by E. S. Bell
“Help me!” Cat screamed, though her words came out sounding pushed together for his hand on her jaw. “Fools! He’s Bloody Bastian!”
Sebastian didn’t look at Niven or Ori. He didn’t need to. He could feel their stillness, their shock.
The bounty hunter named Cat, also known as the Raven, writhed and screamed.
“He said you changed! Marcus Bailey… Grunt. He said you weren’t the same cold-blooded killer. Lies!” She turned her panicked eyes to Niven and Ori. “Watch now! Godsdamn you, if you won’t help me then bear witness. He’ll kill me and you’ll realize I was right all along. All along!”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Sebastian told her, “but the Storm is mine. I can’t allow anyone to think they can take her from me. Not ever. And I can’t have you shadowing me anymore. Your days as a bounty hunter are over.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said and then released her jaw as if he were letting her go. Instead, with one deft flick of his wrist, he slashed her left eye clean out.
Cat’s gaping mouth made a labored gasping sound, her one remaining eye staring wide, full of shock and pain and horror.
Sebastian had seen the same look in the eyes of so many of his victims as Bloody Bastian. Disgusted, he turned, tucked the cutlass into his belt, and walked down the beach without looking back. Cat sucked in a breath and then her screams chased after him in the thick, rain-choked air, accompanied by Niven’s whimpered mewlings of shock.
Above, the sun was rising, the sky lightened, but the storm lingered, gathering again for one last tempest.
Isle Calinda
The scream welled up from deep within Selena, from the place where the wound began and made everything cold, always cold so that she was astounded she hadn’t gone mad from it. But she had no voice left. She had nothing left. Her anguish was a physical pain and she turned her face up to the lightening sky; the moon was racing away from her recrimination, slipping behind gray clouds that were fat with rain, not to emerge again as the day dawned brighter. The sky tore open like Accora’s throat had, and the rain came down.
Selena collapsed onto the sand beside the dead woman, clenching and unclenching Accora’s sleeve. She sobbed hard, hoping to find an end to the pain, hoping that she could cry herself into numbness or hollowness, but more pain remained.
This pain…it will not end until the wound is gone.
The rain had soaked her through and she had begun to shiver. She sat up, her face and throat aching. Accora’s face bore a rictus in death and Selena closed the woman’s eyes with a trembling hand.
Every sinew in her aching, exhausted body told her to give up but she hauled herself to her feet. A wave of dizziness washed over her and a muted pain awoke in her right shoulder. She peered under her tunic that was stained maroon with her blood. Bacchus had nearly cleaved her arm off. She vaguely remembered healing herself as they battled, repairing the worst of the damage. She vaguely remembered the battle. Only flashes of fear and the weight of his blade against hers. Healing herself now would restore her memory, make her sharper, as well as make whole her arm, but she wondered if she had the strength for it after all she had endured. The cost of such healing comes after the battle, she remembered from her training on Isle Saliz.
It might kill me. Or put me to sleep. She recalled how tired she had been trying to talk to Julian. Julian! Where is he? Gods, let him live. Then she remembered, like the battle, in bits and pieces. He is not Julian. He is someone else. Someone terrible. Sebastian Vaas. They sing songs about his deeds… They sing songs…
Selena called for the healing power and wasn’t surprised to find she could only muster enough to keep the pain in her shoulder from waking completely.
It’s because I’m already so spent that I can’t muster more. Me. Not the Two-Faced God. The power comes from me.
The beast she called truth was awake now, its eyes wide open.
We are alone.
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
There was more. So much more she didn’t understand. So much more to learn…if she had the will to. The bitter thoughts kept her company as she trudged along the shore, not entirely sure where she was going. Ilior was nowhere to be seen. The waters churned and crashed on the beach, soaking her boots. The rain was a curtain. She hugged herself, cradling her injured arm, and shivering. The shivering made it ache but the ache was the only thing keeping her lucid.
