Kushiel's Dart (81 page)

It began as a wind ruffling the waves.

Such a thing, one might think, is normal at sea, where the wind is one's mistress, and dictates one's course. This is true. But this wind ... I cannot explain. It ran contrary to the westerly breeze that blew us true,
lower
than that wind, blowing the waves backward, creating a cauldron of distress.

"Ah, no," Quintilius Rousse breathed, taking a firmer grip upon the wheel and casting his gaze skyward. "Ah, no, Elder Brother, have mercy!"

I looked up, then, at the sky, which had bid fair for our journey, as clear as the day before. No longer. Clouds roiled above us, gathering with purpose and darkness, a roiling mix, blotting out the sun.

"What is it?" I asked the Queen's Admiral, dreading the answer.

Questions are dangerous, for they have answers. I had said as much to the Due de Morhban. Quintilius Rousse looked at me with fear in his bright blue eyes, the old trawler-line scar dragging down one side of his mouth.

"It is him," he said.

And that is when the skies opened upon us.

For those who have never survived a storm at sea, I do not wish it upon anyone. Our ship, which had seemed such a safe haven on the vast breast of the waters, was pitched and tossed about like a child's toy. The contrary winds, one moment ago a mild phenomenon, turned to forces of destruction, boiling the sea into crests and troughs higher than our tallest mast. Night or day, there was no telling, the skies turned a horrid bruised color, split only by lightning.

"Drop sails!" Quintilius Rousse shouted, his powerful voice battered and lost in the winds and the lashing rain that followed. "Drop sails!"

Somehow, his men heard; I saw them, as I clung helplessly to the foremast, their silhouettes against the lightning-struck sky, high overhead, obeying the Admiral's orders. The sails dropped like stones, and I saw one man at least swept over, as the ship listed to starboard. Rain blew like veils across my sight; through it, incredibly, I saw Joscelin making his way to the foredeck, from grip to grip, a dim figure inching along with sheer determination. I prayed Hyacinthe had gained the safety of our cabin, though I doubted it; I remembered him last amid a group of sailors, too interested to go below. And it had come upon us too fast.

Gaining the mast, Joscelin took hold and crouched over me, sheltering me with his body from the buffeting winds. Drenched and sodden, I peered out from under him, my own rain-lashed hair obscuring my vision. "Do we turn back?" Joscelin asked the Admiral, shouting the question. "My lord Admiral! Do we turn back?"

"Here he comes!" Quintilius Rousse roared his answer, pointing with one shaking finger across the water. He came.

The Master of the Straits.

Those who have not made this passage say I lie; I swear, it is true. Huddled under Joscelin's sheltering form, I saw him, a face upon the waters, moving toward us. Of waves was his flesh wrought, of thunderclouds, his hair; lightning, his eyes and, I swear, he spoke. His voice burst upon us like thunder, drumming at our ears, until we could but cower beneath it.

"WHO DARES CROSS?"

Like calls to like. Lashing himself to the wheel, the Queen's Admiral dared to reply, roaring like fury into the winds, shaking his fist. "I do, you old bastard! And if you want your precious Black Boar to rule in Alba, you'll let me go!"

There was laughter, then, and the face of the waters reared up three times the height of our mid-mast, dwarfing Rousse's defiance. A vast, watery face, laughing like thunder, until I clapped my hands over my drowning ears.

"THAT IS NOT
YOUR
DREAM, SEAFARER! WHAT TOLL WILL YOU PAY?"

"Name your price!" Quintilus Rousse howled his answer, hands clinging like iron to the straining wheel. The ship plunged into a trough; he held its course, hurling defiance into the winds. "Just name it, you old bastard! I'll pay what it takes!"

The ship climbed up the crest of a wave, toward the vast maw, dark and infinite, that had opened in the sky. Open, laughing like thunder, to swallow us forevermore.

This is the end, I thought, closing my eyes.

And felt the absence of Joscelin's sheltering body.

"A song!" I knew the voice; it was Joscelin's, strident and urgent with hope. His hand grabbed at my shoulder, hauling me erect, even as the ship teetered atop the pitch of a wave. "Such as you have never heard, my lord of the Straits, sung upon the waters!" he shouted at the wave-wrought face that loomed over us. "A song!"

