Kushiel's Avatar (Page 103)
“Of course, my lady.” I inclined my head to her.
“Three days.” She nodded, then nodded again, satisfied. “We will answer your plea in three days, after the festival of the new moon.”
SEVENTY-FOUR
FOR THREE days, we waited in Tisaar.We ventured outside the walls of the city to confer with Tifari Amu and the others. Although they were uneasy at their dubious welcome, they had found the common-folk of Saba more accommodating than Hanoch ben Hadad and the guards. For a few scraps of steel—an out worn spearhead, a broken buckle—they had garnered supplies in abun dance. And, I daresay, a fair accounting of Saba's readiness for overtures to report to Ras Lijasu.
“Kaneka might welcome me,” Tifari said with quiet triumph, “if I became a diplomat.”
“So she might,” I said, hoping it might prove true, not daring to tell him that if the Women's Council denied us, we would risk the most heinous of blasphemies and the enmity of all of Saba to gain the Name of God.
For so I was resolved, and Joscelin too. Fruitless or no, we had come too far to leave without trying. And for all that had been healed between us … it would be lost, if we abandoned Hyacinthe to his fate.
Better we should try our utmost, whatsoever the price.
I wished, in those days, that Imriel was not with us; and I gave thanks as well that he was, for his presence did much to charm the women of Saba, and for that I was grateful. He bore it well. I do not think anyone noticed his inward shudder when an unfamiliar hand caressed his cheek. I knew, and grieved at it. How my lord Delaunay bore it, I will never know.
“You need not endure it, Imri,” I said to him. “It is beyond the call.”
“No.” His brows knit in a familiar frown. Ysandre wore the same look when she quarrelled with Amaury Trente. “I don't mind, not so much. They mean well, and it helps. Even I can tell that much, Phèdre.”
He was right. I brushed his brow with a kiss. “You've too much courage for your own good, Imriel de la Courcel. When it becomes too much to bear, tell me.”
“Don't call me that!” Imriel drew away from me, his frown turning to a scowl.
“It is your name,” I reminded him gently.
He looked away. “They think I am your son, yours and Joscelin's.”
We had not disabused anyone of the idea, which was far simpler than the truth and brought with it a measure of goodwill. I understood better, now, why Brother Selbert held that an expedient lie did not violate Elua's wishes. “So they do. It does not change your name, Imri, nor who you are.”
“Wish it did,” he muttered. “I wish I was your son, and not hers.”
“In the end, what you are is between you and Elua,” I told him. “And he would be proud to claim you as his own for all you have done.”
And he listened to me, his dark-blue eyes hungering, yearning to believe in some proof of his own goodness. It terrified me beyond belief to think he staked such import on my words. What did I know? Beneath it all, I was still a whore's unwanted get, struggling to make sense of the world and do what was right. To be a parent, I think, must be the most fearful thing there is. I did my best, and prayed it was enough.
One by one, the days passed.
On the third day fell the festival of the new moon. It was unknown to me, being something the Yeshuites no longer celebrate. Many old traditions were shattered with the birth of Yeshua ben Yosef. They are still heeded in Saba. All that day, Tisaar fasted, and we fasted with them out of respect. There had been meetings these last two days, covert and secretive. That much, I knew. Of their outcome, I knew nothing.
The rams' horns blew when the lower rim of the sun touched the horizon, calling the Sabaeans to prayers. Sabaean temples are round, with a square room within—the Holy of Holies—and two concentric circles without, plus an alcove for the altar itself. Although we were not permitted into the temple proper, we were allowed into the outer most ring which skirts the court of sacrifice.
There was a long procession leading to the temple, winding through the streets of Tisaar. Elaborate parasols were held over the heads of the priests, casting long shadows in dwindling sunlight. The mournful cries of the rams' horns echoed over the city, finding an answer in the rhyth mic pulse of two-handed goat-hide drums and the small hand-bells car ried by the women. A red heifer was led before us all, lowing softly and adding her voice to the music of their worship.
“Remove your shoes,” Yevuneh told us at the temple, “and stand here; no further. That much is permitted.”
Most of the ceremony, we could not see, blocked by a sea of bodies, clad in Habiru garb with fringed shawls colored by blue dyes. I heard the prayers offered, and the lowing of the red heifer; I heard her cries cut short, and knew by the reek of blood and the charnel odor that followed that the sacrifice had been offered. Imriel looked ill at it. Then came more prayer in the form of song, and bare feet tramping the temple floor in dance, men and women in counterpoint to one another. Eleazar had been right—here were preserved traditions forgotten by the Yeshuites.
