Exeres was both.
Since he was born of a Human father and Shae mother, both societies shunned him. Was he more Shae than Man—or something different? People feared his milky white blind eye, so he suffered their rejection by wearing a patch. Their words still stung, even after so many years. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t right. It was a curse. Mixing with the Shae led to perversions like blindness.
He blinked, trying to banish the memories of his childhood. His father was dead. All of the Druid lessons and journeys through the duchies—gone. Burned to smoldering ashes in a tiny village. Exeres had left the Yukilep and ventured east to the Druids of the Isherwood. He had never suspected his father to be capable of such deceptions. He was grateful that he had not been shunned completely from the order.
After eating a sparse meal of kettle rice flavored with onions and gnerric seeds, he cleaned up his camp and carefully tended it. He stared at the fire that had warmed him and then drew the rest of its heat into himself, feeling the buzz and tingle of Earth magic beneath his skin. A small smile twisted his mouth. Memories were such honest tormentors. He thought of his father and his lessons in taming the Earth magic. His child’s tongue could not describe the feelings that using the magic had brought to blossom inside him. His father did not understand what he was trying to say. But his Shae blood awoke every time he used it. It helped him excel at the lessons. Some day he would travel to Avisahn and seek to spend a season among his mother’s people. Surely the Rules were not as austere as the Zerite oaths he had already taken.
When the camp was cleaned up, Exeres took up his walking staff, left the knot of trees, and went south to meet the border of the Shadows Wood. The Valley Druids already knew that the Bandit army had gathered there. He was one of the first that had been chosen to go and lend aid as a healer. He wondered why. Because of his skill or because his life did not matter as much? The Druids were impervious to external politics. The Zerites healed regardless of who had inflicted the injury.
The tall cedars rose like giant turrets in the distance ahead. The chill of the night quickly fled and the heat of the Inland plains soon had sweat soaking Exeres’ shirt. He knew how to use the Earth magic to make himself more comfortable but did not want to tire himself out too quickly. If the rumors were true, the Bandits had already taken the city of Landmoor. There would be plenty of wounded and sick to attend to down there. He reached the woods and paused, staring at the majestic expanse of wilderness. It reminded him of the Yukilep, only hotter. Searching the grounds nearby, he paused to collect enough giant mushrooms, turtlelock, and thimbleberries to eat later. The woods spoke to him of health and vibrancy, but there was a harmful odor to them as well—a flavor that added a bitter sting to his Shae senses. He had no idea what it meant.
His mind wandered freely as he crossed into the woodlands. He thought back on the dream. It had come to him at least once a year for as long as he could remember. At first he had thought it was a dream about his mother, but his father had dispelled that assumption. In the dream, the woman’s hair was gold, though it was always blurred by the glass, and Exeres’ hair matched his mother’s—a pale silver. His hazel eye came from her as well. The milk-white eye came from some unforeseen blight of fate that demanded cruelty accompany mischance. It was a curse that had plagued him as a child. He always wore the eyepatch. Always.
Perhaps if he had not been thinking so deeply, he would not have walked into the trap set by the Kiran Thall.
Exeres was struck from behind and found himself choking on pinescrub as the full weight of several men crushed him. Pain shot through his shoulder as someone grabbed his wrist and jerked his arm up and behind his back in a searing flash of pain.
“Got him! Lift him up! Watch for a knife…”
“This isn’t him, you fools!”
Exeres felt his body groan as it was forced backwards and his throat raised up. A blade pressed against the slope of his throat.
“Bloody Hate, he’s a priest!”
Dirt stung his good eye and he felt his patch had slipped down his face, which burned from scraping against the cedar scrub. Someone’s elbow stunned his jawbone, sending spots of light into his eyes. The knife left his throat.
“Ban it, it’s only a priest. I’d have sworn on my soul he was a Shae.”
Exeres shook his head and struggled to open his eye again. His arms were held behind his back and they forced him to stay on his knees.
“Speak up, lad. You’re a Druid?”
“I’m a Zerite.”
He tried to open his eye again, but could not because of the dirt or debris annoying the flesh. He was totally blind now.
“His hair is long enough to be Zerite. The complexion is a little weathered. Ban it, I’d have sworn he was Shae.”