Kushiel's Chosen

"No!"

A deep Caerdicci voice, bellowing rage; not Joscelin, no. Another fiery streak etched the night and a thud sounded, wood on flesh. Malvio staggered away from me in a shower of red sparks. The spear fell, clattering harmlessly off my back and onto the stones.

It was my guard Tito.

I pushed myself to my feet in time to see my rescuer's second blow as Tito swung the beam-sized torch at the retreating Malvio. It struck him on the side of the head, with another flurry of sparks and a crunching sound there was no mistaking. Malvio dropped like a stone, and did not move. Unlike Fabron, he would not rise again.

Tito turned back toward me, a profound look of sorrow on his simple, homely face.

'Tito," I whispered as he took one step toward me, staring past him with horror at the descending pursuit. "Ah, no!"

It was the prisoners, wild and maddened, who surged after him, who brought the battle to the cliff. I have never known, to this day, why they did it; whether they pursued him as a hated guard or whether they did it out of some demented gratitude, thinking he threatened me, who had freed them. With spears and axe, they brought him to bay and he stood his ground like a colossus, roaring, carving a half-circle of space before him with great swings of his blazing torch.

"Stop it!" I shouted frantically, trapped behind him. "Let him be!"

To no avail. And then the now-disorganized mob of the guard fell upon them from behind, the warden running beside them, wading into the mix and shoving with his shield, cursing and giving orders no one heeded, and to the rear of it all, Joscelin, half-forgotten, who had acquired a spear which he wielded like a quarterstaff, with eye-blurring speed, forging an alley up the middle.

Close, so close.

I saw one prisoner fall, stabbed from behind. I saw another whirl away screaming, ragged garments aflame, rolling on the ground and beating at himself. I saw Joscelin, grim-faced, stun one guard with a blow to the helmet, reversing the spear and slicing the man's unprotected throat, never stopping, but moving still, plunging onward.

It was all very much like a dream.

And then I saw the warden, calm and implacable, draw one of the guards out of the melee, moving to the right of my giant defender, and pointing.

At me.

I saw the guard, faceless in the shadow of his helmet, draw back his short spear and cock his arm to throw, the point aimed straight and sure for my heart. And I knew I was trapped, with nowhere to go. Behind me, naught but the crumbling edge of the cliff. Around me, naught but the sorrowing wind. Joscelin's face, turning, seeing too late, a cry of despair shaping his lips. Between us, Tito, massive in the torch-cast shadows, turning slow and ponderous as a mountain.

The guard, his arm cocked; the warden, speaking one word.

A spear aimed at my heart.

He threw.

Tis passing strange, how such moments are etched indelibly in memory. Even now, if I close my eyes and listen to the ocean pound the shore, I can see it unfold in agonizing slowness. Joscelin, moving too slow, too late, though guards fell away from him like wind-blown chaff. The concentration of the spear-thrower, weight shifting onto his forward foot as he threw, the graceful arc of his casting arm and his open hand as he made his release, fingers outspread. The hard, flat line of the thrown spear, headed for my heart.

And Tito, lunging to place himself in its path, swinging his torch like a club.

I cried out, strove to grasp him by one massive arm, dragging him out of the way; too late. Seeking to bat the spear from its flight, he missed. The spear struck him full-force, piercing the gap in his armor below the arm hole. A vast gap, on so large a man. It was the impact that staggered him, sent him crashing into me, bearing us both backward to the verge of the cliff, the burning torch still clutched in his loosening hand.

It was his dying weight that bore me over the edge.

I fell.

Through wind and howling darkness, I fell unendingly toward the cauldron of the sea, and above me in the night, I saw the torch, plunging after me like a shooting star.

Until I hit, and saw no more.

FORTY-EIGHT

It came as a shock that I was still alive.

The blow of landing had driven all the air from my lungs. I could feel naught of my limbs, and knew neither up nor down; all was blackness, and only the sensation of air on my face told me I had surfaced.

Alive.

My chest heaved futilely as I struggled to draw breath, and waves churned all about me. One broke over my head, driving me downward. I felt water fill my mouth, and knew I should cease my efforts to breathe; yet I could not. A great pressure, and somewhere, distantly, a sharp pain. Were my eyes open or closed? I could not tell.