"What song?" I asked Joscelin desperately, the ship pitching. The rain whipped his hair, dull and sodden, his hands anchoring me. We might have been the last two mortals left alive, for all that I could see. "Joscelin! What song?"

He answered, shouting; I saw it, though I could not hear. The wind ripped his answer away, rendered it soundless. But we had been together through all that humans might endure, through blizzard and storm, and all that the elements might hurl at us. We did not need to speak aloud. I saw his lips form the words.

Gunter's steading.

And because there was nothing else to do, except die, I sang, then, a song of Gunter's steading: a hearth-song, one of those the women had taught me, Hedwig and the others, a song of waiting, and longing, of a handsome thane dying young, in a welter of blood and sorrow, of reaping and sowing and harvest, of old age come early, and weaving by the fireside, while the snows of winter pile deep at the door.

I am not Thelesis de Mornay, at whose voice all present fall silent, listening. But I have a gift for language, that Delaunay taught to me. These songs I had committed to memory, scrawled by burnt twig next to the hearth-fire, never recorded by men. They were the homely songs of Skaldi women, to which no scholar ever paid heed. And I sang them, then, though the wind tore the words from my lips, for the Master of the Straits, whose face moved over the waters, impossibly vast and terrible.

And he listened, and the waters grew calm, the awesome features sinking back into the rippling waves.

No one, ever, had brought these songs to the sea before.

I kept singing, while the seas grew tranquil, and the waves lapped at the sides of the ship, and Joscelin's hand was beneath my arm, keeping me upright while my voice grew ragged. Those sailors quailing beneath the onslaught stirred, creeping onto deck. I sang, hoarsely, of children born and fir trees giving forth new growth, until Quintilius Rousse roused himself with a shake.

"Do you accept our toll?" he cried.

The waves themselves shuddered, a face forming on their surface, benign and complacent, yet vast, so vast. Its mouth could have swallowed our ship whole.

"YESSSSS . . ." came the reply, whispered and dreadful. "YOU MAY PASS."

And it was gone.

The withdrawal of resistance came like a blow, the restoration of calm, water dissipating into mere waves, rippled by a western breeze. The skies cleared; it was not even dusk. I drew in a great breath, my throat rasping.

"Is it done?" I asked Quintilius Rousse hoarsely, trusting to Joscelin to keep me upright.

"It is done," he confirmed, his blue eyes darting left and right, scarce trusting to the evidence they saw. He looked at me then with something like fear. "Did Delaunay teach you that, then, to soothe Elder Brother's craving?"

I laughed at that, my voice cracking with exhaustion and hysteria. "No," I whispered, leaning on Joscelin's vambraced arm. "Those are the songs of Skaldi women, whose husbands and brothers may yet slaughter us all."

And with that, I collapsed.

When I awoke, I was lying in a dark cabin, enmeshed in a hammock as if in a hempen cradle, swaying. A single lamp lit the darkness, its flame trimmed low. A familiar figure drowsed beside it, sitting in a chair.

"Hyacinthe," I whispered.

He started, and lifted his head, white grin reassuring. "Did you think you'd lost me?"

"I wasn't sure." I struggled to sit upright, then gave up, resigning myself to the hammock. "I saw at least one go over."

"Four." He said it quietly, no longer smiling. "It would have been more, if not for Jean Marchand. He made us lash ourselves to whatever we could."

"You saw it, then." My voice was hoarse still. It is something, to sing down the sea. Hyacinthe nodded, a faint movement in the shadows.

"I saw it."

"Where's Joscelin?"

"Above." Hyacinthe yawned. "He wanted to see the stars, to gain his bearings. He's not vomiting anymore, at least."

I began to laugh, then stopped. It hurt my throat. "We owe him all our lives."

"You sang." He looked at me curiously through the darkness.

"He made me. He remembered the songs. Gunter's steading." I lay back, exhausted again. "I never thought I'd be grateful to the Skaldi."

"All knowledge is worth having," Hyacinthe said, quoting Delaunay, whom I had quoted to him. "Even this. Even the
dromonde
." Rising, he smoothed my hair back from my brow and kissed me. "Go to sleep," he said, and blew out the lamp.

