“Were you shunned for Hearing the god?” Selena asked.
“No, but there was no place for me on Sun-Ka. Healers were welcome and wanted, but my devotion was more fervent. I couldn’t imagine a life in which I was not among those who shared the same magic. I wanted to learn everything, to devote myself completely to the Shining face. When a Haru missionary barge arrived, I was certain the god had Heard me and wanted me in its service as badly as I wanted to serve. I stepped aboard their barge almost before they had dropped anchor.” She smiled wistfully. “I was ten years old.”
“Did you know the price of that devotion?” Selena asked in a low voice.
“Oh yes. Every Haru woman on the barge but for one had given her eyes. And the order is strict but not merciless. I would train for many years until I fully understood what the ceremony would entail, and I was always free to leave should I decide it was too much to give.”
“I know little about the Haru. I had thought it old tradition that was mostly died out.”
“That is true. There are only a handful of cloisters all over Lunos, and all of them small. Mine had twenty nuns and that was considered plentiful.”
“I’m relieved to hear they did not force you to go through with the ceremony.”
Ori wore a strange expression; difficult to read without her eyes. “Sometimes the most efficient prison is one in which the door is left open.”
Selena frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Because I was free to leave whenever I chose, I felt powerful for staying. I felt special. We all did. The pride among us was evident everywhere: satisfied smiles and knowing looks shared among us when we embarked on healing missions to other islands. The Haru who wore the veils were revered among the villagers. Stared at with awe and even fear. Those of us who hadn’t yet undertaken the Devotion were jealous.” She shook her head. “Jealous. Can you imagine? I went on countless missions in the fifteen years before my Devotion. So many islands. So many chances to walk away.”
Selena shifted on her seat and Ori seemed to sense her discomfort.
“I have learned to live without my sight,” Ori said. “My other senses are heightened to degrees I never thought possible. And that is why the Haru undertake the Devotion. But after I carved out my eyes, another sense was awakened. One that neither I, nor the Haru, anticipated.”
“What was that?” Selena asked, her thoughts conjuring unpleasant images of just how one went about ‘carving out’ one’s own eyes.
“A sense of truth,” Ori said. “After the Devotion, I was alone with my thoughts. Among the Haru, this time is called the Silence, in which one rests, recovers, and listens deeply to the god. But I heard nothing. My healing magic was no greater than it had been. No secrets had been revealed. The god did not speak to me in the private, intimate way I had expected it to. I was just alone in the dark. And the dark breeds unpleasant things.”
Selena couldn’t help but think of the silence she’d felt for the last ten years. Unanswered pleas, unrequited devotion. When she’d finally learned from Skye what the god wanted to close her wound, there was joy, but also fear. And doubt.
“You have been influenced by Accora,” Selena said aloud. “It’s clouded your thinking and it’s tainting me as well.”
“My anger was aroused in the dark after my Devotion,” Ori said. “Long before I met Accora.”
“Maybe so, but coming to her instead of to the Moon Temple or another Aluren, only added fuel to your fire. A wise adherent might have been able to help you better cope.”
Ori shook her head. “I told you, the truth was awakened in me, and that truth is what fueled the fire. I sought to kill Accora, not only to further appease a god that seemed to demand so much, but to assuage that anger. Killing is the precise opposite of healing, but I had done everything else. There was nothing, in my mind’s eye, left to do…except kill or die.”
Selena looked away, remembering the dream of the pier that came to her often at night. In the dark.
Find the light or die.
She cleared her throat. “How did you come to serve the woman you sought to kill?”
The Haru lifted her linen shift to reveal a hideous scar along her leg. Selena grimaced at the gash of creased white skin, a deep furrow carved along the length of her thigh.
“It must look a fright,” Ori said, “but I can walk without deficit.”
“She healed you?”
“No, she is Bazira still, in many ways. She cannot heal.” Ori ran her fingers over the rough-textured skin. “I healed myself.” A strange smile touched her lips, one that was difficult to read without a reflection in her eyes. “Before there was you, there was me. I was to be her champion.”
Selena’s eyes widened. “You were going to kill Bacchus for her?”
“Yes,” the Haru said. “But that came long after. First, I hunted Accora. I was trekking through the jungle, seeking her home, and startled a wild boar. It charged and gouged me. The Yuk’ri had been following me since my arrival—I was not nearly as stealthy as I imagined myself to be. They killed the boar but could do nothing for my wound. They brought me to Accora. I had hardly a drop of blood in me left and my ampulla had been lost somewhere in the jungle. But she showed me what to do. She taught me I need not beg for what was already mine.”
Selena’s hand reached absently for the place where her own ampulla had been and she snatched it away. “Go on,” she said. “Tell me the rest.”
Ori smoothed down her shift. “I could not be Accora’s champion. I healed myself but it nearly killed me. Subsequent lessons found me…wanting. I’m not as strong as you are. I have no swordcraft to speak of, and I have no sight. But I could still see, in my mind, the horrors of the darkpool water that she fed me during my failed training. I could not withstand it.”
She tilted her head, as if she were looking up at Selena.
“But while I failed there, I succeeded elsewhere, in ways not even Accora knows. I am blind to the outside world, but I can see myself. At long last. I don’t know where I will go when Accora is dead, but I will not be lost.”
Selena lowered her gaze. “Healing has brought me no relief. Killing the Bazira is all I have left to do.”
Ori rested her hand on Selena’s; it felt light as a bird.
“You are as I was when I first arrived. Blind. I only fear that when your eyes are opened you will not like what you see.”
The day passed slowly. When night fell, it cloaked the island in thick darkness that was full of chirping, buzzing sound. The air was heavy with water, and it seemed hard for Selena to catch her breath as she finally turned her steps toward Julian’s chamber in the keep.