Kushiels Dart

by Jacqueline Carey

Page 43

 

  "Blessed Elua! That's all?" I sat back on my heels and pressed my hands to my face. Remembering Selig, I dropped them and glanced at him. "He grieves for his wrongdoing," I said in Skaldic. "He is atoning. "

  Waldemar Selig nodded soberly; he understood this. "Tell him to live," he said. "I have made atonement in were-gild for the lives of the men he killed. And I wish him to teach me his manner of fighting. " He paused, recalling, and repeated it slowly in Caerdicci to Joscelin.

  Joscelin gave a laugh that scared me, wild and half-mad. "My lord has bested me," he said to Selig in Caerdicci. "Why would you want to learn what I know?"

  "You did not expect to battle me. You have given me your pledge. And you did not expect me to step inside your guard," Selig said deliberately. "Another time, it might be different. "

  "I cannot teach him to fight like a Cassiline," Joscelin said to me in D'Angeline, shaking his head over and over. "I have failed you, too many times. I've dishonored my vow. Better I should die!"

  I shot a quick glance at Selig, then looked fiercely at Joscelin. "How many times do you need to discover your humanity, Joscelin? You're not Cassiel reborn, but you're vowed to me, and I have never needed your service more!" I shook his shoulders, quoting Delaunay's words at him. "Do you remember this? To fail and persevere is a harder test than any you will meet on the practice-field. Keep your sword, I cannot afford its loss. "

  Joscelin laughed again, despairingly, then caught it with a gasp. "I can't, Phedre, I swear I can't! I've not even a sword to keep. " He gazed up at Selig from his huddled pose. "I am sorry, my lord," he said in Caerdicci. "I am not worthy to live. "

  I swore at him then, in D'Angeline, Skaldic and Caerdicci alike, shoving him so he lurched sideways in his chains and fell sprawling, gaping at me. "Elua curse you, Cassiline, if that's all the courage you've got!" I railed at him, in what tongue I know not. "If I live through this, I swear I'm writing to the Prefect of your order, and telling him how Blessed Elua was better served by a courtesan of the Night Court than a Cassiline priest!"

  What Selig thought of my diatribe, I don't know; if I'd thought to look at him, I wouldn't have dared, but it never crossed my mind. With scarce the strength to get upright, still Joscelin's eyes narrowed at my harangue. "You will notl" he retorted with febrile intensity, scrabbling to rise to his knees.

  "Then stop me. " I stood up, hurling the last words at him. "Protect and serve, Cassiline!"

  It must sound, I know, as if I had no pity for him; it wasn't true. I was angry because I was terrified. But there are times when a curse is more bracing than an endearment. Dragging at his chains, Joscelin struggled to a kneeling position, shivering, staring at me with tears standing in his bloodshot eyes. "It's hard, Phedre," he said pleadingly. "Elua help me, but it's hard!"

  "I know," I whispered.

  Selig stepped outside then and said something to the guard. I didn't know what until the White Brethren thane returned scowling some minutes later, carrying a wooden bowl of broth. Selig nodded, and he shoved it at Joscelin. "You eat," Waldemar Selig said to him in his rudimentary D'Angeline. "You live. "

  We left him then, holding the bowl in two trembling hands. I looked back as Selig held the hide back from the door for me, catching sight of Joscelin lowering his lips to the rim of the bowl.

  He would live, I thought with relief. It gave me one less reason to die.

  After that, Joscelin continued to take nourishment and grew stronger, although he had developed chilblains on his hands and on his wrists where the manacles chafed. They itched and pained him mercilessly, but he used it as a reason to postpone teaching Cassiline swordplay to Waldemar Selig. Having invested somewhat in keeping his tame D'Angeline warrior-priest alive, Selig acceded to my pleas to be able to visit Joscelin once a day, rightly reckoning that once Joscelin had chosen to live, my presence would give him incentive to continue living. He had his vow.

  It was the one thing I looked forward to each day. Selig had other business to attend to, so he set one of the White Brethren to escort me. It was well that Joscelin had kept the extent of his fledgling Skaldic hidden, for it aroused no suspicion when we spoke in D'Angeline, and I quickly determined that, unlike Selig, his thanes had no knowledge of our tongue.

  Unfortunately, there was little we could do in the way of plotting an escape. The steading was simply too well guarded. Still, we spoke of survival, and kept each other's spirits from flagging.

  Never long on tolerance when he suspected delay, Selig grew impatient for Joscelin's hands to heal, and sent for a priest of Odhinn who was also a healer to see to him.

