Bacchus
Zak’reth marched behind her. One hundred men in thick armor and heavy boots should have made enough noise to alert the entire island to their presence. But they made no sound. The steady susurration of rain falling over leaf and soil, and the occasional drum of thunder above them, were the only sounds. The storm had abated, but not ended. Selena could feel it gathering again, ready to mount another siege. She tightened her grip on her borrowed sword and glanced over her shoulder. One hundred pairs of yellow eyes flickered back.
A woman’s scream broke the silence. A scream so full of pain, Selena felt an answering ache in her own chest.
“Ori.”
That meant the Black Storm had followed them to Isle Calinda, or the Bazira had captured them on Isle Saliz. Either way, everyone on board was now Bacchus’s.
“Double-time,” she called over her shoulder, and began to jog. Her strange, silent army jogged after her.
Ori’s screams accompanied them for a little less than an hour, guiding Selena through the forest. When they ceased, Selena was relieved and frightened both, for the silence likely meant Ori’s death. She marched on, now without direction though she could hear the crash of surf against shore that meant they had traversed the entire island.
Selena called a halt at a small rise in the woods. She gestured for her army to wait while she scaled it. She gestured for her army to wait while she scaled the rise. From the vantage, she could see a stretch of black sea laced in white-caps hugging the western shore. Three Bazira ships at anchor—black-winged shadows— bobbed on the water. A half a league to the west, Bacchus’s temple: a twisted, thorny-looking tangle atop its own small rise. It seemed too small; a one-room shack and not fit to house the Bazira priest and his retinue for so long. She guessed there was more to his dwelling than she could see in the storm-swept night—an enormous underground stronghold perhaps filled with Bazira.
No, impossible. The island is too small, she thought and hoped that she and her Zak’reth had already faced the bulk of Bacchus’s protection.
She started back down the rise but was brought to her knees. An unseen hand, cold as the deepest sea and just as heavy, pressed down on her. The air tightened and chilled, burning her lungs and she hugged herself, as if she could keep from shattering to pieces. The clouds released the moon and she watched as a sheen of ice spread outward from the little temple on the hill— like a flood of molten silver—and raced outward in all directions. Under the soft sounds of the squall that was building toward a second siege came the cracking snaps of trees as the cold swept over them.
She planted her borrowed sword into the ground and pushed herself to her feet. The thin sheen of frost crunched under her feet as she started down the rise, hunched over like an old woman. She returned to her army.
They marched, slower now, following Selena’s halting step, and arrived at the foot of the small hill upon which Bacchus’s temple sat. Its walls were remnants of the village that her wave had destroyed ten years before, and the Zak’reth ships that had been her intended target. Plain, simple wood beams were haphazardly tacked to lengths of planking that still bore flakes of the red and gold paint the Zak’reth favored. Pieces of a ship’s deck made up the roof, and two masts formed a pinnacle at the top.
The bones unnerved her the most. She had thought the bodies of her victims must have long ago found rest at the bottom of the sea, or in the bellies of sea creatures, but skulls adorned the jutting spars on the temple roof and piles of jagged femurs and ribs lay strewn about the grounds, now rimed in ice. Selena stopped, the black sockets of the dead staring down at her, accusing. But the bones at her feet—a skeleton with a dolphin’s tail and a human’s skull—told her the truth. The Calindari and the Zak’reth who perished with them were long gone.
There are merkind here. Bacchus’s dead, not mine.
She remembered Accora’s words; that darkpools formed in places where great death and grief had been wrought.
I did this ten years ago. These are my dead.
She glanced behind her, to try to gauge if the sight of the remnants of that mighty Zak’reth armada stirred emotion in her Zak’reth. But they were silent. Waiting. Their yellow eyes flickered in the dark and she found them strangely comforting.
Another scream tore the night. Accora’s scream, ragged with pain, emanated from inside temple and then tapered off in something like a sob. Selena understood what Bacchus was doing, calling her to him, using the suffering of others as his clarion. Coward. She whispered the sacred words to call healing to her body.
