Accora
Selena forced her eyes open. They seemed sealed shut and her head weighed a thousand stones. Her warrior instincts urged her to get her bearings, to find her sword, to escape. She’d been drugged last night. They all had. She remembered with chagrin how she’d been enamored with a dancing flame. A figment of her imagination or hallucination. Foolish. And dangerous.
She pushed herself off the ground to sitting. She was back in the makeshift cell. They all were. Dawn’s light had yet to break fully, but the sky was glowing in the east. A torch guttered somewhere nearby; the meager yellow light slipped between the branches. The others still slept, but for Julian. He sat slumped against the opposite wall, watching her through one good eye. His other was swollen shut. Dried blood stained his upper lip and chin, and a bright red rivulet was still leaking from his eyebrow. He held one wrist against his chest and even in the dimness Selena could see it was broken.
“What happened?” Her tongue felt too big for her mouth. She hauled herself to standing and staggered along the pen on leaden legs to collapse beside him. “Who did this?”
“Our native hosts,” Julian said.
“Why?” Selena turned his face this way and that, inspecting the damage. His black coat was streaked with dirt and he had dried leaves in his hair. “I saw you fight the fire—”
“It wasn’t the fire that was the danger. It was the water.”
Selena gently removed his good hand that was holding his wrist so she could examine it.
“The water? No, the dancing flame. That was the magic. Wasn’t it?” His arm was swollen but no bone jutted from his skin. A clean break.
“The flame wasn’t magic, but a leaf that makes you see senseless things when smoked. Common enough on most of these jungle islands, and some other islands too, where that kind of distraction is welcome.” He shook his head. “There was something wrong with that water. I saw it when you and the others drank.”
Selena started to protest but realized she had no argument. It might have been the smoke or the water or the chanting of the medicine woman.
It could have been anything, she thought. I was so oblivious. But Julian had not been.
“How did you resist? Did you not see the dancing flame?” Just hours ago that flame brought her such joy. Now it seemed silly to even say the words.
“I saw it,” Julian said. “But I knew it wasn’t real. I just concentrated on that and tried to keep my wits about me.”
“But how?” Selena asked.
A half-smile curled his lips. “Long years of practice.”
“Practice?”
“Keeping people out.” He tapped his forehead. “When the water bowl came around, I refused. Two big fellows tried to force it down my throat but I spit it in their face. That’s when things got a little out of hand.”
“I don’t remember that. I was already asleep,” Selena muttered with a disgusted shake of her head. “If the smoke gave us pleasant hallucinations, what did the water do?”
Julian shrugged. “You’d know better than I. But it didn’t seem very pleasant to drink.”
“It was not,” Selena agreed. “It tasted like something dead.”
“Aye. Whistle retched. That’s probably a good thing.”
Selena tried to think but her head was still muzzy and her body still felt as though stones were tied to wrists and ankles. “It was a foolish lack of caution,” she said, feeling her cheeks redden, “but if it gets us to Accora, it’ll have been worth it. For now, you need healing.”
“I wouldn’t mind, but you don’t seem up for it.”
That was true enough. The energy it would take to heal Julian—his wrist especially—was going to drain her dry. “I’m not going to leave you in pain.”
“Much obliged,” Julian said. “I don’t want the crew to wake and see me like this. They might cause a little more trouble.”
Selena reached for the ampulla at her waist. It felt as though it held a lake’s worth of water.
“Why haven’t you called Svoz from wherever you sent him and put an end to all of this? After they imprisoned you and your crew? After they beat you bloody?”
He shifted against the wall, wincing again. “Because you need to find Accora and kill her.” He tried another smile. “If I called Svoz and he ate a native or two, the chances of Ori taking us to the Bazira would be pretty slim, don’t you think?”
Selena frowned. It was true, what he said, but it wasn’t all of the truth. “Yesterday morning you were willing enough to leave me on the beach.”
“Aye. I’m curious.”
“About what?”
His insouciant smile slipped. “How this whole thing is going to turn out.”
Selena pressed her lips together and took up her ampulla. She poured a small amount of water into her palm, and then set it down to find the moon in the sky. “Illuria,” she murmured, and laid her wet palm to Julian’s temple.
The swelling around his eye vanished and she watched the cuts on his lip and brow close. Even after twenty years of healing it still fascinated her; a genuine joy. But her breath came short and she steadied herself on his arm as a wave of dizziness crashed over her.
Julian’s gaze flickered to her hand on his shoulder and then smiled lightly. A smile that softened his face. “You might should’ve done the wrist first?”
She snatched her hand away. “That will require more strength. I’m still impaired from the last night. I think I can mend your wrist but I’m going to faint after.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll catch you.”
Selena sat back on her heels. “Will you now?”
He met her eye for a hard moment and then sighed. “I’m sorry about what happened with Ilior. I shouldn’t have pulled my pistol on him.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Selena snapped. But she was too weary to stay angry. She sighed. “And he shouldn’t have grabbed you.”
“It’s what he does,” Julian said, nodding to where Ilior still dozed under the blanket of the kafira’s smoke. “He protects you.”
“Yes. Always.”
“Why?”
