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“No. The cave was called that long before we came here. I encouraged the locals to think of it as such, and of the boy as ‘Banshira,’ however, to keep them all away. He’s suffered enough of their abuse. I don’t know his real name, and he has never told me.”
I thought about the first time I’d seen him on the ledge outside the cave. He had been looking up at the sky, shaking his fist and crying, and I had thought him a monster. I was uncomfortably ashamed of it now.
“Why does he moan and cry so much? Is it because of the pain?” Brandon asked softly, and Grimora shook his head.
“Yes, some. But I think it’s mostly because he still misses his family.”
“Oh.”
There was a long silence then as we listened to the steady, low moaning from deep inside the cave.
“Why can’t he talk plainly?”
“He can. He’s just speaking an old Igellan dialect.”
“Can’t you help him? Roxbury says you’re a powerful sorcerer.”
He glanced over at me and shook his head. “I’m no sorcerer. I was trained as a physician, though I do have some small bit of magic and other abilities. Primarily, I think of myself as a healer. But some things can’t be healed, no matter how much we wish for it.”
“Is that how you know about this magic blood…or whatever you called it? Because you’re a physician?”
“Partly,” he said. “Though it’s commonly known where I come from.”
“Where is that?” Brandon asked, leaning forward with interest.
“The Verian Empire, far to the northeast.”
“But you still haven’t said what magic blood is,” Brandon reminded him impatiently.
“Blood magic. And it’s just what I said. You were both born with it.”
I glared at him with irritation. “Don’t speak in riddles, man. Born with what, exactly? I need more of an explanation.”
He stretched out his legs before the fire. Deep in the depths of the cave, Banshira was softly and mournfully calling for someone. “Ama, Ama,” he said, over and over.
“Is that his mother he’s crying for?”
“No, I don’t believe so. It’s someone like that who used to take care of him though. From what I’ve gathered, he or she tried to protect him from the villagers and was slaughtered right in front of him.”
“Oh gods, that’s an awful story. Can’t you do something to help him?” Brandon said, looking nervously into the darkness.
It was a distracting noise, and heartbreaking, now that Grimora had explained it. I reached for Brandon’s hand and held on tightly.
Quietly and smoothly, Grimora got to his feet and took something from one of the jars on a shelf. He dipped up some water from a small hanging pot pushed to the side of the fire and stirred something into a cup of it. Then he disappeared down a side passage, and soon we could hear his softer tones echoing distantly through the passageways.
Neither of us spoke as we waited for Grimora to return, both of us lost in thought, I suppose. I tried to imagine being a child forced out of my village, and my family and friends, the people who should have been in my corner, protecting me, thinking I was some kind of monster. Trying to hurt me and even kill me. Trying to end my life when all I was doing was just trying to exist. And then having that one person in my world who tried to protect me killed right in front of me.
I’d thought my situation with my parents was bad. It was nothing compared to this poor young man’s life.
Before much longer, Grimora returned and sat down heavily on the furs, and I was reminded that despite the still red hair, he was no longer a young man. What would happen to poor Banshira when he was gone? I shrugged off the gloomy and depressing thoughts and focused my attention back to the matter at hand.
“You were telling us about the blood magic,” I reminded him.
“Oh yes. You might call it magic, but it’s also a deep connection, for want of a better word.”
“Like being related?”
“No. Just the opposite. The people involved are unrelated, which makes it even stranger. People with blood magic feel a deep affection—or possibly the opposite of that, an antipathy for each other—the moment they meet. It’s as if they’ve always known each other. The passion they feel for each other is too strong and never-ending to come from only one lifetime. It’s a belief in my country that some people are born with this in their blood. It’s fated for them, and very strong marriages and alliances have resulted from it in the history of my people. Also powerful enemies. It’s almost like being obsessed with another person, a strong feeling that can’t be broken by time or distance, whether it’s positive or negative. When it’s negative, they want only to destroy the other person.”
