Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3)

"Thank you," I murmured, tears pricking my eyes. It was not enough, not enough by a long sight, but more than I could have asked. "I am grateful, my lord."

"Well." Lord Amaury smiled and withdrew his hand. " 'Tis little enough, when all is said and done. But if anyone's going to emerge alive from the heart of darkness, it's you and that half-mad Cassiline."

I swallowed. "We will try, my lord."

And then we were on our own.

FORTY-ONE

A DRUJANI border patrol found us the first evening.It was twilight, just shy of nightfall, and we had made our en campment in a shallow gully out of the wind. Doubtless they were drawn by the light of our campfire. Tizrav had assured us it was folly to think we could cross Drujan in stealth. Better to allow them to find us, he said; we would die quickly, or not at all.

There were five of them, and they melted out of the shadows like apparitions, silent men on tough, shaggy ponies, armed with short, curving horsemen's bows. Joscelin was on his feet the instant they appeared, placing himself between me and the Drujani. Firelight glinted red along his vambraces, his crossed daggers. I wondered if he could block five arrows fired at once. I didn't think so.

"The wolves of Angra Mainyu are mighty hunters!" Tizrav greeted them in Old Persian. "Will you share our fire? We have beer," he added, hefting a skin.

"Why do you enter Drujan?" The leader lowered his bow a frac tion. The others did not.

"Why?" Tizrav grinned. "This fine D'Angeline lordling has got himself in trouble and finds he has nowhere left to flee. Go and see, if you do not believe me. The guard at Demseen Fort has doubled and the lady's angry kinsmen are waiting. But my lordling here would sooner give her to the Mahrkagir if he will accept his sword in service."

The Drujani conversed among themselves in low tones, and my ear for Old Persian was not yet keen enough to decipher what they said. One of them laughed and rode forward. "Why should we believe you, Akkadian lick-spittle?" he asked, stroking Tizrav's cheek with the point of a nocked arrow. "Why should we ride to the border, when there is sport to be had here?”

To his credit, Tizrav did not flinch, even when the arrow's point scraped against his leather eyepatch. "My ancestors ranged these moun tains when the House of Ur cowered in the deserts of the Umaiyyat. Do you disdain me for the sake of a line drawn on a map, son of darkness?"

Another of the Drujani spoke from the shadows beyond our campfire. I could not make out his face, only that he wore a girdle of bones about his waist, human finger-bones. Raising one hand, he pointed at me.

"Stand aside," Tizrav muttered urgently to Joscelin. "Stand aside!"

He paused, and then did, offering a sweeping Cassiline bow to the Drujani. Tizrav approached me where I knelt beside fire.

"Forgive me," Tizrav said under his breath, yanking back my veil.

The firelight was brighter without the sheer panel of silk before my eyes and I blinked against it, gazing up at the Drujani. Two of the riders startled; one laughed. The one who had pointed fingered his girdle of bones, and a slow smile spread across the face of the leader. It was not a pleasant smile.

"She is for the Mahrkagir?" he asked.

"I have sworn it." It was Joscelin who spoke in crude Persian, his voice raw.

The Drujani with the finger-bones murmured to his leader, who listened intently and nodded. The girded one, I thought, must be some manner of novice, an apprentice-priest. "The embers of despair gutter in your spirit, lordling," the leader said to Joscelin. "Is it as the goat- thief says? Are you willing to swear your sword unto darkness?"

I bit my tongue, longing to translate for him, but Joscelin under stood well enough. The skin was tight over his high cheekbones. "Drujan died and lives. I am dead to my family. If I may live again in the Mahrkagir's service, his sword is mine." There was genuine anguish in the words. How much truth? My heart bled to wonder. I could not begin to reckon the price of what I'd asked of him.

It was enough to convince the apprentice-priest.

"Men will embrace anything to live," he said in a young, hard voice. "Even darkness. Even death. What of the woman?"

"You see her." Joscelin gestured at me. "As faithless as she is beautiful, a servant of our goddess of— " the word twisted in his mouth, "—whores."

It was the Habiru word he used, but close enough, it seemed. The Drujani conferred and settled on a translation, and the apprentice-priest laughed, high and breathless, before whispering to the leader.

Who smiled his unpleasant smile. "The Mahrkagir will be pleased," he said, putting up his bow. "You see, his mother was a whore." He jerked his chin at Tizrav. "We will believe you, lick-spittle, and ride to Demseen Fort to count the guards. If you are lying, we will find you and have much sport. If you are not ..." He smiled again. "Well, she may pray that you were."

