Kushiel’s Dart

"Only pages." Hyacinthe’s voice was like a hollow reed sounding. "Pages from the Lost Book of Raziel, that the One God gave to Edom, the First Man, to give him mastery over earth and sea and sky, and took away for his disobedience, casting it into the depths." The Master of the Straits stopped and considered him. Hyacinthe gave his desperate laugh, black eyes blurred with the dromonde, seeing at last. "A gift of your father, yes? The Admiral calls him the Lord of the Deep, and tosses him gold coins, for he is superstitious as sailors are. But the Yeshuites name him Prince of the Sea; the angel Rahab, they call him, Pride, and Insolence, who fell, and was cleaved and made whole, who fell, but never followed." The words came faster, tumbling from his lips, his blank gaze seeing down the tunnel of eight centuries. I remembered a blazing fire, the sound of fiddles skirling, Hyacinthe playing the timbales while an ancient woman cackled in my ear. Don’t you know the dromonde can look backward as well as forward? "He begot you, my lord, upon a D’Angeline girl, who loved another. Who loved an Alban, son of the Cullach Gorrym, a mortal, one of Earth’s eldest. Is it not so?"

"It is so," the Master of the Straits murmured.

Hyacinthe ran his hands over his face. "The Straits were still open then, free waters…he took her here, to this place, this isle, the Third Sister, still untouched by the Scions of Elua, and she bore you here…though she loved you, she sang in her sorrow and captivity like a bird in a cage, until her song carried across the waters, and the Alban who loved her sailed the Straits to free her…" He fell silent.

"They died." The words rose around us, filled with the sea’s deep surge, ceaseless and sorrowing. "The waves rose, their boat overturned, and the deep water took them. I know where their bones lie." The Master of the Straits gazed across the sea from his vast, open temple, the fluid shifting of his features fixed in grief.

"And the One God punished Rahab’s disobedience, and bound him to His will," Hyacinthe whispered. "But for the heart of a woman he could not sway and his own lost freedom, Rahab took his vengeance, and laid a geis upon you, my lord. He brought up scattered pages, from the deep, to give you mastery over the seas, and he bound you here, that Alba and Terre d’Ange would ever be separated by the waters you ruled, until love daring enough to cross the breach was born once more, and one came willing to take your place."

The Master of the Straits spoke with the finality of a wave crashing to shore, and I knew, then, that I had lost. "It is so."

Hyacinthe straightened; his face cleared and he laughed, a raw gaiety to it this time. "Well, then, my lord, will I serve?"

"You will serve." The Master of the Straits inclined his head, his eyes gone a dark and compassionate blue. "A long and lonely apprenticeship, until you are ready to take on the chains of my geis, freeing me to leave this earth and follow Elua’s path, where Heaven’s bastard sons are welcome."

"You have used us harshly, Elder Brother," Quintilius Rousse muttered darkly. "What’s to become of the lad, then?"

"I have used you less harshly than fate has used me." The Master of the Straits turned an implacable face to him. "The sea has loved you, friend sailor; count it a blessing. Half your folk would have died in the crossing had I not taken you in hand. My successor will be bound to this isle, as was I. That curse will not be broken until the One God repents of my father’s punishment, and His memory is long."

"What of the Straits?" Drustan asked in Cruithne; his brow was furrowed with the effort of following the proceedings, for Hyacinthe’s words had been in D’Angeline. Enough, though, he understood. "Will the crossing remain forbidden?"

"You hold that key." The pale hand pointed once more at the gold signet on Drustan’s finger. "Wed, and open the lock."

"Naught but twenty thousand howling Skaldi and the traitors of Camlach stand in the way," Quintilius Rousse said sardonically. "While we languish on a forsaken rock in the middle of the sea, with no army in sight."

"I promised my aid," the Master of the Straits said, unmoved. "And you shall have it." He swept his arm above the bronze vessel again, its waters rippling. "All that has passed in Terre d’Ange, I will show you. Your men and your horses and arms, I will bring safe to land. No more, can I do. Will you see it now?"

They looked at me; surprised, I looked back, and found I was trembling. Truly, there is a limit to what the mind can compass in one day. I’d risen prepared to chain my life to this lonely isle. It is a hard thing, to turn aside from so deep a path. "No," I said, shaking my head and struggling to keep my voice steady. "My lord, if it please you…I would ask a little time, an hour, mayhap. Might we have that long?"