Selena crossed her arms. “That’s the short of it. Is it true?”
Accora smoothed her skirts over her knees. “No. It’s not.” She heaved a sigh. “Rest assured, sweeting, that when it comes time, you will plunge that pretty sword into the blackened, withered heart of a Bazira faithful.”
A peculiar sensation of relief and dread warred over Selena’s thoughts. “Why do you go so willingly to your own death?”
“I don’t,” Accora said. “Not yet, anyway. After your training, after you kill Bacchus…” She smiled to herself. “I will be ready for my rest.”
“If you teach me how to slay Bacchus, killing you after will not be easy.”
“Aye,” Accora said. “Another weakness, and one that is too ingrained to scrub out, I fear.”
Selena ignored the jibe. “If you’re still Bazira, why did Byric believe otherwise? He spoke at length about the doubts you had regarding both faces of the god.”
Accora waved a dismissive hand. “That was twenty years ago. The musings of a younger woman. A distraction.”
“A distraction from what?”
“From my task. Powerful Bazira adherents—such as myself—are often commanded to mentor younger pupils who show promise. I was so commanded, but my pupil was…difficult. I sought temporary relief on Isle Nanokar. A small rebellion against the duty, a rebellion that no doubt colored my discussions with Byric.”
Selena frowned. “Byric described you as fervent. He mentioned a book you tore a page from a rare book—”
“Yes, yes, I ruined his pretty book.” She laughed dryly. “You should have seen his face. As if I’d pissed on the Chainbreaker Treaties, and then set them afire.”
“What was that page?” Selena asked. “Byric said it had Ho Sun writing on it. Did you find a translation? Do you still have it?”
“No,” Accora said. “I do not.”
Selena was about to press her further when the old woman waved her hands as if the questions hovered in the air around her head.
“There was nothing of import to that page but what I infused into it myself. No, I was intrigued, for a time, by silly fables and the like, but as I said, that was an exercise in distraction.”
“From your pupil,” Selena said.
“My nightmare.” Her eyes grew cloudy with memories and Selena wondered if the woman realized she was speaking aloud. “The atrocities a man can perpetrate on woman are inconceivable to the man. Pain is but a small part. I can abide pain. Bazira are trained to withstand agonies of the body. But there are deeper agonies that cut deeper than flesh or bone, and leave scars that never heal.” Her gaze flickered to Selena and Selena saw she meant for her to hear every word. “You understand the pain of an open wound. That is why I know you will succeed where others have failed me.”
“Bacchus,” Selena said, her voice low. “He was your charge.”
“Yes,” Accora said, and infused her voice with strength again. “Once returned to his service—after Nanokar—I stopped searching for answers to silly mysteries, because it was all rendered so trivial in light of what I faced with him. Fables and translations…distractions, all. There’s no power in old history. There is only what you take for yourself in the here and now. The longer I served Bacchus, the less and less power I had. I realized that if I were to survive, I’d have to leave my faith that did nothing to stop him from damaging me. And that’s precisely what I did.”
“Didn’t you just assure me you were still Bazira?” Selena asked. “I thought—”
“I am Bazira, but no longer of them. There is a difference.”
Selena nodded. “High Reverent Coronus told me that Bazira and Aluren are not merely the names we give to our magic, light or dark, Shadow or Shining. I am not called Aluren because I heal and call water and weave light. I do those things because I am Aluren. Being Aluren or Bazira is a mindset—or, more accurately—a choice that is made in your heart.”
Accora sniffed. “Perhaps your Temple is not entirely peopled with fools.”
“The High Reverent Coronus was returned to the sea before the war,” Selena said stiffly. “He is still mourned.”
“A pity. The Aluren are desperately ignorant these days.” Accora waved off Selena’s affronted look. “Take no offense. The Bazira are no better. Worse, even. While the Aluren kill themselves to the point of extinction for all their good-deed-doing, the Bazira cannibalize their own.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Bazira mentality is very much like that of a ravenous beast. The hungrier and more powerful the beast becomes, the less it is able to distinguish—or cares to distinguish—enemy from ally. But don’t mistake my departure from the Bazira temple as a sign that I’ve seen the light or the error of my ways, or any other such foolish claptrap the Aluren pass off as wisdom—or worse—dogma. Words mean very little. Names mean less. I wield the icy magic because my soul was born to the dark side of the moon where there is very little warmth and nothing that is bright or shiny or silvery.” She peered at Selena with mock curiosity. “Feel better? I didn’t need the kafira ritual to glean that you had reservations about killing me in cold blood.”
Selena was already adept at ignoring the old woman’s jibes, and instead thought of the larger implications. She is Bazira. There is no doubt.
“But I doubted Skye,” Selena said aloud, “because she and my wound are forever linked. That is unfair. I see that now.”
“Unfair?” Accora’s gaze turned to a large tray that hung on a wooden support beam. The tray displayed two dozen insects: beetles and boll weevils, moths and mantises, spiders and scorpions, each pinned to the board with nails or needles. The smallest of the specimens was bigger than her palm, the largest a kind of centipede that ran the entire length of the tray’s edge.
“Have you seen this? Part of my collection.” Accora rose to her feet to admire the insects. “Saliz’s most deadly weapons. Each one of these lovelies has the ability to maim or kill or sicken with its poisonous bite.”
Selena examined the tray. The pincers on one beetle looked sharp enough to take off a finger. Another, a black mantis, had a flat chitin-covered body and wickedly sharp mandibles beneath its bulbous eyes.
“That one is called a stowaway mantis,” Accora said, “named so because, unlike its green and pious brethren, this creature is secretive about its meals. It clings to its prey and nibbles away at its flesh much like humans might gnaw a leg of mutton. The victim does not feel that he or she is being made a feast as the poison in the stowaway mantis’s saliva gland numbs the affected area. Unfortunately, that poison is highly toxic and the prey begins to become feverish, sickens, and dies long before the little bug can finish its meal.”
Selena peered at the insect. “It is both beautiful and ugly.”
“How so?”