The Chronicles of Lumineia: Book 01 - Elseerian (13 page)

Smiles and chuckles answered his statement as everyone stood to leave. Liri followed Taryn out, and when he headed for the ladder to the crow’s nest she caught his arm. “Do you mind if I join you up there?” she asked.

“Of course, as long as you aren’t afraid of heights,” he replied with a smile. She flashed him a disparaging look and slipped past him to the rigging. Her graceful movements as she climbed answered his teasing comment better than any words could have.

Then he frowned as a thought crossed his mind. This was the first time she had
asked
to join him in the nest. She had sat up there before, so it meant she wanted to talk to him about something. Shrugging, he followed her up in time to see the other sailor nod at whatever Liri had said and climb out the opposite side. The sight of the human sailor laboring to descend contrasted so sharply with the graceful form of Liri that it brought a wide smile to his lips.

Once they were comfortably leaning against the rail, Taryn spoke. “What’s up?”

“So,” she began, “when we get to Keese, what’s the plan—after we free Thacker’s son, of course.”

“Hmmm, I’m not really sure,” He mused, aware that he was being evasive but he didn’t have a ready answer to her question.

After a moment of expectant silence she frowned. “You know what I am talking about. How are we going to find out about your parents?”

He sighed and looked out over the water. “I don’t know Liri,” he said. That simple confession brought an ache to his heart, and he wished he knew what he was supposed to do. Growing up, he could always focus on his training to avoid thinking about his mysterious heritage. Learn the next move, master another technique. The constant practice had made it too easy to avert his attention. Only in the last couple of weeks had he really looked at the problem of finding more about his lineage, and the challenge had formed an impenetrable wall. The barricade created by his lack of knowledge felt so tangible that his head hurt, as if he’d hit his mind against it.

 “I know I have elven blood, so I guess I should start there?” Taryn finally said, but his voice carried no hope.  

“That’s a good idea for a first step, but if you don’t find anything there…?” She looked at him with one raised eyebrow and left the question hanging. When he didn’t respond she looked away and whispered, “What if you can't find them?” He heard worry in her tone, and for some odd reason a measure of fear as well.

The silence stretched between them for several minutes while he struggled with that idea. It was clearly a possibility, but not one he’d ever allowed himself to consider. He was too afraid of how easy it would be to give in to the hopelessness of the situation.

“I don’t know what to do after that.” He paused to watch some light clouds drift past the stars. “Wander around asking questions I suppose,” he said with a resigned shrug.

“I think you should go see the Oracle,” she said after catching his eye.

That caught him off guard. Taryn didn’t know much about the Oracle. What he did know he’d learned from the required lessons on magic given by Daiki. The mage had taught about magic, and magic goes hand in hand with the Oracle. Every generation someone was born with the ability to see energy and magic in
every
form. She (it was always a woman) could then perform magic of every type: wind, water, fire, air, light, earth, animal, and everything else. Because she could see energy in everything, she supposedly could see trends in magic and then predict the outcome of those trends in prophecies.

The Oracle was an incredibly powerful person—magically anyway, and although some elf or dwarf might be more skilled in a
specific
type of magic, no one could compare to her all-encompassing power and ability.

“How do you think it would help me to see her?” he asked.

Liri shrugged and looked at the half moon that was beginning to rise. “I don’t know. My father once said he went to her for help many years ago and she just seemed to
know
so much.” Her gaze focused on him and he suddenly came to the realization that she’d been thinking about his problem a lot more than he would have expected. Then he recalled how she’d phrased the search for his heritage. She’d said
we
, not
you
, and her easy inclusion of herself in his quest brought a flood of gratitude through his heart.

He stared hard at her, lost in thought. When he refocused, he became aware of the incredible depth of her beautiful blue eyes. Her soft lips were pursed together and her eyes had a faraway expression in them. Apparently lost in thought, she didn’t seem to be aware of him. He resisted the impulse to call her name and took the rare moment to just look at her. A night breeze pulled at her long hair and the moonlight cast soft light on her perfect face. . .