  "In truth," he confessed to me the night before, "I am curious to see what Lodur will make of you. He is my oldest teacher, and I have great respect for his wisdom. "

  I should add that by that point, unrest over Selig's patronage of me had continued to grow and it was commonly put about that I was a witch, sent from Terre d'Ange to ensorcel him, as evidenced by the red mote in my left eye—a sure sign of a witch.

  Selig laughed at the rumor. "Lodur's mother was a witch too, so they said. They said she could cure a man of any wound, mortal or no, if she found him favorable. Truth is, she was a skilled healer. As you are skilled at. . . other things. "

  I don't know what I said to that; something flattering, you may be sure. If I added a touch of defiant spice sometimes, for the most part, I told him what he wished to hear. But so it came to pass that I rode with him and two of his White Brethren to the home of Lodur the One-Eyed, on a shaggy pony Selig had given me as my own to ride.

  My first glimpse of the healer was of a wiry old man standing bare-chested in the snow, a fur vest over his scrawny torso. His hair was white and wild. He held a carved staff in one hand, and on the other fist, a raven perched. We saw him at a distance speaking to it, but it flew away at our approach. I thought it was Skaldi magic at the time. Later I learned he'd nursed it broken-winged, and it was still half tame. Lodur gJanced up, unsurprised, and I saw that he bore a patch over his right eye; I hadn't know, then, that he was called One-Eyed.

  "Waldemar Berundson," he said calmly, using a patronymic I'd never even heard spoken. Selig, they called him, Blessed, as if the gods themselves had named him.

  "This is Faydra no Delaunay of Terre d'Ange, old master," Selig said respectfully. He dismounted and bent his head to the old man, so I did the same, and noticed that his thanes did too. "She has a companion who has the cold-wounds, that will not heal. "

  "Indeed. " Lodur came to meet us across the snow, moving with a quickness that belied his age. His one eye was a pale, fierce blue, but it did not look unkindly on me. Unlike every other Skaldi male I'd seen, he was beardless, a grizzled white stubble on his leather-tanned face. "You like it, eh?" He saw me looking and stroked his chin, grinning. "I met a girl once who fancied a clean face. Got into the habit, I suppose. "

  Priests aplenty I have known, but never one like him; I stammered some reply. "No matter," he said casually, and felt me all over with firm hands, an impersonal patting. I stood still for it, bewildered. Selig looked approving. "D'Angeline, eh?" Lodur fixed me with his solitary ice-blue gaze, gazing thoughtfully at my face and my own mismatched eyes. The cold didn't seem to touch him. "What do they call it, that?" He nodded at my left eye.

  "Kushiel's Dart," I said softly.

  "You're god-marked, then. Like me, you think?" He laughed, pointing to his patch. "One-Eyed, they call me, like the All-Father. Do you know the story?"

  I knew it; I'd heard it sung at Gunter's steading often enough. I could even sing it myself. "He gave his eye in exchange for a drink from Mimir's fountain," I said. "The fountain of wisdom. "

  Lodur clapped, tucking his staff beneath one arm. Selig's thanes muttered. "Me, now," the old priest said conversationally. "When I was a fool apprentice, I took my own eye, offered it with prayer, reckoning to become wise like Odhinn. You know what my master told me?" I shook my h
ead. Lodur cocked his and gazed at me. "He told me I had gained a valuable piece of wisdom: No one can bribe the gods. What an idiot I was!" He chuckled at the memory. Only a Skaldi could laugh at such a thing. "But I got wiser," he added.

  "Old master . . . " Selig began.

  "I know, I know. " Lodur cut him off. "The cold-wounds. And you want to know what I think of the girl. What can I tell you, Waldemar Berundson? You take a weapon thrown by a D'Angeline god to your bosom, and ask me for wisdom? As well ask the mute to advise the deaf. I'll get my medicine bag. "

  Selig stared at me, frowning. I kept my countenance as open as I could, frankly as bewildered as he. All along, I had thought myself Ku-shiel's victim, marked out for the awful divinity of his love. It was something else, to think of myself as his weapon.

  The old priest fetched his medicines and mounted up behind Selig, spry as a boy. We rode that way back to the steading, through the spectacular forests. Lodur hummed to himself and sang a snatch of song, but no one else spoke. Selig's brow was dark with thought.

  At the hut, Lodur rapped three times on the threshold with his staff and gave a loud invocation before stepping inside. He seemed to bring a clean scent of snow and pine needles into the close, dim air of the hut. Joscelin, engaged in some Cassiline meditation, stared at the apparition.