“Because he is weak, remember? He cares for someone other than himself.” She mustered her strength. “Ready?”
All the hard edges returned to his face. “Fire away.”
She poured more water from her ampulla, much more than she’d needed for his cuts and bruises. The water spilled over her hand that trembled. She nearly dropped the small flask. Julian made to take it by the second handle but she snatched it away.
“Don’t touch it. The first handle is for the Aluren,” she told him. “The second is for the god. The god’s hand and the Aluren’s pour together.”
“As you say.”
She gently turned her hand over his wrist, spilling seawater, and they laid her palm to the break. The skin felt tight and sharp tingles told her it was hot. She sought the moon and prayed for the magic. “Illuria.”
The orange glow emanated under her palm and she felt Julian’s body ease as the pain left him. Instantly, the cell began to spin. She fought the crippling weakness and managed to prop herself against the tree-branch wall but she slipped. Julian caught her by the shoulders, steadied her with his two strong hands. Her head bowed as she was too weak to lift it.
“I can’t…”
“It’s all right. You can rest. I got you.”
Her cheek touched worn leather and she smelled cigarillo and, less strong, the remnants of the kafira smoke. Julian’s arms went around her and she fit perfectly in his embrace. His heart pounded against her ear and she wondered, as blackness took her, why it beat so fast…
She awoke, confused and weary. Ilior’s arm was around her protectively. She blinked and looked up; the Vai’Ensai glowered and she followed his gaze to Julian. He sat where she’d left him, his face unblemished, his arms crossed over his chest. He caught her eye and looked away. The crew was already awake, moving with the same sluggishness she’d felt.
Ori came for them when the sun wasn’t yet at its zenith.
“Your kafira overstepped her bounds,” Selena said.
“She did what she had to do,” Ori replied, “to assess your worthiness.”
“And just how did she make that determination?” Selena asked. “By reducing us to fools, drooling over dancing flames?”
“It was inappropriate,” Niven said, pulling twigs out of his tangled hair. “Unseemly.”
“Necessary,” Ori said. “Come. We walk.”
The natives had broken camp that morning, and they marched behind and around the small group. Selena judged there was thirty or so Yuk’ri all told. They left the lightning-burnt ring and were once again swallowed by the jungle. Without Ilior to cut a path, Selena brushed aside branches and ducked under vines until her already weakened limbs were begging for respite. The crew faired worse, having to suffer the oppressive heat that stole the air from the jungle; she heard their panting breaths all around her.
Ori called a halt hours later, and Selena sat down heavily beside her. “You know what I must ask you,” she said when she caught her breath.
The blind woman smiled thinly. “Why an Aluren serves a Bazira?”
“Is that what you and Accora are? Aluren and Bazira?”
The other woman sipped from a water jug made from a hollowed gourd and passed it to Selena. “Bazira, Aluren. They’re just words.”
“They’re not words,” Selena said. “They are faces of the god.”
Ori began to speak but silenced herself instead. A tight frown marred her mouth.
Selena sat back. “You’re an apostate then.”
“To your thinking, yes. But in truth, it’s not possible for me to be an apostate.”
Ori took a deep breath, one that seemed to calm her. The tenseness around her lips eased and she smiled. There was an unassuming wisdom in the woman’s features when she was calm. Selena imagined that if Ori had eyes, they would be sharp and intelligent, but soft too.
“But it’s not my place to tell you of these things. Accora will be angry with me if I confuse you with lessons you have yet to learn.”
“I did not come to hear lessons from a Bazira…”
“No, you came to kill her,” Ori stated without malice, “as I did, two years ago. A folly. I was young and foolish. And angry. Fortunately, Accora saw me worthy of tutelage and took me in.”
“Why did you seek to kill her?”
“When a Haru nun reaches her twenty-fifth year, she must leave her temple and make a pilgrimage. It is a test of one’s ability: maneuver through the world, blind, having only the god’s voice as guidance.” She stopped and cocked her head. “You must know of this, Paladin, as a scholar of the faith.”
“Some. A Haru must complete a difficult task on this pilgrimage to show her devotion to the Two-Faced God. I always thought that strange. If blinding yourself doesn’t prove devotion, I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Ori’s face under her cloth mask turned down. “The blinding is a devotion, yes. One that we make when we are impressionable and full of naïve exuberance.”
“You regret it?” Selena asked gently.
The woman was quiet for a moment and then said, “The blinding ritual is not…pleasant. I suffered great pain and so felt great anger when I should have felt bonded to the god. Anger does not breed a peaceful heart. I made my pilgrimage with the intent of doing something extraordinary so that I might Hear and be Heard and be rewarded accordingly.” The rueful smile returned. “I was supposed to commit some great deed for the god. Instead I felt owed.
“The Haru nunnery is on a small island not far from here. I followed rumors of a Bazira adherent residing on Saliz, and decided I, young and untested, would best her and spill her blood under a full moon. I thought,” Ori said, her voice low, “the god would be so pleased, it would restore my eyes. Instead, I found my true purpose.”
“What is that?”
“I served the god a long while. Now, through Accora, I serve only the truth.”
An apostate after all.
