Naamah's Curse (20 page)

It was not a joyful moment.

T
he older Vralian’s name was Ilya; the younger’s was Leonid.

I learned this through observation over the course of days, since neither of them deigned to tell me when I asked. It is more difficult than one might expect to pick out proper names in the midst of an utterly foreign tongue, especially among folk who speak seldom.

Beyond that, I learned nothing. By the time we had spent a week’s time jolting our way through the mountain passes, I was just as puzzled and confused as I had been from the moment Ilya first clamped a cuff around my wrist. I could not for the life of me understand what it was they
wanted
of me.

Not pleasure, that was certain. They were as reluctant to touch me as they were to look at me or talk to me.

For that, I was grateful. If they had been intent on committing heresy on me, I would have been helpless to prevent it. But instead, it seemed quite the opposite. I had the sense that they regarded me as unclean, and not in a way that owed to my limited and unsuccessful attempts to maintain good hygiene, a difficult task rendered near impossible by virtue of being chained within my dirty clothing.

No, it was somewhat deeper and more profound.

Over and over, in a thousand different ways, I asked what it was they wanted, why they had taken me. The only answer I ever got was, “God wills it.” Eventually, I gave up asking and pondered why Vralia’s god wanted me.

What little I knew of Vralian faith came from Berlik’s tale—Berlik the Oath-Breaker, who had fled to the snowy wastes, carrying his curse far, far away from his people. In the end, the Maghuin Dhonn Herself had accepted his atonement.

I knew that Berlik had fallen in with Yeshuite pilgrims on his journey, and that he had found a place of sanctuary in a Yeshuite monastery in Vralia. No one had clapped him in chains. No, the head priest had given Berlik his blessing, allowing him to retreat into hermitage and roam freely in an immense tract of pristine wilderness owned by the monastery. When Imriel de la Courcel came seeking vengeance for the life of his wife and unborn child, the priest begged him to spare Berlik.

Of course, we only know Prince Imriel’s side of the tale, but the Maghuin Dhonn have always believed he told it fairly. Tales say that Berlik bowed his head to the sword willingly, and the prince fell to his knees in the snow and wept after he took his life. A man with every right to vengeance would not lie about such a thing.

I wondered what had changed in a hundred and some years that Yeshua’s priests had gone from giving succor to a great magician of the Maghuin Dhonn, one with a dire curse on his head, to dragging me away in chains for the dubious sin of having been falsely accused of cheating in an archery contest.

It was madness.

Vralia had been a country at war in Berlik’s time, that I remembered. The Yeshuite faith was not born here; indeed, it had far closer ties to Terre d’Ange. Mayhap I was approaching the matter from the wrong direction, and Vralia’s gods were interested in me because of my D’Angeline blood.

I tried to think the matter through, looking for some thread of a clue woven into the tapestry of history.

“Yeshua ben Yosef was the only begotten son of the One God of the Habiru folk,” I said aloud in my native tongue, addressing the back of Ilya and Leonid’s heads. “And they acknowledged him as the long-awaited savior of their people. Is that not so?”

I could see both of them stiffen at hearing Yeshua’s name coming from my lips. Although they understood nothing else, they did not like it when I spoke of him, but it helped me think and remember.

“But the Tiberians reviled him for sowing disorder. They took him prisoner, and killed him like a common criminal,” I continued. “And as his true love Mary wept at the foot of the post to which he was nailed, her tears mingled with his dripping blood in the soil. From this joining, Blessed Elua was engendered, and Mother Earth herself nurtured him in her womb.”

They didn’t like hearing Elua’s name, either, although I had the impression it was for different reasons.

I pondered what little else I knew. Of Yeshua ben Yosef, not much. The history of Blessed Elua and his Companions, I knew well. Ever since I had learned that I was half-D’Angeline, I had been curious about it.

The One God had turned his back on his Earth-begotten grandson, but a handful of his divine servants had abandoned their posts in Heaven and gone to Elua’s side: Naamah, Anael, Shemhazai, Eisheth, Azza, Camael, and Cassiel. When the King of Persis put Elua in chains, Naamah offered herself to him in exchange for Elua’s freedom. When Elua hungered, Naamah lay down with strangers in exchange for coin that he might eat.

Wandering the earth, they came at last to Terre d’Ange, where they were welcomed with joy. There, they made a home and begat thousands upon thousands of children.

Except for Cassiel, anyway. Although he stayed for love of Blessed Elua, he obeyed the One God’s commandment that his servants remain chaste.

I’d never quite understood Cassiel.

When their descendants grew too numerous, the One God took notice at last. He sent his commander-in-chief to fetch Elua and his Companions back to Heaven, but Elua refused, saying his grandfather’s Heaven was bloodless. In the end, Mother Earth intervened and struck a bargain with the One God, who had been her husband long, long ago. Together they created a new place beyond the mortal realm, which D’Angelines call the Terre d’Ange-that-lies-beyond.

