The nordeer trotted down to the camp, bells tinkling, antlers flashing silver in the sun. Caelan and Lea followed in their wake, and suddenly the flap of every tent seemed to open at the same time. Staring openly, the Choven peered out at them in silence.
Feeling very self-conscious, Caelan moved one hand nervously to the hilt of his sword, then dropped it. Could he be one of these people, as Lea had said? No, it was too fantastic. He refused to believe it. He had known both his mother and father. He looked like them. There had never been any hint that he and Lea were foundlings.
Yet what else explained why he was so drawn to the glacier, why he loved it so? What else explained how he could hold a warding key in his bare hands when doing so would kill any other man? Lea was no liar. She had loved Beva, who in his own rigid and stern way had been kind to her as a child. Why would she invent a falsehood against her own parents?
Caelan felt confused and wary as he and Lea rode to the center of the camp. It was a cleared space, encircled by smithy tents. All the tent flaps were tied open. The smell of heated metal filled the air, and haphazard heaps of metal slugs lay about—gold, steel, silver, and pewter—along with pots of what looked like precious stones of every kind. This casual display of wealth seemed even more impressive because no guards were in evidence.
Still, he had never heard of anyone who would dare steal from a Choven tribe. What had they to fear?
The sounds of hammering stopped momentarily, and then even the smiths themselves came out to stare at Caelan and Lea. Stripped to the waist, their dark, leathery hides glistening with sweat that steamed in the frigid air, they were short, chunky individuals with broad, flat-boned faces marked by thick, dark brows and wide, thin mouths. Their eyes were tilted at the outward corners, as black as obsidian, and penetrating.
Caelan stared back at them, finding himself almost forgetting to breathe. It was said a Choven could look into your heart and read your future. It was said a Choven could look into your mind and impart whatever he wished there. It was said a Choven could whistle and the seasons would change in obedience to his will.
“Caelan,” Lea said in a soft voice.
Startled, he glanced the way she was looking.
Garbed in flowing robes of white, a Choven male was striding toward them. Taller than the others, tall enough perhaps to come to Caelan’s shoulder, he carried a long staff of gleaming black wood banded with gold. His arms were encircled with gold bracelets of the most intricate design.
As he drew nearer, Lea slid from her saddle and gestured for Caelan to do the same.
When he obeyed, the nordeer flicked their ears and melted away among the tents. The ponies went with them. Caelan was left feeling surrounded and cut off. Edgily, he moved forward to stand a little in front of Lea, and crossed his arms over his chest where he could grab his dagger and new sword quickly if he needed to. His gaze flicked back and forth among the watching Choven, in case they decided to close in.
Lea frowned at him in rebuke. “Stop it,” she whispered. “Why do you fear?”
If she intended to shame his warrior pride, she succeeded. Hot-faced, he said nothing, not even when she stepped around him and hastened forward to meet the figure in white. She bowed to the Choven, and he stretched out a dark, long-fingered hand in response.
Up close, his skin had the texture of tree bark. His dark eyes moved like liquid in his face, and Caelan could feel his inquisitiveness like a physical force.
Stepping past Lea, the Choven came right up to Caelan and stopped directly in front of him.
Caelan’s past experience with the Choven, although limited, had been that they either ignored a person completely or they stared in blatant rudeness. This Choven was of the latter variety. He took his time looking Caelan over from all angles, but Caelan had suffered worse scrutinies on the auction block. He put on his stony mask and gave the Choven a flat, rebellious stare in return.
When the Choven had finished his examination, he glanced at Lea. “Why does he fear?”
She inclined her golden head respectfully and steepled her hands into a triangle of harmony. “My brother is foolish and untrained, Moah.”
Caelan shot her a glare that she ignored.
Moah tilted his head to one side and held out his long-fingered hands, palms up. “You wear the sword. You carry the emerald. You have followed the nordeer to us. We Choven bid you welcome, Caelan E’non, as we welcomed your sister Lea long ago. Are you ready to take your learning from us?”
Lea sent Caelan a radiant glance of pride, her blue eyes shining. The other Choven watched from their doorways. Silence floated over the camp.
Caelan felt a pull of sevaisin, like the strong current of a river. Instinctively he braced himself to resist it and glared at Moah. “For your kindness to my sister, I give you my thanks,” he said in a stiff, formal tone that barely masked his anger.
Lea gasped and turned toward him, but he ignored her as he went on glaring at Moah. “But beyond that, I am not your creature,” he said. He drew the beautiful sword so swiftly the metal whistled against its scabbard. Sunlight flashed off the blade, and the other Choven lifted their voices in a deep, eerie cry of acclamation that made Caelan’s hair prickle up the back of his skull.
Swiftly he blocked his feeling of kinship with it, distrusting how alive and intelligent it seemed. He wanted nothing to do with something so strongly spell-forged, and he bent down and laid the sword on a brightly patterned rug lying on the ground in front of the nearest tent.
The Choven woman standing in its doorway opened her mouth in silent astonishment and fled inside.
Others spoke out loudly in a language that sent chills crawling through Caelan. He knew enough of the ancient words to recognize their tongue as one from darkest antiquity. The air was growing charged, as though spells were being summoned. Caelan could feel it around him, and his heartbeat quickened in alarm.