Selena thought of her own quest, what pleasing the god might bring for her. Her hand went to the place over her heart where the wound breathed its cold breath.
“Yes,” Ori nodded, as if she could see the gesture, “you and I, our paths are parallel and so it is fitting that you become Accora’s student as well. You have eyes, Selena Koren, and when you leave this island, they will be open.”
Selena started to protest, but Ori got to her feet and called the party to march again.
They trudged through the forest as the sun sank somewhere on the other side of the canopy, until the jungle released them a final time to a wide, cleared swath of land. Ori lifted a delicate hand, pale in the wan light of the waxing moon, and the party stopped.
“We are here.”
A small stone castle, incongruous for Isle Saliz, stood squat and dark on the path before them. Selena could see a simple round tower, and an iron gate enclosed by a low stone wall. The courtyard was cleared of the jungle flora but for vines climbing up the tower in green spirals. A single light burned in an upper window of the tower and Selena was reminded of the spook stories her father would tell her on stormy nights.
She glanced around. Ilior stood with his hand on the pommel of his long sword.
“Your weapons were returned to you,” Ori intoned, “as a token of good faith.” She turned and her sightless eyes seemed to find Julian among the group. “But should you breech that faith, either by sword or magic, or by summoning that foul creature that serves you, there will be trouble.”
“They have no part in this,” Selena said. “I seek the Bazira alone.”
“That is not for you or I to decide. Accora will determine what part, if any, they play in your instruction.”
“Instruction?” Niven’s face was drawn with sweat, grime, and exhaustion. “What does she mean?”
“She believes I am here to learn from Accora, and not to….end her. I will not be made subject to a Bazira,” she said loudly for Ori’s benefit.
Ori did not reply. Instead, a soft, withered voice from behind them said, “You will…if you hope to live.”
Everyone turned to see the line of natives part to permit one of their number to step forward. The medicine woman, the kafira. She stood before Selena. Her blue eyes glinted from between the strands of her long, silvery hair. Selena stepped back, incredulous.
“Accora.”
“So I am called. By some.”
Selena swallowed and unsheathed her sword. The natives hefted their spears or put the dart guns to their mouths. Ilior, Julian, and his crew called cutlasses to hand in response until the foreyard of the castle was rife with tension.
The old woman held up a hand and the tribesmen quieted though they did not lower their weapons.
“Bloodshed now would be a waste,” Accora said. “You have come too far to lose your best chance at achieving that which you have dreamt of for the last ten years.”
Selena felt her mouth go dry. “Bloodshed is required,” she said. “Yours and Bacchus’s. I have been sent here by the Alliance of the Western Watch—”
“Of course, of course. Save your pretty Aluren speeches, Paladin. I know why you’re here.”
“To end you, old woman,” Ilior growled.
The old woman’s gaze went to him. She smiled to herself, a private triumph, and then continued.
“You are stronger than I,” she said to Selena. “Stronger than these who protect me. I am no fool. My protectors may kill one or two of your crew but you have only to speak a word and ribbons of light will burn us to ash. Speak another word, and a sirrak will appear to crush our bones. I know this. It is why I permitted Ori to return your weapons of steel and powder. It was useless to withhold them. To destroy us, you need them not.”
“Why bring me here if you know it means your death?” Selena asked, trying to inflect her voice with a boldness she didn’t feel.
Accora took a step toward her. Selena leveled her sword at her naked breast but the woman paid it no mind.
“Because, child, I have been waiting for this moment for three years. Because last night I saw into your heart and soul. I read your thoughts, your dreams, your memories. You sailed from your shining house of the moon with your heart full of hope, and that hope is at war with your truest nature. Murder in cold blood. The mighty Skye, who opened the hole in your breast almost as surely as the god did ten years ago, now decrees how it shall be closed.”
Selena’s sword arm began to fall. Behind her, Julian hissed a warning, but she hardly heard.
“And your High Reverent with her admirals and Justarchs and bickering Paladins. Fools, all. Kill Bacchus, they tell you, and your agony will end. Ha! You cannot kill Bacchus. Not with your light or your sirrak or your best intentions. He will rip you apart and piss on your bones, and your pathetic Alliance will pity the poor girl who died in glorious service to their cause. And with the same breath, they will sigh with relief that the Tainted One no longer haunts their hallowed halls with her dragon shadow following after. No, you cannot kill Bacchus. Not until I show you how.”
The silence in the night was thick. No one moved or spoke, but stood rapt—even Julian—as Accora stepped past Selena’s sword to stand close. Selena could feel the woman’s breath on her skin. Her eyes were clear and blue, but a zealous fire roared behind them. Selena saw herself reflected there and nothing else.
“Poor girl. A used girl. First in the war with the Zak’reth and now again. The Alliance is using you through Skye, and now I will use you too. I will hone your magic and teach you how to use it in ways the fools at the Moon Temple, in their pious ignorance, never imagined. I will turn you into a weapon that will kill Bacchus, for I know him best, and without my tutelage, your quest was doomed from the very beginning.”
She reached out and ran gnarled fingers over Selena’s hair. “And when it is done, my child, I will let you draw your pretty sword across my throat and you will never be the same again.”