Selena and Ilior left the beach at midday. Niven watched from the deck of the Storm as Selena marched across the rough, rocky sand and into the jungle where she was swallowed by the dense foliage. Ilior disappeared after her. The adherent longed to cry out, to tell Selena to stop, but the words stuck in his throat.
You can still go, he reprimanded himself. Get in the skiff and start rowing. It’s that easy.
But his fear was like strong hands, holding him down and gagging his mouth.
The party left behind was sullen, tense, and out of sorts. The crew eyed the waters around Saliz warily, jumping at each ripple in the silt, but Captain Tergus was the worst. His gaze had followed Selena long after the Paladin was lost from sight. Niven could have sworn the same longing to plunge in after her skirted behind the captain’s eyes. When Julian finally tore his gaze from the jungle, it was to curse that his beloved ship was aground. The Storm canted to the port side, its prow mangled, its yards missing, and now its deck was smashed. Niven was afraid for the tide’s return, fearful that Julian would take his ship and sail it away from Saliz’s dangers, leaving Selena stranded.
If they sail, I’ll go after Paladin Koren, Niven vowed. I cannot remain the coward. But marching alone into Saliz’s interior meant certain death. I can catch up to her if I go now.
He gnawed his lower lip, trying to muster the will to stand up, to break the grip of fear than anchored him down. Time slipped past and still he did not move.
The inherent nature of a thing cannot be changed, he thought bitterly. Easier to turn a mountain into a feather than to give me courage.
It was then he saw the figure at the shore, some hundred spans or so away. A woman, judging by the slight figure and billowing material of her simple white dress. Her hair was cut to her chin and as black as her eyes that appeared, from the distance, like two large pits of shadow. She must be wearing a pair of goggles, Niven thought. The woman stood still, calmly observing the party on the beach.
“Captain,” Niven murmured.
“I see her. Svoz,” Julian said. “Bring her to me. Alive.”
The woman tilted her head as though she were listening to something on the wind, and then walked back into the jungle, unhurried.
Svoz glided down from the grounded ship and loped along the shore to where the woman had been standing. He then turned to follow her trail into the rain forest.
“Is she the Bazira?” Julian asked.
It took Niven a moment to realize the captain was addressing him.
“Uh, no. I don’t believe so, Captain. She was not dressed in the Bazira raiment. And while I haven’t Paladin Koren’s talent for sensing our darker brethren, I did not feel the woman is dangerous. For what that’s worth.”
The captain snorted to show exactly what he thought that assessment was worth and Niven drew himself up. “Perhaps she is from the Guild. The goggles she was wearing would seem to suggest so.”
Julian rubbed his chin. “Maybe. A castaway. But why not seek us?”
“Pardons, Captain, but to a lone woman, a ship full of sailing men would not seem the safest situation in which to put herself. To say nothing of the sirrak.”
Julian smirked. “I should have sent you as envoy, then. She’d know she had nothing to fear.”
Niven felt his face redden. Svoz reemerged from the jungle, alone.
“Well?”
“A wily vixen, Master Captain,” Svoz called up. In one hand he gripped the carcass of some furry creature, its entrails dangling from its torn, limp body. “Gave me the slip, she did, which is not altogether easy, given my exceptional talents for perception and pursuit.” This he said over a mouthful of bone and gristle. “However, I found this delectable specimen. Not all was lost.”
Niven watched Julian bite back angry words. “How could she escape you? You found Selena in the bloody ocean, sight unseen.”
Svoz shrugged and swallowed. “I was bound to her by blood. This little flesh-tart left a trail in the sand but once I entered the jungle, the trail was lost. Not a bent branch to be found. My superior senses detected nothing but led me to this.” He held up the remains of the animal that Niven thought must have been some sort of small monkey. “A tasty dish, and dying of a broken appendage.”
“Perhaps she was a phantom or mirage, brought to us by the heat,” Niven offered.
“Or perhaps she’s as real as you or me, and cunning too. Svoz’s tasty dish was a gift to throw him from her scent,” Julian said.
“Of course.” Niven felt foolish. “What now? Do we try to find that woman? She could pose a threat to Selena…”
The captain seemed at a momentary loss but then shook his head. He lit a cigarillo. “No. Our plans remain unchanged.” He turned his gaze to the sea. “The tide will be in soon.”
“You plan to sail?” Niven asked, incredulous. “And just leave Selena here?”