The healing energy glowed inside her. The cold of Bacchus’s magic still wrapped her in its icy grip, but she could move and think and fight. She turned to her Zak’reth, ready to order them to siege the temple when the stomping thunder of booted steps sounded from the western side of the island, near the shore. She watched as a line of Bazira marched out of the ground from a tunnel she could not see, and began to curve around the temple hill toward her. She guessed there were near fifty of them, armed with swords and ice.
“My enemies come this way,” she told the Zak’reth general. “Follow the bend around the temple and head them off.”
The Zak’reth’s guttural words were spoken aloud but Selena heard Tradespeak echo in her mind.
The dawn comes soon. Our service ends with the light.
Selena’s voice was cold and flat to her own ears. “Then you had best kill them quickly.”
“Yai kah!”
The Zak’reth hoisted their blades that glowed with a heat Selena would never feel, and marched past her to meet the smaller Bazira force. From inside the small temple, Accora screamed again.
Selena crept up the hill, to the entrance that was cobbled from a cabin door. Her boot crunched through the thin layer of frost that lay over the ground. It sounded to her like a thousand branches cracking in the night, echoing in the air made thin by the unnatural cold. She stopped and tightened her grip on her sword, using it to nudge the door open. It opened like a corpse’s jaw and again, the noise made Selena cringe.
He knows I come. He can feel me as I feel him. We are drawn to each other; a light to dispel the shadows and a shadow seeking to snuff the light.
She stepped inside slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. Selena had the impression that she was walking inside her own wound: down a well of unending blackness and cold. The thought was horrifying and yet strangely exhilarating.
It means it’s true, she thought, trying to quiet her own rapid breaths. Skye was right. I kill the beast that lurks in this frigid dark, and my own wound will heal.
It was small—one room—and lit by one torch that guttered on the far wall. It melted the ice that lined the walls and threatened to snuff itself out with the dripping water. The water hissed as it rained down on the torch, or smattered the ice-rimed floor beneath.
Above, the roof was thatch, wood, bits of old ship and the homes of those who had lived before. Like the rest of the temple, it was crude and looked as though it might collapse at any moment, especially under the additional weight of the ice. A rough hole in the shape of a crescent moon was cut into the roof so that even the Shining face’s full moon would be diminished to the crescent of the Shadow face.
Directly below the crude skylight was a pool of water that Selena knew at once to be the darkpool Accora had spoken of. Dirty junks of ice floated atop its oily surface like dun-colored lily pads. The water itself was quiet but Selena sensed a dark energy in it, as if somewhere deep below its surface, a heart pumped the corrupted blood of the thousand merkind that had perished in its depths.
Selena gave the darkpool a wide berth and then waited for the trap to spring, for her enemies to make themselves known. Moments passed, marked by the hiss-splat of the melting ice. Of Bacchus or Accora, there was no sign. The tension in Selena’s stance eased. She prowled the small confines looking for another door, for certainly Bacchus had not lived five years in one bare room. Near the torch, she found wet leaves and fresh boot prints. The size of the prints made her heart thud dully in her chest.
Bacchus.
Her own foot was dwarfed; Ilior’s foot would seem dwarfed, she thought. But the large print wasn’t the only one scuffed into the icy grime. Smaller prints—those belonging to a woman or women—were clear. Accora, Ori, Cat. Most or all were his prisoner—Ori and Accora for certain. Selena breathed a prayer to the Two-Faced God that they lived still…or that they had died quickly.
She knelt beside the prints and found a groove along the floor. She followed it up the wall and the outline of a crude door, camouflaged by the varied materials used to make it, became apparent. Selena’s muscled tightened again as she felt around the bits of planking for a way to open the door. Behind her, the torch extinguished its own light as melting ice snuffed its fire with a final, loud hiss. Selena nearly jumped out of her skin as the small room was plunged into darkness. The only light came from the moonlight that peeked in between broken slats in the roof above. When a fat raincloud passed over the moon, that light was stolen too, and Selena shivered in the dark.
Someone moaned.
Accora…Selena thought, but the voice was younger, softer. Her heart thudded like a hammer against her ribcage. Gods, a child…
A wail of anguish joined the child’s whimper, then another, and another. Shadows boiled on her right and she looked to the darkpool. It writhed.
