The Hardest Lesson
Tables were overturned or smashed, and the beautiful multi-colored glass of one wall was shattered where another table had been hurled through it. Selena rushed inside and a dozen Yuk’ri tribesman followed after. She called for Accora and heard the answer at the rear.
“Tergus did this to me,” Accora said. She clutched her shoulder and Selena saw blood seep from between her fingers. The Bazira waved irritably at the tribesmen and they reluctantly retreated, leaving the women alone.
Selena lowered her sword. “Julian did this? No. He wouldn’t have…”
“He would and he did. He sent his pet sirrak to kill me.
Selena glanced around. “Where…? Did you…best him?”
“In a matter of speaking,” Accora said. “I have him in my keeping and there he shall stay until we make new arrangements for the duration of our voyage.” She reached for the flask at her belt. Selena had learned that Bazira carry their own ampullas, but of fresh water, to replenish them after creating ice. Accora drank deep; her battle with Svoz must have been fierce.
“But…how did you defeat Svoz? And what kind of new arrangements?” Selena asked. The mounted frame had been shattered and the insects lay amid shards of glass. They looked as if they would get up and scuttle about at any moment. She shivered.
Accora was studying her through narrowed eyes. “Aye, if you ever want to feel the intolerable heat of this island or any other, you’d best heed my conditions. I won’t be besieged as second time.”
Selena sheathed her sword. “Tell me.”
“What I have done with the sirrak is of no concern. He will remain in my possession so as to ensure my safety, and as a matter of collateral. I will forgive Tergus for this morning’s incident, but only because he is the means to get us off Saliz. And we will leave Saliz after you’ve completed the second portion of your lessons. Three days should be sufficient, beginning this morning. Lastly, when we sail, it will be to Isle Huerta, where you will discard Captain Tergus and his crew and hire a new ship for the voyage to Bacchus. This proviso is not negotiable.”
Selena stared at Accora. Discard Captain Tergus. “There is nothing on Huerta,” she said finally. “It is a jungle, such as this.”
“Wrong. An enterprising young lord and his companion have settled there, bested the land, built an estate, and begun a fine mercantile business trading coffee and tobacco and chocolate to the entirety of the Eastern Edge. Unlike the unfortunate Lord Penderlake, the lord of Huerta has only conquered what he requires and maintains a healthy respect for the rest.”
“How do you know?”
“Huerta is but fifteen leagues to the southeast. Five years is long enough to learn of one’s neighbors, especially if they are merchants. An old woman can’t live on berries and crabmeat alone.” Accora smirked. “You have been too long preoccupied with sailing about the Western Watch, healing every sniffle and scratch in the hopes of closing your wound. The time has come for you to rejoin the world with me as your guide, and you will do it on another ship.”
“I don’t believe it,” Selena said, finding her voice. “Julian wouldn’t send Svoz to kill you.”
“Aye, he seems the sort to do the deed himself,” Accora said dryly. “This cowardice is unlike him.”
Selena shook her head. “You don’t know him. There must be a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Accora gestured around ruins of her greenhouse. “Does this look like a mistake? Or this?” She lifted her arm to show the bite of Svoz’s sword. “Sirrak’ah do nothing that is not strictly commanded by their masters. You know this. But more than that, you must take your leave of Tergus to protect your life as well as mine.”
“My life? Why? Julian has never threatened me. The only reason he commands Svoz is because he swore a blood oath to save me.” Selena crossed her arms. “Did that escape your notice when you pored over my memories the other night?”
“Tell me.”
Selena briefly described the incident on the Crystal Sea, cherishing the small defense of Julian. But as Accora listened, her lips curled into a wry smile.
“He steals your sirrak right out from under you and appears as an angel for doing so. How convenient.”
Selena clenched her fists. “That’s not how it came about. He saved me. Svoz drew me from the water but it was Julian who made me breathe again, who tried to keep me warm.” Niven’s words came back to her. “He was frantic.”
She knew she had made a mistake then, as she had heard the thickness in her own voice.
Accora stared, disbelief pushing up the wrinkled flesh around her eyes. “Oh gods help me, I was right. You love him? Or is it merely carnal lust?” The old woman clucked her tongue. “You are a silly little fool.”