Julian exhaled a cloud of smoke, not entirely careful of how much blew into Niven’s face. “I gave her three days, didn’t I? I don’t go back on my word. But Isle Huerta is less than a day’s sail away and my ship needs repairs. There’s a settlement on Huerta. A new one, run by a coffee farmer or some such. We’ll make repairs and come back to pick up whatever’s left.”
“You mean whoever’s left,” Niven said.
Captain Tergus glanced at Niven sideways. “Selena’s got my contract and promissory note,” he said. “Whether she hands them to me or I take them off her corpse is up to the gods.”
He moved away to consult with Grunt and Cur, gesturing with his hands at the island. Niven looked a final time at the teeming jungle.
He’s going to sail away! I could still go after her…
Whistle’s shrill blast cut the air and Niven thought his heart would stop. He sucked in a breath as the sea floor, visible in the clear, ruddy water, begin to shift in patches. Reddish silt shivered and fell away as dozens of sea scorpions, each the size of a small seal, emerged from under their camouflaged holes. They scuttled along the ocean floor, toward the Black Storm, and in moments the clacking, clicking sounds of their legs could be heard scrabbling up the hull.
“Men, to arms!” Julian cried. “Svoz, a sword, you bastard!”
The sirrak replaced his cudgel for an immense broadsword, and the crew dutifully drew their own blades. But the tide washing over the prow of the Black Storm was going to swamp them in a surge of snapping claws and poison barbs.
“There are too many, Captain,” Niven cried.
Julian’s eyes were full of panic as he watched the scorpions flood his deck. The sound of scuttling chitin on wood was almost deafening.
“Captain.” Niven clutched his arm. “We’ll be overrun.”
The main deck was now half-covered in fiery red scorpions; they scrabbled over one another, snapping their pincers at crewmen’s naked legs. More were boiling over the gunwales; an impossible number.
“We are overrun,” Julian breathed, and then he screamed. “Abandon ship! All hands, abandon ship!”
Even in his terror, Niven heard in the captain’s voice how much it pained him to utter those words. Then Julian was grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and dragging him to the rail, where he shoved him against the shrouds.
“Climb!”
Niven obeyed, jumping up onto the gunwale and holding tightly to the interlocking ropes. Around him, crewmen jumped into the soft shallows and began running up the beach but Niven was shackled to the shrouds by fear. Still more scorpions came over the side of the ship, snapping and darting their bulbous, barbed tails over their heads. Niven eyed them, then the drop to the beach, then the scorpions again. The sound of Svoz’s gleeful battle cry came from behind, and Niven turned to see Captain Tergus at the port side anchor, frantically hauling at the knot. He was surrounded; only Svoz’s swinging sword kept the creatures from swarming over him.
“What are you doing?” Niven cried.
Julian glanced up for half a heartbeat, incredulous, but did not pause at his task. “What am I…? Jump, damn you!” He swore as one scorpion breached Svoz’s defense and snapped at the heel of his boot but never ceased his work. Svoz sliced the pincer off and then ended the scorpion as Julian slowly let the anchor line down. Niven felt the anchor bang and then scrape the hull on its descent, and Julian cursed again, but did not hurry, even as Svoz began to falter under the sheer numbers of scorpions. Niven stared, wide-eyed and frozen at the sirrak’ s battle and then at the main deck. It looked and sounded as though it were afire, with hundreds of red bodies teeming over the planking, barrels, hatches; a fire that was roaring straight towards him.
Niven squeezed his eyes shut and jumped.
He landed in the shallows, in soft sand and warm water, and eased a sigh of relief. He wasn’t hurt. Scorpions scuttled here and there on the beach, but they weren’t giving chase into the foliage. Niven thought if he could make to the jungle…
A crushing weight landed on his back, driving him face down into the water. Sharp, stabbing pains knifed his back and legs, and water slipped into his open mouth and burned his nose. The scorpion scuttled over him with quick, insect-like movements that made him want to scream. The poison dart of the scorpion’s tail would find him at any moment; under the water he squeezed his eyes shut and his panicked mind offered a prayer to the Two-Faced God that his death would be quick. Then the weight was lifted off, and rough hands hauled him from the water. Svoz.
The sirrak clutched him in one hand by the scruff of his shirt and half-carried, half-dragged him across the shore, Captain Tergus ran beside them. From this vantage, the adherent saw the Black Storm overtaken with scorpions, and a crimson cascade plummeted down the side. They scuttled after them, but Svoz’s loping stride carried them off the sand and into the cover of the jungle and the scorpions did not follow.
