Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [220]
That evening, we made camp along the banks of the Voorwijk. After picketing the Bastard, I sat down with Berlik's robe and set about slicing it into strips, pausing periodically to hone my daggers. The fur was dense and thick, rippling in my hands. A smell of musk clung to my skin. I ignored it, working methodically. Strip, strip, strip. It was hard work. Kinadius joined me, raising an inquiring brow. I nodded. He beckoned. Others came, cutting the strips into smaller scraps. Urist gave quiet orders, and several men set about gathering wood. A massive bonfire was built, fire roaring heavenward. It was the largest fire I'd seen since the Feast of the Dead.
When we had finished cutting it to shreds, we burned the bearskin robe, piece by piece. Everyone took an armload of scraps. We fed them into the fire, one by one. The fur sizzled and stank as it flared and crisped, leaving bits of hide to curl and slowly char.
I didn't know if Berlik's robe held any enchantment, not for sure. Morwen hadn't needed one, and I'd seen her body shift and change in the darkness. I'd seen her pry loose a boulder that two strong men wouldn't be able to lift. Mayhap the robe was meaningless, nothing more than a badge of office, indicating his status as a magician of the Maghuin Dhonn. Or mayhap it wasn't. If he'd crossed the Straits as a bear, the robe had crossed with him somehow. And yet, if it was charmed, why would Berlik have traded it for some leather goods and supplies?
In the end, I didn't care. It was his, and there was a tremendous, irrational satisfaction in destroying it. All of us felt it.
Once it was done, we let the fire burn down low, slowly collapsing in on itself. It was too late to cook, so we ate cold rations that night. Urist passed around a skin of uisghe he'd held in reserve, and we all had a few swallows, watching the fire.
"One step closer," Kinadius murmured. "Feels like it, anyway.”
Urist grunted. "But why pilgrims? Doesn't make sense." He slewed his gaze around at me. "Who are these pilgrims? Some sort of mad D'Angelines?”
"Yeshuites," I said. "And no, it doesn't make sense.”
"What's a Yeshuite?" he asked.
At least what knowledge I possessed wasn't totally useless. I told them about the One God of the Habiru—the god whose angel Rahab had once bound the Master of the Straits—and how he had sent his son Yeshua ben Yosef to earth during the time of the Tiberian Empire. How the Habiru had hailed him as their savior, their mashiach. How the Tiberians had feared an uprising and convicted Yeshua, hanging him on a criminal's cross. How Blessed Elua was born of his blood, mingled with the tears of his beloved, Mary of Magdala, nurtured in the womb of the earth.
"But you said they weren't D'Angelines," Selwin said, bewildered.
"They're not," I said. "We share a point of origin, but little else." And so I explained how while Blessed Elua wandered the earth, causing rebellion in heaven, and came to be joined by his Companions and founded Terre d'Ange, the Habiru reckoned him misbegotten and followed their own course, revering Yeshua, and came to be known as the Yeshuites. Like the Tsingani, they had no fixed realm of their own. Unlike the Tsingani, they aspired to one. "There's a prophecy in their sacred books that says Yeshua will return to raise his people to greatness," I said. "And that they should make a place in the cold lands to await him.”
"Reckon it's true?" Kinadius asked.
"I don't know." I propped my bedroll against the Bastard's saddle and reclined, easing my sore body. I thought about Morit and the scholars who had visited Terre d'Ange, spending so many hours in Phèdre's salon discussing these very matters. They came from distant Saba, where the lost Tribe of Dân maintained the old ways of the Habiru. They'd reckoned the entire notion madness, and of a surety there was great power and wisdom held in trust by their priests. But then, they knew little of Yeshua. "The wisest Yeshuite I know, a man named Eleazar ben Enoch, said some passages suggest it's true, and others do not. The Yeshuites