Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [19]
I shuddered under her touch with fear and desire, almost as if she were a patron. "My lady," I said, making myself deliver the words calmly. "I have been told my path lies in darkness. What do you see? Is it Naamah's will that I suffer?”
She shook her head ruefully, hair the color of apricots shining against the silk of her robe. "I am a priestess and not a seer, Phèdre nó Delaunay. This, I cannot say. Only that your knowledge will serve you true, in the end, if you do not fear the offering." Withdrawing her touch, she folded her hands once more in her sleeves. "Love as thou wilt," she quoted. "Even Naamah's Servants follow Blessed Elua, in the end."
It was not the most comforting of advice.
SIX
DRUSTAN MAB Necthana came to the City of Elua.
There was feasting, and fetes; Joscelin and I turned out to meet him, of course, a part of Ysandre's entourage. And I wore the Companion's Star upon my breast, and had Ti-Philippe in attendance with Hugues as his wide-eyed guest, and we pelted the Cruarch with rose-petals and sighed, charmed, with the others when the young Princess Alais hurled herself at her father at the gates of the City. She clung about his neck like a monkey, wrapping her legs about his waist, and Drustan smiled, burying his face in his daughter's hair and walking half the distance to the Palace, despite how his twisted left foot must have pained him.
Truly, it would have warmed a heart of stone.
It warmed Ysandre's heart, I know; and I could not find it in mine to begrudge her. No monarch has risen to the throne of Terre d'Ange under graver circumstances than Ysandre, and none has held it with more courage and compassion. If I seem to damn my lady Queen with faint praise, it is not my intention. I have cause to know, better than any, to what mettle Ysandre's spirit is tempered, and I could not ask for any finer.
No, my discontent lay with the shadow on my own soul.
It is no one's fault but my own that I underwent the ceremony of the thetalos on the island of Kriti, and came face-to-face with the chain of sorrow and suffering that had arisen from my actions. If I had not transgressed, I would have been purged of the knowledge and cleansed to face life renewed and forgiven. I know, for I saw what transpired in the heart of Kazan Atrabiades, who was my friend; friend and lover, and one-time captor. But I had transgressed, and I could not be absolved. The mystery into which I stumbled was not meant for me. What I saw, I must remember and endure.
So I had, for ten years, and the pain of that knowledge had lain buried. Now, Hyacinthe's plight had split the healed flesh and the scars on my soul bled anew.
I went, when I had the time, to my last ally among the Yeshuites, the mystic scholar Eleazar ben Enokh.
He is held in awe and disdain among his people, Eleazar ben Enokh. Awe, for he is among the last of his kind and his knowledge is prodigious for all that he is young to it; disdain, for he looks backward and inward, pondering half-forgotten mysteries while the rest of his folk look increasingly to the north and the future. It is with Eleazar that I began studying the Akkadian language; and that too, his people disdain.
They are wrong, I think—Eleazar thinks it too. There are few tongues older than that which is spoken among the scions of the House of Ur, whose hero Ahzimandias led his people out of exile in the desert to reconquer their ancestral lands. Khebbel-im-Akkad, they call it; Akkad-that-is-reborn. Once upon a time, they were near-kin, the Akkadians and the Yeshuites. The Habiru, they were called then, the Children of Yisra-el; their language is still called the same. But when the Akkadians conquered, the Children of Yisra-el were dispersed and flung to the winds, their Twelve Tribes disbanded, Ten of the Twelve lost and the purity of their mother-tongue diffused.
So it is said, at any rate.
When the empire of Persis arose and overthrew the Akkadians, the royal court of the House of Ur fled, deep into the Umaiyyat, where they