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

And we can bear to hear it now, I thought; not the whole truth, no, but Kaneka's truth, the one she will carry to sustain her, that she will weave into legend and one day her grandchildren will tell to their children, holding up an ancient Drujani war-axe and saying, this was hers, and this was her story.

If it is so, mayhap we can learn to endure our own.

This was her land, and these were her people. I envied her that. Her story was done, and I prayed for her sake it was so. Of a surety, she had earned it. Still, mine continued. A sacrifice had been made, and I had allowed another to take my place. I had promised to walk the Lungo Drom, the longest road, for Hyacinthe's sake. The end of his story was yet unwritten. I prayed it would find an ending half as meet, in debts forgiven and joyous reunion.

I prayed it would end in love. I prayed we could come home, all of us.

In the morning, we departed for Saba. Kaneka held me hard and I returned her embrace, feeling her warm and solid presence. "Take care of yourself, little one," she whispered. "Take care of them all. May your strange gods watch over your every step."

I nodded and swallowed. She had been a good friend, and I was sorry to be leaving her. "And you, Fedabin. I think, after last night, you have a long life as the storyteller of Debeho ahead of you."

"It may be so." Kaneka released me and grinned. "It may be so!"

Onward we rode, turning back in the saddle to wave a half-dozen final farewells. At length, the village faded into the landscape, the mud huts indistinguishable from the tawny plains. Once again, we were on our way.

On the second day, we reentered the mountains, climbing treach erously narrow trails in single file, ascending to dizzying heights with the valley spread below us like a green carpet, deceptively smooth. Our guides Tifari Amu and Bizan relaxed in the mountains, chatting ami cably back and forth as they rode. Joscelin too was at his ease, at home in the highlands of Jebe-Barkal as in his own Siovale, and Imriel—I had forgotten that he had been reared in the heights. I watched him scrambling about the crags in the evenings, gathering deadfalls for the fire, agile as a mountain goat.

A lost prince raised in secret by the priesthood of Elua, innocent of his origins. That had been his mother's plan. Watching him in the mountains, I nearly wished it had been so. Too late, now. The goat herd prince was not to be.

Once, a party of Tigrati tribesmen came upon us. For a few minutes, our welcome was uncertain. Hands hovered over swords, and all of us eyed one another. I held my arm out, extended as Tifari had taught us, revealing the Ras' passage-token, and Imriel did the same. Joscelin was tense, his hands crossed low over his daggers; he had not fought since his injury. Then one of the men grinned and made a jest, and Bizan replied in kind, and all was well. Give every courtesy, and never reveal fear. We made camp together that evening and shared our goods in a common pot.

I heard the "mountain-talkers" for the first time that night, the speaking drums that Audine Davul's father had studied. The hunters carried a smaller version, a short length of log hollowed and polished, which their percussionist beat on with mallets. It made a sharp, staccato sound, carrying over the highlands in a series of complex rhythms. After a time, we heard the great drums of their distant village boom in answer.

"We will pass undisturbed," Tifari Amu said in satisfaction. "The news has been spread." And it must have been so, for we encountered no one else in the highlands.

After a week, we began to descend once more, following a series of plateaus to rejoin the river. Wildlife abounded in these regions. I cannot even begin to count the species we saw. Antelope and gazelles were plentiful, graceful creatures with russet hides and spiraling, pronged horns. They had a trick of springing straight into the air with all four feet off the ground when startled. Bizan and Tifari Amu hunted them on horseback, with spears. It was an astonishing thing to see the swift Umaiyyati horses keep pace with the fleet beasts, swerving and doubling.

There were camelopards, too, which is another beast I would not have credited without seeing it. They are immensely tall and angular, with legs like knobbled stilts and necks that stretch to the treetops, pale hides covered with a crazed pattern of darker blotches. For all their size, they are gentle creatures and merely watched us pass, wondering.

Of a surety, there were other, less benign inhabitants. At night we heard the roar of lions, a fearsome sound. When we could, we would cut acacia branches, dense with sharp, hooked thorns, and assemble a makeshift stockade around our campsite, for beasts of prey would come for our horses if they dared. There were sharp-faced jackals like great black foxes, and hyenas, the carrion-eaters, with their ungainly bodies and spotted hides. After a successful hunt, one could always hear them, the eerie barking laughter ringing out in the night as they fought over the bones, which they cracked in their strong jaws.

There were scavenger birds, too; the sky would darken with them when Bizan and Tifari made a kill . . . buzzards, and vultures with their vast wingspans and bare necks, and strangest of all, great storks that flew with their long legs trailing and landed to pick their way through the throng of bird-life with long, pointed beaks.

