by E. S. Bell
He bobbled and nearly dropped it. “No, no. I keep trying but…I can’t. I’m only a healer.”
“Not tonight,” Cat said. “Ori, what of Bacchus? Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“Accora spoke of a rough-hewn temple with much of it dug beneath the earth,” Ori said. “Like a rat’s warren. She said the above-ground structure served mostly as an altar or place of worship. The darkpool will be there, I’m certain. As to where this temple lies, I can only guess somewhere in the interior. Isle Calinda is very small. I have no doubt we will find it.”’
“I can find it,” Ilior said. He sniffed the air again. “Selena is very close and we waste time.”
Cat met Niven’s eyes. “Very well, we’ll follow you, Ilior. Most likely to our deaths but maybe we’ll get lucky and find the Zak’reth have already slaughtered the Bazira.”
Niven didn’t hold much hope that was true. Ilior trudged ahead, and through the rain and darkness Niven could see the place where his other wing had been, now a scarred tangle of exposed bone.
It’s their war all over again, his and Selena’s, Niven thought. He peered up at the sky to where the moon was a slit in the sky, spilling silver light. A Bazira crescent but waxing. There is hope. Isn’t there?
The quartet marched in silence through the birch forest. Rain patter on the leaves and Ilior’s heavy tread were the only sounds. No one spoke. Niven tightened his grip on his new sword for the hundredth time. The rain made his palms slick—or that’s what he told himself.
Be brave. For Selena’s sake and your own, if you wish to get off this island.
Ilior held up a hand and motioned for everyone to get down behind a tangle of fallen trees. They did so in silence, and gathered around the Vai’Ensai. He pointed at a dead campfire and then another some spans beyond. Niven could smell the remnants of the charred wood and roast meat.
“This camp was cleared out quickly.” Cat pitched her voice under the rain. “Don’t see any sign of battle. Maybe they got wind that Zak’reth were coming.”
“There are no Zak’reth here,” Ilior said.
Cat looked dubious. “Better to be cautious—”
“They are gone.” Ilior’s reptilian face was craggy with shadows and dripped with rain. “I do not forget their smell. Like burnt leather. It’s a smell that filled my nose as they surrounded me and took my wing. I will never forget it. They were here but now they’re gone and all that matters is that we find Selena.”
They followed Ilior into the camp with weapons at hand and their eyes on the shadows. Ori did not weave light to see by but Niven knew she was ready with the sacred word on her lips. They passed by dozens of campfires. Some still smoked and hissed as rain doused the embers. Booted footprints churned the soil and remnants of dozens of dinners were strewn about.
“Wait. I—”
Ilior had no chance to finish his words as the shadows around them shivered and the clearing was suddenly beset with Bazira. At least fifty men in black and red came at them with curved blades and missiles of ice. They descended on Ilior who made a large target and on Ori, who answered their Baziran ice with Aluren light.
Niven did the only thing he knew to do. He grabbed at Cat who was nearest him and dragged her to the ground behind a stand of birch trees. She gave a small shriek that he stifled with his hand, and then dragged her by the collar away from the camp. Panic lent him strength and his blood thundered between his ears as he expected to feel a blade slip between his shoulders at any moment. Cat twisted out of his grasp and crawled and then ran with him.
“Oi, there!” came a call from behind, and Niven whimpered to hear the sounds of pursuit.
They ran for half a league at least, and the Bazira gave chase until one sent a bolt of ice at Cat and she went down with a cry. She clutched her leg and Niven bent to haul her up when their pursuers found them. Three Bazira, each with curved blades, ringed them.
Only three, Niven thought and would have laughed if he weren’t so frightened. May as well be a hundred.
“Drop the blades,” said the adherent, slender in all black and with darting eyes. He jerked his chin at another of the two without taking his eyes off Niven and Cat. “We’ll hold them. Bring some more boys, eh? Can’t take any chances. Not anymore.”
One of the three nodded and turned back to the camp.
“Help me, Niven,” Cat breathed and then her hand was a blur. She reached into her vest and hurled the knife she retrieved from it at the retreating Bazira. They all heard the sound of her blade tearing into flesh, and the man dropped to the ground soundlessly.
