Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [198]
"A sling," Drucilla murmured, plucking at her shawl. "To keep the arm immobile. Use this. I'll have no need of it."
"No," I whispered, kneeling beside her. "Drucilla, no."
"I'll have no need," she repeated faintly, smiling, reaching up to touch my hair with her maimed hands. "Phèdre. You spoke true, didn't you? An ill-luck name. Still, I will die as I lived, a physician to the end, and not a creature of darkness. You have given me that. It is not a gift I thought to find; not here."
"No." Tears coursed my cheeks, salt and bitter; it seemed unfair that she, who had fought so valiantly to preserve life, to preserve her own sanity, should die. "If you will only tell us what needs be done . . . Drucilla, we can do it, I swear to you!"
Behind me, the Caerdicci seamstress murmured agreement, and other voices echoed it.
"The blade has pierced my bowels," Drucilla said gently, her hand falling away, fingers trailing damp across my tear-stained face. "I feel it, child; the poison in my blood-stream. If you had a chirurgeon's tools and a chirurgeon's skill. . ." She smiled with sorrow and kindness, plucking at the woolen fabric that draped her. "It would still be too late. Take the shawl."
Shaking with grief, I did. It was her wish. She watched the seamstress Helena fold it with care and tie it in exacting knots, making a sling for Joscelin's arm. When it was done, her lashes fluttered closed, and Uru-Azag and two of the Akkadians carried her with all tenderness to the corner of the hall where we had established our infirmary, laying her on cushions purloined from the zenana and heaping blankets atop her.
"Remember this," I told Imriel, who watched gravely. "Remember her courage. Remember them all.”
Wordless, he nodded.
It was somewhere in the small hours of the night that Drucilla died, and sometime afterward that the Chief Magus came for me, a lamp in his hand.
"Come," he said in Persian, as I blinked out of a half-waking doze on a makeshift pallet where I maintained a vigil in the infirmary. Somewhere, a clean robe had been found for the old man and the worst of the filth washed from his hair and beard. For all the deep lines that scored his face, he looked stronger than I would have believed possible mere hours before. "We must speak."
"Stay with them," I said to Joscelin, who had come instantly alert, reaching for his sword with his good right hand.
"And let you out of my sight? Not likely," he muttered, levering himself to his feet and calling one of the Akkadians to stand guard over the injured, and the sleeping Imriel. "Now," he said to the ancient Magus, "we will go."
Arshaka inclined his head. "Bringer of Omens. As you wish."
And so saying, he led us through the palace, up a winding stair to one of the lookout towers. There, in a small garret, a Drujani guard lay dead—who had killed him, I do not know—and a shuttered window had been forced open, a square of darkness looking out over the city below and the land beyond.
"Behold," said the Chief Magus. "Jahanadar, the Land of Fires."
In the city of Daršanga, the Sacred Fire burned in the ruined temple. Everywhere there were torches lit, wavering in lines. Voices raised in celebration and prayer floated on the night breeze, crying Ahura Mazda's name. Beyond, across the plain of the peninsula, blazes were scattered like stars emerging from the clouds.
"You cannot stay here," the Magus Arshaka said gently. "The Lord of Light has reclaimed his people. Soon, they will come for Daršanga, and you are too few to hold it."
Joscelin made a sound in his throat that might have been a dour laugh.
"It is ours now, my lord Magus," I reminded him.
"It is," he acknowledged. "This night. You have captives, servants, Magi, all bent to your will. For what you have done, Ahura Mazda permits it. What of the dawn? Will the women of the zenana fight once the madness