Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [277]
"Phèdre."
It was Imriel who drew me back, and I saw in his twilight-blue eyes that he was afraid. And then I tried harder to keep the Name from filling me wholly, but it was not easy.
A half-day's ride past the Falls, we said farewell to Eshkol and his men. He wept upon leaving us, too. I watched the tears fill his eyes and overflow his lower lids, trickling like drops of rain on his mahoganycheeks, whispering the Name of God in the path they traced. "You have given me a dream," he said. "I am not sure of what, but it is a dream. I never had one before."
"You will know," I said, certain. It was written in the geometry of his bones, the sharp jut of his cheeks and his eloquent hands. It sounded in his voice, and the passion that threaded it. "Whatever Saba is to become, you will help shape it with courage and wisdom."
"I pray it is so," he said, bowing. "Adonai guide you."
"And you," I said, watching them go. "And you."
Mile by slow mile, we began retracing our steps.
It took me sometimes in the highlands, atop the vast mountain peaks where the green carpet of forest spread below us. I watched hawks and buzzards circling over the valleys and grew dizzy at their grace, the gyres etched by their sharp-tilting wings. If the Jebeans had thought I was god-touched before, they were sure of it now; half-mad and blessed with it, but apt to endanger myself. I wasn't, I don't think. I cannot be sure. Semira had spoken truly; it was a mighty thing to bear.
The Yeshuite mystic Eleazar ben Enokh had claimed the Name of God was the first Word spoken, the Word that brought all creation into being. Whether or not it is true, I do not know; no two nations hold the same story as to how it came to pass. We are Elua's children, the last-born, and we took the world as we found it. But I know there was great power in that Name, and when it blazed in my thoughts, I beheld the world through different eyes.
Imriel didn't like it.
I learned why, a week into our journey.
It was the campfire that struck me that night, the glowing orange caverns of embers beneath the stacked branches, the flames leaping above and sparks ascending in a column into the black, black sky. How long did I watch it, marveling? A few seconds, I thought, though I daresay it was a good deal longer, until I realized my arm was being shaken.
"Phèdre!"
"Yes?" I inquired. "I'm sorry, I was thinking."
Imriel shook his head and looked away. "You weren't," he muttered.
"Imri." I waited until he looked back at me. "I'm trying. It's like having someone shout in your ear, can you understand? When it happens, it's all I can hear. I didn't know it would be like this, or I would have told you. But there was no one to ask and no way of knowing.”
"You look like you did in Daršanga," he said, half under his breath.
"What?'
"You look like you did in Daršanga.'" His voice rose, scared and defiant. "When you sat with the Mahrkagir, in the festaJ hall, your face—you looked the same, exactly the samel"
"Really?" I asked Joscelin.
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
It made me Jaugh. Elua knows why, but it did, and once I had started, I was hard-put to stop. All the absurdity of our long journey, the immensity of our task, the chaos that followed in our wake, the endless variations of the pattern I seemed destined to follow; it all came upon me at once. "Ah, Elua.'" I gasped, wiping my eyes. "Well, gods are like patrons, it seems. The shape of their desire may vary, but the manner of possession all comes to the same in the end.'"
Imriel regarded my mirth with apprehension.
"She's fine," Joscelin told him.
He looked doubtful.
"Oh, Imri." With difficulty, I managed to gather my composure. "It's nothing like Daršanga, I promise you. Listen, and I'll tell you what happened."
I told them both, then, what had happened after I had entered the temple on Kapporeth, and it seemed my laughter had freed my voice to speak. I told them the furnishings were those described in the ancient writings of the Tanakh, and