Chapter 43 The Arcane Oaths
Before the goddess and these witnesses,” Rolan murmured, “I vow to uphold the Law of the Arcane.”
Luc’s eyes widened, at first in confusion, then understanding. “No…”
“I vow to be a shield of the people, their sword in the dark,” Rolan went on, more loudly, as the duke and his men came to a halt behind the Arcanist, listening to his apprentice speak.
The words had been stuck in Rolan’s memory ever since he’d first read them, sounding them out, the Arcane Histories heavy in his hands.
“I vow to seek no justice or retribution, nor to pass judgment on or seek out any person whose secret I may learn through the relics I collect. I renounce all titles, properties, and inheritance. I will take no spouse and father no children.” An image of Anaya, laughing and kissed by sunlight, flashed in his brain.
With a stab of pain, he ruthlessly pushed it aside.
“I will share no Arcane knowledge with any person outside the Arcane order. I vow that my life from this moment to my final breath shall be in service to truth.”
Luc looked stricken. Panicked. He gripped Rolan’s shoulders so tightly that Rolan’s arms began to tingle, his fingers robbed of blood. “Rolan! Don’t do this! You’re too young. You don’t know what you’re—”
“I vow to speak no secret I learn,” Rolan finished, his spine rigid against Luc’s grip. “My lips shall remain sealed upon the pain of my own death. I will live in service to the Arcane Order until the day I die and my soul is taken up in the goddess’s embrace. Such is my word. Such is my vow.”
It was done.
Luc’s eyes slid shut. His grip on Rolan slackened and he sighed long and wearily.
“We can still undo this,” Luc whispered.
“I know the rules,” Rolan said. “I fulfilled them all. I slew a Cryptic of Rank Four or higher in the presence of an Arcanist. I spoke the vows before at least three witnesses. And I’m holding an Arcane blade, given to me by my master. I’ve done it all by the book.”
“I know what you’ve done, my boy,” Luc said wearily. “But I fear you do not.”
Rolan swallowed. He knew exactly what he’d done. He’d sealed himself forever to the life of an Arcanist. There was no going back now. There would be no other paths for him.
And Luc would not get his secret, the secret that would doom him. There would be no final vengeance for the Arcanist. He would live, and he would stay with Rolan, and they would be family.
Rolan met Luc’s eyes and regretted nothing.
“Well,” said the duke, clapping deliberately. “That was unexpected. Er… he seems a bit young for the oaths, doesn’t he, brother? And a bit questionable in his morals, given his father. Personally I wouldn’t trust a son of Rabb Strider with a rusty fork. Regardless, about this mess—”
“How do you know who his father is?” Luc asked, oh so softly.
The Arcanist rose, his sword point dragging through the dirt.
The duke’s eyelids fluttered. “What?”
“You told me you’d never heard of Rolan’s father.”
Rolan slowly shut his eyes as his heart slid to the ground. The world seemed to tilt beneath him.
Stupid, stupid duke. Why, oh why, had he not just kept his mouth shut? Rolan had had it settled. He’d made sure Luc would not find out the truth! Everything would have been fine!
But Benhald just had to get a jab in. Just had to remind everyone how unworthy and wretched Rolan was.
It was over now. Rolan had made his oaths for nothing. Luc knew the truth, and he would destroy himself to destroy his brother.
Peeling his eyes open, Rolan gazed miserably at his master as he advanced on the duke.
“I… well, I found out,” stammered Benhald. “It wasn’t difficult—”
“It was you,” Luc said, his hand a white knot around the hilt of his sword.
The duke stumbled back. “What are you talking about, man?”
“Rabb Strider,” said Luc. “You’re the one who hired him.”
Benhald blanched, taking a step back. “What?”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.
” Luc gave a bitter, twisted laugh that sounded half mad.
More Cryptic than human. It made chills run down Rolan’s spine.
“I let myself believe that the conspiracy against my family began and ended with a common crook. Perhaps I didn’t want to believe it could go higher, and that my own brother could stoop to such cowardice. ”
“Luc,” Benhald said, his voice hardening back into the duke’s voice. “You are not well. And no wonder, we all saw the size of that—”
“Then you got scared,” Luc said. “You saw me take Strider’s son as my apprentice, and panicked. You thought I was getting close to the truth. Why else take such an interest in a boy the rest of the world had overlooked?”
