Another of Odhrán’s men grabbed Brynn from his arms. Brynn kicked and squirmed, but he was too weak to break free of the pirate’s grasp. The pirate set Brynn down and wrapped a large arm around the boy’s neck. Brynn struggled to breathe and clawed at the man’s arm.
Taren knew if he didn’t do something, they’d probably both die. Maybe if he could hold off the pirates long enough, Brynn might be able to make a run for it. He prayed to the goddess for strength, then lunged at the man holding Brynn. He managed to grab the blade of the man’s sword and push Brynn away.
“Run, boy!” he shouted. The pain in his hand came slowly. It always did with a sharp blade. First heat, then the sting of the wound and the warmth of his own blood. Strangely, though, the man did not force the sword deeper.
One of the other men grabbed Taren around the neck. Taren elbowed him hard in the belly with his free arm. Taren saw the glint of another sword as a third man came up from behind. “Let ’im go, or you’re a dead man,” the man said as the metal touched his bare skin.
Brynn didn’t move.
“Brynn! Boy! Save yourself!” Taren yelled, hoping to wake Brynn from his trance. No doubt he was terrified. The only other person in the narrow passage who had not moved was Odhrán, whose face was set in a sneer. He stood between Taren and Brynn. Goddess, why wouldn’t Brynn move?
“Brynn!” Taren felt the point of the sword pierce his skin. He gasped as the man whose arm was around his neck tightened his hold. Tiny points of light filled Taren’s vision. He struggled to breathe.
“Stop this! Now!” It took a long moment for Taren to realize it was Brynn who had spoken. The authority that resonated in those few words took Taren aback. Instead of fear, Brynn wore an expression of calm control and focus.
Immediately, the man holding Taren by the neck released his grip and stepped aside, as did the man behind him. The third man, whose sword Taren still held by its blade, released the weapon. It slipped through Taren’s hand, cutting deeper into Taren’s tender skin. Taren relinquished his hold and allowed the sword to fall to the ground, where it landed with a clatter. Odhrán backed away from Brynn and watched him with keen interest.
“But Captain—”
“Enough.” Taren had expected Odhrán to respond, but again the words issued from Brynn’s lips in an unfamiliar voice.
“Brynn?” Taren tried to move but found he could not. “What…?”
“They won’t hurt me,” Brynn said. He walked past Odhrán and over to Taren. “But you’re hurt.” Brynn reached for Taren’s bloodied hand, then looked into Taren’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I let this go too far.” Whatever force had held Taren in place now freed him, though he did not pull away from Brynn’s gentle touch.
“You… what?” If his hand didn’t hurt so much, Taren might have believed he was dreaming.
Brynn smiled at Taren. The deep circles under his eyes had faded, and his pale cheeks were pink once again. Without answering, he pressed his free hand to Taren’s damaged one. Familiar heat warmed Taren’s hand.
A healer? “You… you’re… Ea?” Taren stammered. “But—”
“I’m not Ea.” Brynn spoke the words with something approaching disgust. He released Taren’s hand. Taren didn’t need to look at it to know it was healed.
“Then what are you?”
Brynn gestured to the men, including Odhrán. “Leave us.”
“But sir—?” Odhrán said, clearly concerned.
“Leave us, James. I’ll be fine alone with him.” Again, Brynn spoke with authority and confidence, although Taren heard respect as well. Brynn clearly viewed these men not as enemies but as compatriots.
“James?” Taren looked at Odhrán—the man Brynn had just called James—then back to Brynn.
“Leave us,” Brynn repeated. This time the men left without another word, though Taren thought he saw Odhrán, or James, glance back one last time.
“You…,” Taren began as the realization struck him. “You’re….”
“Odhrán,” Brynn said. “Aye.”
“But you’re a boy.” It made no sense. For years the people of the Gateway Islands had feared Odhrán and his men. The pirate’s reputation was a bloody one. Taren had heard tales about him from some of the crew aboard the ships he used to repair for Borstan when he was a boy.