'Twas a beautiful land, that much I will own. I could understand why Audine Davul's father had loved it. I could understand, too, why she longed for home. For all the wonders of Jebe-Barkal—and I am glad, to this day, that I have seen a herd of oliphaunts bathing in the river at sundown—I could not help but think that the lavender must be in full bloom in Terre d'Ange, perfuming the air, grapes beginning to ripen on the vine.

Still, there were far worse places we could be.

I knew. We had been there.

And whether it had been madness to bring him or no, Imriel thrived on the journey. Although the loose Jebean burnoose kept off the worst intensity of the sun, the pallor of the zenana had given way to healthy color. He had lost the skulking wariness I had first known, and the shadows under his eyes were gone. Although he was far from sturdy, his bones no longer seemed quite so frail and vulnerable beneath his skin, and I swear, he'd grown a full inch since we left Daršanga.

"He must be eleven, you know," Joscelin remarked one evening, watching Imriel lay tinder and branches for the campfire in accordance with Bizan's careful instruction.

"Eleven!" It startled me somehow; his age was fixed, in my mind, at ten.

"Do you remember, he was born in the spring? Six months old, when he vanished in fall." From the Little Court of La Serenissima, he meant; he'd been part of that search. "Somewhere between Drujan and here, he would have turned eleven."

"You're right," I said.

Joscelin watched him without speaking for a time. "He'll hate it at court," he said eventually. "They'll watch him like a hawk, every min ute of every day, waiting for him to turn into his mother."

"Ysandre won't allow it," I protested.

He gave me a deep look. "Her own cousin tried to have him killed. Elua knows whether or not Barquiel was behind it. What's Ysandre going to do? Bring back the Cassiline Brothers, assign him as someone's ward?"

"If she has to."

"She won't like it." He shook his head. "Not after La Serenissima. And that won't stop the talk. Nothing can stop the talk. He's already pulled one of Melisande's own tricks, eluding Lord Amaury like that."

"He didn't know," I said softly.

"You think that will matter where gossip is concerned?"

I looked away. "No."

"It will make him hard," Joscelin murmured. "I hate to see it, that's all."

"I know." I watched Imriel crouch beside the firepit, coaxing a spark from Bizan's flint striker and blowing softly on a nest of dried grasses at the heart of his arrangement. "Well, we've a long way to go yet, and a longer way back."

"Not as long as it was," Joscelin said. "Not nearly so long as it was."

And I was not sure, then, if we spoke of the journey or somewhat else.

SEVENTY

WE OWED our respite to the rhinoceros.'Tis passing strange, to owe so much to such a monstrous beast; and yet it is true. We were yet in sight of the river when the creature burst through the dense underbrush of the acacias, the hooked thorns troubling its thick hide not at all. I sat my horse stock-still, feeling it tremble beneath me, staring at the looming head like the prow of a warship, small, maddened eyes set on either side of that great central horn. All I could think of was the Black Boar of the Cullach Gorrym, and how it had emerged from the wood to lead Drustan's troops to victory in Alba. I'd thought that was big.

Then Tifari Amu shouted, and Bizan, and both of them wheeled their horses in opposite directions, seeking to draw the beast off. Having none of it, it lowered its head and charged, swerving at the last minute to miss me, scattering our bearers and our donkey-train, scattering all of us. It was fast, faster than one would imagine, and its passage shook the very earth. I heard cries of dismay and a yell of pain as someone was entangled in the thorns.

"Joscelin!"

Like in Daršanga, Imriel's voice, high and true, rose above the shouting and the drumming of mighty hooves. I saw, and breathed a curse. Joscelin had dismounted and stood between me and the beast as it made its turn, rounding. His sword gleamed, angled in his two-handed grip, and he stood light on his feet, waiting.

The rhinoceros charged.

I did not see, in truth, exactly what happened, for in that instant I dug my heels into my mount's flanks and fought him as he flung up his head in terror, sawing at the reins and wrestling him into a sideways dancing step. I know only that Joscelin whirled out of the way, turning like an Eisandine tauriere, both arms extended and the tip of his sword scoring a long gash down the length of the creature's leathern hide.

I will do it, I thought, still fighting my mount and seeing the rhi noceros gather itself, lowering its head, shoulders rising like a hummock on the sea, seeking its opponent. Joscelin moved to intercept it, graceful and sure, Tifari and Bizan returning at full tilt, too far away, the wind snatching their cries from their open mouths. Elua help me, but I will do it, I will ride between him and that monster, if I have to kill my horse and myself.