Long, pale arms thrust from the stinking water, then heads matted with seaweed and bits of flotsam broke the surface. Staring eyes and gaping mouths that loosed anguished cries found Selena. In the shadowy dark they were even more horrifying to behold; pale, bloated, scrabbling over one another to get at her.
Merkind, she thought, readying her blade, but no, these were humans. As they hauled themselves out of the darkpool, Selena saw homespun clothing—tattered and sodden and moldy—instead of fins or tails. Men and women and children. The drowned. Her drowned.
“The Calindari,” she whispered, her sword nearly falling from nerveless fingers.
They staggered across the temple, water pouring out of their mouths as if they were welling up from within. Their moans and sobs, she realized with a pang of horror, were resounding in her head. In her heart. In her wound. And though they spoke no word, she heard their plaintive, singular cry as clear as a clarion.
Why?
“This isn’t real,” she whispered, staggering away, her back coming against something hard and that smelled of rot. Bacchus! She spun, sword cutting a vicious arc, and then pulled up short with a shriek.
“Ilior! Thank the gods.”
Ilior replied by raising his own immense broad sword and bringing it down over her head.
Selena only barely registered that the blow was meant for her. With a cry, she dodged, but not enough. His blade came down on her shoulder. Flesh tore and bone cracked. Selena uttered a strangled wail and stumbled against the rough-hewn wall. Her arm hung low, nearly cleaved from her body, and blood gushed. She spoke the sacred word to call healing, though it came out as a whimper. The orange glow answered, diminishing the pain enough so that she was not drowning in it, but no more. Behind her, the throngs of dead Calindari wavered in the murky dark like mirages and then vanished.
Ilior remained.
He snarled and delivered another blow that would have decapitated her had she not spun clumsily out of reach. She cut at him, mostly to keep his sword at bay, knowing it was futile anyway, that he was going to kill her. But he was slow. Slower than she knew him to be. Her haphazard swing had opened a small gash on Ilior’s thigh and terror wracked her like the cold to see it leaked not blood, but a yellowed, watery sap that smelt of rot.
Gods no, I’ll heal him. And what the darkpool did to him, I’ll heal that too…
The pain of Ilior’s answering swipe at her side added its voice to the throbbing scream of her shoulder. Blood washed down to her thigh and she called her healing, inhaling it and holding it to staunch the pain, while at the same time, dancing out of Ilior’s long reach. Somewhere, she knew, Bacchus watched.
“Ilior, stop! It’s me!”
Ilior replied with the sword, and Selena found herself locked in a dance of death with him. It was a nightmare come true, as every stroke of his sword came with a memory of him fighting with it to defend her life. Every grimace of rage was echoed by the thousands of kind words and bolstering care he’d given her over ten years.
And now he will kill me, Selena thought, for surely I cannot kill him. I cannot…
“Your healing, girl.” Accora’s voice was a hiss in the fog of battle. “For him and for you, it will fight the darkpool. Not the poison, but the hate. Healing…it is the answer to—”
The old woman’s words were severed by a thud and whimper. Selena called more healing to her, but she couldn’t get close enough to touch Ilior. Not without being struck by that sword that could sever her in two. With her injured arm, it was all she could do to keep from fainting.
And then Ilior stumbled and then fell to one knee. The sword in his hands trembled.
Selena saw her chance and rushed at him. He brought his sword arm up in a weak defense but with a running blow, she knocked it out of his hand.
“Ilior,” she cried, dropping her own sword. “It’s not real. Fight it.”
He grabbed her by the collar and hauled her to him so that his snarling visage was inches from hers. His breath smelled of death and his flesh looked as if it were rotting from the inside out. He balled his other hand into a fist and raised it. Before he could knock her senseless, Selena quickly laid her good hand on his leathery cheek and channeled the healing into him. She watched with tears in her eyes, as the light of madness died in his, and he looked down at the hand clutching her so roughly.
“Selena?”