Without thinking Niven shouted, “Illuria!” and felt the healing glow infuse him. He threw himself front of Cat just as the adherent, screaming his own sacred word, sent three bolts of ice at her, while the other Bazira sliced at her his sword. The cold stabbed Niven’s gut and the sword sheared skin off his left arm to the bone. Drunk with pain, he pitched forward and the ground rose to meet his cheek with a rough welcome that rattled his brain. His eyes found the sword Cat had given him while above him the bounty hunter’s grunts of battle were mingled with that of the Bazira.
Niven whispered the sacred word again, and inhaled the healing as if it were air. Warmth melted the icy pain in his gut and his arm went numb under his blood-drenched sleeve. He reached his right arm out and closed his fingers around the sword handle. Booted feet shuffled around him, grit sprayed his face. Cat cursed and her voice was full of pain. Niven gripped the sword and rose to his feet.
The figures of Cat and the two Bazira danced in the flashing lightning. She slammed the pommel of her sword across one man’s face, and sent him sprawling. The other closed and opened his fist just as she whirled to face him.
“Krystak!”
Ice lanced from the palm of the adherent and into Cat’s thigh. She cried out, the ice crippling her as she turned to block the sword of the other man. Her attack was weak and the man’s sword slid down her own in his downward strike. Steel sang against steel. Niven watched it all as if they were under water, slow and murky in the dark. The Bazira flipped his wrist and Cat’s sword flew out of her grasp. Niven watched in horror as the second man hauled himself from the mud and came at Cat from behind.
Niven scrambled to his feet, gripped his sword, point down, in both hands and raised his arms. He flew at the adherent and sunk his sword between the man’s shoulder blades. The blade scraped bone and the sword was jarred from Niven’s hands; he hadn’t the strength to hold onto it.
The adherent arched his back and let loose a scream into the storm. The sword jutted from his back and wagged slightly from side to side. Blood burbled from his open mouth as he drowned slowly in it, until finally pitching forward face first. Bones crunched as his nose flattened and then he was still.
Niven fell to his knees again and watched with a stupefied fascination as Cat rolled away from the remaining Bazira’s killing blow that would have swept her head from her shoulders. She scrambled on all fours to where her sword had tumbled.
She’ll never find it, Niven thought dully and he was right. The Bazira caught Cat by the heel and gave her a yank. She hit the ground with a whump and kicked as the bigger man wrenched her ankle, flipping her over. He attacked and from where he knelt, all Niven could see was the big man’s body over hers. He whispered Illuria and felt the glow clear his head. He rose to his feet and raced at the struggling pair, not sure what he would do when he got there.
There was a sickening sound, as a knife puncturing a fat wineskin. I’m too late. Too late!
The Bazira lay over Cat, unmoving.
“Niven…help me.” Cat’s voice sounded tight and strained from under the big man. Niven gripped the Bazira by the collar and rolled him off her. One of her other throwing knives protruded from the man’s throat another in his gut; his face bore a final grimace of complete and utter surprise.
Cat got to her feet and Niven let out a cry as lightning lit up the night. Her face was a mask of rain-streaked blood
.
“It’s his,” she said, and wiped her face with her sleeve. The last of the orange coloring in her hair leaked off to stain her shirt. Her hair, though cropped messily, was thick and raven black. She looked him up and down. “You all right?”
“This isn’t good,” he muttered, indicating is left arm. “But I can heal it. You?”
“I could use some help.” She rubbed her thigh. “What you did…jumping in front of those men…”
“It’s the only thing I knew to do. It almost wasn’t enough.”
“But it was,” she said. She held his gaze a moment more and then chucked him on the shoulder before turning to retrieve her fallen sword.
“It wasn’t enough to save Ilior. Or Ori.” Niven shook his head. Water dripped from his hair. “I just…ran away.”
Cat sheathed her blade, wincing as her wounds protested. She limped over to the Bazira adherent. “The others were captured,” she said. “The three that chased us meant to take us alive. Ori and Ilior are alive too.”
“You sound so sure,” he said and shook his head. “Ilior would have fought them to the death.”
