Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [201]
It was Joscelin's turn to look away. "I hate this," he said quietly. "I cannot tell you how much I hate this."
"I know." Even if there had been time, it was too enormous to discuss, too immediate. It lay between us, incomprehensible. I touched his uninjured hand. "Joscelin. Let's just. . . let's just get out of this alive, first. The rest can wait. If we can do that, the rest can wait.”
After a moment, he nodded. "It will have to."
With a couple of hours of light left to us, we took our leave of Daršanga.
It was an unwieldy, polyglot caravan of riders and wagons and mules, inching and groaning along, flying the pure-white standard of Ahura Mazda and flanked by four unhappy Magi. Still, we were moving, and the grey walls and pitch-blackened roofs of Daršanga palace fell behind us. In the city, people stared open-mouthed, unsure what to make of our company, but leaving us unmolested. No one cringed or fled. In the open temple, the Sacred Fire burned, and a party of workers cleared rubble, cleaning the square, righting the marble benches. The forges had gone cold. We passed through the city and onto the open road.
Joscelin was right; it hurt to ride. If I had willed myself past the endless nights of torment, my body had not forgotten the abuse it had undergone, the ravages of the Mahrkagir's iron rod. I was sore and raw, and the pressure of the saddle made me bite my lip in an effort not to scream.
I rode anyway.
Mayhap it was a punishment, a means of castigating myself for the pain I had inflicted in this god-cursed quest; I cannot say. It was foolish, I know that much, but it was somewhat I needed to do. I had ridden into Daršanga of my own will. I would leave the same way.
And behind me, straddling the saddle with his knees and clinging to my waist with determination, rising with a wince at every bump, rode Imriel. He'd refused the wagon—Joscelin had been right about that, too. I understood it, understood his folly better than my own.
He had his mother's pride, and I could not help but love it in him.
How not, when I had loved it in her?
Thus began our long, absurd trek across Drujan, which does not bear telling. Enough to say that we made it, most of us. Betimes we saw soldiers, the wolves of Angra Mainyu, bereft and leaderless. Some of them came to seek the Magi's blessing, penitent. Some saw the white flags and fled. I do not know who ruled in Daršanga, unless it be the Magus Arshaka.
Some of the injured died, despite our best efforts. Wounds took septic, or bled internally; one, with a blow to the head, fell asleep and never awakened. We lost seven in all, leaving scarcely fifty survivors from the zenana.
One was the Hellene girl I'd watched carried out, an islander sold at auction, traded to a Skotophagotis for a handful of coin. Ismene, hername was; I knew them all, by then. A sword-stroke had caught her beneath the armpit, and the gash had festered. I stayed with her the night she died, fever raging. Just before dawn, it broke and she grew lucid.
"Lypiphera" she said, seeing me and smiling. "I thought it was you."
"Shh, lie still." I removed the damp cloth, feeling her brow as she sought to rise, finding it cool. "Ismene, why do you call me that? I've heard it before."
"It is a story," she whispered, watching me wring out the cloth. "A story that slaves tell in Hellas. Sometimes the gods themselves find the pain of existence too much to bear. Because they are gods, they pick a mortal to bear it for them; a lypiphera, a pain-bearer." Catching my hand, she pressed it to her cheek and closed her eyes, still smiling. "Sometimes they take on mortal pain, too. It is a lucky thing, for slaves."
"Ismene." I swallowed my tears for the untold countless time, laying my palm against her soft skin. "Try to sleep."
In the morning, she was dead.
I'd thought the danger past when her fever broke. I sat on a rock and stared at the dawn, brooding. Joscelin had to come find me when camp was struck.
"Phèdre." His