“You see the form I choose you to see.”
“Form?”
Odhrán smiled, lifted his hand to his face, then slowly trailed his fingers in a line from his forehead to his chin. Taren watched, mesmerized, as the face of the boy he’d known as Brynn appeared to blur, then form once again. Brynn was now a young boy with almond eyes and dark features whose smile revealed slightly crooked teeth. Another movement of his hand and the boy became an old man with thin lips and white hair whose eyes sank into his skull and whose mottled skin sagged around his jaw. “But perhaps,” the old man said, “since you came seeking Odhrán, I should show you his face.”
Without thinking, Taren blinked as his vision once again seemed to blur. This time Odhrán’s body lengthened until he stood about the height of Taren’s shoulder. The sinews of Brynn’s arms and legs grew longer and slightly more muscled, athletic and lean like those of a young man of Bastian’s age.
Odhrán’s face was the last to change, though it was familiar, much like an older version of Brynn. Odhrán’s eyes remained the same piercing blue, his hair long and the palest shade of gold.
“Beautiful.” Taren hadn’t meant to speak the word aloud, but he didn’t regret having said it. Odhrán—if this was his true form—was one of the most beautiful men Taren had ever laid eyes on. Not quite masculine, yet not female either. The kind of man—
Odhrán completed Taren’s thought. “—other men might covet.”
“You can read my mind?” Taren was unsure whether to be angry about this. He was still trying to decide if he should be angry with Brynn—Odhrán—about having deceived him for days on end.
“In this form, only those thoughts you do not seek to hide are clear to me.” Taren thought he saw a hint of a smile on Odhrán’s delicate lips.
“Then this isn’t your only true form, as you put it?” He was quite sure he knew what Odhrán’s other form might be.
“I am not Ea,” Odhrán repeated. “But we share the same heritage, in part.”
“You’re a hybrid.”
“One of a kind.” Odhrán’s laugh was bitter. “At least I’ve never met another.”
Taren guessed there was more to Odhrán’s words, but something in Odhrán’s tone warned him off the topic. Later, perhaps, he would ask about his parentage. “Why did you lie to me? Why the elaborate ruse? Why not just tell me who you were? You’re clearly more powerful than I am.”
“I needed to know if you were the man I hoped you were.”
“Me? I’m nothing.”
Odhrán smiled. “So you’ve said before. And yet you’ve more than proven yourself as a man. You saved my life several times over. Risked your own life for a boy you knew nothing about.”
Why did Odhrán’s praise leave him feeling so ill at ease? “Recognizing your strength,” Vurin had once told Taren, “means you must accept a future in which much will be asked of you.”
Taren’s anger flared as understanding came. “You were testing me. All of this…. You did this all to test me.”
“Aye.” Odhrán motioned Taren down the passage, back toward the cave they’d escaped from only an hour before. “You came here to recover the rune stone, didn’t you?”
“You know about that?”
There was something of Brynn’s cocky grin in Odhrán’s smile. “Of course. But you didn’t really believe I’d just give it to you if you asked, did you?”
“No.” He had no reason to argue the point. He’d always expected he’d need to work to retrieve the stone—fight for it, if need be. Die for it, if necessary.
Odhrán smiled broadly, crossing his arms over his chest in obvious satisfaction. “Your people did well
to send you to me,” he said. “I am the keeper of the stone.”
Thirteen
A FEW hours later, back in the large cave, Taren and Odhrán ate their dinner in silence. Although Odhrán’s rooms were hardly palatial, they were far more comfortable than the damp cell Taren had shared with Brynn.
From what he could tell as they’d walked across the cavern earlier, nearly forty men and women inhabited the dwellings carved into the bedrock. Children played in the open spaces and chickens pecked at the dirt. Taren’s accommodations were quite comfortable. Although Taren had expected the underground dwellings to be as dark and damp as the caves, the rooms were warm and bright. Well furnished too, in a mixture of styles Taren recognized: the muted fabrics and carved wood he’d grown up with in Raice Harbor, the bright painted furnishings of the Luathan Islands, and jewel-tone silks and pillows he now knew must have come from the Eastern Lands. As they’d walked back through the caves, Odhrán had called his men a “ragtag bunch, with hearts as true as any.” In the short time he’d spent in the caves, Taren sensed some of the same camaraderie he had felt aboard both the Sea Witch and the Phantom.