He did not know what could happen if a Choven became angry. But just then his own temper was boiling enough to keep him reckless.
Defiantly, he slipped the carrybag off his shoulder and dropped it on the rug beside the sword.
“Caelan, no!” Lea said in distress.
He refused to look at her and instead faced Moah once again, glaring down into the man’s shimmering, unreadable eyes. “I cannot be bought,” he said through his teeth, his anger like heat in his bones. “No matter how magnificent the price you offer, I am free, and I will stay that way. You told my sister we are Choven, but we are not. We are human, and we take pride in that.”
His speech finished, he gave Moah a curt bow and wheeled around to stride away. “Come, Lea,” he commanded. “We are leaving.”
Chapter Eleven
Lea trotted beside him, glaring in protest. “No, Caelan! You don’t understand anything. Why must you be so rude?”
He lengthened his stride, refusing to listen. His ears were roaring, and he had to grit his teeth to hold back a rebuke. It was his fault, not hers, that he had come this far. He should never have held the sword, should never have admired it, should never have buckled it to his belt. Pausing in mid-stride, he yanked the scabbard free and flung it away.
Lea gasped. “You are stupid! You—”
He turned on her, rage swelling inside his chest. “I will not become a—”
Pain struck his chest as though he’d been speared. With a hoarse cry, he doubled over and fell to his knees. This attack was worse than any of the previous ones. He felt as though his chest was being pried open. Desperately, he struggled to master the agony. If he could just sever the pain, then he could regain his feet and get far from here.
But severance failed him. He had lost his techniques, his knowledge, in the sea of pain.
He cried out again, flailing with one powerful arm against an enemy that could not be touched. This battle raged inside him. Gasping for the breath that did not seem to come, he slewed around on his knees, falling off balance only to catch himself with one hand, and looked at
the pouch containing his emerald. The leather was splitting along one seam. Through it he could see the stone glowing.
Again, his anger intensified. “Get away from me!” he shouted, fearing the emerald’s mysterious power. “Get out of me!”
His heart was bursting. The pain grew worse, until he knew nothing but it. He had been told in the arena barracks that men did not pass out from pain alone. They might lose consciousness from loss of blood or shock or fear, but pain went on relentlessly.
Now, he prayed for oblivion, for release, but his agony burned ever more fiercely. It was unendurable, yet he could not escape it. He could not master it, could not master himself. Worst of all, he could not sever. The calm void inside him had been filled with fire that twisted and tortured him.
He was drowning in pain, unable to breathe, his lungs jerking convulsively now. In a brief moment of clarity, he found himself writhing on the snow, its crusty, frozen surface scratching his cheek until it felt raw. Then another wave of pain, like a tide of heat, swept over him, driving him back into madness.
Suddenly an unknown voice spoke to him in words he did not understand. A cool barrier drove back the heat. He found himself able to breathe again. Shuddering, drenched in sweat, he lay there with his eyes closed while he dragged in breath after breath. The pain receded, leaving inexpressible relief. Spent and exhausted, he felt too weak to even lift his head.
“Arise,” said the voice of Moah.
Caelan dragged his forearm across his face and slowly opened his eyes. He found himself lying on the ground with his fur-lined cloak a thin barrier between his body and the ice. Gone was the sunshine. Gone were the brightly colored tents. Instead, everything was gray, windswept, and desolate.
Struggling to his feet, he frowned at how weak he felt. He could barely stand, and his muscles felt drained as though he had been in combat for hours.
The only sound beyond his own labored breathing was the empty whistle of wind over the expanse of glacier.
Where had everyone gone? Where was he?
Suddenly alarmed, Caelan spun around and nearly lost his precarious balance. “Lea?” he said uncertainly.
He was alone, whisked by some means to the far end of the glacier and abandoned there. The wind blowing into his face was frigid and raw. As far as he could see in any direction, there was nothing but ice. No trees, no rocks, no tents. Just cloud, mist, and bone-chilling cold.
He shivered, rubbing his arms beneath his cloak, and drew up his hood. His dagger was gone, and he could not find a recognizable landmark in any direction.
Fear traveled up his spine, but he squelched it quickly. His anger was returning. Was this an exile, a punishment? If so, he did not care. He would rather die out here of exposure than grovel to anyone.
Absently he rubbed his chest where the pain had been, and pivoted again. Wind off the glacier usually blew southward. Grimly, Caelan put his back to the wind, then he set out with long strides. In moments, his breath was rasping in his throat. The high altitude began to sap his strength.
No one had ever tried to cross the entire glacier and lived to tell how large it was. Caelan’s own knowledge was confined to the southernmost tip of the ice, where it spilled into the mountain passes. He might have to walk for days, and he did not think that was possible. Already his toes were numb inside his boots. His cloak did not seem to break the wind that drilled into his back. He lacked even a tinderstrike to start a fire, not that there was any wood or peat up here to fuel it. When darkness fell, he would have no shelter.