She nearly wept with relief as he held her to him. But the stench of the darkpool was still all over him. His skin was burning and riddled with bites and deep rents. “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered. “I’ll make you better…”
A hulking shadow, darker than those that cloaked the temple, loomed over them both. Ilior was torn from her as Bacchus lifted him by his remaining wing. Bones snapped and Ilior cried out raggedly. Bacchus tossed the dragonman aside where he landed on his broken wing and this time a scream was coaxed from his ailing body.
Selena felt an answering wail in her heart.
I can heal that too! I will heal him. I will! I’ll heal everything…
And then Bacchus stole her every thought with the terror of his presence.
More bestial than human, more dead than alive, Bacchus appeared as the embodiment of the Shadow face’s dark magic. He emanated cold the way most living things did heat, and as he reached down to grip her by the tunic just as Ilior had a moment before, Selena’s panic-stricken mind recalled Celestine’s words.
He’s very powerful.
Selena choked out a laugh that sounded like a sob as Bacchus pulled her close. She saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing but him.
“Cunt,” he said. “I smell the ice in you.”
He exhaled rank cold air, and Selena’s vision wavered, broke apart, and came together again. She stood atop a high square platform, garbed in black and red. A crescent-shaped hole was cut out of her fine velvet doublet so that her wound was visible to all, breathing free and terrible to behold. Throngs of fearful knelt before her, trembling, and she smote one supplicant with ice and fire; a silver ribbon and one of red, burning and freezing the man until his skin was blackened and hard…
“Illuria,” she breathed, and the vision dispelled, as did some of the terror that wracked her with as much ferocity as the cold.
Bacchus clamped his hand over her mouth. In the dark of the chamber, his eyes were huge dead things, boring into her.
“The old mother taught you a trick or two, Aluren, but mostly she lied to you. The one you call Skye—a goddess to your kind whose word is stronger than truth—she has lied to you. I will not lie to you.” He stroked her hair with his enormous hand and she quailed, her mouth still clamped tight under the other. “There will be pain, I promise this. I will tear you open and plunge myself into your wound where the Shadow face lives. But when it is over, you shall have your freedom. With me, you will reside in the shadows of the new moon where our god wants you.” He pulled her closer, like a lover to kiss. “Why else would it mark you so?”
His hand still clamped to her mouth, holding her by the jaw until she thought her bones would snap, he tore her tunic open with his other hand, ripping the stiff wool of her overtunic as if it were gossamer, laying the wound bare.
The sight of it awed him. Bacchus’ hand slipped from her mouth and he staggered backward, his eyes locked onto the horrid black hole bored into her. Behind him, Selena saw Accora crumpled on the ground near the darkpool. She struggled to raise her head and watched through long strings of silver hair. Just beyond Bacchus, Ilior lay shuddering, his remaining wing a tangle of broken bone and leathery membrane. The horror of it arrested Selena until she realized the moon had come out from behind the clouds, illuminating the room enough for her to see more than shadows and Bacchus. She raised her uninjured hand.
“Luxari!”
A ribbon of light lanced at Bacchus’s head, striking his cheek. He staggered backward as her magic eviscerated his flesh and melted his left eye with an audible pop. His hair went up in a foul-smelling inferno on his head before being snuffed by his own icy magic, leaving a blistered red scalp. His scream of rage and pain promised a long, slow death.
So it begins, Selena thought.
The light was fading again. Without taking her eyes off of him, she bent down and retrieved the cutlass. Her courage wavered as the Shadow Reverent faced her. Half of his face was boiling, and she watched with grisly fascination as a curl of flesh dropped from his chin. Where his left eye had been was only a burnt socket that leaked blood and pus. He peered at her with one dark eye framed by one thick eyebrow—the only hair left to him. He removed his immense sword from a scabbard Selena was sure hewn from human skin.
“Ours would have been an unstoppable union,” he said. “Now I will violate you as I crush your throat. I’ll piss on your corpse and feed it to the merkind. But not yet…”
He twisted his sword in his hand so that it was pommel first, intending to knock Selena senseless. She dodged easily; his size made him slow and therein was her only advantage.