And with that, they were gone, melding into the darkness as swiftly as they'd appeared, only the faint rattle of a pebble dislodge by a pony's hoof marking their passage.

Tizrav exhaled with relief and picked up the skin of beer with both hands, drinking deep.

"Is it over?" I asked him.

"No." He lowered the skin and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "But it's begun, and we are still alive."

We were four more days in the mountains, and saw no further signs of human inhabitants; birds of prey, mainly, circling high above the crags, and on the ground, hares and sometimes martens, quick and darting. It was cold, though not so cold that the streams had frozen. Where we could not find water, we melted snow scooped from deep crevices. In the valleys, our horses pawed the hard turf and cropped at yellow grass, dead and frost-bitten, but nourishing nonetheless. Tizrav set snares in the evenings, catching hares when he might, and with these we supplemented our stores of dried foods.

On the journey, we spoke seldom. I rode without complaining, feeling I had no right. Tizrav, swathed in layers of felted wool, was scarce visible, his chin tucked into his chest, unlovely visage peering out beneath his thick woolen hat. Disdaining the cold, Joscelin rode bare-headed and silent, his mouth set in an implacable line.

"Did you mean it?" I finally asked him, two nights after the Drujani had come.

"What?" His tone was short.

"What you said." I hesitated. "That I was as faithless as I am beautiful."

"Ah," he said flatly. "That." He looked at me for a moment without speaking. "Mayhap. Phèdre . . . what you ask of me—I do not know if I can do it. All I can do is seek a way, and the way is cruel."

Would that I did not understand; but I did. "What have I done to us?" I whispered.

"I don't know." Bowing his head, Joscelin fiddled with a stiff buckle on his dagger-belt. "Do you want to turn back?"

I did. With all my heart, I did. "No," I said.

He nodded without looking up. "Then do not ask me questions I cannot answer. I am Cassiel's priest, and I have broken all his vows but one. You ask me to ride into the mouth of hell to keep it. I am doing what I can. Be satisfied, or be silent."

So it went between us.

On the fifth day, we entered the plains of Drujan. Mayhap it is a more welcoming place in summer; I cannot say. If it was less harsh than the mountains, it was more dire, for here people lived and labored, and here we saw the shadow under which they made their existence. The land is arable and there were villages, at the center of grain-fields and fit pasturage for sheep and goats.

We were not welcome there.

I saw it, on the faces of the villagers as we rode past, travelling now on the old roads, crumbling and still passable, that had once formed part of the mighty empire of Persis. They stared at us with hatred, and I did not even know why. In one village—it had a name, I suppose, but Tizrav did not know it—a woman stood beside the road, clutching her listless child in her arms, and watched us with hungry eyes, despair and contempt in her sunken gaze.

Too many fields lay fallow, dead and grey, naught of winter's doing.

Too many flocks struggled, slat-ribbed and gaunt, with staring coats.

"What has happened here?" I asked Tizrav, my voice shaking. "How can a kingdom that makes Khebbel-im-Akkad itself tremble come to such an impasse?"

The Persian shrugged. "You wished to come to Drujan, lady; the kingdom that died and lives. Behold, if you will, life-in-death."

I did not like it. Turn back, I thought; the words were on my lips, near to being spoken with every stride our mounts took. I did not utter it. I thought of that moment in Prince Sinaddan's hall instead, the slow, dreadful withdrawal of Elua's presence, and the emptiness that awaited. Farewell. And I gazed at their bitter, resentful faces, the starving Drujani, until my heart ached within me. They had not chosen this, I thought. What commoner ever does? Caught between the hammer of warfare and the anvil of survival, they endure; endure, and hate, seeing us ride of our own volition unto hell, on our well-fed horses with gold jangling at our bits, clad in silks and fur.

There were no fires, either. Jahanadar, the Land of Fires, lay sullen and bleak.

"Tell me of the faith of your forefathers," I asked Tizrav one night as we made camp.

He looked at me, his single eye like a cold ember. "My lady wishes to know?"

"I do," I said. "Truly, son of Tizmaht, I do."

He nodded, and swallowed, and looked away, then busied himself building up our campfire until it roared like a pyre, sending showers of sparks into the cold night air. "You see?" he asked quietly, watching the sparks ascend. "In fire there is light, warmth . . . life. It is Truth. Ahura Mazda is all these things; Lord of Light, the Truth." His mouth curved in a deprecating smile. "Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. It is the trifold way taught to me in secret by my father, and his father's father before him. And the fire ... ah, the fire is proof, a living, burning flame set before us to purify the Lie."