Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [141]
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."
In the heart of the fire, a pair of crossed branches crumbled, and the flames subsided.
"So." Tizrav's mouth twisted. "Darkness returns. Even the great prophet Zoroaster did not deny it would hold sway on this earth."
"Still," I said to him. "Morning will follow, and the dawn."
"Dawn, aye." He fed the fire and did not look at me. "The Lion of the Sun, the face of Shamash. The Akkadians have stolen the light of day, and named it their own. And Ahura Mazda made no protest, but let his people die beneath their swords. Do you wonder that the Drujani have laid claim to the darkness?"
"No," I said. "No, son of Tizmaht, I do not."
Tizrav shrugged. "My father was a fool, and his father's father before him. I place my faith in the only light that endures, yellow and unwinking: The bright sheen of gold."
To that, I had no words.
FORTY-TWO
THE SKOTOPHAGOTI knew we were coming.
That is not what they call themselves, to be sure, but it is the first name I knew, and the one that stays with me. After all, I have heard it in my dreams. We saw him at a distance, this one; he did not approach unseen. No, he came down the old royal road, the city of Daršanga rising behind him, its bulwarks and spires silhouetted against the wintry sea.
He rode a wild ass without stirrups or bridle, his legs dangling, and it would have been comical if it was not terrifying. Sunlight from the east gleamed on his boar's-skull helmet, and his staff of office lay athwart his ass's withers. I saw that he wore a girdle, too; finger-bones. I had not noticed, in Iskandria, that the Skotophagoti wore such things, but I had never been so close to one, either.
"You have come for the Mahrkagir." He pointed with his staff, lazily, the wavering ball of jet taking in all three of us. It seemed to linger longest upon me. I was glad I wore the veil, and did not have to meet his eyes.
"I have." Joscelin kneed his Akkadian mount forward, a long-legged black gelding with three white socks. His sword-hilt protruded from beneath the collar of his sheepskin coat and his gaze was as cold and blue as a Drujani winter sky. "Will he see me?"
The Skotophagotis merely looked at him, calm astride his ass, his shadow thrown before him, foreshortened and deadly on the old royal road, its fireclay bricks crumbling for lack of repair. "Yes," he said presently. "The Mahrkagir will see you."
We rode behind him into the city of Daršanga.
There was more life in the city than we had seen in the countryside and villages . . . more life, and more fear. How not, when we rode incompany with an Eater-of-Darkness? People hurried to the sides of the streets as we passed, prostrating themselves before the priest, pressing their brows to the earth. The Skotophagotis took no notice.
Although there seemed no marketplace and no shops, there was trade of a sort, furtive and joyless; foodstuffs, mostly, a good deal of fish, and bread and oil. A man pushing a two-wheeled cart sold tallow candles; another, needles and skeins of thread. A cobbler sat on a wooden stool, measuring a Drujani soldier's foot for a boot. The soldier did not kneel, but