“Ilior will keep himself alive to find Selena,” Cat said. “And he doesn’t look so good lately, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Yes,” Niven said. “I noticed.”
She planted her boot on the back of the dead adherent’s skull and yanked the sword from his back. “This is yours, I believe,” she said with a wry smile. “Come on. Before others come looking.”
“Where should we go?” Niven whispered as they slipped away, southward.
“To find some cover. A place to rest and then you can heal us up.” Cat grimaced with each limping step. “Bastard iced my leg and twisted my ankle. After, we find that temple Ori told of. That’s where the others will be.”
Niven nodded. “Good. Yes. We will help them.” The words sounded right and true, and yet he could not shake the taint of fear off them.
I am no warrior, no matter how many swords I bury in the backs of my enemies.
He looked at Cat lurching grimly beside him, muttering curses.
But tonight I will be.
Darkpool
He fell again. This time, when he hit the ground, a heavy silence came with the flash of pain. It was so quiet. And dark. Sebastian closed his eyes and he kept them shut.
The silence resolved into a constant susurration of sound. A sssshhhh that blocked out all other noises, like a curtain. He tried to sink back into the quiet, but awareness kept him afloat. The susurration was rain. Heavy rain falling in thick sheets over dried leaves. It soaked him through and the cold bit him. Muffled voices were breaking through the curtain too, and he knew that pain as soon to follow.
Selena…
He heard Jude. He opened one eye. When lightning flashed, he could see the drops lancing down from the sky like silver needles, drenching Jude and the handful of Bazira who ringed her.
She barked an order and Sebastian felt rough hands under his arms. He was hauled to standing and the pain mauled him at his burnt and stabbed shoulder, at the back of his head. That was the worst. A heavy ache that seemed to burrow deeper into his skull with every passing moment. That pain scared him.
You’re dead already, Accora had told him. She may be right.
Jude appeared before his bleary vision. Her red hair was plastered to her face, like streaks of blood. “You can’t get up? The next time you fall, I’ll impale you.” The fire in her voice had dampened. She sounded nervous. Scared.
Good, Sebastian thought. That means Selena’s still free and that’s all that matters.
A stinging slap across his cheek brought fresh agony.
“You’ll forget how to smile,” she seethed. “Priest Bacchus will see to that.” She snapped at her men. “Take him. I want to get out of this bloody rain.”
The trek seemed interminable. Accora lay slung over the shoulder of some Bazira like a sack of grain, while two men dragged Sebastian behind. The storm did not abate but the rain ceased to fall in driving sheets, and instead pelted them with heavy drops.
After what seemed like hours, the path they walked began to slope downward. The island terrain rose before them and Sebastian presumed Bacchus’s temple was over the rise. The moon kept slipping in and out of cloud cover, and while it floated free for a few short moments, a yawning black hole cut into the hill became visible.
Like the library on Nanokar all over again. Bloody fuck.
They entered the burrow that looked cut into the soil by a very large worm. It was wide enough for three men to walk abreast. Sebastian was shoved inside and the party came to a halt in the impenetrable darkness. He was surrounded by Bazira; they jostled him, closed around him, stole his air. Jude struck flint to tinder and torchlight flared. Sebastian kept his gaze locked on the fire he could see over the shoulders of a dozen Bazira clerics, and tried not to think of the weight of the island that hung over him as it rained little spirals of dirt over his face. Old wooden beams that resembled the planking of a ship were all that separated them from the being buried alive. The beams creaked and groaned at the strain and Sebastian marveled that none of the Bazira paid their imminent doom any mind.
Finally, Jude called a halt. She opened a crude wooden door and one of the Bazira shoved Sebastian into a small room.
It smelled of death and pain, the soil crusted with old blood. A mist hung in the air and he felt as if he had walked into the jungles of Isle Saliz, but this humidity was icy cold and smelled like the sick tents he’d worked in during the war. Sebastian was forced to his knees by a rough hand on his wounded shoulder, and bound beside Accora. When their captors stepped aside, Sebastian’s eye went to the blood-stained slab in the center of the room. Leather straps lolled like tongues at the top and bottom to bind hands and feet, but Sebastian saw no other instruments of torture.
