Selena felt her neck and ears flush red. “I fell into frigid water and he was forced to warm me,” she said. “That is all you saw and that’s all there is.”
“Liar,” Accora said. “But more important is that he refused the water and so remains closed off to me. And that is dangerous. To both of us.”
“I don’t wish to discuss this anymore. We waste time,” Selena said. “You’ve taught me nothing but that I have even less cause to trust you than I did before. And there wasn’t much to begin with.”
“I don’t need your trust, girl,” Accora snapped, “I need your sword. Your magic. Your power. And you need me if your wound is to close. There is no trust, there is necessity. And my necessity required that I glean from you information that I might use for our protection and for your instruction.”
“There will be no further instruction if you poison us with that water again,” Selena said. “The eradication of my wound is everything, that is true. But I won’t pay for it with the souls of my friends.”
“Friends,” the old woman spat, but swallowed whatever else she had been about to say. She held Selena’s gaze a moment and Selena felt the silent truce between them. An accord based on mutual desperation and nothing more. The old woman was too proud or stubborn or Bazira to say it, but Selena saw that she’d earned the woman’s grudging respect.
Selena lifted her chin. “Let us begin.”
“Hmmph.” Accora gave her a final, imperious look and then held aloft the pallid, pus-colored vial. “The water gave you during the ritual the other night—this water— came from a darkpool that Bacchus now guards. After you kill him, you may destroy it, for what he is doing with it is far worse than the prying I did the other night.”
“What does he use it for?”
“Can’t you guess?”
Selena’s gaze went to the vial in Accora’s hand. The liquid inside was a sickly yellow color. Like the pus that oozed from the dead mermaid’s eyes.
“The merkind.”
“Aye,” Accora said. “It is terrible enough to drink the water. Quite another horror to be submerged in it.”
“Bacchus…he trawls for merkind, captures and then poisons them?”
“Yes,” Accora said. “The darkpool water has a horrifying effect on the merkind that it does not have on humans. It alters them, as you’ve seen, and when they are mindless, half-dead hungry things, he releases them back into the seas to hunt and kill.”
“Where is he?” Selena demanded, her hand clenched around her sword’s handle. “Which island?”
“Information. Do you see its value? It’s quite obvious to me that Bacchus’s location is all I have to ensure that neither you, nor one of your loyal friends, end me before my time. And besides, you are not ready to face him. You would sail to Bacchus, march into his foul temple, hold up your pretty sword in a challenge salute, and then you would die the most excruciating, debased death his blackened mind could devise. He would force you to drink from the darkpool and watch you dwindle into insanity. You would fight foes of his creation—foes culled from your darkest imaginings—and as you fight these phantoms, he will kill you.”
Selena shivered. “So much ugliness in this,” she whispered. “Celestine made it sound so easy.”
She expected Accora to scoff at this and was surprised when the old woman laid her hand on Selena’s. “Your people are fools or assassins in their own right, sending you after the likes of us.”
Selena pondered all of this for long moments.
The horror of your wound is no small thing. Great evil wrought it. Destroying great evil is necessary to close it.
She took a deep, steadying breath and raised her gaze to meet Accora’s.
“What must I do?”
“The key is your healing,” Accora said. “The dark nature of the Bazira enable us to use the darkpool for our purposes. Healing—the Aluren’s greatest power—is its corollary and its nemesis. You must use your healing to barricade yourself against Bacchus. From both the might of his blade and the insidious power of the darkpool.”
“Barricade myself?” Selena asked. “How?”
Accora rose from the bench. “Come. I will show you.”
From Within
The sun was high in the sky as Selena and Accora arrived at the small yard at the rear of the keep, a dirt-and-rock-strewn area behind the main hall in the inner bailey. Accora had sent Ori—the Haru always hovered nearby—to fetch one of the natives, and Selena waited with the old woman in the thickening heat of Saliz for her first lesson to begin. Across the yard, Ilior stood, his massive arms crossed over his chest, still as a statue, watching.
“I demanded there be no distractions,” Accora said “I trust you will keep him away from Bacchus when the time comes. My old pupil will use your dragonman to destroy you and this endeavor will have ended before it has even begun.”
“I will convince him to stay behind.”
The woman sniffed. “As if it will be that easy.”
Selena’s gaze went to Ilior and An-Lan’s words came again.
The Sacrifice. He will bleed for you. He will die for you.
“I will order him to stay behind,” Selena said.
A small smile twitched at Accora’s lips. “Aye, you will. But he has his own duty, doesn’t he?”
Selena glanced sharply at her but Ori had returned to the yard with a hulking young native man in tow. The native carried an immense broadsword, old but clean, and he approached Selena and greeted her by nodding at her once, briefly, and then slicing that sword at her so that she felt the wind of it on her chin as she danced out of reach, scrabbling to draw her own Paladin’s blade.
The first lesson began.
Jorqui was as large as Svoz, as strong as Ilior, and unbelievably fleet. It took everything Selena had to keep his broadsword at bay. She parried a thrust that came at her thigh and swung her own sword up and out, trying to expose the big man’s flank. But she hadn’t the momentum needed and he was too strong. Instead, he pressed his weapon down, pinning hers to the ground and then released one hand to deliver a startling cross blow that exploded across Selena’s cheek. Stars filled her vision, as she tumbled and then rolled out of reach. She came out of the roll with her sword up to block the blow she knew was waiting. Steel scraped against steel as the combatants stood locked, swords pressed together, but it didn’t last. The native warrior was vastly stronger than Selena; he shoved her off his sword and gave her a punishing kick to her midsection. Selena sailed backwards and landed on the hard-packed dirt. Her lungs constricted but took in no air. Choking on nothing, she rolled to her right and dirt sprayed her cheek as the native pierced the ground where her head had been a moment before.
Maybe Accora means to kill me after all, Selena thought, finding her feet.
She gripped her sword in both hands and sucked in deep breaths to help uncoil the knot of pain in her gut. She bled from a half-dozen different places; shallow wounds so far.
What happens when I tire?