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He was breathing fast, and he looked like he might be in pain, though, and I was suddenly ashamed of myself. What the fuck was I doing?
“I meant to say, no, we need to stop because you’re still not well.”
“I’m well enough.”
There was that defiance again. But I could hear his soft panting as he tried to catch his breath.
I pulled him into my arms, nuzzling my nose into his wet skin, unable to let him go so quickly. He started in surprise at first, and then his arms went around my neck again. We remained quietly holding each other for a long time, until my breathing went back to normal. Finally, I stood up, pulling Brandon to his feet and depositing him on the edge of the pool.
“Stay in the sun until you dry off.”
Instead, the stubborn ass tried to get to his feet, but he was staggering with exhaustion, so I pulled him to lie down by the pool. I remembered that Brandon used to love the sun. I lay down beside him and closed my eyes for a moment, hooking a leg over Brandon’s in case he got any ideas about running away. He wasn’t going anywhere until I was done with him, and I had no idea how long it would take to get him out of my system—or if it could be done at all. I was beginning to doubt it.
Chapter Seven
The sun was setting by the time we made our way back to the ship. The hunting had gone well, and the men had killed two deer and a wild boar. An unexpected bounty. While we’d been ashore, repairs had been made to the rigging and we were ship-shape once again. Chasing the sun’s dying rays, we made our way farther out to sea, but still kept close to the darkening coastline. As nighttime fell, the shadows on shore lengthened and the rocks took on frightening shapes. It seemed dangerous to pass so close to the rocky cliffs rising high above us.
I felt better after my nap in the sun, not to mention the warm dip in the pool, but I had an uneasiness I couldn’t seem to shake. Brandon and I were wary of each other after that little interlude in the water, and I sent his dinner down to him on a tray, but I ate with my men.
“Tomorrow we should reach Banshira’s Cave,” I said, and I saw the furtive looks the others gave each other. Sailors were notoriously superstitious, and these men were certainly no exception. I knew they were afraid of the dark wizard, Grimora, and the monster he shared his cave with, but they were also a little in awe of the fact that although I’d had some dealings with the sorcerer, I remained intact and unharmed.
In actual fact, I’d never been afraid of Grimora, who was a small shrunken soul with a thatch of improbable red hair and wrinkles cut so deeply into his withered skin that they might have been etched there with a blade. In fact, it looked as if someone had taken a blade to him at some point in his life, and his face was scarred and puckered. He was of an indeterminate age and had been living in those caves for as long as I’d been at sea, and, I knew, many years before that.
Old Gold Tooth Jack had first sent me to meet with him a few years ago, when the whole ship, including Gold Tooth himself were down with a fever of unknown origins. I was the only one who remained mostly unaffected, or at least I had been up to that point. We’d put into shore as close as we could, and I swam in, afraid I couldn’t handle a boat on my own in the rough currents, and none of the men were feeling well enough to accompany me. I had a map in my head, committed to memory, so I knew approximately where the cave was and aimed to land on the shore below it. It was almost dusk when I crawled out onto land, and I heard the bawl of the monster Banshira, as he stood high above me on the edge of a cliff. I could barely make him out in the dim light, as he stood at the mouth of a huge cave, gazing up at the sky and making an appalling noise. Meanwhile, I crawled up on shore and tried to get my bearings.
I knew the monster must be the one they called Banshira. No one knew exactly what he was, except that he couldn’t be human. He was a hulking beast, nearly six and a half feet tall with long, tangled fur as dull brown as old dust. Most disturbing of all was that he seemed to be yelling at me, in the words of some unknown language. At least it was none I’d ever heard before. His eyes were red, and he had the look of a werewolf. He was reputedly as wicked as an old wolf, too, and his teeth were supposed to be jagged, like the teeth of a saw.
Grimora had stepped out beside him and said something soft-voiced to him that caused him to stop his shouting and turn to go back inside. Grimora then picked his way down the cliffside path, as nimbly as a mountain goat despite his advanced age, and he came over to greet me.
I don’t even remember now what I said to him, but he listened and told me to wait. He went back up to his cave and came out less than an hour later with several bottles of some magical elixir or other.
“Have your men dose themselves with this, Captain. It will purge them of the sickness.”
“Oh, I’m not the captain,” I’d said.
He had replied with a shrug. “Not yet. Give it time.”
I gave him the bag of silver coins that Gold Tooth had sent with me, and he nodded and turned away. He stopped after a few steps and said, “You have a great deal of blood magic running in your veins, though your mate is no longer with you. Interesting. You must suffer greatly.”
“What are you talking about?”
He simply shook his head, making his wispy red hair fly about his head in the breeze coming off the ocean. “No matter. I’ll tell you one day when you come looking for answers about him. It will do no good until then, because you won’t believe me.”
I was young then and had neither the time nor the patience for his black, riddling hexes, especially from a disfigured old lunatic. I’d made some nasty remark or other about crazy old men—it seemed like I was always angry and surly back then—and I swam back to the ship with a bag tied around my neck holding the elixir and delivered it to the ship. By the very next morning, most of the men were on the mend.
I’d seen Grimora a few more times since then, and he’d never again mentioned the blood magic thing or whatever it was, though I’d asked him about it a time or two. He always replied that the time wasn’t yet and to talk about it might only make matters worse.
At any rate, I was anxious to see him again, and hoped that he’d be successful in healing Brandon, for both our sakes.
The next morning, I awoke early and nudged Brandon awake. He had been lying close to me, and I had awakened to find my arms wrapped around him. I remembered I’d done it in the middle of the night to stop his soft groans. He had leaned back against me with a tired sigh.
Now that morning had come, I quickly moved away and sat up. The sunlight coming through the porthole tried to nail my eyes shut again, as I leaned up to look outside at the shore.
We had anchored nearer the shore this time, and I could see Banshira’s cave looming high above, with nothing stirring outside the mouth of it. Even though the angle was impossible, I fancied I could see flickering shadows on the wet rock walls inside the mouth of the cave.
“We’re here,” I said softly in Brandon’s ear. “Time to go find Grimora and the monster.”
Brandon rolled to his back to look up at me.