  "Like a young Baldur, eh?" Lodur said casually to Selig, naming their dying-god, who is called the Beautiful. "Well, let's see 'em, boy. " He squatted on his shanks next to Joscelin, examining the swollen red flesh of his hands and wrists. They were cracked and suppurating, weeping a clear fluid and refusing to heal. "Ah, I've one of mother's recipes will do for that!" the priest-healer laughed, digging around in his bag. He drew out a small stoneware jar of balm and unstoppered it. What was in it, I don't know, but it stank to heaven. Joscelin made a face at it, then looked questioningly at me over Lodur's head as the old man began slathering his hands and wrists with it.

  "He is a healer," I said in Caerdicci, for Selig's benefit; we kept up the pretence that Joscelin's Skaldic was inadequate for conversing. "Lord Selig wishes that you become well enough to teach him your manner of fighting. "

  Joscelin bowed his head to Selig. "I look forward to it, my lord. " He paused. "To teach the Cassiline style, I require my arms, my lord; or at least my vambraces. Wooden training daggers and sword will suffice. "

  "The Skaldi do not train with wooden toys. I sent your arms to my smith, to duplicate their design. You shall have them when we spar. " Selig cast a scowl at one of the White Brethren; he'd reclaimed Joscelin's sword, then, and been annoyed at its loss. "Are you done, old master?"

  "Oh, nearly. " Lodur worked deftly, winding bandages of clean linen about Joscelin's balm-smeared skin. "He'll heal quickly. These D'Angelines, they've gods' blood in their veins. It's old and faint all right, but even a mere trace of it's a powerful thing, Waldemar Berundson. "

  If I did not miss the warning in his words, Selig could not fail to heed it. "Old and powerful, and corrupted with generations of softness, old master. Their gods will bow their heads to the All-Father, and we will claim the magic of their blood for our own descendants, to infuse it with red-blooded Skaldi vigor. "

  The old man glanced up at him, his one eye as wintry and distant as a wolfs. "May it be as you say, young Waldemar. I am too ancient to strong-arm the gods. "

  I felt a chill run through me at his words. Whatever else was true, the old man had power, that much I knew. I felt it in that hut, creeping over my skin, whispering of the dark earth and the towering firs, of iron and blood, fox, wolf and raven. Lodur rose then, patting Joscelin kindly on the head, and gathered his things.

  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 and displeased.

  The lessons ended. Joscelin's arms were locked away in Selig's cupboard, and his shackles returned permanently.

  And Selig's suspicions mounted.

  Kolbjorn of the Manni came to meet with him, bearing news from the south. There are Skaldi there, I learned, who live near the border of Caerdicca Unitas nigh unto Tiberian nobles, with proper houses and vast estates worked by slaves
. The Caerdicci reckoned them almost civilized, and still maintained some measure of trade and correspondence with them. It was from them that Kolbjorn came, bearing a letter for Selig.

  Even in the bustle of the great hall, I knew how to make myself invisible, kneeling motionless in a corner. Selig supposed me working on some new translation for him, and paid me no heed; taking their cue from him, the others ignored me. I was too far to read, but I saw his face as he broke the seal and opened the letter. It held relief. "Kilberhaar suspects nothing!" he exclaimed, clapping Kolbjorn on the back. "He will take our bait, and move his armies as we agreed. Good news, eh?"

  Kolbjorn of the Manni rumbled something in agreement, I couldn't hear what. I saw, instead, the letter lying open on the table between them, the cracked seal impressed in gold wax. Broken or no, I knew the design, even at a distance. Three keys intertwined, almost lost in the intricate pattern; the emblem of Kushiel, who was said to hold the keys to the portals of hell.

  It was the insignia of House Shahrizai.

  Of course, I thought, kneeling in silent agony. Of course. Melisande Shahrizai was clever enough to bring down House Trevalion; she was too clever to fall with House d'Aiglemort. She would play both sides, and claim the victor's part. I clutched the diamond at my throat, grasping it until I could feel every facet impressed into my palm. Even here, I was not beyond her reach.

  It was then that I heard, through a distant haze, Selig tell Kolbjorn in a casual tone that there would be a great hunt on the morrow. The Skaldi place great stock in hospitality, and Kolbjorn was a valuable ally; the hunt would be held in his honor, and a feast to follow.

  That was when the plan came to me.

  Withdrawing silently, I returned without subterfuge, approaching Selig and kneeling. He acknowledged me with a nod, and I begged his permission to visit Joscelin. He granted it absentmindedly, sending one of the White Brethren with me. Trudging across the snow, I studied the lay of the steading and the encampment, my mind working feverishly. It would work, perhaps. If sufficient numbers of Selig's thanes turned out for the hunt. If Joscelin would cooperate.