Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [31]
I tried my best to emulate him.
I willed my mind to silence, seeking to find a small, still place within myself to contemplate Blessed Elua's gift to his children; love, in all its myriad glories. Once upon a time, I had it. But that was before the slave-traders, before Daršanga. It was harder to believe, now; harder to worship. And yet, by the same token, who had greater cause than I? If Elua allowed me to be cast into a living hell, he had not suffered me to be abandoned.
I gazed at Elua's enigmatic visage, wondering, for the thousandth time in my life, why. Wondering if what had befallen me had been necessary. Wondering if it were true, after all, that we had defeated a terrible darkness in Daršanga. Ill thoughts, ill words, ill deeds; such were the tenets of the Mahrkagir and the priests of Angra Mainyu, who sought to conquer the world. And there was power in them—I had seen it. I had witnessed the bone-priests there wield death and madness as weapons, killing with a thought. A mighty army of Akkadian warriors had been destroyed by the dark sorcery begotten there.
And against this legion of horror, where other gods sent forth armies, Blessed Elua had sent an unarmed courtesan and a single swordsman.
Love.
It had been the Mahrkagir's undoing. He had loved Phèdre in the end. So much that she would have been his perfect sacrifice, the offering that would have sealed his power. So much that he allowed her within the circle of his trust. And there, she had killed him.
My knees were beginning to ache. I shifted, trying to find a more comfortable patch of ground. I wondered how Joscelin could bear it. Surely his old wounds must ache in the cold. He has earned enough of them in his lifetime—the shattered bones of his arm, the long scar that curves around his ribcage, the myriad lesser gashes he has sustained. But if they did, he gave no sign of it. No sign that his joints were stiffening. No sign that the cold was leaching all the warmth from his body, leaving him shivering to the core.
The others did. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them move from time to time. I could hear them rustle, and the occasional cough. Only Joscelin had gone so deep inside himself that he scarce seemed to breathe.
Once, Phèdre told me, he sat cross-legged in the snow all night long. That was in Skaldia, where my mother betrayed them into slavery. And yet Joscelin says it is Phèdre whose will sustained them there; who goaded him into hope when he despaired.
Rejoice that you have loving guides to set you on your way.
Did Elua's priest think me unaware? Ungrateful? I knew it all too well. I was not worthy of the sacrifices they made. No one mortal could be. I didn't forget it, ever.
I didn't rejoice in it, either. Not often. Joy came hard for me.
Perhaps, I thought, that was priest's meaning. Not a reminder, but an injunction. All darkness, even that of the Longest Night, gives way to dawn. I had passed through darkness, but I had emerged. Not unscathed, but alive.
I bore the scars of Daršanga, though only a few were visible; a handful of faint lines cross-hatching my back where the deeper welts healed, and the Kereyit rune branded on the flank of my left buttock. That one wasn't the Mahrkagir's doing. It was Jagun, a warlord of the Kereyit Tatars, who marked me for his own.
He died for it, one of many Joscelin slew there. We made our way out of darkness together and found brightness on the far side of hell.
Rejoice.
It was hardest at night. There was no daylight in the zenana, never. Not until the day Phèdre found a way to pry open the boards sealing the walled garden there. I remembered how it had felt to see the sky, cold and grey, and found my eyes filling with tears.
Somewhere in the distance, a horologist was crying the hour. It was later than I had thought. I tilted my head to gaze at the night sky, remembering. The stars were cold and bright. They had seemed closer in Saba, where we had followed the constellations across