Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [228]
It was my fault, all mine.
I have known pain—Elua knows, I have known pain. It is my gift and my art to endure it, and even I have known pain beyond bearing, under Waldemar Selig's knife on the fields of Troyes-le-Mont.
This was worse.
After a time, I was no longer aware of specific incidences of blood-guilt, but only the vast, featureless agony of it. It bore me up and carried me down all at once, and I felt the surge of it in my very bones. A scream gathered at the back of my throat and I locked my jaws on it, thinking, I will not scream, I will not scream, until I was not sure whether I thought it or said it, whether I screamed or not. I saw red in the blackness of the cavern, and Kushiel's face before me, stern and bronze, lips shaping words I could not understand; I thought, if only I could, all would be redeemed, but I could not concentrate for the vastness of my sins. And then it came to me that if only I gave my signale, all of this will end, and I heard Melisande's voice telling me as 'much, rich as honey, coming from somewhere beyond the pain ...
... and thought with my last gasp of consciousness, no!
SIXTY-ONE
There were voices speaking somewhere.
It seemed I had to come back from a very long distance to make sense of them, to derive words and sentences from the meaningless sounds assailing my ears. I could not understand why it seemed so very difficult, but it did, for even when I recognized the sounds as speech, I could not make out what they said, although they seemed very close at hand. Ah, I thought, pleased at the discovery, it is because they are speaking Hellene, and it seemed to me that I knew that tongue. I fumbled for it with difficulty, and thought perhaps if I opened my eyes, it would be easier to think. I tried to do so, but it was hard, for my lashes were glued shut with sticky matter.
"... move her or tend her here?"
Yes, I thought, I know that voice; that is the Hierophant of the Temenos. I am on the island of Kriti in the place called Temenos, and I have profaned their mystery.
"Hush. She is waking."
I knew that voice, too. It belonged to Pasiphae Asterius, daughter of the House of Minos, who is called the Kore.
"Here." There was a sound of someone moving, the faint slosh of water, and then I felt my eyes gently bathed with a damp cloth. I opened them, and saw the Kore kneeling beside me, frowning gravely, still clad in her ritual regalia. "Can you speak, Phèdre?"
I wasn't sure. I opened my mouth and tried it. "Yes, my lady."
A war whoop sounded somewhere behind her; loud enough to split the cavern roof, I thought, and surely loud enough to split my skull. And then I was scooped up from the floor where I lay into a vertiginous, bone-rattling embrace by a grinning Kazan Atrabiades.
"Kazan! Put her down!”
He did; if he did not know Hellene, he knew what the Kore meant. I wavered unsteadily on my feet, clinging to his sleeve. He was still grinning, and his face was as joyous as a lad's. I moved my head slightly, tested my limbs to see if they yet worked. It seemed they did. The Kore and the Hierophant and a handful of initiates all stood within the sunlit cavern, staring at me with incomprehension in their dark Kritian eyes.
"You are ... well?" Pasiphae asked cautiously.
I moved my tongue around in my mouth and swallowed. It seemed that worked, too. "I am ... alive, my lady."
The scions of Minos exchanged a glance, and the Hierophant spread his hands, relinquishing judgement. Pasiphae shook her head, still frowning. "No one has ever undergone the thetalos undedicated and lived to tell of it. I cannot bestow the rites of absolution upon you, Phèdre, but Mother Dia has spared