Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [179]
I obeyed. Her fingertips felt cool. I kept my eyes closed as she smeared unguent on my lids, trying not to flinch at her touch. I could smell the ointment, sharp and herbal. I could smell her, loam and fermented berries. I could taste the mushroom tea on my tongue, acrid and bitter, drying the tissues of my mouth.
"It begins." Morwen reached across the boulder to grasp my right hand. "Here." She placed the leather bag in my palm. "As I promised.”
I stared at it, gaping. When I closed my fingers on it, I could feel the shape of the mannekin charm it contained. My blood pounded in my veins, in my wrists and ankles and temples. My entire body throbbed.
"And here," she added, picking up the stone knife.
Fast; so fast! Before I could react, the stone blade snicked forth, the tip sliding beneath the yarn bindings around my right wrist and severing them. My heart expanded within my breast and freedom rushed in upon me, swift and almost sickening. I drew a deep breath, reeling where I sat. "Ah, no!" I whispered. "Elua!”
"Did you think you would be able to see, bound as you were?" Morwen asked in a hard voice. "Don't worry, I will make the offering." She turned her left hand palm-up on the boulder. The stone knife snicked again, chip-edged and keen, opening a cut on her wrist; and then she did the same to her other hand. Her hands reached for mine, slippery with blood. "Put the mannekin aside and hold hard to me. If nothing else, you will see. And you will understand.”
I did as she said.
For a long time, nothing happened. Morwen closed her eyes and breathed slowly. Her face was calm and serene beneath the claw-marks, despite the steady seep of blood from her wrists. I tried to emulate her, but my body was shivering with an uncomfortable mixture of excitement and nausea. My belly clenched on the mushroom tea, and I thought for a time I might vomit.
Slowly, slowly, it passed. The shivering stopped. My body began to feel warm and heavy. I relaxed, bit by bit, feeling stored tension ease from my neck and shoulders. Morwen opened her eyes and smiled at me.
"You see?" she said. "A gift of the earth, nothing more.”
I laughed. "We're allowed to speak?”
"Oh, a little," she said. For some reason, it made us both laugh. I sat, holding her hands across the boulder, and thought about how much better things would have been if we'd spoken honestly and openly from the beginning. If the Cruithne had spoken frankly about the Maghuin Dhonn, their powers and their claims, instead of shunning them out of superstition. If the Maghuin Dhonn had approached me and spoken frankly of their concerns, instead of trying to trick and bind me.
I tried to tell Morwen this, but the words emerged in a muddle and I was overly conscious of the way my voice echoed within my own skull.
"Hush," Morwen said. Her pupils had grown enormous. "Just watch for a time.”
So I did.
It seemed the night had grown brighter; or mayhap my vision was altered. Everything seemed very sharp-edged and clear; the stones, the blades of grass, the slow, spreading puddle of blood trickling over the edges of the boulder. I could see near and far all at once; a branch on a distant tree and a twig caught in Morwen's hair. It was exhilarating, but it was unnerving, too. I tried looking at the sky overhead. At first the black velvet spaces between the stars were calming; then I thought about the night sky's infinite depth, and it made me dizzy.
"Think of a pleasant time," Morwen said.
I thought about Sidonie.
Elua knows, I didn't mean to. It seemed wrong, there in one of Alba's sacred places, with Dorelei's kiss still lingering on my lips. But I couldn't help it. I was free of my bindings. The moment Morwen spoke, my thoughts leapt to Sidonie, as swift and straight as an arrow from the bow. Sidonie in a shaft of sunlight, smiling. Tangled in bedsheets.
Propped against the door of the bedchamber in Naamah's Temple, her legs around my waist. Glancing at me with stricken eyes when it was announced the Cruarch's