile. “I’m sorry your opinion of me is so low. I’m sorry you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

  Beva tucked his chin deeper into the folds of his hood. “It is actions, not words, that speak truth.”

  Caelan frowned and tried to hold onto his temper. “Whether you approve of fighting or not, it doesn’t change the fact that we may be forced to defend our hold. What can we do to protect ourselves?”

  “We have the warding keys.”

  Astonished, Caelan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “They aren’t enough!”

  Beva glanced sideways at him. “They are from the old ways, yes. While I do not approve of them, they do work. Someday, when all men are enlightened into the paths of severance, we shall not need warding keys or weapons.”

  “But that day has not yet come,” Caelan said impatiently. “And until it does, we have to be strong and defend what belongs to us.”

  Beva sighed. “I had hoped the school would tame this wild spirit inside you. This craving for excitement, for things beyond the ordinary. Why can you not understand that excitement equals danger, that danger destroys, that destruction takes away all that is good and harmonious, leaving only chaos and harm in its wake?”

  “But, Father, when the danger comes to us, what are we to do? Just let it destroy us?”

  “To admire danger is to summon it. You have been warned of this, boy.”

  Caelan frowned. “So are you saying the Thyzarenes are my fault, that I brought them here?”

  “Rebellion opens the gateway to darkness,” Beva said. “When enough hearts resist harmony, then darkness grows.”

  Caelan slammed his fist against the pommel of his saddle. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered furiously.

  “Elder Sobna told me you ran away from Rieschelhold, choosing night as your ally. You found only danger in your search for excitement, did you not?” Beva’s voice was cold, holding condemnation with no hint of concern. “You brought danger to others. The soldiers you admire proved their brutality by attacking you. Has this lesson taught you nothing? Fighting only brings more fighting, just as war begets war.”

  “But how can a person learn if he doesn’t seek—”

  “The search is inward, not outward. I have told you so many times.”

  Caelan frowned. “But to sit and meditate ... I can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “You mean you will not.”

  “All right, then, I won’t!” Caelan admitted stubbornly. “I want to see new places, to travel, to have adventures. I want to see the world and all its wonders, not remain forever cooped up in a hold with my hands tucked inside my sleeves.”

  “The journey must follow an inner road,” Beva said with a reproof. “Why do you resist this truth?”

  Caelan gestured behind him. “And what of that imperial road, leading across the world?”

  “Leading to ways of wickedness and error. This, you crave.”

  “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.

  C
aught completely off guard, Caelan went tumbling out of the saddle and fell flat in the snow.

  Stunned, he lay there a moment. Astonishment flattened him more than the actual blow. His father had never struck him before. Never. His father did not believe in violence. His father always said his hands were a gift from the gods, to be used to heal, not harm.

  Beva must hate him for what he’d done. Bitterness welled up in Caelan. He’d spent his life loving his father, wanting so desperately to measure up to his father’s high standards, yet torn by wanting to go his own way. Now he wondered why he had ever bothered to seek this man’s affection.

  Above the treetops, jackdaws wheeled in the sky with their raucous call. The ponies jangled their bits impatiently and stamped in the cold.

  “Get up,” Beva said at last. His voice had lost its anger. It sounded hollow and unlike him. “Get back on your horse. We have far to ride.”

  Caelan rose to his feet and brushed the snow from his clothing. Nothing dealt him at the school had been this humiliating; not even the treatment from the soldiers had equaled this. His head was on fire; the rest of his body felt cold and detached.

  “I’m not going with you,” he said.

  “Don’t be foolish. You ran away from school without adequate preparation and came to grief immediately. How long do you think you would last out here?”

  “I won’t go,” Caelan said, refusing to acknowledge his father was right. “I won’t go home to be purified. I won’t do it.”

  Beva’s eyes narrowed. They locked stares—Beva’s cold and Caelan’s hot. Finally it was Beva who looked away first.

  “Get on your pony,” he said in a voice like stone. “We shall settle the matter once we are home.”

  Resentfully, knowing he had little choice, Caelan mounted and they rode on. Neither of them spoke again through the long cold hours until dark, when they camped in an ice cave at the foothills of the Cascades. The air held the crisp scent of the glacier far above. Outside, beyond the edge of the forest, the aurora shimmered lights of green and pink and yellow in a dazzling display that tilled the night sky. Caelan huddled at the mouth of the ice cave, far from the warmth of the tiny fire his father had kindled, shivering in his cloak and enraptured by the sight.

  “Caelan,” his father said finally, breaking the long silence between them. “Come back to the fire. You have seen enough of the light spirits at play.”

  Caelan said nothing. He did not move.

  “Caelan!” his father said sharply. “Come here.”

  Caelan ignored him, his gaze still locked on the beauty of the sky. How magical it was, as though the gods opened the veil between heaven and earth just enough for mortals to enjoy this glimpse of their wondrous world far beyond reach.

  “The light spirits can dazzle your wits and draw you outside if you’re not careful. Don’t tempt the wind spirits into preying here.”

  Caelan snorted to himself. He knew the aurora had nothing to do with the malevolence that flew on the winds during winter nights. His father didn’t believe the old superstitions either, no matter what he might say.

  But defiance had a way of diminishing Caelan’s pleasure in the beautiful display. Abruptly he returned to the fire.

  It was so small it hardly gave out any warmth. Ice caves ran deep into the Cascades. They were camping inside a long, tunnellike entry that was made more of stone than of ice. To build a fire deeper would be to start the ice walls melting. The ceiling could fall. But here they were safe enough, deep enough into the mountain to avoid detection by anything prowling the darkness, their fire glimmer further concealed by the branches pulled across the mouth of the cave.