Before dinner, Taren washed in the communal baths and was surprised to find that many of Odhrán’s men were human. They and Odhrán’s Ea followers eyed him with obvious curiosity, although none of them spoke except to offer him assistance and direct him back to his room when he’d finished.
“As you can imagine,” Odhrán said as he reclined on a tumble of pillows after dinner, “I guard my secrets well. Only those most loyal to me know how to find this place. They are both my crew and my people.”
“But some of them are….”
“Human?” Odhrán finished. Taren nodded. “Aye. Both human and Ea live here together. Peacefully. I don’t care what they are as long as they serve me faithfully.”
“But how did I not sense this before?” Taren asked.
“I did not wish you to sense the presence of Ea here.” Odhrán smiled as he offered Taren a cup filled with wine.
“You can do that? Disguise their true nature?” He knew that Vurin had used his magic to hide Taren’s Ea form from himself and the rest of the world, but this was different. Odhrán had managed to hide more than a dozen Ea without altering their true nature.
Odhrán shrugged and filled a second cup with wine. “Aye. I can. I needed to be sure the stone was safe. If your people had sensed others of their kind here, it would have raised too many questions.” He paused as if anticipating Taren’s next question. “I have allowed your mate to sense your continued good health, however.”
“Ian?”
“Aye. My sentries tell me he’s been looking for you.”
“Looking for me?” Of course Ian had. Once again, Taren questioned his decision to seek Odhrán out by himself.
“You doubt your choices,” Odhrán said. “You wish others to choose for you, and yet you understand that you must make your own decisions. An interesting dilemma.”
“How—?”
James, the man Taren had believed to be Odhrán, entered the room and nodded curtly, interrupting Taren’s question.
“Taren, this is James Cairn, my lieutenant.”
James eyed Taren with obvious distrust but inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“James got a bit—” Odhrán chuckled softly. “—carried away with his role, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve already apologized,” James said, his obvious affection belying his gruff manner. “You told me to play my role well.”
“And that you did.” Odhrán laughed outright this time. “You called me a ‘runt,’ I believe?”
James scowled in response. Taren sensed Odhrán’s fondness for the man. Odhrán stood and clapped James on the back, then turned once more to Taren. “Taren is here to retrieve the stone,” he added as what sounded like an afterthought.
“He knows about the stone?” Taren blurted.
“Of course.” Odhrán appeared to take pride in this revelation.
“But he’s—”
“Human?”
Taren was tempted to tell Odhrán he didn’t appreciate having his thoughts completed for him, but thought better of it. “Aye” was all he said. Judging by Odhrán’s expression, Taren wondered if he communicated this last thought too clearly as well.
“James was born here,” Odhrán explained. “And his father before him. I keep no secrets from him. I trust him with my life. He knows what I am.”
“Wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t trustworthy, though,” James said with a dismissive shrug. “No one can recover the stone but the wielder or a priest.”
“Not even its keeper,” Odhrán added with a glance in Taren’s direction. Why was it that every time Odhrán looked at him like that, Taren felt as though he was transparent? “I’m keeping you from your duties,” Odhrán told James. “You came to tell me something.”
“Aye.” James eyed Taren once more.
“I trust Taren as well.” Odhrán shook his head. “Tell me.”
“Sentries spotted several ships off the coast of Cera. Human, although there are several Ea aboard,” James said. “There are stories of strangers in Gate Town. They’ve been asking about the ship damaged in the battle several days ago.”
“The Phantom—!” Taren nearly jumped out of his seat.
“Is safe,” Odhrán said with a gentling hand on Taren’s shoulder. “For now, at least. She’s undergoing repairs and hidden by enchantments.” Relief tempered Taren’s irritation at having been interrupted once again.
