“Necessary,” Ori said. “Come. We walk.”
The natives had broken camp that morning, and they marched behind and around the small group. Selena judged there was thirty or so Yuk’ri all told. They left the lightning-burnt ring and were once again swallowed by the jungle. Without Ilior to cut a path, Selena brushed aside branches and ducked under vines until her already weakened limbs were begging for respite. The crew faired worse, having to suffer the oppressive heat that stole the air from the jungle; she heard their panting breaths all around her.
Ori called a halt hours later, and Selena sat down heavily beside her. “You know what I must ask you,” she said when she caught her breath.
The blind woman smiled thinly. “Why an Aluren serves a Bazira?”
“Is that what you and Accora are? Aluren and Bazira?”
The other woman sipped from a water jug made from a hollowed gourd and passed it to Selena. “Bazira, Aluren. They’re just words.”
“They’re not words,” Selena said. “They are faces of the god.”
Ori began to speak but silenced herself instead. A tight frown marred her mouth.
Selena sat back. “You’re an apostate then.”
“To your thinking, yes. But in truth, it’s not possible for me to be an apostate.”
Ori took a deep breath, one that seemed to calm her. The tenseness around her lips eased and she smiled. There was an unassuming wisdom in the woman’s features when she was calm. Selena imagined that if Ori had eyes, they would be sharp and intelligent, but soft too.
“But it’s not my place to tell you of these things. Accora will be angry with me if I confuse you with lessons you have yet to learn.”
“I did not come to hear lessons from a Bazira…”
“No, you came to kill her,” Ori stated without malice, “as I did, two years ago. A folly. I was young and foolish. And angry. Fortunately, Accora saw me worthy of tutelage and took me in.”
“Why did you seek to kill her?”
“When a Haru nun reaches her twenty-fifth year, she must leave her temple and make a pilgrimage. It is a test of one’s ability: maneuver through the world, blind, having only the god’s voice as guidance.” She stopped and cocked her head. “You must know of this, Paladin, as a scholar of the faith.”
“Some. A Haru must complete a difficult task on this pilgrimage to show her devotion to the Two-Faced God. I always thought that strange. If blinding yourself doesn’t prove devotion, I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Ori’s face under her cloth mask turned down. “The blinding is a devotion, yes. One that we make when we are impressionable and full of na?ve exuberance.”
“You regret it?” Selena asked gently.
The woman was quiet for a moment and then said, “The blinding ritual is not…pleasant. I suffered great pain and so felt great anger when I should have felt bonded to the god. Anger does not breed a peaceful heart. I made my pilgrimage with the intent of doing something extraordinary so that I might Hear and be Heard and be rewarded accordingly.” The rueful smile returned. “I was supposed to commit some great deed for the god. Instead I felt owed.
“The Haru nunnery is on a small island not far from here. I followed rumors of a Bazira adherent residing on Saliz, and decided I, young and untested, would best her and spill her blood under a full moon. I thought,” Ori said, her voice low, “the god would be so pleased, it would restore my eyes. Instead, I found my true purpose.”
“What is that?”
“I served the god a long while. Now, through Accora, I serve only the truth.”
An apostate after all.
Selena thought of her own quest, what pleasing the god might bring for her. Her hand went to the place over her heart where the wound breathed its cold breath.
“Yes,” Ori nodded, as if she could see the gesture, “you and I, our paths are parallel and so it is fitting that you become Accora’s student as well. You have eyes, Selena Koren, and when you leave this island, they will be open.”
Selena started to protest, but Ori got to her feet and called the party to march again.
They trudged through the forest as the sun sank somewhere on the other side of the canopy, until the jungle released them a final time to a wide, cleared swath of land. Ori lifted a delicate hand, pale in the wan light of the waxing moon, and the party stopped.
“We are here.”
A small stone castle, incongruous for Isle Saliz, stood squat and dark on the path before them. Selena could see a simple round tower, and an iron gate enclosed by a low stone wall. The courtyard was cleared of the jungle flora but for vines climbing up the tower in green spirals. A single light burned in an upper window of the tower and Selena was reminded of the spook stories her father would tell her on stormy nights.
She glanced around. Ilior stood with his hand on the pommel of his long sword.
“Your weapons were returned to you,” Ori intoned, “as a token of good faith.” She turned and her sightless eyes seemed to find Julian among the group. “But should you breech that faith, either by sword or magic, or by summoning that foul creature that serves you, there will be trouble.”
“They have no part in this,” Selena said. “I seek the Bazira alone.”
“That is not for you or I to decide. Accora will determine what part, if any, they play in your instruction.”
“Instruction?” Niven’s face was drawn with sweat, grime, and exhaustion. “What does she mean?”
“She believes I am here to learn from Accora, and not to….end her. I will not be made subject to a Bazira,” she said loudly for Ori’s benefit.
Ori did not reply. Instead, a soft, withered voice from behind them said, “You will…if you hope to live.”
Everyone turned to see the line of natives part to permit one of their number to step forward. The medicine woman, the kafira. She stood before Selena. Her blue eyes glinted from between the strands of her long, silvery hair. Selena stepped back, incredulous.
“Accora.”
“So I am called. By some.”
Selena swallowed and unsheathed her sword. The natives hefted their spears or put the dart guns to their mouths. Ilior, Julian, and his crew called cutlasses to hand in response until the foreyard of the castle was rife with tension.
The old woman held up a hand and the tribesmen quieted though they did not lower their weapons.
“Bloodshed now would be a waste,” Accora said. “You have come too far to lose your best chance at achieving that which you have dreamt of for the last ten years.”
Selena felt her mouth go dry. “Bloodshed is required,” she said. “Yours and Bacchus’s. I have been sent here by the Alliance of the Western Watch—”
“Of course, of course. Save your pretty Aluren speeches, Paladin. I know why you’re here.”
“To end you, old woman,” Ilior growled.