Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [222]
I bowed my head. It would be enough; it had to. "You are kind, my lady Kore."
"You may call me Pasiphae," she said, and smiled once more.
FITY-NINE
It seemed that my audience with the Archon of Phaistos would not be granted until Kazan had undergone the cleansing ceremony of the thetalos. In truth, I was not sorry for it, for I was in two minds about what I should request of him.
A great deal rode on Kazan's survival, and I could get no clear answers concerning the nature of this ritual. I had not known, until then, how fond I had grown of him, and it fretted me deeply.
"He was your captor," Pasiphae said curiously; although she would not divulge the details of their mysteries to me, she had taken me much into her confidence, for she regarded my presence in the Temenos as a mystery unto itself. "He betrayed you to your enemies. How is it, then, that you care for him?"
I frowned, not sure how to frame my reply. "My lady, what you say is true. But the blood-curse that made him a pirate was a tragedy not of his making, as are the politics that made him resent my country. He treated me fairly, within his own constraints, and did not mean to betray me. When it came to it, he risked his life to save mine." I shrugged helplessly. "Yes, my lady, if you are asking it; I care for him. And I am D'Angeline, and bound to the precept of Blessed Elua. I do not forgive him, for what he did. But to deny my own feeling.. .'twould be a violation of Elua's sacred trust."
"Elua." She examined a painted kylix, shaking her head. An initiate moved quickly to lift the wine-jug, refilling her cup. We sat on the gracious terrace of the Palace, overlooking the sea. "Many gods have there been, for Mother Dia has many sons; they wear as many guises as she wears faces. But never has there been one such as Elua, who got himself a whole people and slipped the chains of rebirth.
What shall Earth's eldest children make of her youngest, Phèdre? I cannot say whither you are bound."
I made her no answer, for I had none, but looked instead at the horns of consecration atop the Palace, rearing upward to gore the sky. The folk of the Cullach Gorrym, the Black Boar, had claimed too to be Earth's eldest children. Who was to say? Mayhap they were one and the same, when one came to it. There are truths and truths. "My lady, I have always been told I bore an ill-luck name, but Oeneus Asterius the Hierophant suggested to me that I did not know the truth of that tale, and you yourself bear an equally ill-starred name, for Pasiphae was mother to the Minotaur, do I not mistake my history. Is it not so?"
"It is so, and it is not so." Pasiphae reflected, and answered me at length. "Always, there has been a conflict between earth and sky, old and new. Mother Dia endures, but her sons, ah! Ever do they seek to cut the cord that binds them to Her, and yet ever do they fear begetting their own successors. It was Ariadne the Most Holy who betrayed her Mother's son, giving him unto the blade of Theseus the Achaian. And as my namesake Pasiphae prayed for the means to redeem this tragedy and the loss of her child, Zagreus did answer, who is called lacchos by the Achaians, and bears the gifts of insight and madness. Himself, he claimed Ariadne, whose fate you know—and 'twas your namesake, Phaedra, who took revenge on the supplanter, Theseus the Achaian, offering herself as sacrifice that the supplanter's son