Well and so, it seemed to me that the matter had been peacefully resolved. It had taken place over a thousand years ago. So far as I knew, Yeshuites and D’Angelines had lived peaceably together for those long centuries.

Mayhap the answer lay in more recent history. My thoughts circled back around to Berlik’s tale. In his day, there had been a great exodus of Yeshuites around the world as they embarked on pilgrimages to Vralia. There was a prophecy that when Yeshua ben Yosef returned to the world, he would establish his kingdom in the north, and the Yeshuites believed the time was nigh.

That, I remembered, was because of the war in Vralia. Some royal prince named Tadeuz Vral had set himself up as the supreme monarch. He’d even named the place after himself. But his brother had rebelled against him. Tadeuz Vral had appointed a Yeshuite immigrant with a gift for military strategy to lead his army, and swore an oath that he would convert and rule the country in Yeshua’s name if the fellow was victorious.

As it happened, he was.

That was how Vralia had become a Yeshuite nation, and that was the extent of my knowledge. I did recall that in Prince Imriel’s tale, this Tadeuz Vral had been none too pleased with him for killing Berlik, as all Yeshuite pilgrims were under his protection and Prince Imriel had lied about his intentions. But it was the very same priest who had begged Prince Imriel to spare Berlik who convinced Vral to let the prince go, so I did not see how the incident could be the cause of a grudge that had festered for over a hundred years and led to my own half-breed D’Angeline self being taken into captivity.

Again, so far as I knew, it was the start of a diplomatic relationship between the nations, and I didn’t recall hearing aught to suggest it was anything but cordial in the decades that had followed.

None of it made a damn bit of sense.

Of course, I had been gone for a long while. For all I knew, there had been some new incident that had Vralia in an uproar against D’Angelines or the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn, and I was paying the price.

It seemed unlikely, though. There were no great, shape-shifting magicians like Berlik left to my people, and I could hardly imagine thoughtful, steady-minded King Daniel of Terre d’Ange allowing a diplomatic outrage to take place on his watch. No, if anything, he was overly cautious. The only outrageous thing he had ever done in his life was marry Jehanne.

Despite everything, the thought made me smile.

Few folk had ever understood that match, but I did. Daniel’s first wife, the one who died, had been the love of his life, gracious, noble, and kind. To this day, he grieved deeply for her. He had allowed himself to love the fickle, tempestuous courtesan that was my lady Jehanne because she was nothing like her predecessor—and Jehanne knew it full well.

That’s why he tolerates my foibles,
she had told me once.
We’re unfaithful to one another in different ways
.

It was true, but not wholly so. Deep down, Jehanne was a great deal wiser and kinder than she pretended. I knew, because she’d let herself show it to me. And for all her fears and uncertainties, I didn’t doubt that motherhood would bring out the best in her.

I only hoped I’d have the chance to see so for myself one day. Rattling my chains ruefully, I remembered gentle Checheg lying exhausted and calm in the aftermath of giving birth, assuring me of just that thing as she described my glad return to Terre d’Ange with Bao at my side—and little Sarangerel telling me that Jehanne’s babe would be as big as her bright-eyed, toddling brother, Mongke, already creating mischief.

It had seemed possible then.

Now…

I fought down a wave of despair, stroking the blue silk scarf that Checheg had given me. I wore it knotted around my throat.

That, and one jade bangle the color of the dragon’s translucent reflecting lake were all that were left to me of the tokens I had collected along the way, reminders that I had been loved once.

Everything else was gone.

My yew-wood bow, gone, left behind in Batu’s
ger
. My ivory-hilted dagger, gone or taken. Also left behind, my battered canvas satchel that held items of little value to anyone but me. There was the Emperor’s jade seal, which I’d stashed there for safe-keeping. That, I supposed, might be bartered for a considerable amount. The same was not true of the other items. Not the signet ring my mother had given me, proof that I was a child of Alais’ line.

Not the square of cloth embroidered with flowering bamboo by Bao’s half-sister, Song.

And surely, surely, not the little crystal vial of perfume that Jehanne had given me to remember her by.

No one but a D’Angeline would know what
that
was worth.

It shouldn’t have mattered so much; they were only things, after all. But they were things that had given me comfort.

And there was no comfort here.

None at all.

W
e began to pass through villages.

I had some mad idea that I might find help or allies within them. I called out to the staring villagers in the Tatar tongue, rattling my chains plaintively, clasping my hands and pleading, doing my best to convey that I was a captive in need of rescue.

They looked away.

Ilya spoke to them in his deep, sonorous voice, and they nodded in understanding. Some turned and spat as I passed. One little boy stooped, picked up a rock, and hurled it at me, his face contorted with disgust. He had good aim and a strong arm; although I jerked away, the rock grazed my brow in passing.

“What are you saying to them?” I asked in fierce frustration.

He eyed me sidelong. “God wills this.”

God.

God.

God.

Oh, how perishing sick I was of hearing it!
Why?
It nagged at me.