Selena sent a tongue of light to lash his side, and danced out of the cut of his sword. If he felt pain he didn’t show it. Or perhaps he absorbed it, used as fuel the way she used her healing. He must, she thought, for he gripped his sword in both hands over his head and brought it down as if he meant to cleave the island in two. She parried the blow, twisting her wrist and planting her sword tip into the ground to help bolster the block. The force of his strike reverberated up her arm and broke her sword cleanly in two.
Bacchus’s shadow fell over her, and he tossed his own sword away.
“The wound,” he said, his eyes trying to find it among the torn shreds of her tunic. “Give it to me.”
He lunged for her and then a shriek of fury came from behind. Accora’s arms upraised, icy darts shooting from her fingertips. Bacchus turned to face her and they struck his chest like pebbles bouncing off a boulder. Selena sagged against the far wall and summoned her light quickly, but the chamber was too dim. Bacchus hoisted the old woman off the ground, shook her like a dog worrying a rabbit, and threw her against the temple wall that shivered and cracked with the impact. Accora cracked too; bones snapped and she emitted a small sound like a broken flute, and then lay still and silent.
The priest turned to Selena. “Now you.”
Snakes writhed on the floor. Thousands of them, they coiled around her ankles and slithered up her boot, hissing and baring fangs that dripped poison. False, Selena thought, and looked up in time to see Bacchus’s hand reach for her.
She rolled to the side, whispered Illuria. The snakes vanished as the healing flooded her. She rolled a second time as Bacchus closed and then opened his fist. The cold blade struck her back, stabbing her with a chill that stole her breath. The agony was almost as strong as that of her wound when it was new. She slipped on a patch of ice and fell hard, her shoulder jarring so that she thought she would retch.
Bacchus was over her, arms raised. Her shoulder screamed as she thrust both hands forward.
“Luxari!”
Twin streams of light lanced into his midsection. The smell of burnt flesh permeated the air and Bacchus stuttered backward, growling like a feral dog.
The rippling muscles of his torso were charred black. He regarded her with his one eye.
“You don’t know what you have,” he said. “Give it to me, Aluren, for you are not worthy to bear such a gift.”
“You are…an abomination,” Selena gasped. “And it is my duty to rid Lunos of one such as you.”
She raised her arms to call light and the moon disappeared behind the clouds, plunging the room in shadow. In that first dark, she heard only Bacchus’s sepulchral laughter. And then a heavy thud. Like a sack of flour hitting the floor.
A man in black bent over Ilior’s dead body. A glint of steel flashed and then the man in black turned. Julian—no, Sebastian Vaas—swiveled on his heel, his dagger wet with Ilior’s blood. His expression was cold with hate.
“You want more like this?” Sebastian swept the bloody dagger to indicate the dead. “Give in, sweets. It happened. Nothing can change that. Find the power in that pain or give up.” He flipped the dagger deftly in his hand. “Up to you.”
Selena shook her head wordlessly as the first bolts of ice struck her arm, her wounded shoulder, her stomach. Bacchus stepped through the false vision, closer to her, over her, and rained down his cold. Selena curled into a ball, flinching with every shard of ice, losing her healing magic, losing her fire under the barrage. When she could no longer move, the Bazira ceased the attack, unhurried in triumphant. She watched, trapped in the frozen shell of her own body as Bacchus gripped her wounded shoulder and lifted her up.
“Accora promised you phantoms of my devising,” he seethed, his breath fetid against her cheek. “She told you I’d torture with imagined visions of pain, suffering, death. And so I have. But she has never realized, not in all the long years of her blasphemous pilgrimage, is that the truth is always more frightening than anything one can imagine. You, Selena Koren, should know this better than any.”
Bacchus inhaled deeply, and then exhaled over Selena’s face a cold mist that smelled of the darkpool. “The truth,” he breathed and Selena felt the darkpool vapor infect her thoughts, her mind.
“My god,” she whispered.
“No, girl.” The dark priest of the Bazira held her aloft; his single black eye reflected her own stricken visage and nothing else. “My god,” he said, and plunged his hand into her wound.