Svoz dumped Niven to the ground, muttering vile oaths to himself over the number of injuries he’d taken in the battle. Beside him, Julian stared, horrified, as scorpions scrabbled over his ship. The other crewmen gathered behind them to watch.
“They won’t hurt it,” Niven offered in a small voice. “They might make a mess of the galley, but there’s nothing on the ship for them. Is there?”
“Probably not.” The captain saw his crew all accounted for and he nodded almost imperceptibly. The stony mask dropped back into place.
“So, what do we do now?” Niven ventured.
“We wait,” Julian replied. “I dropped the anchor so she can’t drift. And those bloody bastards can’t stay out of water forever. The high tide will come in and we can take her back. Get the Deeps out of these cursed waters.”
Niven mustered the courage to ask the Captain not to leave Selena stranded on the island, but the jungle’s cacophony of buzzing insects and birdcalls went silent. The broad-leafed plants around them shivered as two dozen men and women, dressed in woven grasses and painted in mud, ringed around them. Each bore a spear, or had hollow reeds to their mouths, trained on the crew. Svoz drew his weapon but one painted man snaked an arm around Whistle’s neck and laid a dagger of carved stone to his neck. Julian held up his hand and Svoz halted.
“Poison darts,” Julian muttered, and Niven followed his gaze to the men with reeds in their mouths. “Svoz might take down one or two, but the others will kill us.”
“That is certain,” said a quiet, feminine voice. The painted natives parted to let the woman pass, the same woman in white who had slipped away from Svoz earlier. Niven gasped in horror at the sight of her face.
She’s not wearing goggles…
The woman smiled softly. “You will be coming with us.”
Insects whirred, chirped. They droned in the thick air or sawed their legs in unseen hollows until the noise was a cacophony. Some swooped across their path, flashing poisonous hues of yellow, black and purple. Dark green plant life surrounded them on all sides, as if they walked through a living cave. Bursts of color—some flowers with petals as wide as a man—lined the path or hung over them like parasols. The heat enshrouded them. Selena could feel the tingles of it on her skin and the air was thick and hard to breath. Ilior moved with vigor, pushing aside the dense flora when he could, slicing a path with his long sword when he couldn’t. The humid, jungle climate was akin to that of his homeland.
This is the closest he will get to it, she thought. No wonder he seems almost happy.
The cold draft in her chest silenced her unsettled thoughts where her own admonishments could not. She was close. She could sense it.
Ilior paused and snuffed the air. “Do you know where we are going?”
Selena glanced up to mark the sun in the sky and to get her bearings, but the canopy of forest made the midday seem as twilight.
“No,” she admitted. “But I do not fear becoming lost. The Bazira…she knows I am here. We will find each other.”
When night fell, they made camp in a natural clearing just large enough for one of them to lie down while the other kept the watch. Ilior argued to take first watch but Selena knew he was weary of hacking a path through the jungle for them. In the deep dark his shape was no more than an outline, his shoulders slumped and his voice thick with fatigue.
“I will take first watch,” Selena said in a tone that brooked no argument.
For once he didn’t protest. He sat down and endeavored to curl his large form into a position of comfort. Within moments, his breathing was even but Selena did not kid herself that he slept deeply. He was as he had been in the war: her soldier and this was their new battle. He would wake at the slightest whisper of his name and be ready to fight in an instant.
Selena sat on the damp ground and drew her knees to her chest. She tried to be watchful but the jungle had become the night and the night the jungle; a great beast of darkness that had leafy hands to brush across her skin, and snake-like vines that curled at her feet. The beast’s breath was the susurrations of the countless insects, and Selena fought the urge to build a fire or weave light to drive the darkness back. But fire was too dangerous in this thick foliage and the light would only draw more insects to her. She was already beset by flying pests that blundered into her cheeks, or those that purposefully sought out her warm blood.
Nothing I can do about a slithering snake or poisonous spider, she thought and shivered.
The blackness seemed to thicken. Instead of Selena’s eyes adjusting to the dark, she grew blinder. Shadows and dim outlines were all she could make of her Ilior and the forest around them. She drew her sword and laid it across her knees. A frog croaked. The cacophony of insects was steady. For that she was glad, as any approaching danger would silence the night creatures’ buzzing song. Or so she hoped.
Selena grew weary. The dark implored her to close her eyes. She blinked and shifted and tried to stay alert. She thought of the Bazira she had come here to kill and what it would be like to face her, to draw her sword against her or weave light and end her. Perhaps without provocation.
Or perhaps the dark priestess would view Selena as an enemy and strike first.
