“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.