SIXTY-EIGHT

The following day dawned as calm and bright as one might wish, as if in apology for the Master of the Straits' dreadful storm. We had turned northward in the night, rounding the lower tip of Alba, and I could see her green coastline lying off our starboard bow, hazy in the distance.

"Where do we make landfall?" I asked Quintilius Rousse, standing on deck with him. The wind tugged at my cloak, but it seemed milder than yesterday, with less of a biting chill. I felt more myself, and thanked Blessed Elua for the thousandth time that I healed quickly.

"That," the Admiral said dryly, "is a very good question." He looked haggard and tired, having gotten but a few hours sleep, delegating the wheel to his helmsman once he'd determined we were well and truly clear of danger. He swept one brawny arm toward the coast. "There, in all its glory, lies Alba. Where Ysandre's deposed Cruarch bides is another matter."

"I thought you knew," I said, dismayed once more. "You sought him before, you said. Among the Dalriada."

"I know where the Dalriada lie." Rousse turned to spit, then remembered my presence, and refrained. "On the land that juts out nearest to Eire. Our sources
said
that's where Drustan mab Necthana fled. But it's a sizeable kingdom."

"How do we even know it's true?"

Rousse shrugged. "Delaunay said it was, and Thelesis de Mornay. They had some system of exchange, across the waters, with Alban loyalists. Folk that Thelesis had known, during her exile. Then the messages stopped coming, and they reckoned Maelcon the Usurper caught them. That's when I tried the coast. But I never caught sight of any Pictish Prince."

And I had doubted, when he called it a fool's errand. I sat down on a spar near his feet, thinking. In the prow, Joscelin was doing his Cassiline exercises, silhouetted against the sky. Sunlight flashed from his steel. He had found his sea-legs, it seemed.

"How long until we reach the kingdom of the Dalriada?" I asked.

"A day, no more." Quintilius Rousse shrugged again. "Then we take our chances, I reckon, and hope they can lead us to the Cruithne."

I was not entirely sure I liked his plan. I'd doubts enough about my own skill with the tongue—it is one thing to learn a language on paper, with tutors who speak one's own language, and another to deal with native speakers—and I wasn't sure the Dalriada spoke the same Cruithne I had learned. Eire is its own island, and separate from Alba; if their folk had established a foothold on Alba, would they speak a dialect I recognized? Or somewhat altogether different? The scholars do not say, for the armies of Tiberium never ventured so far before being ousted by Cinhil Ru. And if it were so ... how could I make them understand? Ysandre's ring, Drus-tan mab Necthana's pledge, would mean naught to them.

So I mulled over the problem, until it came together in my mind.
All knowledge is worth having
. "Hyacinthe," I said. "Mayhap he can help. He can speak the
dromonde
, and tell us where to land."

"You believe it?" Quintilius Rousse glanced at me sidelong, profound doubt in his blue gaze. "It's enough that we come in a single ship, I think. Even Delaunay wasn't so credible, lass, and he could ferret out truth in the strangest of places."

Resting my chin in my hands, I watched the waves pass. "I know. But my lord Admiral. . . when I was but thirteen, his mother spoke the
dromonde
for me, unbidden. While I was trying to get at the truth of Delaunay's history. She told me I would rue the day I learned it."

"And you did, I suppose," Rousse said gruffly, when I ventured no more.

"There were two days." It was hypnotic, watching the sliding waves, unchanging, never the same. "I learned half of it the day Melisande Shah-rizai contracted me for the Longest Night, and used me to flush out your messenger, my lord, whose liege led d'Aiglemort's men to Delaunay. I learned that he had been beloved of Prince Rolande. And I learned the balance of it the day he was killed, and all of the household with him, including Alcuin, who was like a brother to me. That was the day I learned that he was oath-sworn to protect Ysandre de la Courcel, which Alcuin told us, dying. Yes, my lord, I rue those days."

Quintilius Rousse was silent for a moment, tending to the wheel. "Anyone could say as much," he said finally. " 'Tis dangerous, to chase after buried secrets."