But he refused to fear. It was his own death he faced, on his terms. When the time came, and his legs could carry him no farther, he would lie on his back for a last glimpse of the breathtaking aurora before he fell into eternal sleep.
With a start, he jerked up his head and blinked hard, finding himself kneeling on the ice in a shivering knot. He realized he must have passed out. Alarmed, he struggled back to his feet and nearly fell in the process. His feet were entirely numb, and he couldn’t feel them when he stood. When he touched his face, he couldn’t feel his own fingers. Lassitude crept over his limbs, and he knew very soon he would start to feel warm as he froze to death.
Staggering forward, he stumbled and fell to his knees. The wind howled over him, whipping his cloak about his shoulders. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. He sank down onto the hard, frozen surface of the ice. How old it was, as ancient as time.
Caelan’s senses swirled. He felt dizzy and lost. Severance was gone as though he had never had it. Perhaps this was the ultimate end of reaching into the void. Perhaps he was already completely severed and did not realize it. He felt as though his own threads of life had been cut. Now he drifted here between the physical and spirit worlds, part of neither. And he heard the grumble of the ice below him, heard the ponderous shift and grind of its infinitely slow progress. More than that, he heard its song—a low keening like the sound from the rim of a crystal goblet when rubbed.
Sevaisin pulled him to it. For a moment longer—perhaps the space of a heartbeat—Caelan resisted. Then with a sigh, he stopped fighting and allowed himself to join with the ice, to become one with the glacier.
There was a brief jolt of incredible cold, as though he had been frozen solid in an instant, and then light flashed through him. It was like physically exploding, except he felt no pain. And he found himself in a roofless temple, a place of peace and calm harmony. He stood on a slab of pale marble surrounded by twelve marble columns reaching high above him. Another row of columns, too many to count, stretched into the distance without end. There was no sky, no horizon. It was neither day nor night. Yet he saw everything with complete clarity. The air was the perfect temperature, neither hot nor cold. He heard the gentle sound of running water in the distance. It was a soothing noise. Mentally he felt renewed, restored. His naked body stood strong and whole. For once, perhaps the first time in his life, he felt centered and complete, as though he had found balance.
The quiet sound of footsteps made him turn around.
Robed in white and wearing a soft, brimless cap of silver cloth, Moah approached him with the peculiar gliding stride of the Choven. Although Caelan could feel no wind here, Moah’s silk robes billowed around his squat frame in constant motion.
Seeing Moah, some of Caelan’s peace faded. He sighed, but made no move to evade this meeting.
Moah stopped a short distance from him and stood regarding him in silence.
Meeting Moah’s liquid gaze directly, Caelan squared his shoulders and said, “Am I dead?”
Something unreadable glimmered in Moah’s rough-textured face. “Do you believe you are in death?”
“Didn’t I freeze to death on the glacier?”
“Did you?”
Caelan frowned. He had no patience for such puzzles. “Why else would I be here?”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” Caelan said, holding onto his temper with difficulty. Already he was finding it difficult to keep his resolution. “This looks like a temple of some kind. Am I at the edge of the spirit world?”
“No.”
It was the first solid answer Moah had given him, but it wasn’t very informative.
Caelan’s frown deepened. “Then where am I?”
“Where do you think you are?”
“I don’t know. I’ve already given you my best guess.”
Moah raised one long, dark finger. It looked like a twig. “Guess is unnecessary. Think.”
Caelan didn’t appreciate being treated like a schoolboy. “I’m in no mood for lessons,” he said sharply. “Why have I been brought here? What do you want from me?”
“I want nothing,” Moah replied, unruffled. “You are seeking to learn. Will you take learning from us?”
The fear that Caelan had known earlier among the tents came back. “No,” he said. “Why should I?”
“You fear me.”
Caelan’s mouth was dry, but he answered with the truth. “Yes. I fear y
ou.”
“Why?”
“Because—” Caelan stopped, his thoughts and emotions a chaotic tangle in his mind.
“Because you were taught to be afraid?” Moah suggested quietly.
“You are not part of our world,” Caelan said, defiant and angry. “You have powers from—from the gods that men may not have. You follow the ancient ways, ways that are forbidden. How do I know what you will do to me? You can probably turn me into smoke at will.”
“Not smoke,” Moah said. “Ice.”
Caelan swallowed hard and held his tongue. He’d said too much already.
“On the glacier,” Moah said, “you were dying. Did you feel fear?”
“Some,” Caelan admitted reluctantly.
“But you accepted death.”
It seemed to be a question. Not understanding where the Choven was going, Caelan nodded his head with impatience.
“Yes.”
“Why did you accept it?”
Caelan shrugged. “I had no choice. I had done my best to save myself. But it was inevitable. I had to accept it.”
“So when no other choice is possible, you will accept what is before you?”
“Maybe.”
Moah laughed. “Such stubborn caution.”
“I am not Choven,” Caelan insisted, goaded by the Choven’s amusement. “I am human, son of Beva E’non—”
“A man you do not love, a man you do not respect,” Moah interrupted.
“That’s between me and him,” Caelan snapped. “No one else. He’s still my father.”
“And you would defend him?” Moah asked. “How curious. You have resented and criticized him as long as you can remember, yet—”
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