There had been air; air! I willed my legs to move, uncertain whether or not they obeyed, uncertain whether I drove myself upward or deeper down. All was turmoil, and the sea roared in my ears.

I thought myself drowned, and then I felt it again; air, upon my face, laced with salt-stinging spray. And the stricture about my chest gave way, and I drew in a raw, gasping breath. As much as it burned, it was sweet. I flailed my arms, feeling the water's resistance, thinking, for a second, I would survive.

And then the sea mocked my folly, surging over my head, the indrawn susurrus of breakers at the foot of La Dolorosa drawing me down, down. Every which way waves broke and withdrew against the jagged rocks of the black isle, forming a maelstrom. 'Twas better to have thought myself dead; alive, and knowing it, I fought desperately against the churning waters. The immersed folds of my woolen prison dress twined my limbs like a shroud, heavy with water, dragging at me like a sea anchor.

So do they bury the dead, in the deeps.

A breath; one breath. My lungs ached to expel it, to suck in another. I clenched my teeth against the urge, feeling the pressure of the sea. Underwater. A simple desire, to breathe. One does it a thousand times an hour, never thinking. There is life, not death, in breathing.

But it is death underwater.

My chest began to jerk involuntarily with the effort of holding in air. I splayed out my hands, reaching, finding nothing, beating futilely, legs kicking. The roiling water pulled mercilessly at me, tugging me this way and that, ever deeper. The raging sound of the sea was dreadful, here in the pounding, elemental heart of Asherat's grief. At a distance, it could madden. Here, in the heart, it would kill.

They knew, the ancient Hellenes, that to behold certain things was death.

This was one of them.

I sank, deeper and deeper, wound in my swirling woolen shroud. And below the raging waves, below the howling anger, I found the still, silent core of grief. Here, in the blackest depths, all was nothing. Only unbearable pressure, and the quiet certainty of death. I could bear no longer the aching in my lungs and released my last, precious breath, hearing it trail away from me in a series of bubbles, one last offense wrought by mortal flesh against the sacred depths of Eshmun's cenotaph, marker for a slain deity, a beloved son.

All the life remaining in my body could be measured in a span of failing heartbeats. I yearned for air as I had yearned for naught else in my life; not Delaunay's approval, nor Hyacinthe's company, nor Ysandre's regard, nor Joscelin's love, no, not even Melisande's kiss. My body burned for it, chest heaving, muscles quivering. In a second, ten seconds, I would give in to it. I would open my mouth and inhale deeply; not air, but rushing water, filling my lungs. It would be the end, the final weight, never to rise again.

Elua, I prayed in the final seconds remaining to me, Blessed Elua, forgive me, for I have failed you and all those you love! Naamah, take pity on me, for I have served you well and true. Ah, Kushiel, harshest of masters, have mercy on your chosen. All you have asked me, I have done; forgive me that it was not enough.

My prayers fell unanswered. Not even the cruel beating of Kushiel's bronze-winged presence sounded in my ears, but only the thready pulse of my failing heart, blood beating in my ears, bidding a faint farewell. I was far away, too far from the land of my birth, for the gods of Terre d'Ange to hear, too far.

I knew true terror then, open eyes bleeding salt tears into an ocean of grief. To die, alone and forsaken! It is the worst fate a D'Angeline can face. I had come to the scantest raw end of my courage, and like a child, reached for the only solace I could, releasing will and volition to place my fate in another's hands.

Asherat, I prayed silently, mouth shaping the words against the pressing waters, Asherat-of-the-Sea, forgive me. For the death of your son Eshmun, I am sorry; I have heard your grief and shared it. Only spare my life, and I swear to you, I will do you honor; on the name of Blessed Elua, your bastard-gotten son, I vow I will return to La Serenissima and cleanse your temple of those who turn your worship to their own ends.

I, Phèdre nó Delaunay, swear it.

I swear it.

Was there an answer? I cannot say in certainty, not being bred to the worship of Asherat-of-the-Sea. I was faint and delirious, stunned by the fall and bereft of air, but this much I know to be true. As the last vestiges of control gave way in my beleaguered body, my mouth opening and closing helplessly against an influx of seawater, seeping past my choking throat into my lungs, I heard something; a sound, a movement. A deep, steady thrumming filled the waters, the sound of a strong current, bent around the rocks of La Dolorosa.

A current, a strong current.