  Beyond the fire and their bedrolls, the ponies shifted restlessly. Their shaggy bodies gave out warmth in the narrow space to supplement what the fire provided. Overhead a few icicles dripped. Caelan shifted position to avoid them. He had already eaten, too hungry to refuse the rations his father offered.

  Beva, as usual, ate only a tiny portion of the bread and cheese, picking at his food, tasting, nibbling, putting it down again. He studied Caelan, who pretended not to notice.

  Gathering a handful of pebbles, Caelan tossed them one by one at the opposite wall.

  “You have never learned to stand fast,” Beva said finally. “Your will is like a river, winding along the easiest path. Yet, like the river, you resist change and will not allow the channel you follow to be altered. This is not the way, my son.”

  It wasn’t an apology. Beva was simply trying another argument on the same old line. Caelan ached with disappointment, but even that was nothing new. He went on tossing pebbles at the wall.

  “They also told me you used severance to remove a warding key from the gate,” Beva said quietly. “That, more than anything else, shows me the strength of your talents. If you would just surrender to the true ways, you would surpass even what I have accomplished.”

  Caelan frowned, refusing to look at his father. He did not like what he heard in his father’s voice. Admiration? Greed? Caelan shivered and said nothing.

  All he’d ever asked for was simple affection, plain dealing, and freedom. All he’d ever received was cold isolation, lectures, riddles, and philosophy lessons. Now he wasn’t sure exactly what his father wanted. All he knew was that the blow from his father had destroyed something necessary and vital between them.

  Beva said something else, but Caelan didn’t listen. He was busy planning his next course of action. As soon as he reached E’nonhold, he would persuade Old Farns to unlock the arms room. He would gather weapons, provisions, and adequate clothing. If necessary he would break into his father’s strongbox and take his inheritance. He would see his little sister and give her a proper goodbye before he left her.

  “Caelan,” Beva said again, sharply enough to penetrate his thoughts this time.

  Caelan looked up, keeping his expression blank and cold.

  Beva sighed. “Very well. If we cannot have a discussion, I will bid you goodnight.”

  Caelan’s heart still thrummed strongly with anger. He met his father’s gaze, aware of all they would never have as father and son, all they would never share. His father had killed his love. It was finished.

  “Goodnight,” Caelan replied and turned away.

  Chapter Six

  IN THE STILL grayness of dawn, they broke camp and emerged cautiously from the cave where they’d sheltered for the night. Heavy snow had fallen during the night, and the ponies floundered their way through tall drifts. It was not snowing now, but as they followed the steep trail into the mountain pass, they entered the gray bellies of the clouds until all was dim mist and fog.

  Caelan could barely see his father’s back, although his pony crowded close to the heels of the other. Beva’s white fur cloak and the white ponies looked ghostly in the gloom. Around them the hills rose steeply, rocks jutting, the trail growing ever steeper and more treacherous.

  The fog was freezing in the cold, coating the world in thin ice. Whenever Caelan moved, it splintered and showered off his clothing like glass.

  Then they were high above the world, up in the Cascades themselves, and despite the gloom, the beauty of this silent, frozen world made Caelan catch his breath in appreciation.

  The mighty waterfall that gave the mountains their name was frozen, a vast sheet of ice hanging in midair. During warm months the waterfall thundered with a force that could be heard for miles, but now its voice was hushed. It was as though the gods had struck the river and stopped it, leaving it suspended until spring thaw when it would rush, gloriously cold and rapid, mist rising high to make rainbows in the air.

  They rode up the trail beside it, then turned and passed behind the great sheet of ice. Caelan put out his hand and trailed his fingers across its surface for luck, the way he’d been doing since babyhood when his mother told him about the blessings of the Cascade River. It was she who first dipped his chubby fingers in the icy water. It was she who told him the river’s father was the mighty gla
cier high above them on the top of the world, and that was why the water would always run cold. It was she who had told him legends and stories from the ancient times, filling his head with heroes and adventures, stirring curiosity into his blood. She had loved life and laughter. Even now, though his memory was dim, he could see her sitting on the rocks in the sunshine, her skirts spread around her, a long golden braid hanging over her right shoulder, her face merry and kind.

  She had been the sun in his life to his father’s moon. She had been the gentle pressure of a loving hand on his shoulder after his father’s scolding. She had bustled around the hold, directing the housework and singing melodies, her voice as clear as birdsong.

  He had been eight when she died giving birth to Lea. The grief was gone now, faded through the years, but he had never stopped missing her.

  Homecoming was never quite the same without her at the hearth, waiting to greet him.

  Always cautious, always taking the worst trails in order to keep under as much cover as possible, they rode all day through the mountains. They passed other, smaller waterfalls also hanging frozen. Natural springs that in summer would seep from the rock faces now lay dormant in the grip of winter.

  Once Caelan spotted a band of lurkers high in the rocks overlooking a ravine, but they were too far away to be a problem.

  By twilight when Caelan and Beva descended into the thick pine forests of the plateau, Caelan was saddle sore and weary. His wounded shoulder ached, and with each landmark they passed, he grew more eager for home.

  Finally the forest cleared and there stood the while limestone walls. Thin spirals of peat smoke curled in the air—smelling homey, warm, and beckoning. Recognizing their stables, the weary ponies quickened their pace, and Caelan would have let his mount gallop in had his father not been there.

  The watchman, Old Farns, called down from the walls, and Beva replied. His grave, even voice could not be mistaken. In minutes, the gates were being pushed open, and Caelan found himself being greeted by familiar, eager faces crowding around to see him.