“He is the torture,” Accora murmured. With her head bowed, her silver hair falling in grimy strands over her face, she looked small and old. She looked up at him, and the zealous fire in her eyes was dulled by terror. “All that you have done, Bloody Bastian, is but a drop in Bacchus’s darkpool.”
“So it is,” Jude said, kneeling beside Sebastian. “Is it the darkpool that makes you shiver so? “ She observed him quietly for a moment in the dim torchlight. “Ah, I remember now, when we first met. Isle Kabak, it was. We tried to put you in a small cell and you didn’t much care for that. It feels like the entire island is resting just above your head, doesn’t it? It should,” she smiled at him, “because it is.”
Sebastian spat at her feet. “To the Deeps with you.”
She laughed and her laughter sounded out of place in this chamber that was haunted by pain. “What a silly weakness. Wouldn’t the singers laugh to know that the dastardly Bloody Bastian can’t abide the terrors of small rooms.”
Heavy, stomping footsteps could be heard drawing near. Jude’s laughter blew away like a wisp of smoke on the wind. “He comes,” she breathed.
Sebastian felt the cold first. An icy draft that preceded the Bazira Reverent; it enveloped him, emanated from him, and chilled the room instantly. His skin was colorless, like that of a corpse drained of blood, and stretched tight over bulging muscles. Greasy black hair hung to his chin and parted around his hawk-like nose.
Bacchus stood over Sebastian, a feral beast sniffing new prey. Accora curled beside him, as if trying to make herself small enough to disappear. The movement caught Bacchus’s attention.
“Did you miss me, mother?”
Accora lifted her head with halted, jerky movements, and when she spoke, her voice was like dry scattered leaves. “If I were your mother, I’d have drowned you in the sea as a babe and thanked the gods when your little corpse floated away.”
“Why did you seek me? You were free and now you are trapped all over again. You sent the Aluren to kill me, is that the way of it?”
“You are correct, great priest,” Jude said when Accora didn’t reply. “I found them on Is
le Saliz together—”
Bacchus’s hand shot out and his fingers curled around Jude’s throat. Her face darkened immediately and Sebastian thought it was to her credit that she did not struggle, but bore his casual wrath with as much dignity as one who is being strangled can muster. Jude’s face was purple and her eyes bulged before Bacchus let go and sent her sprawling to the hard-packed earth.
“Do not speak of your failures as if they were triumphs. The Aluren was on your ship,” he said, “and in your camp. I come down to take her and instead you give me a broken man and a withered husk.”
“I bring you a valuable tool in the assassin.” Jude gasped, and scrambled to her feet. “I bring you the old one who plots against you and Selena Koren is here, on the island. She cannot escape you.”
But Bacchus had already turned his dead-eyed stare on Sebastian.
“Who is this?”
“Sebastian Vaas.”
“I know this name,” Bacchus intoned. He cocked his enormous head at him, studied him.
“Aye, my priest,” Jude said, with more energy. “He is a great assassin. Or was.”
“He stinks of fear,” Bacchus said.
“Our Vicar wishes that you purge him of that fear and return him to what he once was. What he was meant to be, in service to the Shadow face.”
Bacchus nodded his enormous head. “This I can do.”
Sebastian didn’t want to think about what that meant and fear rattled his bones when it seemed he was about to find out.
A Bazira adherent entered from the door on the other side of the chamber and muttered a few words to Bacchus that Sebastian couldn’t hear. Jude couldn’t hear either; Sebastian lifted his head enough to see the woman stride over to join them with an annoyed, if apprehensive, look on her face. Her irritation vanished as she listened. Bacchus looked pleased as well—a terrible sign—and strode out of the chamber, the Bazira in tow.
Jude returned to Sebastian’s side. Her fingers were cold and hard as gripped his jaw and jerked his head up. The ache in the back of his head flared and subsided back to dullness. He looked at her. She was beautiful like a jungle cat—a beauty that invited you to stroke her sleek softness and find instead sharp claws and tearing teeth. Marks from Bacchus’s fingers stood out on the pale skin of her neck.