“I don’t…” Selena stammered. She couldn’t feel the heat of her flush but she knew it was there. “I need him. He is an able captain—”
“He is not what he seems,” Accora spat. “He’s dangerous. He’s manipulative. He has plans of his own.”
“Really?” Selena said. “Funny you should say so, as the entire crew believes the same thing about you. They all wonder—as do I—why you’re so intent on helping me. Why you’re willing to die on my sword after Bacchus.”
“I told you,” Accora snapped. “Revenge for the years of torture I suffered at his hands. But does it matter? Is there anything more important than the closure of your wound?”
Selena shook her head. “But Julian…”
“Must be replaced. He is not trustworthy,” Accora glanced around her shattered greenhouse, “to say the least.”
Selena took in the wreckage again. Svoz had done this on Julian’s orders. There was no escaping that. Ilior hated the captain. Niven feared him. And she herself vacillated between thinking he cared for her and believing she could walk off the face of the world and he wouldn’t even notice but for the payment he wouldn’t receive.
What does it matter what he thinks of me? He’s a means to an end, as I am to him.
“Whatever bond you think you have with him because of some transient moment of intimacy will seem as insignificant to you as it is to me once your wound is gone.” Accora said. “You stand at the threshold of a new life. No more shame. No more reminder of that day on Calinda. No more cold. Now then.”
Accora held out her arm for healing. Selena absently reached for her ampulla her heart ached anew at the revelations of yesterday’s lesson. Perhaps it was a fluke. I was tired, scared… She laid her hand on Accora’s arm, and muttered the sacred word without finding the moon. The orange glow knit Accora’s flesh.
“Good,” the old woman said. “Very good.”
“It’s not,” Selena said, snatching her hand back. “None of it. I don’t understand what’s happened.”
“You’re not required to,” Accora replied. “It’s too much for you. Think of it only as means to close your wound. Your wound.”
Selena closed her eyes. A swirling chaos, a maelstrom like that of the merkind, turned around her, sucking her down. What had happened with her healing was too big, threatened to drown her if she dwelled on it too long. But Julian….Her feelings for Julian surfaced at the threat of losing him.
She opened her eyes and found Accora staring at her, shaking her head.
“He wouldn’t care,” she breathed. “I know it. When he warmed me… I thought it mean nothing to me, but I…I was wrong.” She shook her head, tears falling on Accora’s sleeve that gripped her arm. “He wouldn’t care about my wound,” she whispered, pleading. “I know he wouldn’t.”
Accora was merciless. “Of course he wouldn’t. I told you. Your wound,” she said slowly, “is repulsive to everyone who is good and decent.”
Selena inhaled sharply. Then again, and again. She wiped her eyes. She nodded. “On Huerta. I’ll take a new captain.”
“Good. No distractions.”
“No distractions,” Selena whispered.
Accora withdrew something from a pocket in her robes and placed it into Selena’s hands. A vial of darkpool water, thick and yellow.
“Drink. You second lesson begins now. And we shall begin.”
Selena took the vial, turned it over in her hands. “I told you; you’re never to poison me with this again.”
“Drink it,” Accora commanded. “Not so that I may pry into your thoughts, but so that I may protect you from them.”
It didn’t make sense. Nothing did. Selena felt as though her mind was as exhausted as her body had been yesterday after the healing. She laid her hand over the cold draft over her breast. The wound exhaled, gently, smoothly, as it always did and always would unless she did as she was sent to do.
“Do you swear to me, upon the gods, that killing Bacchus will close this horror forever?”
Accora’s face was solemn. “Upon the gods, I swear it.”
Selena drank.
Ori stood in the ring behind the keep where Selena had bested Jorqui. Selena didn’t remember walking there from the greenhouse. After she had put that foul vial to her lips, she remembered only fragments of the morning. The Haru woman wore a simple dress of billowing white. The black pits of her eyes and the black shine of her hair were stark contrasts in the sharp midday sunlight. She held her arms up to Selena, beseeching.
Selena walked towards her. “Ori?” Her tongue felt thick in her mouth and her stomach churned.
Only one span separated the women when a moment earlier there had been fifteen.
“What is it?”
The Haru said nothing but dropped her arms. A black millipede emerged from the darkness of her hair, marched down her cheek and under her collar. A blue beetle, bulbous and shining in the brilliant light, scuttled out of one eye socket and into the other. Selena watched, horrified, and then Ori’s mouth dropped open like a drawbridge and a swarm of insects blasted out.
