As if reading her mind, Accora strode into their midst. “And so it goes until he wears you down or bests you with his strength and then kills you.”
“Then this lesson serves no purpose,” Selena said, still wheezing for breath. “I’ve been trained in swordcraft since a young child. I’m not going to get any better at it than I am this moment.”
Accora held up her hand. “Wait. Listen. Learn. I would not have been so eager to take you on as a pupil if you weren’t an expert swordswoman. But you will need to be more than that to defeat Bacchus.”
“I will weave light against Bacchus,” Selena said. “But I can’t against Jorqui; I don’t wish to hurt him.” She touched her hand to a bleeding cut on her thigh. “It doesn’t seem as if you’ve given him the same reticence.”
Accora rested her hand on the native man’s arm. Next to him, she was dwarfed: a sapling standing beside a great oak. “Of course not,” she said. “There’s no incentive to coddle you. When I saw him last, Bacchus was a span taller than Jorqui, and twice as large. He is…abnormal and not pleasing to look upon. I shudder to think what four more years of playing in his darkpool have done to him, but I can tell you that he won’t go as easy on you.”
“Easy?”
“The answer is healing. You must be able to heal your wounds as you fight if you hope to best Bacchus.”
Selena sniffed. “If that could be done, they’d be teaching it at the Temple.”
“Would they? What is the tenet of your faith with regards to the god’s healing gift?”
“The power of the god is too much for the human body to handle,” Selena said. “The price of healing power is the weakness it leaves behind. And that is balance.”
“That is foolishness,” Accora said. “Do you not weave ribbons of light in the thick of battle?”
“Yes, but that exhaustion comes later and is not so strong,” Selena said. “Healing creates an instant weakness.”
“As it should, it’s the stronger of the powers. But there is a way to postpone that weakness until the battle is done. You must treat your healing as you do your light weaving: as an offensive weapon.”
“If that were possible, I’m sure some adherent or Paladin in the centuries since the Breaking would have discovered it.”
“Some adherent did,” Accora said with a dry smile. “The fact that I’m not the adherent you had in mind makes it difficult to accept, yes? Leave it. Leave the notions of Bazira and Aluren, of Shining and Shadow behind you. There is only the magic, and it comes from the same source. All the tenets and scripture and edicts in the world aren’t going to chance the truth of that.”
Selena grit her teeth.
What Accora believes to be true and the truth are not necessarily the same thing. I trust the Temple’s teachings before I trust a Bazira.
The notion firmed her resolve and she faced Jorqui.
“We don’t have the time to argue theology and what you believe is not important anyway,” Accora said as she stepped out of the makeshift ring. “It’s what you can do that matters. Before you begin again, draw in the healing. Let it infuse you, keep it for yourself.”
“Draw it in? I have to use seawater from my ampulla. I can’t very well—”
“Ampulla,” Accora scoffed. “Drop it. It’s a hindrance. Makes for a pretty show but utterly useless.”
“Useless…” Selena felt the tingle of her cheeks burning. “You go too far, Bazira…”
Then Jorqui was there, his sword leveled. He nodded once, slowly, as if to say, Whenever you are ready. There was no malice in him, only duty, but whether she was ready or not, he came at her, his sword whistling as he swung at her legs and arms. She parried every strike but found her concentration split in two, as Accora’s instruction rattled in her mind while she defended herself from attack. A moment later, Jorqui’s sword sliced across her other thigh, splitting the skin in neat gash. Blood poured. Jorqui did not stop.
Selena gritted her teeth against the stinging pain; she could feel her skin tear open wider as she scrambled away from Jorqui’s next strike.
“Heal yourself!” she heard Accora screech from somewhere.
“I can’t,” Selena said, dodging and parrying from the native’s relentless attack. “I have to find the moon—”
“No! Say the word!”
No! I won’t befoul the healing with her blasphemy…
And soon enough Selena needed every breath she had to keep from falling to Jorqui. She kept her teeth clenched in sheer determination, and stinging pain flared across her face as Jorqui’s sword breeched her defenses. He had opened a gash that cut her from cheek to ear.
He will kill me, she thought and then there was no time for thought; she hoisted her sword up to block the native’s downward strike. The blow reverberated up to her elbow and she nearly lost her weapon. Jorqui opened another wound on her, and then another, until her blue and silver Aluren garb was a patchwork of bloody stains. Accora had been shouting at her but was now silent.
Maybe this was her plan all along. I am a fool…
There was a commotion in Selena’s periphery, though she couldn’t spare a second for it. She was going to die. Her arms were so weary she could hardly lift her sword and Jorqui, though he had kind eyes, seemed intent on ending her. Selena fell to her knees and hadn’t the strength to get up or slip out of the way.
I’ll have to burn him.
Selena raised her hand, the word to call light on her lips just as Jorqui’s sword came up…and then a shadow dropped between them and Selena saw a flurry of gray skin and a leathery wing.
Ilior.
Selena slumped back in the dirt. The Vai’Ensai charged at the native and Jorqui instantly gave up the fight, throwing his sword to the ground and then holding his hands up. Ilior wasn’t about to let him go so easy but Selena called him back, her voice weak with exhaustion. The Vai’Ensai did so, but reluctantly. He knelt beside Selena.
“What are you doing?”
“She is having a lesson,” said Accora, her voice stony.
“He would have killed her!” Ilior thundered at her. “Under your orders!”
Accora paid him no heed but turned a sour face to Selena. “No interference,” she said. “From him or anyone else.”
Selena glanced up to see the crew of the Black Storm watching now too. Whistle and Niven shared stricken expressions, while Grunt rubbed his beard restlessly. Cat’s arms were crossed casually, but Selena saw daggers glinting, one to each gloved hand. Julian leaned against the wall of the bailey, not a care in the word, as he had on Isle Uago, looking like a dagger himself, sheathed in black.
Niven had crouched beside her and now his worried face filled her vision and drew her attention to the bloody splotches on her clothing that corresponded to deep, stinging pain on her leg, her arm, her cheek.
“Let the boy do it,” Accora said, disgusted. “You need your strength.”
Niven reached for the ampulla at his belt and sought the moon. Her wounds closed and the pain ebbed. She climbed to her feet even as Niven slumped with exhaustion, but Ilior was shaking his head.