The scream tapered away and for a time there was nothing but eerie quiet. Sebastian struggled harder at his bonds until his shoulder screamed and his wrists were scraped raw. He spat mindless, vile oaths at the Bazira guards who looked unnerved.
When another shudder shook the temple, one shook his head and said to the others, “Bloody Deeps, I’ll take my chances out there.”
There was no argument; soon the chamber was empty but for Sebastian and Ori. The battle above resumed and Sebastian took a small measure of relief that someone was left alive to fight Bacchus. He hoped it was Selena but after a scream such as what he heard, he held little hope.
Ilior, most like, he thought dully.
The temple shook again and it seemed as if the island were groaning with the strain. The inevitability of being buried alive should have rattled him too, but he only leaned against the wall and waited.
When Ori sat up like a corpse rising from the grave, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Bloody bones and spit,” he breathed. “I thought you were dead.”
“I am. I have outlived my usefulness to the Bazira. I’m a former Haru, a blind woman with no people,” she said, her voice weak and soft. But Sebastian heard a vein of steel running through her words. “And you are a reviled assassin, feared and hated and deserving of death.” She smiled thinly. “That is what the world will think of us, should we live.”
The temple shuddered again with real violence and a large chunk of soil crashed to the ground on the side of the room. Dirt and grime rained down on them.
“You’d better get out,” Sebastian said dully.
“Yes,” she replied. “And you?”
He shrugged, a gesture she couldn’t see.
Ori was weak; whatever Bacchus had done to her had left her drained to the point of death. She murmured her prayer word and the glow of healing magic emanating from under her plain tunic and he saw some color return to her pallid face. She crawled to him, her hands outstretched until she found his knee.
“You have a knife?”
He nodded and then said, “Yes,” when she cocked her head. “Boot. The other one.”
Ori retrieved the dagger and then felt her way to his bonds. The temple gave another shudder and more dirt rained down. A beam cracked right above them and Sebastian didn’t know what to worry for most: the collapse of the temple, or a blind woman cutting rope on his wrists.
But he was free in moments and Ori handed the blade to him, hilt first.
He took the dagger and returned it to his boot and the temple groaned, like a man on its deathbed; a final rattle that broke the beams that supported the roof. Sebastian coughed and shielded his eyes from the grit that swirled in tunnel. The beams creaked. Dirt poured down like water into the hold of a sinking ship.
He wanted to go up to where Selena was, but he couldn’t find the way across the small chamber in the dark morass. Reluctantly, he turned toward the way he knew to get out—the tunnel in which they’d come in. Ori clung to his arm.
A beam—a thick slant of shadow in the dimness—started to fall. He dragged Ori and thrust her ahead of him, into a murk of dark blue that he hoped was the end of the temple. Behind him, a great rumbling deafened him and he dove forward, diving out of the maw of a terrible beast. He hauled Ori through it and out into the night just as the room collapsed behind them.
He landed heavily, Ori beside him. The dust settled. The temple was no more. The moon was obscured by thick clouds that pelted them with rain and tamped down the swirling dirt of the temple’s demise. But dawn was coming. By the faint light welling up from the east, Sebastian could make out a wide sunken patch of earth stuck with beams that jutted out like broken bones. The above-ground temple. He could see no movement amid either the wreckage or the forest beyond.
Sebastian crawled to his knees, shaking founts of dirt from his hair. The exertions brought new pain and sat heavily, cradling his aching head in his hands. Selena…
He felt a gentle hand on his arm and a warm glow emanated from under Ori’s touch. The pain receded, and he caught and steadied her as she slumped in exhaustion.
“Why heal me?”
Her tunic was dark with dirt and in the dimness, the hollow pits of her eyes seemed gaping, but her voice was gentle when she spoke.
“I am blind here,” she pointed to her empty eyes, “but not here.” She laid her hand on her heart. “Tonight, my eyes were opened. As a Haru, I followed the god without question. And when that path led me to pain, Accora showed me another. But to her, I was but a means to an end, and when I proved a failure, she made me her servant. Following her was no different than blinding myself for the god. There is only one truth and that is what we make for ourselves.”
Sebastian pulled himself to standing and then helped Ori to her feet. She laid her hand on his arm.
“Every life has more than one path, Sebastian Vaas. This I know.”
The Raven
Niven followed Cat on a western path around the island. They’d retreated to the beach and kept to the shore where bodies tumbled in the storm-tossed surf. Clumps of dried grass would act as cover should the Bazira pursue them, Cat had told him. He’d nodded, as if that would save them and she marched as if she knew where she was going, but Niven felt the hopelessness of it all soak him deep as surely as the rain had.
The beach curved and the three Bazira barques became visible out to sea, anchored and bobbing on choppy swells. A small, makeshift dock was just visible some several hundred spans to the north. Half a dozen dinghies were tied there. The shrubbery and forest that made up most of the island’s interior left only a narrow strip of beach on this side and Niven saw shapes moving within the foliage.
Cat held out her hand and crouched low behind a stand of grass. Niven followed suit and nearly sliced his thigh open with his borrowed sword.
The two watched as a line of Bazira emerged from the forest, heading north, away from he and Cat. It looked as if they were marching up and out of the island. Niven saw a red-haired woman among them, but no sign of Ilior or Ori, nor Selena or Sebastian. He was about to ask Cat what they were supposed to do next—there were at least fifty Bazira among the crowd at the dock—when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Beside him, Cat rubbed her arms and they both looked around. She clutched Niven’s wounded arm but he hardly felt it.
Niven’s heart clanged madly in his chest, as one hundred Zak’reth, with softly glowing blades and yellow pinprick eyes, silently chugged along the edge of the forest. The full moon was released from its cloud cover long enough for Niven to see the intricate detail on the warriors’ masks: snarling dragons, screaming sea hawks, and jagged rows of teeth in the gaping maws of sharks…all done in stark detail that made their phantom silence all the more disorienting.
“Where did they come from? What are they?”
Cat hushed him. After the last of the warriors had passed them she tugged his sleeve. “Come on.”
Niven swallowed. “Wouldn’t it be safer to wait here?”
“Aye,” Cat said. “But I want to see this.”