Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [197]
At the center of the steading, he refused a ride back to his home in the woods, saying he would welcome the walk. I, shivering as always, could not credit his hardiness, but truly, his bare skin seemed unaffected by the cold. Selig was speaking to the White Brethren about some matter, so I took the chance to approach Lodur as he made ready to leave.
"Did you mean it?" I asked him. "About the weapon?"
No more than that did I say, but he knew what I meant and considered me, standing ankle-deep in snow. "Who knows the ways of the gods? Baldur the Beautiful was slain with a sprig of mistletoe, cast by an unknowing hand. Are you less likely a weapon?"
I had no answer to that, and the old man laughed. "Still, if I were young Waldemar, I'd take the risk of you too," he added with a wicked grin, "and if I were not much younger at all, I'd ask you for a kiss."
Of all the unlikely things, it made me blush. Lodur cackled again and struck out across the snow, staff in hand, walking briskly back the way we'd come. A strange man; I'd never met stranger. I was sorry not to see him again.
For his part, Waldemar Selig responded to the whole encounter by regarding me with a new suspicion. It came out that night in bed, when he did not bid me to please him, but regarded me instead, tracing with one finger the lineaments of my marque. "Mayhap there is rune-magic in these markings, Faydra," he said, deceptively. "Would you say so?"
"It is my marque, that says I am pledged to Naamah's service. All her Servants bear such, and there is no magic in it save freedom, when it is made complete." I held myself quiet, kneeling before him.
"So you say." He laid his hand open across my back; it spanned a great expanse of my skin. "You say you were sold into slavery because you knew too much. I, I would merely kill you, were it so. Why do you live?"
Melisande's voice came back to me, calm and distant. I'd no more kill you than I'd destroy a priceless fresco or a vase. "My lord," I whispered, "I am the only one of my kind. Would you kill a wolf with fur of purest silver, if it wandered into your steading?"
He pondered it, then drew away from me, shaking his head. "I cannot say. Perhaps it was led by Odhinn, to my spear. I do not understand this thing you say you are."
It was true, and a mercy to me. Even he, the least unsubtle of Skaldi, understood pleasure in its simpler terms. It was not much, but I was grateful for it. "I am your servant, my lord," I said, bowing my head and setting the rest aside. It was enough. He reached for me, then, running his fingers through my hair, and drew me down to him.
FIFTY
As Lodur had predicted, Joscelin healed quickly. Selig had his arms brought to their training-sessions, and sought to learn this new D'Angeline skill.
I'd paid little heed to Joscelin's sessions with Alcuin in the garden. Now I watched more closely. The forms through which Joscelin flowed so effortlessly in his morning ritual were at the heart of it. Watching, I saw them broken down and how each one had a purpose. No matter that the Cassilines had given them poetic names, they were strikes and feints, blocks and parries, all of them, designed to lead and anticipate an opponent's blows-or multiple opponents, as it were.
Members of the Cassiline Brotherhood begin their training at ten, when they are inducted. Day after day, for long years, they practice nothing else, until the forms are so deeply embedded in them that they can do them backwards and forwards, waking or sleeping. And even so, they do them every morning, lest the memory etched in their bones begin to flag.
I'd thought, when Joscelin said he couldn't teach it to Selig, that he meant it was against his vows; I saw then that he meant it was impossible. With Alcuin, it had been play, and he'd naught to unlearn. Waldemar Selig, acknowledged champion of the Skaldi, thought to add to his skill. But what Joscelin sought to teach him ran contrary to the simple, brutal efficiency bred and trained into him. When he found himself floundering, awkward as a stripling lad, he grew impatient