She is waiting for me. To kill me, no doubt. She is Bazira and I am Aluren. How can there be any end between us but death?
The thought was darkly comforting but not by much. It did not assuage the pang in her heart that told her she was no better than a hired assassin.
The oppressive heat of Isle Saliz couldn’t null the chill of her wound, but she was as close to comfortable as she was like to get, and she slipped into a half-sleep. Her thoughts broke apart and made no sense. A sea scorpion snapped at her heels and then burst into flames. Svoz’s cudgel broke the ship and the water poured in. Julian….Julian had sea-glass eyes, green and gray and hard… and his lips…snarling at her, then smiling, leaning in to kiss her…
Selena felt a tingle of warmth on her cheek, like a soft wind. But no breeze stirred the jungle air. She sat, unmoving, waiting to feel the little breath again or to know it came from her sleepy imagination.
It came again.
Selena cupped her hand and spoke the sacred word, Luxari. There was very little light to draw from. The blackness grew deeper around them as a small ball of light bloomed in her palm.
Selena saw black; black pits where eyes should have been in a pale face framed by black that was hair cut short. A face, inches from hers, peering at her sightlessly, guilelessly, head cocked to the side, breathing a gentle breath over Selena’s skin.
All this Selena perceived in the heartbeat before a scream tore from her throat. She jumped to her feet, her heart hammering inside her chest, her fingers curling around the handle of her sword. She snuffed her light in her panic, plunging them back into darkness. Beside her, Ilior was a flurry of scraping steel. Selena quickly conjured a new ball of light. The eyeless face was gone.
“What was it?” Ilior was calm but wary.
“A…a Haru,” Selena said breathlessly, willing her racing heart to calm itself. “Yes, a Haru. I believe so.”
“A Haru?” Ilior scanned the jungle.
Selena did the same, waiting for the eyeless woman or apparition to come again. The jungle sounds that had ceased were now coming back to life. Selena let her sword arm drop.
“The Haru are Aluren nuns,” she said. “Women whose devotion to the Two-Faced God is singular and without question.”
“Singular how?”
“The Haru cut out their own eyes as part of their initiation into the order.”
Ilior frowned. “That sounds…impractical.”
“It is believed that the removal of a sense heightens the others. The Haru remove their eyes to better Hear the god,” Selena replied. She held her light globe high, peering into the darkness.
“If she is Aluren, she is ally,” Ilior said. “Perhaps she hasn’t gone far. We can call to her, invite her to join us. Tell her not be afraid.” He glanced around. “Certainly she’s listening right now.”
Selena sheathed her own sword. “She might be Haru. She appeared so. But whoever she is, she approached soundlessly, sightlessly, without disturbing the jungle. She crept within inches of me. Invite her to join us without fear?” Selena shook her heard. “She could have slit my throat as an introduction. No, if she wants to reveal herself she will.” She addressed the jungle. “Show yourself. We will not harm you.”
The jungle made no reply.
The cloud of insects around Selena’s light globe cast chaotic shadows on Ilior’s face, etching his likeness closer to his dragon ancestors than a human one. “I say we keep going,” he said. “I’d rather face an enemy that I can see than jump at shadows.”
Selena agreed. She drew breath to tell Ilior to take point when the jungle’s teeming chorus disappeared, as though a veil of silence had been dropped down. Selena kept her light globe alive in her palm, illuminating a small area around them.
“Haruuk’sha bast!” Ilior swore.
They were surrounded. Pale men and women, their faces and bodies streaked with muddy paint, emerged to form a ring around the three. They carried spears, nets, some held reeds to their mouths. Poison darts. The thought scampered in and out of Selena’s fearful consciousness. The people wore nothing but grass skirts or loincloths over their nether regions; the women were topless, their breasts streaked with the same patterns as the men’s chests.
The islanders said nothing. They made no threatening moves but Selena knew that to fight meant death.
The human ring broke to admit one to step forward. A small, willowy figure in tan leggings and white dress stepped into the meager circle of light. The woman’s hair was black and brushed her chin, reminding Selena of An-Lan. But the woman’s eyes were missing and all that remained were empty bowls of scarred flesh.
“Paladin,” the woman said, addressing Selena with an inclination of her head. Her voice was low and rich and steady with no discernible accent. Her sightless eyes were black pits in the shadows. “I apologize for disturbing your rest this night but I must ask that you accompany us.”
“To where?” Ilior rumbled.
“To Accora,” Selena answered.
The sightless woman nodded. “She has been waiting for you.”