The currents around La Dolorosa are strong and uncertain ...

So the Captain of the Darielle had said; so it was. Deep, deep beneath the surface of the waves, a powerful current flowed, and it clasped me like a pair of arms, drawing me away from the isle.

Away, and up.

My head broke the surface of the water and I drew in one ragged, whooping gasp of air, expelled it choking, flailing my arms, not realizing in my frantic efforts that the sea in which I had surfaced was calm, calm and still, save for the smooth, steady pull of the current. 'Twas all I could do to breathe, coughing up seawater and feeling it trickle, bitter and warm, down my chin. My lungs burned, my stomach burned, and somewhere in the vicinity of my ribs, a sharp pain reestablished itself. I churned my legs, struggling to keep myself afloat, and realized I truly was alive, alive and breathing.

A solid object bumped at my arm, making me start and thrash at the water, and my reaching fingers encountered wood, sea-sodden and slimy to the touch, but solid and floating, a great beam-sized length of it, one end sticky with pitch.

Tito's torch, caught in the same current.

"Thank you," I whispered hoarsely, my throat raw with pain. I clung to the torch, wrapping both arms around it, desperate as any shipwrecked sailor clinging to a broken spar. It dipped, but floated still, bearing my weight enough to keep my head above water. "Thank you."

Only then did I think to look about me, gazing over the waters to see where I was. When I saw, I gasped.

Asherat's current was no jest. Without rocks or shore to provide resistance, it flowed like a silent river, swift and sure, charting an invisible course across the sea. La Dolorosa lay well behind me, a black, jagged form marked by tiny pinpricks of flame.

One was moving lower than the others, scrambling down the crags toward the base.

Joscelin, I thought in agony as the current bore me away, sweeping me further out to sea. Oh, Joscelin!

Though it was in vain, I cried out, shouting over the bobbing waves until my ragged voice failed and the pain in my ribs rendered it hard to draw breath. No one could have heard at that distance, over the pounding surge at the base of La Dolorosa. It didn't matter. When I could do no more, I laid my cheek on my arms, still wrapped about the torch, and wept with exhaustion, drifting on the relentless current.

I lived through that night, and Blessed Elua grant I never pass another like it. I daresay in any other season, I would have died of exposure, but it was late summer yet and the sea was mild. In the final hour before dawn, the temperature of the air dropped and I shivered violently. My head ached, my jaw ached and sharp pains shot through my midsection; I cannot even begin to describe the pain in my arms, locked about the floating log of Tito's torch. With a truly heroic effort, I managed to drag my sodden skirts to my waist and wind a length of woolen fabric about the torch, securing me to it.

There were things moving in the deep. I heard them and sensed them-twice, something large brushed against my bare legs, making me shudder with fear and revulsion. Asherat-of-the-Sea, I prayed, you have spared me; let your creatures treat me gently!

Whether 'twas Asherat's mercy or some other protection, no harm came to me from the denizens of the sea. And although I thought that night would never end, in time it did. I had not known, until the sky began to turn grey in the east, which way the current bore me. In the utter blackness of clouded night, I'd harbored some faint hope that it had bent to carry me alongshore, mayhap in sight of land. But the scrap of pale orange rising on the far horizon told me otherwise; it had borne me out to sea.

I remembered the captain's tale of the merchant who had drowned off La Dolorosa and washed ashore on the Illyrian coast, and knew fresh fear. Cloud-hidden and ghostly, the sun crept slowly above the horizon. Mist hovered over the sea, where the air was still cooler than the water. But the sun would rise, I thought, and warm the air, enough to burn off the mist, whether the clouds cleared or not.

And it would grow hot.

Clinging to my makeshift float, I licked my dry, salty lips. Beset with the terrors of drowning or being devoured by some monster of the deep, wracked with the pain of my injuries, I'd not given thought to thirst.

But once I had thought it...

My tongue felt swollen, my throat and lungs raw with the seawater I'd breathed. I'd feared the blind horrors of night, but it was day that was more likely to kill me. One can go a long while without food; I knew, I'd done it. Not water. And I had none.

I didn't pray, then, when the full, deadly irony of it struck me. I had been deceived, betrayed and imprisoned; I had escaped death too many times, and left too many dead behind me. To think, over and over again, so this is how it ends-it was too much. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">