Kushiel’s Dart

"This is the training I will ask of you, Phèdre," he said, his voice sterner. "You will learn to look, to see, and to think on what you see. You asked me at Midwinter if I knew you by your eyes, and I said no. I did not need to see the mote in your eye to know you were one who had been stricken by Kushiel’s Dart. It was in every line of your body, as you gazed after the dominatrices of Mandrake House. It is to the glory of Elua and his Companions, in whose veins your blood flows; even as a child, you bear the mark of it. In time, you may become it, do you choose. But understand, my sweet, that this is only a beginning. Now, do you see?"

His face acquired a particular beauty when he put on that expression, stern and serious, like the portraits of old provincial nobles who could trace their lineage straight back to one of Elua’s Companions in an unbroken line. "Yes, my lord," I said, adoring him for it. If Anafiel Delaunay wanted me to lay down in the stews, like Naamah, I would do it, I was sure…and if he willed me to be more than an instrument for Mandragian fiddle-players, I would learn to be it. I thought on his words to me that Longest Night, and a connection formed in my mind, as easily as a nursing babe finds the nipple. "My lord," I asked him, "did you place a wager in Night’s Doorstep that Baudoin de Trevalion would play the Sun Prince?" Once more I was rewarded with his unexpected shout of laughter, longer this time, unchecked. Alcuin grinned and hugged his knees with glee. At last, Delaunay wrestled his mirth under control, removing a kerchief from his pocket and dabbing his eyes. "Ah, Phèdre," he sighed. "Miriam was right. She should have asked for more."

Chapter Seven

So began the years of my long apprenticeship with Anafiel Delaunay, wherein I began to learn how to look and see and think. And lest anyone should suppose that my time was taken with nothing more taxing than watching and heeding my surroundings, I may assure you, this was the least of it, if not the least important.

As Delaunay had indicated, I studied languages; Caerdicci, until I could speak it in my dreams, and Cruithne (for which I saw no need) and Skaldic, recalling to me the long-ago tribesman who had appointed himself my guardian on the Trader’s Road. Alcuin, it transpired, spoke Skaldic with some long-imprinted skill, for it had been his milk-tongue, spoken to him in the cradle by a Skaldic wetnurse. In truth, it was she who had saved him from an ambush by her own people and given him unto Delaunay’s keeping, but this I learned later.

In addition to languages, we were made to study history, until my head ached with it. We traced civilization from the golden age of Hellas to the rise of Tiberium, and followed her fall, dealt two-fisted by twin claimants. The followers of Yeshua held that his coming was a prophecy, that Tiberium should fall and they should restore the throne of the One God; historians, Delaunay told us guardedly, held that the dispersal of Yeshuite financiers from the city of Tiberium had more to do with it. Strained coffers, he maintained, were what eventually caused the great empire of Tiberium to be divided into the loose-knit republic of nation-states that comprises Caerdicca Unitas.

The second blow, no less doughty, was struck against the once-mighty Tiberian armies on the green island of Alba, when there arose amid the warring factions a tribal king named Cinhil ap Domnall, known as Cinhil Ru, who succeeded in making a treaty with the Dalriada of Eire and uniting the tribes against the Emperor’s armies. Thus did the island come once and for all under the rule of the Cruithne, whom scholars call the Picti. They are a wild, half-civilized folk, and I saw no need to learn their tongue.

Once the Tiberian soldiers were driven out of Alba, they began retreating and never stopped, driven out of the Skaldic hinterlands by berserkers and-legends claimed-the spirits of raven and wolf.

Through this bloodstained tapestry ran the history of Terre d’Ange, shining like a golden thread. A peaceful land content to fruit and flower beneath the blessed sun, we had no history, Delaunay said, before the coming of Elua. We gave way with grace before the armies of Tiberium, who ate our grapes and olives, wed our women and held our borders against the Skaldi. We carried out our small rituals unchanged, and kept our language and our songs, unchanging. When the armies of Tiberium retreated like a wave across our lands, into the waiting emptiness came the wandering steps of Elua, and the land welcomed him like a bridegroom.