“What do you wish me to do, sir?” James asked.
“Send Garan,” Odhrán told James. “Have him reassure the Phantom’s captain of his mate’s safety. He should be able to manage the enchantments without too much trouble.” Perhaps noting Taren’s surprised expression, Odhrán said, “Garan is a powerful mage. Even if he can’t pierce the barrier around the ship, he will make his presence known.”
“Aye, sir.” James left a moment later with a quick glance back at Taren.
“Much as I remind him that I’m more than capable of defending myself, he worries about me,” Odhrán said.
“How did you know about me and Ian?” Taren asked.
“That you are soulbound?” Odhrán smiled. “Any mage would sense this. The bond between you is stronger than any I’ve ever sensed. From the first time we met, I felt his emotions flow through your mind and body. But you’ve sensed this as well, haven’t you?”
Taren nodded and wondered vaguely how Odhrán felt this. Then he remembered what Vurin had told him: Ea hybrids were said to be more powerful than those with only Ea blood. And yet Taren sensed that Odhrán despised his Ea brethren. Feared them, even.
“You are curious about me.” Odhrán’s expression became pensive with these words.
“I… yes. Of course.” Taren hesitated a moment, then said, “Did the islanders harm you?”
“The islanders?” For a moment Odhrán appeared genuinely confused. “Oh. Do you mean those who live on Ea’nu?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Odhrán laughed. “No. I’ve never been to the island.”
Taren knew his shock must be obvious. “Then did Vurin…?”
“No.” Odhrán shook his head. “My reason for avoiding the Ea has nothing to do with the islanders or their mainland counterparts.”
“But the Ea cast you out?” Taren struggled to understand.
“Aye. But it was long before Treande and the others settled Ea’nu.” Odhrán refilled their glasses, then sipped his drink before continuing, “I was a half-breed. An abomination. Neither human nor Ea. Hideous.”
“You’re not—”
“I was to them.” Odhrán brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. “I swore I would have nothing to do with them. Then, years ago, I met an Ea who was kind and good. He didn’t fear me. We became good friends. The best of friends. He asked me to keep something for him. Something important to his people.”
“The rune stone.”
“Aye. He told me that someday I would meet a young man who would come to reclaim it. I swore to keep that young man safe and to guard the stone until he came for it.”
“To whom did you swear this?” Taren asked. He was quite sure he already knew the answer.
“To you,” Odhrán whispered. “My friend. Treande.”
Fourteen
TAREN HAD known the truth even before Odhrán spoke the words, but the truth so overwhelmed him that he needed a moment to grasp the implications.
“You knew Treande?”
“Aye.”
“But how is that possible? He lived more than eight hundred years ago.” Taren shook his head in wonder.
“I am far older than you might imagine.” Odhrán, who had been sitting all this time, now stood up, walked over to the wall, and ran his fingers over the rough surface. The glowing crystals grew brighter with his touch, changing color like a small rainbow, as if they fed on his power. Was it Odhrán who caused them to glow?
“But Ea cannot live…,” Taren began, stopping as the realization of what Odhrán had just said began to sink in.
“Ah, the irony is not lost on you either, is it?” Odhrán’s mouth curved upward in something approximating a smile. “The Ea cast me out because I was not like them. They thought me weak, and who could blame them? They despised the humans. Feared them. And yet in spite of their fear, humans and Ea mated. The offspring of a human and Ea had never before survived. And yet I lived.”
“You outlived them all.”
“I am nearly a thousand years old.” Odhrán laughed, then added, “No one knows how long I will live because there are no others like me.” He stroked the crystals again, causing them to flicker. “The few children like me from the time before the Ea colonized the island all died, abandoned by both their peoples.”
A thousand years old. Taren had only begun to understand the meaning of his own extended life-span. To him it felt like a gift, but only because it meant he had more time to share with Ian. But to Odhrán?
“I need the stone,” Taren said, unsure of how better to ask for it.
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