“Lucas—”
“You panicked, all right,” Luc chuckled, a horrifying sound, “and set your rats to scurrying again. Hoff killing Cryptics. Cabbot and Strider posting secrets around the city, turning people against the Arcanist. Giving them Arcana. Arcana, you fool! In the hands of criminals and murderers! You would do anything, betray everything, hoping someone would do what you failed to do years ago: finish me off. Because you thought I was coming for you at last. Oh, the reckoning you must have been fearing all these years, breathing down your traitorous neck.”
Luc spit on the ground between them.
The duke’s lips trembled as he backed away. For a moment Rolan thought the man was about to confess to everything.
But then he began bleating like a wounded goat. “Guards! Guards! The Arcanist lured that Cyrptic here to attack the palace! He means to kill me! Arrest him! Kill him!”
“No!” Rolan cried, not to the duke, but to the Arcanist, who had taken a large step toward his brother. Rolan threw himself between them, facing Luc with pleading eyes. “Don’t do this! Please!”
Luc didn’t seem to see him. His eyes were locked on the duke’s, filled with rage and pain and violence. “Give me your sword, Rolan.”
Rolan’s sword, with the immense Arcana of the giant Cryptic locked inside its steel. Power enough to cut through a hundred guards.
He swallowed. “No.”
“Rolan!”
“I won’t!”
Rolan tossed his sword away and put both hands on Luc’s chest, ready to push him back if he had to. “You won’t do this!” he cried. “I lost one father! I cannot lose another!”
That made Luc blink. He looked down at Rolan then.
“He’s not worth it,” Rolan said. “I know you’re angry and he deserves the worst, but you don’t. If you hurt him, they’ll kill you. Please!”
“Get out of my way,” Luc said.
Rolan pounded his fists on the man’s chest. “Who will teach me, if you’re not here?
Who will make sure I take baths and eat vegetables and learn that stupid, stupid thing called long division?
” Tears burned in Rolan’s eyes. He gripped Luc’s shirt and shook him as hard as he could.
It was like trying to knock over a mountain.
“If you hurt him, you hurt me. Let him go!”
Still Luc was as solid as marble under his fists, his face a mask.
“You’ve spent years chasing pain and death through the dark!” Rolan said. “It’s not him you really blame. It’s yourself! Hurting him won’t make you feel better. It will only make you as monstrous as he is! Luc!”
The Arcanist blinked. A shudder rolled through him.
“Luc, please,” Rolan sobbed. He felt as if his skin were peeled open and he were exposing every ugly, wounded, shameful part of himself.
Every fear he’d been too afraid to speak came spilling out of his eyes, his lips.
No more secrets. Only truth. He would turn himself inside out to save this foolish, kind, broken man.
But it was like wrestling him away from ghosts whose cold hands still wrapped around Luc’s heart, strangling his pulse and flooding his veins with ice. Rolan had to pull him back. He had to.
“I can’t go back to who I was, Luc. I can’t go back to my pa. I need you. Please. Don’t choose vengeance. Don’t let the pain and the past win. Choose the future. Choose me. Choose me!”
The lines in Luc’s face eased. He drew in a shuddering breath as if he’d just surfaced from some dark lake. And he looked at Rolan. Truly looked at him, as if he were seeing him for the first time.
“I’ll go!” Benhald cried. “I swear it, brother! I hereby abdicate my throne! Let someone else have it! You can have it! I’ll go join a Confessory and take an oath of silence, I swear on the goddess, and I’ll live out my life in penitence! Just don’t take your vengeance, brother!”
Luc looked up at him, the sadness in his eyes as deep as an ocean.
“Go,” he whispered.
That was all the permission Benhald needed.
He ripped off his ridiculous armor and hiked up his cloak, scampering away down the hill.
His guards stared after him in bewilderment, then down at his armor and crown.
They began backing away, as if unsure what to do now that there was no one to give orders.
Rolan dropped his arms, his relief rocking him like a hard wind.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“No,” Luc said, pulling him in for a crushing hug. Rolan could feel the man’s trembling, the gallop of his heart in his great chest. He felt as strong as a mountain, as fragile as paper. A paradox of steel and softness. His hot tears dripped onto Rolan’s hair. “No, my brave, wise boy. Thank you.”