Selena fell back, frantically swiping at the morass that engulfed her like a tornado. The stings came one after another, lighting her face and arms afire. She culled her healing but it wasn’t enough; they were razing her flesh. She stumbled backwards and fell to the ground. The agony prompted a scream and the swarm poured into her open mouth. She gagged and choked, her magic blown away by thousands of buzzing wings and gnawing mandibles. Through a veil of scuttling legs and biting pincers, she held up her hand and watched as the flesh melted away to bone…
“Enough.”
The pain vanished. The deafening buzz went silent. Selena, gasping clean air, sat up and looked at her hand that was unmarred.
“By the gods…”
“You’re dead,” Accora said. She sat on a bench made from a fallen tree in the outer bailey. “While you floundered and flapped at invisible pests, Bacchus ran you through with his sword or stabbed you with daggers of ice until your heart stopped.”
Selena hauled herself to her feet. “How…?”
“The water, of course.” Accora said.
Selena’s stomach roiled with darkpool water and her mouth still remembered the sour tang of insects in her mouth, real or not. She bent over and retched but it brought no relief. When she had heaved nothing but air and bile, she straightened and wiped the back of her hand over her lips.
“How are you able to do this to me?”
“I told you; the magic of the darkpool is somehow attuned to that of the Bazira. I can feel it course through you after you drank it. A conduit has been opened between us, and all that is required of me is whatever my imagination can devise.” She sniffed. “You think that was bad? Bacchus’s mind is far more perverse than mine. He’ll cull nightmares that would make your captain’s sirrak weep. Or worse, he’ll use your own dark memories against you.”
Selena shuddered. “What do I do? I called healing, like I did when sparring with Jorqui…”
“You used it to heal wounds that did not exist, therefore it was useless. You must use the healing on the darkpool water itself.”
“Wounds that do not exist? I watched my flesh melt away, and felt every stinging bite. How is it possible to feel real pain when the injuries are caused by illusions?”
“The body only knows what the mind tells it. Since you were incapable of barricading yourself, you would’ve died had I not called off the swarm.”
“Barricade myself.” Selena shook her head. Her stomach felt clean and empty, but now it seemed she could feel the darkpool water coursing sluggishly through her veins. “It’s already in me. I don’t know how…”
“Did your Aluren masters teach you nothing? Do you even know why you are possessed of healing magic? Or how it works?”
“Of course,” Selena said. “Water is the blood of the god—”
“Oh the god, to the Deeps with your god,” Accora snapped. “Water is everything. The salt tears in your eyes when you weep are born of the oceans that swath Lunos. It is a second blood that flows in your veins. When you weave light, it is water that traps the illumination. When you heal, it is water that carries the healing magic to the wound. Water is the channel. The conduit. It is the means by which Bacchus will pollute your mind with terror. The darkpool. You must fight it by healing yourself, keeping yourself pure and untainted. If you do not, he will watch you exhaust yourself fighting imagined dragons and then he will cut you apart at his leisure. Cull the healing as you did when fighting Jorqui, and channel it. Feel it infuse your body, your mind.”
Selena sighed. “I don’t—”
“And do it now.”
Selena saw three red-armored Zak’reth warriors standing over a man who lay face down on the ground. One Zak’reth stood on his forearms to pin him down. A second Zak’reth had a hold of something that protruded from the prone man’s back, while the third raised his sword that glowed like fire. He brought his fiery sword down again and again, as if he were chopping down a tree. It was then Selena saw that the object the Zak’reth was holding was a wing. The man on the ground was no human, but a Vai’Ensai.
Selena watched, stupefied, as the Zak’reth’s sword came up and down a final time. The smoke of burnt flesh rose up from the wound. The Vai’Ensai screamed raggedly, and the second Zak’reth stumbled backward as the wing came off in his hands. The laughter of the third Zak’reth resounded from under his hideous lion mask.
A battle cry tore out of Selena’s throat and she flew at the armed Zak’reth just as he raised his sword to cleave the remaining wing. He changed his swing to block her, but it wasn’t enough. Selena knocked aside his blade and ran him through his heart. The other two struggled for their swords; the one holding the disembodied wing had to drop it to find his weapon. Selena killed him next, slicing his head off in one clean blow as the fool had removed or lost his gorget. The third, who had been standing on the Vai’Ensai’s arms, was ready for battle.