—Her eyes snapped to his and with a start he realized that his mouth was half open. Embarrassed, he turned away to look out into the darkness, taking a slow breath to calm his oddly accelerated heartbeat. If she had noticed his expression, she chose to ignore it.

“I just want to help you figure out what you need to do,” she said from beside him.

After a minute of silence he replied, “Thank you Liri. You really have no idea how much that means to me.”

“We
will
find out who your parents were, Taryn, I promise.”

He turned back to her and nodded but didn’t respond. It made him feel better just to hear her say that out loud.

The silence stretched between them for a while and at some point they ended up sitting back to back with their legs dangling through the railing. Warmth radiated from her back into his and he could feel himself somehow entwined with her. He could even feel a slight tension in her muscles as the boat rocked harder than normal, but most of all he could feel her breath going in and out, even and slow.

Creaks of wood and the wind rustling the sails were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the cool night air. Twinkling stars stretched across the sky as far as the eye could see in the almost cloudless night—so close it felt like you could reach out and touch them. Taryn couldn’t imagine anything evil in the world as he looked at the bright moon. Peace softened his heart and gave him hope that he would find his family . . . someday.

Liri stirred behind him. “What a great view,” she murmured.

He agreed in a subdued tone, not wanting to disturb the stillness. As he sat there looking at the peaceful view he found his mind drawn to the contrast between the current peace and the violent battle that morning. Thinking about the fighting reminded him of a question that had been bothering him.

“Did you see me fight this morning?” he asked.

“Of course.” Her tone became one of amusement. “Are you looking for me to tell you how good you were?”

He was glad she couldn’t see him flush before he answered, “No—that’s not what I mean.” He stopped, searching for the right words. “Did you notice that I didn’t kill anyone?”

For several moments she didn’t answer until she said softly, “I did.”

“I can’t kill people,” he said in a rush. “I see them, and I see good in them, and I can’t do it. I just can’t.”

By the time she answered, it sounded like she was picking her words carefully.

“I have seen you fight for a long time Taryn, and I don’t think you . . .
fight . . .
the same way the rest of us do.”

He turned to look at her again, confused by her answer. “What do you mean?”

She hesitated and cocked her head to one side, her brow furrowing as she said, “When you draw your weapons, you don’t battle . . .
against
your opponent, you fight . . .
with
your opponent. The rest of us observe our adversaries movements to find a way to defeat them, but we don’t really see the person attacking us. We see move and countermove, while watching their body and weapons to figure out how to get past them.”

She smiled affectionately. “You see everything we see—but you also,
somehow
, see the person, who they are and
what
they are. In that moment, I think you measure the person—and I guess you are able to find some portion of good in them.”

When she stopped speaking Taryn felt stunned. Not only was her description accurate of how he fought, it revealed how much she had observed him. It was also something he’d never really been able to explain out loud.

“I thought everyone fought the way I do,” he exclaimed, still surprised by her description.

She shook her head even as she answered, “No Taryn, I don’t think anyone has the
ability
to separate their mind like that. They can’t focus on fighting if they are paying too much attention to the person, or at least I can’t.” Her voice turned sad, “I don’t think I could kill anyone if I saw them as a person.”

Impulsively he reached out and clasped her hand. “At least you saved lives today. I don’t know if my inability cost the crew, or who died because I failed to dispatch a pirate.”

She chuckled, surprising him once again. “No Taryn, if it weren’t for you we would have
all
died today. You might not have killed a single pirate, but you were the one that saved us. Everyone on board this ship owes you their life.” She squeezed his hand to emphasize her point.

Torn between her perspective and his own, he blurted, “But that just means I don’t fit anywhere. I am the same as a farmer that can’t use a shovel, or a fisherman that is scared to touch fish. It’s the only thing I can do, but I can’t do it right. It just means . . . I just . . .” He growled at his own inability to voice how he felt. “Where do I fit?”