She heard someone calling her name. Or it might have been the wind. But no, a figure was racing up the beach toward her. She thought to weave light but she was too weak. If the person was an enemy, she was dead. But it was Niven. Rainwater plastered his light hair down around his face and his eyes were wide with elation that she was alive, but he was desperate too. He shouted something at her; she saw his mouth move. She shivered as he pulled her down the beach, stumbling along until the word Ilior made itself distinct from the rest of Niven’s urgings. Then she found the strength to run.
The dawn had come but the storm howled like a night creature. Selena saw huddled shapes in the sand, gathered around another, larger shape. Cat was there, but she had black hair now. Ori sat beside her and Cat had her face buried against the Haru woman’s chest. Ori’s shirt was red with blood.
Sebastian was sitting off to the side, his head slumped down. He looked up as she approached and hope flared across his wan features. He was hurt; his face was ashen and bloody but he smiled at her. Faintly. Happiness that she was alive. She could see he wanted to go to her but he dared not. He was a stranger. And then Niven was showing her…
Ilior.
He was dying. Selena was as sure of this as she was of her own name. He writhed with illness, muscles twitching and drawing tight. His face was a grimace of agony. Selena fell to her knees beside him. The rain was relentless.
“Heal me,” she commanded Niven. “I need strength.”
“Your wound?” Niven asked tremulously.
Selena forced the words out between clenched teeth. “It remains.”
Sebastian’s face contorted with pain before he turned away.
Niven did as he was told and Selena felt the strange delirium of exhaustion and fear recede along with the pain in her shoulder. Her mind grew sharper as Niven tended her, and a new fear seized her as she regarded her friend.
It’s so very bad.
She shrugged off Niven’s touch and channeled her own healing into Ilior. It did nothing. Too late. She kept some for herself, grew more powerful, and tried again. Nothing. He had been in the darkpool and the darkpool’s poison knew no remedy.
Ilior opened his filmy eyes. He smiled when they found her.
“Selena…”
Her heart broke into pieces at the warmth in his rough voice that cradled her name so softly.
“Hear me,” he said. “Garand’ash means Guardian. That is you.” He swallowed with difficulty. “Kori’bi means protector. That is me.”
Selena nodded. She didn’t know what he meant but that he was making amends. For the rift that had sprung up between them. It all seemed so foolish now; she wanted to scream for the lost moments in which she doubted him.
For all the he has done for me…
“Vai’Ensai means ‘the siblings,’” he said. “Just like you thought.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry, Ilior. So sorry.”
Every part of her was cold and growing colder as she watched the light in Ilior’s eyes dim. He unclenched his fist and an iron pendant on a chain slipped out on the sand. She had never seen it before. Not in ten years but she suspected he carried it with him always. She regarded it with no surprise and let it lie where it fell.
“It bears your name,” Ilior said. “The stone and fire…it sent me to you. It gave you to me.”
Another scream welled up in her throat. A wail of anguish. A desire to kill someone or something and make it feel the pain so that hers was less. Instead she only nodd
ed again.
“You must… never go to the Cloud Isles,” Ilior said. “It is too dangerous…No matter what …anyone tells you. Stay away. Please. That is all I know, I swear it. That is my first oath. Do not…let me forsake…it.”
“I promise,” Selena whispered. She held his hand tightly, so tightly, as if she could keep him in his body. “Please, Ilior. Stay. I can’t survive this without you.”
“You can. You are strong. You are…so beautiful.” With effort, he laid his scaled hand to her cheek and she held it there for him. “I love you. That was my mistake. That was not part of my duty but it’s true anyway.” He smiled. “It’s true.”
“Ilior, please,” she whispered. “You are my other half. Please…Stay…”
He tried to speak but could not. He only smiled at her words. His hand fell from her cheek and slumped into the sand beside the pendant. He did not stay.
For long moments, Selena heard only the whistle of her breath, in and out. She was finally numb. She couldn’t even shiver, but knelt in the sand beside Ilior, staring at nothing, at the sand. At a tuft of grass.