The sky was violet when they spilled out of the temple, the three of us dispersed in their wake, struggling to find our shoes amid the crowd. In the southwest hung the new moon, a slender crescent scarce visible against the darkling sky. The Sabaeans lifted up their hands, praising Adonai for its return.
And I thought. . . Elua help me, but I thought of Asherat-of-the-Sea and her crown of stars. Asherat, who had once saved my life; Asherat, by whose mantle Melisande Shahrizai herself was protected. And I prayed, in that twilight, to the goddess Asherat, to Blessed Elua and his Companions, to Isis who knit the sundered pieces of her beloved Osiris, and to Adonai Himself, the One God of the Habiru.
I do not know which one of them answered.
I know only that when we returned to the household of the widow Yevuneh, the Council of Women had gathered to await us, and a mighty feast had been laid to break our fast and celebrate the new moon. Young and old were gathered alike this time, and the youngest was scarce six weeks old, a nursing babe in the arms of Yevuneh's daughter Ardath. But it was Semira, eldest among them, who was appointed to give us their decision.
“It has been determined,” she said in the lamp-lit courtyard, sum moning her dignity and drawing her shawl tight across her hunched shoulders. “It has been determined that your presence among us con stitutes a sign. And it has been determined that humility is the better part of wisdom. Your case is just. It is not meet that this mortal man— this friend you name Hyacinthe—should suffer for the transgressions of Rahab. This matter must be put to Adonai Himself. This we will help you to do, insofar as we are able.”
My head felt light and dizzy atop my shoulders. I sank to my knees in Yevuneh's courtyard, grasping Semira's hand in my own and kissing it. “Thank you, my lady,” I said in Habiru, scarce daring to believe. “Thank you!”
“Oh, wait,” she said testily, pulling her hand away. “You haven't heard the how of it.”
The how, it transpired, was complicated.
We sat for long hours that night in the widow's kitchen, poring over maps of the night sky; for that, it transpired, was the only means by which we might find the island of Kapporeth, the fabled land-mass in the Lake of Tears on which the Ark of Broken Tablets was hidden.
“You see, here,” said Morit, who was entrusted with our teaching, as she pointed to a scroll. “Nemuel departed from the shores of what would be Tisaar.” She was a young woman and grave with her calling, coming from a family that had practiced the art of Mazzalah for time out of mind, mapping the night skies and charting time by it. “And here he writes, 'The red planet of war hung low upon the horizon in the tenth degree of the Lion of Judah, and it is toward that I made my way, with the Throne of Shalomon hanging behind my left shoulder like an omen. For five hours we rowed, and came ere daybreak to this isle I have named Kapporeth, that is the mercy seat of the Luvakh Shabab, may Adonai have mercy upon us all. And here I shall dwell until the end of my days.' ” Morit raised her gaze. “He refers to the Broken Tablets, you understand, and where the temple was built to house them. The location of Kapporeth is known only to Aaron's line and the Sanhedrin of Elders, but a copy of this document was given unto the keeping of my many-times-removed great-grandmother, for the records of the Mazzalah “
“Then we have but to follow the red star,” Joscelin said, adding wryly, “and row for five hours, I take it.”
“No.” Morit smiled with kind condescension. “Only the distance remains constant. Nemuel travelled at the end of the rainy season, my lord D'Angeline, and the stars have changed their position from where they were on that night many hundreds of years ago. For two days, I have studied the records. This— ” she pointed, ” —is a chart of the night sky which Nemuel followed. And this— ” she pointed again, ” —is the sky as we behold it tonight.”
I gazed at the circles inked on parchment, the stars and constellations drawn in with a fine hand. “They're completely different.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “They are.”
For the remainder of the night, into the small hours of morning, Morit taught us to read the charted stars, working out a course that paralleled that by which Nemuel had steered his craft.
Semira was right. It would not be easy.
“The Eagle of Dân is ascendant,” Morit observed. “See here, this bright star marks its passage. Do you depart when it is in the tenth degree, and make for the smallest spoke of the Wheel, you will be nearly on course. Keep you the constellation of Moishe's Rod behind your left shoulder, which stands in place of Shalomon's Chair. Do you see, here?” She traced a shape on the parchment. “Moishe holds here the rod which became a serpent when he cast it down, and he seized it by its tail.”
“Ye-es,” I said, dubious.
“You will see,” Morit said, and smiled. “I will show you.”
And that she did, for we went into Yevuneh's courtyard and she pointed out to us the myriad stars, naming the constellations and tracing with her forefinger those vast, mighty shapes betwixt the expanse of blackness, the forms of which were echoed in miniature upon her parch ments. Over and over she drilled us, a relentless taskmistress, until all of us could name and recite them by rote.