He had the mask of his helm lifted to reveal dusky skin and eyes that were dark maroon, like old blood. His face was that of a young man; not monstrous, not inhuman. But he smiled at her with a bloodlust that was frightening to behold; she could see it kindled in his eyes, as if the very thought of battle roused him the way a naked woman might rouse another man. He uttered a battle cry in his own tongue and then flew at Selena.
She barely held him off. The ferocity of his blows was incredible and it was all she could do to keep him from bleeding her. He knew he was overpowering her and he muttered something in his language, a parting salute. The killing blow was coming. In this flurry or the next. His burning sword would find her and she would die next to this fallen Vai’Ensai who was so far from his Cloud Isles.
And it was the Vai’Ensai’s wing that the Zak’reth warrior tripped on. His booted feet got caught up in the torn, blood-spattered membrane and he fell backward. Without thinking, Selena flipped her sword in her hand and flew at him. She drove the blade downward, between red armored plates over his chest, with all her weight behind it. He died with blood burbling out of his mouth.
That was red too.
The Vai’Ensai peered up at Selena. His face was more reptilian that human, but for his eyes that were looking at her as though he’d found something he’d been looking for a long while. He smiled with relief as she knelt beside him.
“You saved my life,” he said, his voice hoarse and his accent thick.
“Ssshhh,” she said, studying his wound. “Lie still. I have to help you.”
He smiled sadly, and suddenly it was Selena’s mother lying there in a pool of her own blood. A dagger protruded from her chest.
“You’ll be all right,” her mother said. She tore the dagger free and lunged at Selena.
Selena’s horror nearly killed her; she barely brought her arm up to ward off her mother’s dagger, and felt the blade scrape against her forearm. The pain was bright and helped her focus. She flipped backwards, out of harm’s reach. Her mother lay prone on the ground, swiping pitifully with her blood-stained knife.
“No.”
Selena closed her eyes to that awful vision and inhaled deeply. The healing magic welled up in her, flooding her up to the crown of her head. The gash on her arm closed and the bloody apparition evaporated.
She turned to Accora, her hand clutching the hilt of her sword so tightly she thought her bones might snap.
“Never again,” she seethed, hardly able to find the words. “You will not do that to me again.”
The old woman sniffed. “Then you will die. You did better, but you still healed yourself after the fact. While you dodged your mother’s phantom blade, Bacchus beheaded you with a real one.”
Selena hardly heard her. The horror of those moments in her life did not fade as quickly as the visions. My mother… She had almost forgotten what she looked like, but the phantom of Accora’s creation was culled from her own memories and so perfect down to the last detail. And everything was just as it had been when she’d found Ilior on the Forgotten Isle, during the war. She felt a great wail of grief rise in her. Where was Ilior? Alone somewhere, hurt and betrayed by her suspicion.
Selena snapped her sword back in its sheath for she had unknowingly drawn it halfway out against Accora.
“Where are you going?” Accora called after her as Selena strode away.
“To find Ilior. To find Julian. The lessons are over. We sail to Huerta at first light.”
“The lessons are not over! You haven’t learned all that you need!”
Selena whipped around. “I’ve given you enough! First Julian and now this… lesson? It’s the wound’s horror all over again. I won’t willingly suffer it. I used the healing to make the vision disappear. That is enough. That is all.”
She turned again and stormed away. Accora’s shrill voice followed her.
“You have only begun to use your power. There is much you don’t know…”
Selena ignored her; the woman’s words were drowned in the pounding of her own heart. She found Ilior sitting alone in the feasting hall. His head hung listlessly and his shoulders were slumped. A bowl of uneaten stew sat before him. He looked up dully when she came in.
“I heard a commotion—we all did—this morning,” he said. “The greenhouse is destroyed. I feared for you, but then I saw you in the yard. With that woman.” He looked at her more closely and his face contorted in worry. “Are you all right?”
Selena threw herself against him, holding him tightly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “For everything.
“Then you will leave her? Or…”
“I need her to tell me where Bacchus is. Then…” Selena squeezed her eyes shut, “I’ll kill them both.”