A hand touched her arm. She looked around. Niven. Tears streamed from his eyes as he pressed the iron pendant into her hand. She stared dumbly down at it, and then at Ilior again.
Ten years…
She cut off the thought before it could undo her.
Beneath her was the sand of Calinda. The water pounded the shore behind her and the water was filled with the dead. Some washed up on the beach, driven by the storm. Dead. Like Ilior. Like Accora. Like the Bazira they had killed this night. Like the Zak’reth who had fought for her this night and the Zak’reth she had killed a decade ago. The villagers were here too. Bacchus had turned their grave into his temple and they were restless. This place, Calinda, was the end.
Yes, an end…
Selena rose to her feet and looked around at her companions. Tired, wounded, scared. They looked at her for what to do next. Sebastian had risen to his feet but he looked as though a strong wind would topple him down. He looked at her, his face no longer expressionless but alive with fear for her and a desperate need for her mercy.
“Heal him,” she commanded someone—Niven or Ori—but no one moved. Niven was too afraid and Ori was spent.
Selena looked at Sebastian. He was different now. Before Calinda, he was Julian, the man she loved. Calinda turned him into Sebastian Vaas. The island had killed her love too. She marched across the sand, her booted feet sinking into the dampness, until she was standing before him.
Hope burned in his eyes. “Selena…”
“There are skiffs yon,” she said, pointing with her chin at the small docks where the Bazira had left their boats.
“Aye,” Sebastian said, hope burning in his gray-green eyes.
“We need you to row the boat,” she said coldly.
His hope died. She healed him swiftly. But only enough.
I must conserve my strength. An end…
She watched as the deathly pallor left Sebastian’s skin and she felt relief as the pain of a dozen wounds left him. An ugly open wound on his cheek closed, restoring his beauty.
A false beauty, she thought, no deeper than the skin I healed. Another, tiny voice told her there was more to him than that but she silenced it. She let his silent pleas go unanswered and turned away.
She got them going, marching them to the makeshift dock.
“Everyone into the boat,” she commanded.
“I was told the Vai’Ensai believe a …a body should be buried,” Ori said gently, still holding Cat tightly. “To keep the soul from wandering.”
Selena braced herself to look once again at Ilior’s dead body.
“He will not wander,” Selena said, her voice sounding as though it were coming from leagues away. From somewhere cold and barren. “I will bury him,” she said. “I will bury them all.”
The group climbed into the skiff without speaking; they looked at her now fearfully, none dared to touch her or talk to her further. Sebastian took up the oars.
“Svoz?” Selena asked.
“Lost on Saliz,” Sebastian replied. “Accora kept him.”
Selena nodded and looked away when he tried to hold her gaze. She watched as Isle Calinda receded. Ilior’s body was a dark shape on the sand. Other shapes, other bodies, had washed up near him. The tide was coming in.
Selena’s lips curled. Indeed, the tide is coming in.
The Black Storm was closer than they had left it.
All were aboard and the skiff was stowed. Ori took Cat below. Cat was wounded somehow but the small woman flitted in and then out of Selena’s thoughts. Unimportant. The crew gathered around, smiling their pleasure at their return. Marcus Bailey beamed beneath his beard to see her and Sebastian, but the smile faded quickly. Whistle bounded up to Selena, happiness writ all over his face. He stopped short when he saw her and backed away. Somewhere, she felt bad for frightening him, but it wasn’t important. She turned to Sebastian.
“Take us another league out and no further.”
“Selena,” he said slowly. “What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done.” She fixed him a cold stare. “Do it.”
He looked about to protest but then nodded and went to do her bidding. Selena went to the starboard rail, as the ship was perpendicular to Isle Calinda. Around her, orders were shouted, sails unfurled, and soon the Black Storm was parallel to the island as the ship began to sail away on a westerly wind, plowing a path through the dead. Then more orders and the sails were furled again and the ship drifted.
