Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [140]
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