She gave a deep sigh, her voice turning soft. “Everyone feels that way, Taryn. Those that don’t are either lying, or it’s only temporarily true. A precious few recognize the value of what they have around them.”

Her voice carried such an odd timber to it that Taryn was drawn to ask, “Have you found a place
you
fit?” For some reason he felt anxious for her answer.

Her answer took longer than he expected to come, and when it did, it was not what he expected.

“No Taryn. Not yet.”

The sadness was so out of character for his longtime friend that for a minute he didn’t know what to do. Unable to figure out an appropriate response, he settled on humor.

Bumping her shoulder, he said, “At least you fit very well in the nest. Have you heard the sailors grumble about how small it is up here?”

He turned away, grimacing at his attempt at humor, and was surprised to hear her chuckle.

“You would think they designed it for smaller people.”

He laughed, and tried to allow his tension to melt away, finding it was easy to do so with the peaceful night and the rocking boat. Later, he would think more about her words, but tonight, he didn’t want to dwell on such a topic. He sighed in content and leaned back against Liri, happy—at least for the moment, that they were their together. He also found himself glad that Liri had not let go of his hand, and their clasped hands felt especially warm against the cool breeze.

“Hey, can you promise me something?” she asked, turning her head to the side to see him.

“Of course,” he replied as he turned to look at her as well, almost bringing their cheeks close enough to touch.

“Actually I have two requests . . .” She trailed off with a questioning look.

“Okay . . .?” he answered with a raised eyebrow.

“I want you to promise me that no matter what happens—good or bad—we’ll always remember this view, and how peaceful it feels here.” She held his gaze until he nodded.

“—and the second promise?”

She looked at him a little longer before answering, “Someday we will come back and have another night like this.” She looked away as soon as she said it, but he could sense that his answer was important.

“No matter what,” he said with a sincere smile, and hoped she didn’t see his face flush.

She flashed him a grin so wide he could feel the warmth on his face before she nodded curtly and twisted her body to lean against him again.

“Good,” she said. Then her tone turned sharp. “You had better not let me down Taryn Elseerian, or I
will
have to kill you.”

They both laughed, but Taryn knew that she was only half joking. She would hold him to his oath—and he found that he was glad that she would. Leaning back against her, he wondered if he would ever be as happy as he was in that moment.

Chapter 8: Keese

Sunlight blossomed across the sky in a dazzling array of dawn as their ship crashed through the waves at a steady clip. Lights from Keese had been sighted a few minutes ago, and the
Sea Dancer
had gracefully turned towards the port city with a strong wind filling its sails. Sailors and fighters alike were more than ready to get off the boat and stretch their legs. Perhaps the only exception was the captured pirates, Raize and Braglair, the pirate Taryn had knocked out. They were going to be handed over to the guards as soon as they landed, and neither of them were very pleased.

Taryn stood in his favorite spot at the top of the mast—with Liri by his side. With the ship rising and falling several feet in an instant and lurching sideways at any moment, the crow’s nest became highly unstable, but Liri just laughed at every sudden dip. Taryn grinned wide as they rode the ship, and found his gaze kept returning to Liri, whose wide eyes and matching smile rivaled the brightness of the rising sun.

Hunrin had said they would be in port in less than thirty minutes, and Taryn wanted to spend every last second he could in his perch. It certainly helped that Liriana had asked to join him—as she had been prone to do more and more in the week since the battle. It would be good to get off the
Sea Dancer
and feel the solid ground under his feet again, but leaving the seagoing vessel would be bittersweet.

As cramped as the boat had been, in some ways it had more freedom than Sri Rosen had ever had—where every day had been filled to overflowing with a strict regimen of training and practicing. On the boat they had been free to socialize and relax in a manner that Taryn felt unfamiliar with, and he found himself thoroughly enjoying it. It had given him the opportunity to become close friends with Trin, in particular, as well as with Hunrin, Frey, and Erix, the captain.