Selena climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck. The crew watched her go; she passed Niven who might’ve spoken to her but she couldn’t hear him. She climbed the ladder. Sebastian was at the helm, watching her, but he made no move to stop her.
It will likely kill me.
Likely. She was exhausted to the point of collapse and the grief of her open wound, of Ilior’s death…it hounded her just outside the periphery of the edge, like a caged animal eager to maul its prey.
Death would be a relief, she thought idly. If I survive, that pain…it will be there. Waiting for me. This is the end.
The sun was struggling above the horizon and storm clouds spilled an unending torrent of rain. They hovered over Isle Calinda and wept for the doomed island.
Selena raised her arms. She saw only Calinda, a tiny shape huddled against an orange and gray horizon, sunlit enough so that her target could not escape. The words were on her lips but she did not need to utter them. She felt the power well up from within her. From behind, footsteps on the deck. Voices shouting. But none dared to touch her.
The seas began to boil.
She thrust her arms higher; her shoulder screamed and she lent her voice to the rising wind. The waters roiled, swells rocked the ship but passed under it, heading toward Calinda.
More, more, more…
Selena called more power, more magic, and the waves began to grow. The ship was tossed but she kept her footing, concentrated on directing the water to do her bidding.
The seas obeyed.
Wave after wave battered the island but it wasn’t enough. Selena summoned more power and with another scream, thrust her arms to the sky.
A great wall of water rose in front of the Black Storm, rising up until its crest was lost to the sky above. Selena felt her body bend and stretch and twist, trying to contain the power. Pain wracked her, the hole in her chest turned her every sinew to ice. Yet she held on. Her teeth clenched, her head pounded with the strain, her arms felt as though they were tearing from her sockets as she thrust the water up ever higher. And when she could hold it no more, when the very seas around them seemed shallow as the water fed her wave, she thrust her arms forward with a final scream that clawed its way out of her throat. She fell to her hands and knees but could not let go yet, could not let the darkness or death take her. She had to see. She had to watch Calinda die.
She crawled to the rail and hauled herself up
and watched as the wall of water raced away from the ship, toward Calinda. A tidal wave that made the waters she sent crashing into the island ten years ago look like a child’s splash. She was dimly aware that the others were at the rail beside her, stupefied, but she could only watch her creation.
Bodies of the dead were caught up in its swell; she could see them in the sunlight, trapped in the wall of water and carried toward the island.
Yes, she thought. Make it clean. Make it stop.
And then the tidal wave swept upward, rising higher, impossibly high, and then it crashed down on Isle Calinda.
The roar was deafening, human-sounding; like hundreds of voices crying out in their final throes. White water crashed and roiled in a huge turmoil of spray that stretched for a league and a half, obscuring the island in foam and churning water. It was as if the sea were devouring Calinda, and Selena found the strength to nod with satisfaction. She was slipping down, but she held on long enough to watch as the seas calmed and the roar—the cries of the dead, she imagined—were finally silenced. The waters were clean, no dead could be seen floating among the remaining small swells. The seas settled.
Isle Calinda was gone.
Selena heard the gasps around her, but they were beyond her now.
It’s over. It’s all over…
She let go the railing and fell bonelessly into a heap. There was nothing left in her and she closed her eyes and let the blackness take her away, down, down, into the Deeps where the dead of Isle Calinda lay. Where they rested. Where Ilior rested. She smiled faintly.
I’m coming, my friend. I’m coming.
And his deep, rumbling voice, full of love and free of pain, answered.
Not yet.
The night was thick and black as the bulbous moon hid behind storm clouds. The jungle teemed, as if biding its time when the embers would finally burn out and it could reclaim the land stolen from it so many years ago.
Behind the melting shell of the keep came a rattle and then a small explosion of glass and burnt timber. A plume of oily smoke rose from the ruins, and a deafening roar silenced the jungle’s cacophony for a few brief moments.